Performer Tawni Ocean's comments about a recently cancelled Jail Babes shoot got the whole Larry Flynt building into an uproar including Larry Flynt Jr.
Ocean: "It's all about the unprofessionalism, and the way they [Mark Cromer and Mark Kulkis of Jail Babes] treat the talent. That's the way I was treated. I can't vouch for anyone else. But I can vouch for both James Bonn and I. We were supposed to do a shoot May 16.
"They first set me up to work with Dave Hardman [first, on April 24, according to Ocean] who I don't really care to work with. It's nothing personal. Except he's unprofessional and always late. I have a list of people who I'll work with, and he's not on it. They set me up with him [Hardman]. He was supposed to pick me up. Well, what wound up happening was, he was late again. When Dave finally showed up he showed up really late and didn't have the courtesy to call Hustler. Dave showed up at my place at 11:45. The shoot was scheduled for 12:00. There was no way we were going to get there on time. I called Hustler three times. They told me not to bother to show up, they didn't want me to waste the time, that they'd re-book it.
"But they [Hustler] started taking it out on me. Mark Cromer, the executive editor at Jail Babes was extremely rude to me. Cromer re-booked me after Dave didn't show up that day. I was communicating with him [Cromer] the whole time, saying he was supposed to be here. They told me, shouldn't you know to get in your car. Their whole attitude was extremely unprofessional. Other parts of Hustler don't seem to be that way. I took a $500 drop in rate after Dave didn't take me to the shoot. It's okay if they're mad at Dave Hardman, but I took a drop in rate.
"I drove out all the way to Pomona [May 16], the location, and so did James Bonn in our respective cars. And no one even had the courtesy to call us and say it was postponed. I called them and said it was bad enough when you set me up with someone who I don't want to work with [Hardman] and when they don't show up, you take it out on me. And then I get one of the top male talents [Bonn] in this business for you, and you don't even have the courtesy to tell me the shoot's been cancelled."
According to Ocean, Bonn was doing a favor to her. "He probably wouldn't work for them," she says. Ocean said she drove two hours to get to Pomona on May 16. "It was an noon shoot. They have my cell phone, they have my pager and they have my home phone, but nobody even called to cancel me. What happened was I called from my cell phone to let them know I was coming in and could someone come out and meet me in the area there. I did that because I've have such weird communication problems with them previously. I made a very deliberate call, telling them I was almost there. I called the location which was the number they gave me. I talked to a very nice gentleman - Walt Wells - [it's Walt Weiss] I believe he's the photographer there. He told me there was no shoot lined up and he didn't know anything about it. I told him this was extremely unprofessional, that I was informed this was being re-booked and I don't understand why they would have me and James Bonn drive all the way to the location.
"I tried calling Cromer [last Friday morning]. He hung up on me. He's extremely rude. I told him none of my model friends will work for him. I don't want them to go through what I've been through.
"My question is, if I took a drop in rate and that wasn't good enough, why did they re-book this shoot? And, if it wasn't booked, why wasn't I informed that it was? Why didn't they have the courtesy to call. And when I called them the guys were extremely rude. I just don't want other actresses to go through this. I was asking for an explanation and Cromer said speak to my assistant and he hung up on me. I think Kulkis and Cromer aren't at the highest level at Hustler and will do whatever they have to do to save their own butts. I have nothing to lose here. Obviously, I don't want to work for them.
According to Mark Kulkis, the Hardman shoot got cancelled. To make good, Ocean reduced her rate. She wanted to do a scene with James Bonn. That was set up.
Mark Kulkis: "This girl, we told her, May 16 at noon. I must have gotten like three or four phone calls the next couple of weeks with her saying, it's Saturday, right? {May 16 was a Sunday.] Like she had the wrong weekend, first, then the wrong day."
Mark Cromer: "The only thing I can tell you about Tawni, and Mark [Kulkis] would back me up on this, as would Walt Weiss, our studio manager, is that she's a total flake. She scheduled approximately three different shoots for us of which two she didn't show up at all, without calling. I believed she called once, an hour and a half after her call time. She was still in Los Angeles and said she was running late. We can't do business like that. We told her we weren't going to use her again. This was weeks ago. Then she basically came back and said she wanted to make it up to us. Our position was, look, you cost us money. We had to pay our crew, regardless. So, if you want to make it up to us, do the scene at half your rate. Which she agreed to do and promptly didn't show for the next scheduled shoot. It was eitther three strikes you're out, or the third time's the charm.
"We cancelled the shoot. I think James Bonn was the talent. He showed up. We paid him a kill fee. She never showed up. You can talk to Walt Weiss. He's the studio manager in Pomona. What can I tell you? She's flakey. The interesting thing she called up and Walt explained the shoot was cancelled. She hadn't left. She said she wanted to drive out there so they can pay her a kill fee. Walt explained that isn't how we do it. She never showed up, anyway. Larry Flynt Jr.'s had a lot of problems with her as well. Needless to say, she won't be working for LFP again, I imagine.
Flynt: "I guess she's going around bad-mouthing our company. Where do you want me to begin with the problems I've had with her? It started out where she walked out on a Jail Babes shoot in the middle of the thing. Then she flaked out the second time around. Then she comes here, she shows up to do a shoot for Flynt Digital. She's ill-prepared. Nancy Vee was in on the shoot. I'm shooting Nancy again tomorrow. Nancy has been very good. She was the one who introduced Tawni Ocean to me. This is where her [Ocean's] attitude all came in. She [Ocean] didn't sign the release form for me to air the video that she did. All I would have to pay her was $250. So I called her and asked to come up and sign this paper and I'll cut her a check. She comes up here and proceeds to cuss out my talent people.
"It got to the point where she even had words and cussed out my finance people. But no one's allowed to cut her a check unless she signs this paper. So I sat down and talked to her and explained everything to her. She told me that she totally understood and that she didn't need the money. I asked her why then she was coming up here acting like a raving idiot in our offices. She had no explanation. I had her fill out the paperwork and gave her a check. That's basically the falling out. She's flaked out on three shoots, now, on us. I told her she'd never work with us again. So, far she's run Jail Babes a couple of thousand by having the crews there and her not showing up. Where our thing started, when I got involved, is when she proceeded to come up here and cuss out everyone involved. She wanted me to pay her for a video she did but didn't want to sign the release form for me to air the video. It wasn't worth me paying her $250 unless she was going to sign her release form. But I talked to her and she said she was fine and there was no problem at all. The next thing I know Mark [Cromer] calls me up and tells me she's going around bad-mouthing us. It's frustrating when I tried to give this girl a break, tried to do something for her, get her involved with us and she screwed it up.
"I was going to do a joint deal with her and Nancy Vee. Nancy's worked out totally fine, I'm filming her a second time and building a website around her. I was going to do the same thing for Tawni. I was going to put a similar package together for her, but she refused to sign the release form. We agreed on a $250 price, then she wanted more money. Because I didn't get her signature, she thought she was going to come back and up the bid on me. She tried to ram me for $700 on it when we had already agreed on the price. Other than that, I really don't know what the girl's problem is. I just know that I opened up every day. We tried to involve her in every aspect of the videos.
"We're mainly a magazine company, but we're starting to open up to videos. We've got our Jail Babes and our Flynt Digital, our multi-media websites. We're now developing our own video, now. We've hired in some cinema photographers who are really good from the mainstream entertainment world. We've got several editing bays. We're filming approximately one on-line movie a week, right now. I'm trying to open up the doors and work with all the girls I can, right now. I'm not trying to put anyone under contract. I'm trying to keep it open and keep them all happy. But I don't know what the hell happen with that girl [Ocean]. She just aggravates me. I thought I came to conclusion with her on everything. Sometimes I don't know where to turn with them.
"Do you remember Domy Moore? She started a big old ruckus with Primal Sex. They called me up. She threatened to kill the owner of the company and I guess that pretty well destroyed her career. I've been looking for her. I want her to do some work for me. I can't find her anywhere.
"We going to end up doing our own [video] distribution. Right now we're filming for full-length films but are archiving and editing down into segments to be aired over the Internet right now - from 15 to 30 minutes. But everything we're doing, we're doing high quality and pretty outstanding work. What we want to do is spice up the video on-line. I work on the on-line side, my dad works more on the magazine side. Once they choose to, if they want to, I'm going to open up a Flynt Digital line of adult videos.
"How do I feel about what happened in Cincinnati? I feel like it was a good bargain. Our whole concept was to get Hustler Magazine back into Cincinnati. That's what my dad accomplished. Because when the store originally opened in Cincinnati, we weren't even carrying videos at that time. It was just the magazine and our Hustler products. The uproar started right around there and just got worse when we put the videos in. Overall, I think it was a real success on my father and uncle's side. I see that video will eventually be sold in Cincinnati.
"The city wants to move us out to build an art center there. But it is understandable. The structure of the building is very old and it's decaying. Even if they weren't moving us out, we planned on moving out anyways. We're building a larger store but more full-retail. Since we can't do the videos, we're really going to push our clothing and our mainstream Hustler products. It's going to be something similar to Hustler Hollywood, on a high, nice sclae and everything, minus the adult videos and DVD's. Part of the deal was that we can sell Hustler Magazine, we can have our store, we can sell any of our Hustler products except for our Hustler videos or anyone else's videos. We're going to keep moving forward."
John T. Bone signs a new Cream girl, Rikki Anderson. Anderson is blond and an ex-army M.P. Her interview appears tomorrow.
Allison Kilgore called about the dents in Kid Vegas' rental car. Kilgore says she didn't do a d.p. scene on the car as implied in the Kid Vegas interview last week.
Kilgore: "He [Vegas] just showed up because he wanted to hang out with me, so Jim Powers decided to just throw him in the scene, and he [Kid Vegas] offered to use his car. Jim was like, nah, nah, and he said let's use my car. The only thing I did was get on the car and dance on it. There was no sex scenes on the car. He's a nice guy, but he's a little whacked. We've hung out, but he gets too crazy for me. He said [last week] that I had problems with my family and he left Vegas? I gave him $40 to LEAVE and stop bothering me.
Kilgore says she's not heavily involved in the adult business right now. "I just come in, do a couple of scenes here and there and I go back home. I'm in school so I can't afford to blow that off. Kilgore said she can't make the business full time because she doesn't live in LA. "People call Regan [Senter] all the time requesting me, but there's nothing he can do when the body's not here."
Kilgore said she felt serious about leaving the business altogether at the time she was working on a documentary for Kris Kramski. "At that time I felt like I was ready to live a normal life with a boyfriend and everything. Then I realized, nah, I'd rather go make pornos, feature dance and do it while I'm young." Kilgore's going to school to be a paralegal. "Someday when I grow up, I want to be a lawyer. I thought about being a journalist, though, after working on that documentary, but too much hard work I guess.
Kid Vegas comments on the anti-Kid Vegas posting from last Friday:
Kid Vegas: "I know who it came from. It was Kid Sparkle. It was all out of his jealous mouth. He was paging me off the hook the other day."
[Vegas said he was doing Kid Vegas Superstar this past weekend.]
Vegas: "I know Kid Sparkle is going to be very jealous about this one. This one's just going to blow his lid. He called me up and said, 'you gotta stop slamming me this and that.' I told him look, 'I'm not slamming anyone. This is my character. You don't like it, tough luck. I know my movies are better than yours.' He was telling me my movies suck, they're not good and they're not funny. I told him everyone else is telling me different. That they're better than his movies. I just want Kid Sparkle to know he's not exposing anything. That money is all coming out of my pocket. Jeff Mike and Max Hardcore have nothing to do with my movies. They're simply distributors. That's it. Max Hardcore I might even put in one of my movies. Now that he [Kid Sparkle] brought up his name. I might as well."
[Kid Vegas clarifies the Allison Kilgore issue.]
Vegas: "No, she danced on the car. She did the d.p. scene on the ground in front of the car."
Gene Ross: "What was that comment all about that she paid you 40 bucks to get out of town [Las Vegas]?"
Vegas: "She did? Huh? I don't know where she got that from. That's kind of weird because she's telling me she wants me to come back to Vegas with her. She called me up telling me she's having problems with her ex-boyfriend. I said I could make a call, have my cousins come over and take care of him. He was beating her up. I heard he punched her in the eye. She was crying like two in the morning. I was out at a club. She paged me, told me what happened...anyway, Kid Sparkle's just on his jealous trip and he's probably getting clowned all day at work because he thinks I slighted him. I want to tell Kid Sparkle one thing - all these harrassing pages - I'm going to tear him up in this movie. He's really going to be mad. I'm going to do my best working on everybody I don't like. I was going to offer him a deal to come be in my movie so I could tear him up in my movie. He didn't want to talk about that. He was just mad about what it said on the box - about the Matt Sparkle-thing one of my cameramen said when I was jumping up and down on the bed.
"This movie real be the real Superstar of all movies. It has some real entertainment value. I have some real good ideas for this one. This is a movie where we're not going to be doing any drugs in it. We're going to be sober, having a good time. Well, maybe we'll do a little drinking. Johnny Toxic isn't going to make it for this one. He hasn't called me back. He doesn't return my calls. He was in that new Kid Sparkle movie that's being released next month. So I'm kind of mad at him."
