HOLLYWOOD—The particulars of former Disney and Miramax executive Richard Nanula's ploys to sate his seemingly boundless appetite for porn stars continue to unravel with new revelations to AVN by adult talent agent Mark Spiegler.
Spiegler first became aware of Nanula via a booking of client Sarah Shevon for Trinity St. Clair's website (TrinityStClair.com), upon which Nanula ultimately appeared with Samantha Saint, thus setting off the current scandal surrounding him.
"Trinity contacted me last year at approximately the beginning of April to book Sarah Shevon for a b.j. scene," Spiegler said. "I didn't think anything of it, it was a name porn chick; I asked who the guy is, she said a guy named Richard, then I asked, 'Well who is he?' and she said, 'It's my ex-boyfriend.' And I said, 'Does he have a test?' and she said, 'Yeah.'
"So she booked Sarah Shevon to shoot it in Malibu at 7:00 on Tuesday, April 17," he continued, "and I told Sarah, because I didn't know the male talent, he was new to me, I told her, 'You ought to double-check the test.' So she went and did the scene, and I didn't hear anything about it, nothing unusual."
Soon enough, however, some decidedly unusual developments unfolded. "Then Trinity wanted to book Remy LaCroix and Lily LaBeau," Spiegler recounted, "and she tentatively wanted to book them in May, then she moved it to June. She wanted Lily LaBeau for June 10 for a boy/boy/girl anal scene, and Remy LaCroix July 1, and didn't say what kind of scene. But the thing is, when she wanted to book these, I didn't get all the info but I knew she wanted to book them after 8 p.m. on a Sunday in Malibu, and that's what first got me to start thinking about this."
Before moving forward with the LaCroix and LaBeau bookings, Spiegler insisted upon meeting the male talent—again submitted to him as St. Clair's ex-boyfriend—face-to-face. "So [St. Clair] set up a meeting, all three of us met at a cafe in Malibu on June 7," he said. "And when I first saw the guy, he didn't look like a regular porn dude, he looked more like a business executive—he had a Blackberry and all that stuff, well dressed—so I just talked to him and he seemed to know a lot about the business.
"Also, I asked her to have him bring his test with him," Spiegler added. "So I told him I wanted to see his test, so he gave it to me; it wasn't from C.E.T. and it wasn't from T.T.S., it was simply from a private doctor. So that really set off alarm bells. So I said to [St. Clair], 'I gotta see this guy on your site.' I said I wouldn't feel comfortable having [LaCroix or LaBeau] work with the guy until he's on the site doing a scene, and we can see his face. So she says, 'Well, we're going to update the site in a couple of weeks.' And I said, 'That's fine.' And that's the last I ever heard about it. I canceled the Remy and the Lily shoots, pending seeing the guy on the site, and of course it never happened."
That was not the last time, however, that a Spiegler Girl got snared in Nanula's kinky web. Yet another performer on the Spiegler roster, Penny Pax, shot a scene several months later for another producer entirely that turned out to be a private show for Nanula's masturbatory enjoyment.
"A director for one of the major companies booked Penny Pax for a boy/girl anal scene with himself," Spiegler explained. "It was in October of last year. It was at 7:45 in Malibu because the location was not available until then. So she went out there to do the scene, and [the director] was supposed to be there at 8 and I guess he didn't show up 'til 9. And it turns out, I mean I didn't know at the time, that it's [Nanula's] house. And then when the director showed up, he put up a camera on a tripod in the bathroom facing into the bedroom where they were shooting the scene, and he did the scene with the girl, which she was kind of weirded out about it because the homeowner, this Richard guy I'm assuming, was sitting on the couch jerking off."
Eventually, Spiegler said, Pax "got all flustered and she left. They didn't do the anal part and she left. She called me right after to tell me, and then I called the director and I said, 'Hey man, this ain't a legit shoot.' And he was like, 'Oh yeah, I didn't know. I should have realized something was up when the homeowner let me use his house for free,' and I'm like, 'Come on, man, that's bullshit.' But that's when I got the actual address of the guy's place, and then I knew if anything else comes up at that address it ain't legit. So that was that."
Pax herself corroborated Spiegler's account of that night's events.
"The time was set late in the evening, so it was kind of weird, and the location was way out in the middle of Malibu," Pax said. "The talent ended up being like two hours late to set, and then when the scene finally started going, I noticed that the homeowner was sitting on the couch, and when we were about to start the anal part of the scene, I noticed he had his dick out and he was jerking off, and I was just totally like, 'Whoa, what's going on here?'"
Unnerved by the situation, she said, "I pretended like my butt wasn't really working, because I didn't really want to be there and I was really uncomfortable with this gentlemen jerking off. Nobody told me that this was going to be happening, I was just told it was a boy/girl anal. So I just pretty much busted out of there. I was like, 'I'm sorry, this isn't working,' and I left. I was like, 'My butt's not feeling great today, I don't think the rest of this scene's gonna work out, but at least you got what we got.'"
Asked what transpired during the two hours she was waiting for the director/male talent to arrive, Pax related, "I actually spent the first hour in the bathroom cleaning my butt because it was an anal scene, and then the second hour I went outside and I smoked for a little bit and then I called Mark and I called my boyfriend, and I was just like hanging out. It was just me and the homeowner in the house, and that was really weird, and he was like drinking wine and offering me wine, and I was like, 'No, I don't drink.' I figured it would just be easier to sit outside and chill out there. It was just totally weird. It was just so shady, it's like what do they think they're trying to pull? I'm not totally stupid, I can figure it out."
In light of the similar reported scenarios involving Samantha Saint and Sarah Shevon, Pax commented, "It's just shitty. It's like, why does this guy keep trying to pull this trick? I'm sure there's plenty of girls around that would be happy to indulge in his fantasy, but it's not fun to try and play games with girls. It's just weird."
To that end, and further underscoring the hard line Nanula has evidently attempted repeatedly to cross between a legitimate adult production and a private sexual encounter, Spiegler offered this concluding note: "Apparently [Nanula] tried contacting Sarah Shevon a year earlier for a private. I didn't even know about that. So I have no idea if he tried to contact any of our girls beforehand, like Remy or Lily, directly and then he's trying to do it obliquely now. I have no idea."
Trinity St. Clair has declined on multiple occasions through her publicist, James Bartholet, to comment on this matter.
