Seven Deadly Sins and Double Feature! all but conquered the Year 2000 A2K Awards at the Venetian Hotel Jan. 8.
A cohesive vignette set from Vivid Film, Seven Deadly Sins was voted Best Film and nailed down Best Supporting Actor and Actress honors for Michael J. Cox and Janine. The film also took away honors for Best All-Girl Sex Scene, Film (Janine and Julia Ann), Best Art Direction (Film), Best Screenplay (Film) for Ren Savant and Eugenie Brown, and another award for Savant for Best Editing (Film).
Double Feature!, a brisk comedy from Wicked Pictures, was recognized as such, taking Best Comedy honors as well as Best Actress and Actor (Video) for co-stars Serenity and Randy Spears. Shanna McCullough also nailed down Best Supporting Actress (Video) for her performance. For Best Actor and Actress (Film) honors, the winners were the co-stars of Chloe, Chloe and James Bonn.
Double Feature! wasn't nominated for Best Video - that prize was won by VCA Platinum Plus's Dark Garden. But the Wicked film's key players weren't exactly disappointed.
"Oh, it's absolutely wonderful," said Wicked's Bambi Hall afterward. "Serenity absolutely deserves it. As far as I'm concerned, she should have won a long time ago."
Serenity beat out some formidable competition, including Kylie Ireland (in Timeless), Chloe (in Taboo 19), Best New Starlet nominee Katja Kean (in Millennium), adult film legend Ginger Lynn (in her "comeback" film, Torn, following a long sabbatical doing mainstream work), and her fellow Wicked contract star Stephanie Swift (in Crossroads).
"I didn't expect this at all," Serenity said in her acceptance speech, giving Best Director winner Jonathan Morgan much of the credit. "I could not have acted as well as I did without his help." Morgan, while accepting the Best Comedy award, thanked both his stars. "She got me my start at Wicked," he said of Serenity. "And I want to thank Randy…he's one of the greatest actors in our business."
Spears also conquered formidable competition such as Brad Armstrong (Knockout), Tyce Bune (Revenge), Michael Raven (Mindfuck), Tony Tedeschi (Taboo 18), and Tom Byron (Archer's Last Day), among others. "It's been a long time since I held one of these," said Spears, who won Best Actor, Film in 1990 for The Masseuse. "This was a funny movie. It was a lot of fun to do."
Hall admitted she didn't expect Double Feature! to do even half as well as its ten awards. "It was very well written, everything about it (I liked)…I thought it would take Best Comedy and that Randy Spears would win for Best Actor," she said. "But Serenity's always been a Susan Lucci (the soap opera queen who finally won a daytime Emmy award after eighteen straight nominations) and never winning, so we weren't expecting anything."
Vivid Film's Marci Hirsch was also pleased with the success of Seven Deadly Sins. "It was a great night," she said. "It was great when it happened." Hirsch said she believed the vignette film would be a success from the beginning. "It was different than any of the other films we had shot," she said. "With a lot of different people and locations."
Janine didn't appear to claim her award, but most of the winners did, including effervescent newcomer Tristan Taormino, whose Tristan Taormino's Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women took honors for Best Anal-Themed Tape and Best Group Sex Scene, Video.
Another winner who didn't show up was radio host Howard Stern. He was awarded the AVN Special Achievement Award in absentia, after a special presentation to David Sturman, for whose father, Reuben, the award was re-named. Stern sent a pint-sized performer known as Beetlejuice to accept the award, given to Stern for his defenses of the First Amendment in his battles with the Federal Communications Commission and his overall support of adult entertainment.
Bridgett Kerkove took home Best New Starlet, edging out favorites such as Jewel De'Nyle, India, Anastasia Blue, and Sonja Redd. "Wow, what can I say?" she said as she accepted her award from presenters Herschel Savage and Alisha Klass and trophy girls Alexa Rae and Layla.
Klass and Savage stepped forward to make the presentation with a small sight gag - Klass wearing a sort of gag in front of her mouth, an allusion to what many considered was a too-long winded acceptance speech when she was named Best New Starlet last year. This time out, as Savage was about to announce the winner, Klass launched into a somewhat lengthy thank-you speech which she might have been expected to give…last year. But she finally ended and named Kerkove the winner.
Lexington Steele and Inari Vachs were awarded Best Male and Female Performers of the Year.
Many of the nominees and presenters spoke of the adult entertainment business as a kind of family, including hostess Juli Ashton. "The one thing that I felt for the new century," she said, "is that we keep the sense of family. Everyone has told me…is that this is a family and we need to keep our family."
But there were some high laughs as well, mostly provided by comic actor Bobby Slayton, who portrayed Joey Bishop in HBO's The Rat Pack.
"I hosted this show for a couple of years," he said, "I presented awards for a couple of years…and Paul Fishbein (AVN publisher) said to me, 'Bobby, when you go up there, let people know that the reason you're up there is you're an honorary member of the AVN family…(and) I don't want to be a fucking honorary member, Fishbein - I want to be part of this goddam family, I want you people to be my family. Because I'll tell you something right now - Thanksgiving at my house sucks! If we were family, my wife would be cooking, I'd be fucking plenty of girls…the gay table, we'd stuff the turkey, we'd have a big happy family Thanksgiving!"
As might be expected, some of adult entertainment's best-loved legends were present for the festivities, including Lynn, Marilyn Chambers, Nina Hartley, Ron Jeremy, Savage, and Screw publisher Al Goldstein.
It was Goldstein who gave the most politically-charged speech of the night. He admonished the crowd to appreciate those in the business who paved their comparatively easier way over three decades ago. Then, after reading a very vivid description of Rough Sex 2, he challenged the crowd: "I know you find it exciting," he said, "but let's see you in front of a grand jury defending it."
Also making his way around the crowd was a legend in another world - Rollie Fingers, whose stellar relief pitching with the domineering Oakland A's of the 1970s and, later, the Milwaukee Brewers, put him into the baseball Hall of Fame. Two nights earlier, appearing at Adam & Eve's hospitality party at the Venetian, Fingers - who lives in Las Vegas - relaxed in the crowd.
"I'm just retired," he said jovially, his smile punctuated by the handlebar mustache he made famous and inspired as a trademark of the early 1970s A's. "I live here, I play some golf, I've been just goofing off."
Some of the other honored films included Return to Planet Sexxx, whose director, Anita Rinaldi, picked up Best Director, Foreign Release, while Amanda's Diary 2, released in the U.S. by Private USA, picked up Best Foreign Feature.
The DVD categories saw Electric Sex (Digital Sin) picking up a prize for Best DVD Extras; The Devil in Miss Jones Part III & IV winning Best Classic Release on DVD, beating out, among others, Marilyn Chambers's legendary Insatiable; Vivid Virtual Vixens taking Best Interactive DVD; and, Cashmere (VCA Interactive) taking Best DVD.
It was another entry in The Devil in Miss Jones series, Number 6, which proved the Best Renting Tape of 1999. The Houston 620, the gangbang performance which was said to be a record until Sabrina Johnson (a Best Female Performer nominee) went for and succeeded with two thousand just before New Year's Eve, was the best-selling tape of the year.
The festivities moved to the Venetian's Club2K for a post-awards party which packed the much-publicized though somewhat noisy dance and theater club. There were only a few sour notes heard over it, mostly involving many complaining about how heavy-handed club bouncers and security seem to have been. Best New Starlet nominee Jewel De'Nyle was refused admission, outraging some partygoers. Some AVN staffers - including Fishbein - were almost refused admission as well despite their all-access passes.
But most of those problems were resolved in short order, and partygoers otherwise relaxed, danced, and milled about.
"I think this is a great night," said Jeff Krull, Adam & Eve's director of licensing and wholesale. "It's only going to get better from here." He might have been speaking of the business as a whole as well as the party and the evening.
For a complete list of categories and Winners, click here.
