Production of the as yet untitled reality show based on Vivid Entertainment began last week, with production crews from World of Wonder Productions visiting Vivid headquarters, sets and even the homes of the Vivid Girls to capture an insight into the “nuts and bolts” of an adult production company.
Emmy Award-winning executive producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato of World of Wonder (WOW) have already signed two deals in the United Kingdom to air 13 episodes of the half-hour show by the end of this year. Channel 4 has picked up the rights for terrestrial broadcast, and SkyTV, the U.K. equivalent of DirecTV, will carry the show as well. A deal for stateside broadcast has not yet been reached, although several stations have reportedly expressed an interest in the project.
“We had been contacted by many, many companies to do a reality show. We turned them all down because it didn’t seem to fit in with what we wanted to do,” Vivid co-founder and co-chairman Steven Hirsch told AVN.com. “When we were fortunate enough to meet Fenton, we just sort of clicked and hit it off. We had the same vision for the show.”
The “vision” is to show the mainstream world what the adult industry, or at least Vivid, is really like. The show will have three main threads: the business aspect, with an emphasis on Hirsch’s daily life; a focus on the Vivid Girls that will include both positives (money and fame) and negatives (effect on personal relationships); and the search for a new Vivid Girl.
“I think people for many years have been interested in what goes on behind the scenes in a real adult film company,” Hirsch said, explaining the attraction of a show about Vivid. “I think with Skin coming out your going to see a fictionalized version of an adult film company. Then you have Family Business where it’s just really focused on one person. This show is going to be different because it’s going to focus on an entire company and how a company works – the nuts and bolts.”
WOW has complete editorial control of the project, which differs from the adult-friendly Family Business that showcases Adam Glasser, aka Seymore Butts. Glasser has a say in the final content of each episode, which from all accounts gives a rosy impression of the adult industry.
“This is not an infomerical for the adult entertainment business," Bailey told the Daily Variety today. "We're showing the world how it exists: Not just black and white, but all the shades in between. There are going to be funny moments, heartbreaking moments and some mundane business. There's a big contrast between people's imaginations and what really goes on."
“We made a decision to open up the company a little bit so that people can really get a sense of what happens behind the scenes at Vivid,” explained Hirsch. “We felt that there was a great upside in us doing that: we want to get our message out there, we want more people to become comfortable with our movies.”
World of Wonder Productions won an Emmy for their movie Party Monster, which was aired on Cinemax, but is probably best known the cult classic documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye. They have previous experience working with the adult entertainment industry – they produced Tech TV’s Wired for Sex series and a documentary for Channel 4 called Pornography: The Secret History of Civilization.
