This article originally appeared in the September 2009 issue of AVN Magazine in conjunction with the issue's cover story on Steven Hirsch and Vivid Entertainment Group.
10. Vivid’s longtime porn designer extraordinaire—still anonymous except for his title, Creative Director—is actually Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who is currently contemplating another Vivid blockbuster, Deepest Throat.
9. An inadvertent marketing boom occurred for Vivid Video simply because the acronym for the empire they had morphed into, Vivid Entertainment Group—VEG—attracted countless vegetarians to become faithful fans of Vivid’s organic porn flicks.
8. Pope Benedict issued a secret pronunciamento allowing actors in Vivid films to wear theologically correct condoms (with tiny pinprick holes in the reservoir tip to give the spermazatoa a fighting chance), thereby transforming innumerable practicing Catholics into loyal customers.
7. Sixty-nine of the Vivid Girls participated in producing a DVD fundraiser for Porn Star School scholarships by simultaneously performing 69 on each other, forming the shape of an extra large 69 that filled a ballroom floor; the 70th Vivid Girl served as their choreographer.
6. In 1996, attorneys for Vivid tried to bribe Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan to pressure city managers to grant permission to Vivid to put up a billboard on Sunset Boulevard. The mayor refused an envelope containing $1 million in cash, but nevertheless he applied the requested pressure. This year, Vivid offered that same amount to tempt the dethroned Miss California—anti-same-sex marriage, Carrie Prejean—to appear in an adult movie. Not surprisingly, she declined the offer, complaining, “The only reason you asked me is because the media made such a mountain out of an implant.”
5. A public relations consultant for Vivid was able to persuade hotel chain managers around the country and internationally to make hardcore movies available to guests by uttering just a single sentence: “The trouble with soft-core movies is that all they do is give a guy a soft-on.”
4. A Vivid cameraman arranged to shoot the sex tape of Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee so that it would look amateurish and candid. He later arranged to steal the tape, and the rest is trendsetting porn history.
3. Vivid’s sex toy division reached a tipping point in their sales when they patented a combination dildo and sleeping-pill holder, the Dil-Doze.
2. Vivid’s downloadable films that can be turned into DVDs by the viewer, so that the footage can be watched on TV rather than on computer screens, have been a huge success because this process eliminates the common problem of ejaculating on keyboards.
1. And, the No. 1 reason for Vivid’s incredible staying power: Viagra!
Paul Krassner is the author of In Praise of Indecency, and publishes the Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster, available at PaulKrassner.com. He also writes a bimonthly column for AVN.
