LOS ANGELES—The German performer known as Texas Patti wears stars and stripes everywhere she goes, adopting the American flag design as her signature look.
The official spokeswoman for the erotic TV division of Germany’s largest adult media company, Beate Uhse, says her red, white and blue fashion statements have become synonymous with her personal brand.
“When we were starting the business in Germany we thought we have to do something special,” Patti recalls. “At this time all the girls were called like Sweet Anne, Anal Suzy, Erika 69…”
With the intent of setting herself apart, the former dental assistant combined her legal name, Betti, with her husband and business partner’s name, Patrick, to make Patti. Then she chose Texas for its simplicity.
“We love it,” Patti says. “This is a product of both of us. I am the face, but I can’t do it on my own.”
Now she and Patrick, aka “Mirror Man,” have turned Texas Patti into a household name in Germany, where she has won six Venus Awards and has represented Beate Uhse—the country’s leading porn retailer—for almost three years. Others have taken notice of Patti’s high-profile in her home country—in July she was named ModelCentro’s German ambassador.
The versatile duo has parlayed their success in Deutschland into a full service production studio that next year will churn out 240 sex scenes. Texas Patti Productions is a subsidiary of their new holding company, Hitzefrei! Medien, which means “hot free” in German and also includes a licensing arm and web services.
“We do everything on our own. We produce it, we sell it,” Patti says. “Then it was too much work. It was really hard. We take a look for the last year and we had only 43 days at home.
“So now we have five guys, we are together. One of them do the licensing; one of them do the online product and we do the production.”
Patti says the next step is to expand her brand in the U.S. market. She recently completed her second trip to the States, staying for the entire month of June, following her first visit in January for the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo and AVN Awards Show in Las Vegas, and some shoots in LA.
“It is totally different to Germany, absolutely,” says Patti, who can be booked through OC Modeling. “The people are funny, a little bit crazy. It is the lifestyle of LA, I love it.
“In Germany the community is very, very small. Germany is not a big country. In Germany it works another way. The actor and actress are just the normal people.”
So far she has shot about seven times in America, including work for Brazzers, FTVGirls, FistPumpFilms and Gamma Films, in addition to performing in more than 500 scenes in Germany since 2009—the majority of which have been in the last five years.
“I want to shoot for all the big companies who don’t shoot in Germany or Europe,” Patti says.
They produced their first full-length movie in 2015, after Patrick got a crash course in filmmaking, paying $5,000 to attend a three-month film academy. Their mentor Tomas has 25 years of experience in the porn industry.
“So it was jumping into the cold water and we did it,” Patti says. “I was a little bit afraid when it was ready, but it was really cool and it’s a really funny movie. After this one comes another, and then Beate Uhse give us the main production for Sky.”
Hitzefrei! Medien produces three different kinds of movies: Class A movies are cinematic features shot at high-end locations; B-productions have an emphasis on the sex with less dialogue and fewer actors; and C-material are 20-minute clips solely focused on sex and group scenes with no dialogue.
The company’s two most notable feature films are Auto, Motor Sex and Sexpension Huttenzauber, which they shot at a ski lodge in the mountains of Bavaria about 60 miles outside the state capital of Munich.
“What we wanted to do was the old German porn and the time now,” Patrick explains. “The first German porn was 1970 and we want to make it the same way but 40 years later at the same place.”
In one dialogue scene from the movie Patrick shot 57 takes before he got what he wanted.
“Everybody was hating me,” he jokes.
The screening process to shoot for Texas Patti Productions in Germany is impressive—in fact it may be the most intensive in all of porn.
“We have a quality check. We ask, ‘Why do you want to make porn—is it the money or do you like sex? What kind of sex do you like? How old are you? 22 years old? OK, then we don’t want to shoot with you,’” Patrick explains.
“When I was 22 I didn’t know what I want to do in the next 10 or 20 years. … That is what we tell the girls and the boys to be thinking about. I tell them, ‘Please don’t make porno, I’ll explain you why. And after one week you can call me back.’ And 90 percent don’t call us back.
“The 10 percent who’s calling us back, we make the same interview with him or with her. ‘OK, now we show you what negative sides you have, and your parents and your children and your cousins and your friends of friends of friends. That’s a serious situation. It’s not only your life that is broken, maybe the next life, too.”
Patrick adds, “And then most guys say, ‘OK, I wasn’t thinking about this situation. I saw the fast money.’ And we say, ‘OK, don’t shooting with us.’ And that makes it so difficult to find good actors and good actresses. But that is what we want. When you want to shoot for me you have to love sex and the discipline of sex it doesn’t matter. But what you do, do it from the heart and not for money.”
Not unlike the U.S., Patti says it can be challenging to land a mainstream job in Germany if you’ve done porn.
“In Germany most people who work for us, in their first life they have a normal job,” she says. “They do their school and then they have the job. They have something they do before they start porn.
“I did my school; I worked 16 years in an office for a dental shop. Then after this I do my own business.”
Patrick agrees, saying, “Most of the German porn actors see only the moment—only today—not tomorrow. And that is what we want to change there.”
Patti married Patrick Mirror Man 11 years ago—they met at a traffic light in Germany—and they were swingers before getting into the adult industry.
“I never believe in love at the first sight, but with this…if it was a cartoon it would be many hearts,” Patti says.
Now they are a team in every way as Patrick produces and directs, Patti performs and both share in the marketing efforts.
“Our job is our hobby,” Patrick says. “I think that is the reason for the success that when you love your job, you win.”
“It’s not like work,” Patti adds. “I changed my life from the dental work to this not for the money. What I do now is like free time.”
Top three photos by Rick Garcia/@industrybyrick
