CYBERSPACE—“Mark Spiegler looks like the embodiment of what most people would think a pornographer looks like,” says documentarian Dino Roscigno of his Mark Spiegler: Patron of the Tarts, just released on Amazon Prime Video. “But he’s the antithesis.”
Shot in January and February of 2018 and following the veteran adult industry player and owner/agent of Spiegler Girls, Patron of the Tarts, Roscigno says, shows Spiegler for the “anomaly, the unicorn” that he is.
“L.A. can be full of phonies,” Roscigno, a native New Yorker, says. “But Mark plays himself down, whereas most people play themselves up.”
Roscigno met Spiegler more than 20 years ago when the former came to L.A. to break into Hollywood acting, staying with AVN Hall of Famer Rob Spallone, “who was married to my sister in-law’s stepsister.” Spallone, director of projects like My Big Fat Gangbang, introduced Roscigno to Spiegler and the two have been friends since.
Roscigno recounts Spiegler’s ambivalence to the documentary project at first (“He told me, ‘I’m not giving you a dime’”), saying that the agent had seen lots of projects come and go. But when his team hit the ground in Vegas for the 2018 AVN Expo to see Spiegler at work, Roscigno admits to being constantly surprised by the reverence industry performers and other professionals had for his old friend.
“Believe me, we tried to get someone to say something bad about him,” Roscigno says. “But no one did.” For commentary on “the other side of the industry,” Roscigno says he employed his old in-law, Spallone, “as a foil.”
Patron of the Tarts was funded by Roscigno and also features interviews with Angela White, Asa Akira, Riley Reid and Markus Dupree, among many others. He says he submitted the finished film to Amazon about eight months ago and hopes porn business workers will help promote it.
Roscigno promises the doc is “laugh out loud funny” but also serious and truthful in its acknowledgment of the porn industry’s potential pitfalls. Ultimately, he says, the doc helps explain why so many performers “choose Mark and no one else” as their agent.
Mark Spiegler: Patron of the Tarts is available to rent, buy or stream (for Prime members) here.
Photo from the 2019 Los Angeles premiere of Patron of the Tarts by Jeff Koga/@KogaFoto.
