As part of the Summer Expo, look for the big blast this evening at Hustler Hollywood. Hustler and Digital Playground co-host an evening that features Teri Weigel, Nikki Tyler, Sadie Sexton, Alexandra Silk, Taylor St. Claire and Farrah. The girls will be there for autographs, polaroids, photographs and other giveaways. The big promos are both Teri Weigel's Virtual Sex and Nikki Tyler's upcoming feature for Digital.
One of the big buzzes at the Summer Expo which opened yesterday at the LA Convention Center to a sprawling display of adult industry firepower and representation, was the fact that Kevin Beech supposedly sold his company in a deal that gives him $3 million in cash up front, allows him to maintain 25% ownership and an annual salary. More details forthcomings.
Another inside scoop says that Ginger Lynn is in love, and is having a bit of a problem coming to grips with her current contract.
Industry vet David Kastens is now living in Hawaii where he's selling "brain gum" over the Internet.
Sin City had its Open House party last night. With generous assistance from AVN's Tod Hunter, the evening shaped up something like this: a hot July night with overcast skies keeping the heat and humidity up.
Sin City's The production space was turned into a large party area, with bandstand, d.j. set up, and dance floor. Two bars (one manned by Napoleon, thge other by Charley Lynch) offered beer and wine. Backlit canvas backdrops of skyscrapers, a marina, and the moon provided indirect lighting. A side room labeled Cafe Sin held a large buffet of hot and cold foods which was restocked regularly. The No Smoking signs throughout the building were mostly ignored.
The mid-party performance of band Psychedelic Thrust served as an litmus test for age: the twentysomething attendees rushed into the room to hear the band as the over-30 contingent fled to the relative quiet of the outside alley.
Sin City provided motor coach transportation from the faraway Convention Center, and weary conventioneers had a chance to meet a large segment of the porno-American community, including Sin City contract girls Shay Sweet, Katja Kean, and Linda Thoren, Nakita Ka$h, Ed Powers, Sydnee Steele, Raylene and Alec Metro, Shawn Ricks (in a wheelchair after injuries to both feet), Anastasia, Tony Montana, Laurie Holmes, Julian St. Jox, Stryc-9/Cherry, Farrah (recently broken up with Christian Steel), Alexandra Silk and Luc Wylder, Ron Jeremy, Allysin Chaynes and Mark Vega, Nancy Vee, Zoë, Dominic, Devin, Wicked contract players Stephanie Swift and Brad Armsrtong accompanied by French performer Laure Sainclair, Donita, Stoney Curtis, C.J. Bennett and Max Hardcore.
The nonperformer contingent was also well-represented by VCA Xplicit's Harry Weiss, Jail Babes impresario Mark Archer, VCX's Harry Young, CDi's Jack Stephan, director Roy Karch, Scotty Schwartz, Lisa Schmidt, director Jim DiGiorgio, producer Rob Spallone, Zane Entertainment's Burt Levesque and Mark Zane; and AVN's Paul Fishbein, Gene Ross, Jennifer Rosenblatt, and Tod Hunter
The proximity of the show seminars to the main exhibition hall at the Convention Center where the adult industry exhibited its wares was roughly the geographical relationship of Los Angeles to Butte, Montana. That, plus, a labyrinth of turns and frustrating cul de sacs necessary to get to the meeting rooms prompted the first day seminars to get underway a bit late.
Prominent Free Speech attorney Paul Cambria [you may have seen him on Court TV during the recent Larry Flynt trial] hosted a seminar addressing one of the most prominent issues in the adult industry today, even more so, perhaps, than obscenity cases - zoning. Zoning cases are an interesting animal that comes bearing its own set of colorful jargon such as "grandfathering," and "unfettered discretion."
Unfetteringly candid, Cambria's panel featured Bruce McLaughlin whom Cambria described as the leading expert and specialist in zoning cases. Also on the panel was Lou Sirkin, noted First Amendment attorney and particular famous for his defense in the Mapplethorpe trial; and attorney Jeffrey Douglas, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition.
Crackling with an abundance of dry wit, Cambria warned the audience that they should be armed with questions or risk hearing talks from the panel. Cambria wasn't disappointed. Questions were posed by retailers who represented such diverse zoning areas as South Dakota, New Orleans, San Antonio, San Diego, New York City, Knoxville, Tennessee; Hawaii and Alabama. According to Cambria, particular issues facing store owners in zoning cases are 1) whether the store qualifies as an adult store; 2) where stores are presently located or are able to locate, and the distance requirements from other structures; 3) whether a store owner can have a preview booth or not; 4) lighting; 5) signage: and 6) hours of operation. In many areas, local ordinances seem to be putting the squeeze on the hours of operation.
According to Cambria, there now exists a steady proliferation of special interest groups developing throughout the country that are devoted to strangling adult stores with bureaucratic red tape.
Being a good neighbor in one's community were the strong words of advice offered by the panel.
Douglas: "If you know there is political action against you, long before it comes to fruition, you have the opportunity to affect that legislation. If you are in an community [of book stores and video stores], come together, organize; if you're the one and only business, be the best neighbor possible. There are communities where businesses have been saved because the business owner has been part of the community for 20 years and sponsored Little League teams and donated money to this or that. In order for you to be villefied they have to not know who you are. I'm not saying if you're the world's nicest guy that you're not going to get screwed, but you give yourself a chance."
According to Sirkin, going on TV and calling city council members nazis will, obviously, put you in a defensive position. "Believe it or not, you're in a politically incorrect activity and you've got to be a better person than they are," Sirkin said.
Cambria: "Remember, they're litigating with no money coming out of their pockets. If you piss them off, call them names, they won't settle. They're using your money to spite you."
A question was posed from the audience whether their exists a standard playbook or information to fight zoning restrictions.
Cambria: "There isn't a canned set of answers. There's thousands of cities and towns that have zoning ordinances and they change. In preparing for cases, guys like Bruce [McLaughlin] go in and get the lay of the land...don't hire someone who's never done zoning. It's very important to hire the right people for the job. We as lawyers always think we know it all, but we regularly use someone such as Bruce...I always consult someone like Bruce...if we run out of approaches, he'll come up with a method we're not familiar with. It's always important to use the experts, in the long run it's worth it."
The question was brought up about what New York City Mayor Giuliani has done to 42nd Street.
Cambria: "First of all, let me do a disclaimer. My partner handled that case. I didn't have a damned thing to do with it...but I don't think it mattered who did it. Every lawyer in America who was involved in those cases or had collaborated on it, there wouldn't have been a different result. When Disney comes in and says we're going to invest a billion dollars in 42nd Street, forget logic, forget precedent, forget anything....that's what you're dealing with."
Cambria observed that a lot of mainstream stores are opening up adult sections. "I know this from advising a 130-store chain. A number of communities are saying 10% [of stock] is as far as you can go without being an adult store, and a lot of these stores are justing doing that.. We're seeing them all over the place, and we're going to see a lot more around the country."
Cambria relayed an amusing anecdote about a case in Virginia involving an Ass Masters tape featuring throat fucking that involved him and Sirkin. "It was a rough tape. The judge said he'd all like us to meet, and he introduced this female judge who had just been sworn in. She was going to sit in, it was her first trial, and she was going to be there for the entire trial. We start the trial, everything's fine. It was 7-person jury that was staggered like slalom poles in the jury box. And the way it was set up, to get out the door you had to go through the jury box. They played the film and it gets to the first set of gags, and wssssh, she bolts through the door, slaloming through these jurors, out the door, never to be seen again.
"In the summation I said if you're concerned about children, aren't you better off having a store that's all-adult where you can stop them at the door saying you have to be 21 to get in here than if you are a store that's only partially adult where they can wander over to adult? This is the kind of store [all-adult] you want. They agreed with us. Very tough films but a very fine victory for us.
"Remember, the First Amendment has never been a majority rule. It's not six foxes and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. Prosecutors argue it as if it's a majority rule, but it's not. It's meant to protect minority interests and the right to be different. I think the proliferation of stores that have adult sections gets more material out, makes more people comfortable with the fact that the material is out there. And now we can go to juries and say we accept it. Look at all these stores that sell it. If it wasn't being sold, they wouldn't devote their shelf space to something that wasn't being sold. That must mean it's acdeptable. I think it's good that this is happening.
In Sirkin's opinion, one of the detriments to adult stores has been the proliferation of adult cabarets and gentlemen's clubs. "It seems the big attention the last couple of years has been the opening of adult caberets in communities. Part of the problem has been the image they portray of themselves to the communities. The pendulum started to swing with the guys who own Rick's Cabaret. They had the big TV special showing them in jet planes. It was too much showing off. We're all tied in with that."
Douglas on future trends: "In the forseeable future there will be video-on-demand where you can call your utility company, phone company or cable company and get delivered to your home, higher quality than VHS. The market for pre-recorded material is going to change. It's part of the business plan of Blockbuster not to have any retail outlets in the future. They intend to have the intellectual property rights on their materials so they can sell it over the wire. That means that, down the road, the video store is going to be an endangered species. A store that provides not just adult video but other adult products will have an on-going existence."
AVN's Mark Kernes hosted a follow-up panel that addressed some of the hot button issues in adult today including content and condoms. Kernes' panel included Joy King of Wicked Pictures, Seymore Butts, attorney Alan Gelbard, John Stagliano, Max Hardcore and Luc Wylder. Gelbard held the floor on the issue of obscenity as defined by the Miller decision.
"The only thing that's illegal, per se, in the United States is to show, in videotapes, child pornography," said Gelbard. "What you can or should put in a video are decisions for you to make based on your own sense of whether you can sleep at night. The other types of issues that raise obscenity questions are what we, in the industry, call the seven deadly sins - bestiality, necrophilia, urination, defecation, bondage with penetration, fisting and interracial in some areas, also. Those areas, per se, are not illegal. There's no law anywhere that says Thou shalt not make a fisting tape, but when they judge that type of a content on a community standard, the odds of being prosecuted are significantly higher. You have to evaluate what you're going to put in your movie based on where it's going to be distributed."
Seymore Butts on the controversial Chloe/Alisha Klass fisting scene that found its way in Tampa Tushy Fest:
Butts: "The reaction was varied. For me the most important consideration was how the fans reacted, how the people that keep me in business reacted. They loved it. There was somewhat of a quandary in my thinking before I released it whether or not I was going to make a big fanfare about this or not. In the end I decided not to make a huge hullabaloo about it. I didn't put out a press release. There were no quotes on the box. The reason I did that was because I didn't necessarily consider it much different than anything I normally put in my movies. I consider it a sensual act between two adults who were of sound mind and brought the idea to me. I don't have scripts. It basically just happened. It was something made the girls come. In that respect I don't see it any differently than any of the other acts I portray, be it anal or oral sex or anal-to-oral.
"We anticipated there would be some adverse reaction [among stores]. There were some people who said hey, motherfucker, what are you doing. Why didn't you tell me. I don't feel comfortable with this. To those people we said we had a softer version and offered to exchange it at that time. In hindsight would I do it again the same way? Possibly not. If I told anybody that this was coming out, it would have spread like wildfire. The tape would have sold only for the fact that people would have been interested in seeing this fisting scene.
"The initial reaction was far worse than what turned out. We got initial calls saying they were going to return every piece, and we want a credit or an exchange. In actuality we returned about 7 or 8%. A lot of people didn't bother to look at the tape when they heard what was in it. Automatically this bell went off in peoples' head. Fisting, can't do it. To me it's all about what context things are presented. After a lot of people actually looked at it, they changed their minds.
Max Hardcore on the subject of speculums and pushing the envelope.
Hardcore: "We'll go as far as the performer is willing to take it. Whatever she can take. If the girl is willing to do something, and she's not screaming bloody murder, people ought to watch what they want to watch. We want to make it wild and nasty, if there's fist fucking or pissing, we'll always do it because Europe, which is much more sensible, will take all that stuff. We just take it to the point where the girl's not going to get hurt, at least not too bad. Unfortunately or fortunately I work for an uptight, pretty conservative company, Legend Video, plus all the GVA's take a microscope to my shit. Jeff Mike does all this other crazy crap like Perverted Stories with power tools and shit like that. He'll get away with this stuff like dunking a girls head in a toilet. If I did stuff like that in my videos, I'd be looking for another distributor.
"We got to play by the rules. It's frustrating, but the most important thing is not getting into trouble. There's no rhyme or reason to that. You can get busted for a Vivid tape. There's no logic to what;s happening out there. I just got busted for six fucking tapes that has the same stuff as the rest of the country. There's no pissing or fist fucking, but they still busted it.... Mom and Pop stores can't afford to litigate with DA's.
"I think we've reached the limit...we're turning off people. The more extreme you go, the harder core you make it, the smaller the audience. We've reached the end of what we can do here in the states. We want to make pure, no nonsense, no bullshit porno. No fancy tricks. People don't want to see 20 minutes of crap. The speculum thing, we did for awhile. It was stupid. Stores are doing a pretty good job of marketing the product.
Stagliano who just came out with Buttman Confidential that features some controversial scenes says his favorite director is now Hardcore. Stagliano was asked how his views of dos and don't have changed over the years.
Stagliano: "For me what I feel comfortable in doing in video has changed in respect to looking at things like what Max does or what Rocco does. I've got a little bit more open mind about different aspects of human nature that to me has become more arousing. I'm going on a continuum of looking at porno. I started out looking at just normal sex..the first time is really interesting, then we do get more jaded.
"We get more interested in playing around. Human beings have always played around with their sexuality, doing different odd things, putting speculums in the butts and stuff and all sorts of weird props. That is something I've become more personally aware of. I've been so focused over the years on just what I get off on. But because of competition I've become more aware of human sexuality and the incredible variety of human sexuality. In bondage there's all sorts of interesting little devices and gadgets that people come up with for purposes of pleasure.
"There's a whole bunch of stuff out there that's really psychological. The one thing I really love about Max is that he's the real thing. It's genuine. It's focused. I like the stuff he's doing a lot of the time. Max doesn't get the credit for what he's done to this business. People weren't doing gaping assholes before Max came along. They weren't doing a lot of things Max does - the whole attitude-thing; he's the original. I respect people who push the envelope. I respect Seymore for what he did with his movie...people who go just a little bit further are the innovators.
"What people think of us today for doing something radical and different is not what people are going to think of us 20 years from now. You have to look into the future and ask how is this going to fit in the spectrum of human evolution. People [in the future] might say controversy was interesting and treat it like a textbook-thing. They might look at like a controversy. Human beings are changing. We don't know how we're changing. We're going off in all sorts of different directions. In terms of the entertainment field you're seeing all sorts of new and innovative movies being made in the mainstream and porno. It's a good thing."
Stagliano's opinion is that every scene shot is a story whether there's an actual script or not. "Every time the camera turns on, there's a beginning, a middle and an end. People take their clothes off, they have sex, the guy cums, that's a story. There's something going on in that room. It may be really simple, but there's a progression. The sex is the story."
The issue of condoms, at one point, precipitated a verbal free-for-all with Stagliano, Hardcore and Butts lining up against what they consider the apparent contradiction of coming on a woman's face despite the notion of condoms being used as protection against HIV. Joy King, who represents Wicked, which has a strong condom policy, fielded the brunt of the attack. Wylder said his company is now pro-condom. "I think we should be as safe as we possibly can. I now have to answer to my 18-year old daughter," Wylder said "I try to promote the use of condoms in my video." Wylder also acknowledged a new twist on video that's becoming increasingly popular - the internal cumshot - as promoted on a website called 'creampie'.
"I just shot a whole series of videos with internal cumshots featuring married couples. People are buying it just for that fact." Wylder said he can't say he's sold less videos featuring those with condoms. "But things changed," he said. "I sold more videos to some poeple and less to others."
King, describing herself as "the token chick" on the panel said Wicked's been condom-only for 14 months, and it hasn't affected business whatsoever. "We're still growing and prospering," King said. "People share our vision to promote safe sex. We did a market research survey which showed a vast majority had no opinion whatsoever as to whether there was a condom in the movie. But we feel very strongly about condoms and promoting safe sex."
Hardcore said he's used a condom only in the case if had to work with "some shank whore".
"I'm not here to be a role model for the youth of America," Hardcore said. "I'm here to make dirty, nasty fuck films. That's my job. My job is not to educate society or become a fucking role model for kids growing up. I personally don't like using condoms. A lot of companies claim to be all-condom, and that bullshit, than they go and squeegie in a girl's face, eyes and mouth. What's with that shit? It's stupid and not following all the rules."
Stagliano [to King}: "How can you encourage safe behavior then do something that isn't safe?"
King: "We're trying to create a safer environment for performers. If they don't want to do it [facials], they won't."
Hardcore: "There's a certain hypocrisy there."
Butts: "In my videos, I don't focus where the cum shot's going to happen. It's not an issue for me."
Mike Albo comments about yesterday's LA Times article that states Rodger Jacobs writes for Hustler: "Gene: Where do these people come up with this stuff? I'm referring to the information posted on your site regarding yesterday's L.A. Times article. Specifically, I'm talking about Roger Jacobs' assertion that he writes for Hustler Erotic Video Guide. I've been the executive editor here since November of 1993, and I've never met, spoken to or used any of this guy's material. While he may have written for previous editors, he's about 6 years out-of-touch with us now. While I'm flattered that he would use the Hustler Erotic Video Guide name to pad his resumé, in the interest of accuracy it should be noted that he hasn't written anything for me and there are no plans to use him in the future. His less than forthcoming demeanor assures this.
Albo also has this to say about comments about a Hustler interview made by Frank Towers posted on this site this week: "Here we go again. Another performer does an interview, is unhappy with the final results and then has to claim that everything was twisted around and embellished. Oddly enough, this seems to happen whenever the performer in question has performed in gay movies. Your readers might remember the recent flap concerning Peter North and Jewel DeNyle. I played you the tape of the interview and, I believe, I was vindicated. Now comes Frank Towers who's whining about how he did an interview with Marc Medoff for Huster Erotic Video Guide (not Hustler as Frank claims) and how we "twisted the questions around."
"That's simply not the case.Frank is correct when he states that he gave Medoff a "good interview." It was one of the funniest pieces we've run in a long time. Frank was honest about his gay performance, and I think we can all admire someone who will speak the truth. However, now that he has regrets about his decision, he's trying to shift the blame away from himself. Hey, Frank, neither Marc Medoff nor I told you to perform in fag flicks, and neither one of us embellished, twisted or otherwise changed your interview. It's all on tape, sport.
