The name "Sex-Z Pictures" seems like such an obvious one for a porn company that it's hard to fathom why nobody snatched it up before. Well, as they say, sometimes things can be right in front of people's faces, and they don't see them.
Thankfully for Bo Kenney, he managed not to miss this particular thing, and with each year that's passed since he first smacked it onto a box and shipped it off, he has reaped more and more benefits from it.
Kenney, the CEO of distributorship LGI Digital, out of which Sex-Z was born, has been in the adult business since 1974, when he joined mother and stepfather Barbara and Dennis Pryba's family firm. Fast-forward to 1990, when he started his own retail chain, MVC; currently consisting of 10 stores, the chain led eventually to Kenney's delve into distribution, which happened in 1997 with the formation of LGI.
"We distributed video, toys and magazines," Kenney explained, "then DVDs. Sex-Z Pictures started in 2004 and our goal was to make the best quality adult films in the business. The principal players have been myself, my wife Shannon [the company's CFO] and my brother Todd [general manager of all three companies]."
LGI, as Kenney elucidated, stands for Light Gray Industries: "Never legal, never illegal, always in the gray area."
The decision to start up their own production company stemmed from the Kenneys' desire to … well, make sexy movies, and so Bo set about trying to give it a name that would stick.
"We wanted a name that stood for what we wanted to do,” he explained, “which [was] make movies that are 'Sex-Z.' We also wanted a name that could be branded and remembered by the consumer. I sat down one night and listed the names of companies that were the biggest and easiest to remember, and came up with Sex-Z in about three hours. It just stood for everything I wanted to do. It has taken two years to get to where we are, and it will take AVN Awards before it gets to where I want it."
Helping the company in that mission has been veteran director Roy Karch, who has helmed a number of titles for Sex-Z Pictures, and garnered nothing but respect from Kenney.
"Marty Turkel hooked me up with Roy," Kenney related. "Roy is a great director and always does what he says. He has had more movies than any director played on cable TV, and he always delivers a quality product on budget and time. He is very easy to work with, and he gets what we are trying to accomplish at Sex-Z."
And what is it, precisely, that they are trying to accomplish at Sex-Z? Well, Kenney describes the company's product thusly: "They are Sex-Z [and] easy to watch with your partner or if you are just jerking off. We produce what males and females 18 to 55 want to see in their bedrooms."
That, or course, encompasses quite a large range of things, but Kenney boils it down to the basic tenet that, "People want to see product that gets them and their partners in the mood for hot sex. We produce movies that stimulate their mind and body. We are just working hard at making the best product we can. Feature quality, feature cast, gonzo sex."
It can be a never-ending pursuit to make that happen, but Kenney is optimistic about the company's direction. "We are very pleased with the people currently directing for Sex-Z," he said. "We are currently doing the biggest-budgeted movie ever for Sex-Z (Corruption, due to street in September; see On the Set report in next month’s AVN. — Ed.) with Eli Cross, who is a very talented director. We also like Red Ezra and would like him to direct for Sex-Z. Kurt Lockwood has done a great job on his first two movies for Sex-Z (including The Decline of WesternCivilization, Part 69). As in any business, our doors are open for any talented new director that may come along. We look for talent in stimulating the mind in a director, as well as their business ability for bringing the movie in on time and budget."
One thing the company definitely is not looking for, if Kenney has anything to say about it (and he has everything to say about it), is anything overly rough. "You do not have to degrade women for your product to sell," he maintained. "You need hot sex, and sex is all about fantasy. You need to make quality movies, not ultra-hardcore, degrading movies. Ultra-hardcore leaves the consumer empty, still longing for more degrading product, which gets producers in trouble with the government. We need to be creative and make Sex-Z movies for the consumer to enjoy."
Something else you probably won't see Sex-Z do is sign any contract girls. "I think the day of the contract girl is over," Kenney said bluntly. "You can never pay a girl enough money to keep her happy. The talent is also entitled to make as much as they can. Sex-Z likes shooting all the top girls, and if they do good work, we always bring them back for more movies."
Despite his anti-contract girl stance, Kenney named such pro-contract girl enterprises as Vivid Entertainment Group, Wicked Pictures, Metro Interactive and Video Team as companies that "do it right," though he added that, "I tend to blaze my own path, right or wrong. You can only learn from your mistakes."
On the other hand, he did admit that, "AVN magazine and the competition has guided us on what we do and who we use to do it — directors, talent, artwork and what the consumer buys.
"It takes awards and good reviews to get shelf space," he continued. "You can have the best movies, but without shelf space, no one will ever know. In our retail stores, we get the best retail spots and we are number one. In other retail stores, they won't even try our product unless we win awards and get four-star ratings from AVN. It's very important to make movies that win awards and get good reviews."
Meanwhile, there's a whole other issue at hand that not only has nothing to do with shelf space, but could negate the entire concept of such, along with the very existence of the brick-and-mortar porn shop: the new age of VoD and mobile delivery.
"Owning 10 stores, we never want to see the brick-and-mortar business go away," Kenney stated. "I personally think we (video producers) are being cheated by the MSO/cable companies that are taking 97 percent of gross revenue. I think as producers, we are shooting ourselves in the head by giving Time Warner, DirecTV, Comcast, Cox and Adelphia our movies for $20,000 and then they make $800,000 off the movie. In the last six months, Sex-Z products have produced over $3 million in revenue, and we only received pennies on the dollar. While they made millions for nothing.”
"I think producers should cut off the VoD and PPV and Internet streaming companies until we get a better share,” he continued. “All we do is destroy our retail customer business and our hard goods market, and for pennies, while they make millions. Rupert Murdoch is the true king of porn, not Larry Flynt or Steve Hirsch — they don't even make a pimple on his ass. Murdoch makes more money in a day on DirecTV's porn channels than most producers make in a year. And we give it to him for pennies. We need to wake up and get our fair share, or cut off the supply. You heard of the movie Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room … I think I'm going to make a movie [called] Porn Valley: The Dumbest Guys in the Room. Yes, I will be on the cover, too."
All that said, Kenney still considers his stores the most important part of his enterprise. "Our core business is our retail stores," he made clear. "You can never forget where you came from, and for us, it's retail; MVC, Sex-Z then LGI."
For more on LGI Digital, call 888.303.5443, and to check up on the latest from Sex-Z Pictures, visit sexzpictures.com.
