The April 8 raid of Extreme Associates by over 40 FBI agents, postal inspectors and IRS agents became the talk of the industry before the feds had even left the premises, with AVN fielding calls from all over the country asking for details of what went down, and especially inquiring about the content of the material seized.
But with more federal anti-adult legislation pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, the question on everyone's mind is, "Is this the beginning of a nationwide crackdown on adult material, or is this somehow an isolated incident?"
"I did expect that Ashcroft would use the distraction effect of the war in Iraq to cover what would otherwise be the shock of proceeding against nationally-known Web operations and tape operations," said J.D. Obenberger, a Chicago-based First Amendment attorney with strong interest in the adult Internet. "He apparently has done that, and this is not the kind of thing that is going to make much of a ripple in the mainstream press on the day that Saddam Hussein's statue gets toppled."
"All of this is looking through a smoked glass window," Obenberger continued, "and it's hard to know what factors might theoretically, possibly have constrained [them], but you know, there's no obvious reason why these tapes couldn't have been proceeded against a long time ago. It would appear to me to be the kind of thing where there's lots of latitude, freedom of action, freedom of discretion in when to time a raid. There's no compelling reason why it has to be done now... One can only wonder under these circumstances whether the Justice Department is using all of the tumult and excitement about the war in Iraq as a screening device as against what would otherwise be adverse public reaction to this raid."
Los Angeles attorney Jeffrey Douglas, however, thought that an Extreme bust was almost inevitable.
"Because Extreme Associates has positioned itself to be literally at the extreme end of all production," Douglas analyzed, "their prosecution was highly likely if not inevitable. That is, their content goes so far beyond that which any production that I'm aware of has undertaken in terms of depictions of non-consensual material, the depiction of incest, rape or rape of adult actresses portraying extremely young people, it was as predictable as anything in the world that they were going to get busted.
"Everything about their tapes, their marketing, the way they have just burnt every bridge that exists, is tragic," Douglas said sadly.
But Extreme Associates owner Rob Black took issue with that type of thinking.
"This case is definitely more than just Rob Black, the fuckin' asshole big-mouth scumbag who does rape movies," Black said in an exclusive interview. "It's a bigger spectrum than that, and for people like Jeffrey Douglas to say where we positioned ourselves as far as the adult industry, and that our product is so extreme, no one else has to worry about it because we're so left-field or right-field that it isn't the norm, that's completely bullshit. We have over 400 movies. If you include 15 movies of our company [that are] positioned past the norm, then you're fuckin' completely retarded and you don't know our company. And if you're going to make those kind of accusations, at least look at our library."
In a statement posted online, Black noted that of the five titles seized during the raid - Ass Clowns 3, directed by Tom Zupko; Forced Entry and Cocktails 2, both directed by Lizzie Borden; 1001 Ways to Eat My Jizz, directed by August Arkham; and Extreme Teen 24, which is credited to "Stanley Ferrara," but which reportedly had multiple directors - two of the titles - Ass Clowns 3 and Cocktails 2 - were "director's cuts." On its Website, Extreme notes that it only sells its director's cuts by mail order, and the implication is that those versions are harder than the versions available for rent or sale in video stores.
"In [Ass Clowns 3], I kill Osama bin Laden by cutting his head off with a knife, and we shoot everybody else that's with his little group of murdering cutthroats," recalled veteran performer Dick Nasty. "There's lots of blood, and there's lots of, basically, rape; they all rape the American journalist before we go in and save her. I play a British Special Forces guy going in with and American Special Forces guy, and then we d.p. her, but when we do it, she's [consenting]."
But as inflammatory as blood and rape in a sexually-explicit movie may be, the "director's cut" has material almost guaranteed to upset any mainstream audience - especially if they sit in a jury box.
"To the best of my knowledge," said a knowledgeable source, "the difference in the director's cut of I>Ass Clowns 3], is that Brian Surewood plays a Christ-like figure who is nailed to a cross and crucified and there's an angel present and he comes down off the cross and has anal sex with her. He essentially rapes the angel. In the non-director's cut version, the scene begins with it being blacked out, and [text] saying, 'To see the full version of this scene, ask for the director's cut,' and it begins with him just sort of walking; he's come down from the cross and is walking."
Extreme Teen 24, has at least one scene featuring an adult actress (Black Cat) playing what appears to be a pre-teen who lives in a crude tent in her parents' living room, wears pajamas with feet and constantly sucks on a lollipop. Valentino enters, claiming to be selling Pokemon magazines, and tells her that Pokemon would want her to suck his cock, which she proceeds to do. The scene continues explicitly from there.
As for Cocktails 2, reviewer Roger T. Pipe writes, "Girls drinking their own spit, pre-puke, vomit and other bodily fluids is horrid enough. Add in some enema remains and a bit of piss and you know there was a shortage of breath mints and barf bags on the set when everything was finished."
Forced Entry, of course, was the feature showcased in last year's Frontline episode, where various Frontline personnel claimed to have been sickened by the tape's depictions of forcible rape.
One performer who worked on Forced Entry, who asked not to be identified, said that where any other company, knowing that their material would form part of a mainstream porn "exposé", might tone down the content, Extreme would say, "Crank it up!"
"I think they enjoy 'poking the bear' at Extreme," the performer opined.
And indeed, according to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service's "Search Warrant/Arrest Operation Plan" which Black provided to AVN.com, "poking the bear" is apparently exactly what started this particular ball rolling.
"For over a year Extreme Associates, Inc. has been investigated by the LAPD Obscenities Squad," the warrant reads, in the section entitled 'Summary of Case.'
"On February 7, 2002, PBS-Frontline interviewed Extreme Associates, Inc. during a movie shoot of American Porn. The PBS-Frontline camera-man and interviewer stopped shooting during the movie shoot. We believe they left because of the shock and disgust of the rape scene which was subsequently released as Forced Entry.
"During the PBS-Frontline interview, [Rob Black] (principal) and Extreme Associates issued a challenge to U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft [USAG]. They touted the USAG in regards to the content of their movies and that USAG could not do anything about it."
But according to Black, Frontline may inadvertently have played a part in setting up the bust.
"When all is said and done, basically that movie we did was for PBS," Black recounted. "We made it for PBS, because PBS, in the pre-interview with us beforehand, told Kevin, our then-general manager, 'We want something extreme. We heard Extreme Associates is the craziest.' So we set that up for them, and whether they set us up or not, we knew what was going to go down. We weren't like Belladonna and everybody, saying, 'Oh my God, look what they did.' We knew what was going to go down. We knew it. But the thing is, if you watch the PBS special, them coming out of the room disgusted, if you notice, they had another camera shooting them. It was all a 'work' [a wrestling term meaning a pre-arranged stunt]. And if it comes down to affidavits, they're going to have to go up there and talk about being in pre-interviews with us and us talking about what we're going to do and how to make it extreme and what we're going to give them."
Unfortunately for Extreme and Black, however, the Frontline crew won't be the ones on trial. But the point Black hopes to be able to put across to the jury is that what his company does is make movies.
"I think it's about time that somebody stands up in the adult business and is able to deem their movies as movies," Black stated. "It's a fuckin' movie, and that's it. And for some reason, for all these years, pornography has always been treated like it wasn't a movie, but I don't think that when people see Straw Dogs, or Clockwork Orange, and they're fuckin' raping and killing people, I don't think people sit there and go, 'Oh, that's real; we're going to have to go and bring them up on charges of obscenity.' It's made to look as real as possible or the movie's not good. Same thing in pornography: Our stuff is made to look as real as possible, and if we didn't, then why make the fuckin' movie in the first place?"
But since obscenity is a crime, and since, if Black and/or Extreme are charged with it, it will be a jury of 12 average citizens that will decide whether Extreme's five features fit the criteria for obscenity, the question of everyone's mind has to be, how will the Extreme material look being played in court?
Douglas was somewhat hopeful on that score.
"It doesn't take much of a memory to recall that when Hustler first was putting out its magazines, it was roundly condemned by other magazine publishers because it was going to bring so much heat onto their tame magazines by exceeding all known bounds of good taste," Douglas recalled. "Now, Larry Flynt is regarded as a hero because he fought back and, to a large extent, won, thus expanding the realm of First Amendment protections for everyone... If they [Extreme] manage to get acquitted, they're going to be heroes, because they will have extended the bounds of First Amendment tolerance."
But the search warrant served on Extreme came from the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Pennsylvania, and it has been widely reported that the pro-censorship organization Morality In Media considers Pennsylvania its first "saved" state, meaning that it considers Pennsylvanians to have less tolerance for, among other things, sexually explicit materials than other parts of the country.
Black feels hopeful that society has changed sufficiently and that the jurors will be able to take the more divergent aspects of his features in stride.
"This type of stuff wasn't around 12 years ago," noted Black, referring to the time of the last major federal obscenity bust. "Those juror members, if the case goes to that, they're in Pittsburgh; the same stuff that gets beamed onto my TV gets beamed onto theirs. If they have In Demand [pay TV service], they're beamed pornographic material; if they have Fox, they're beamed Fear Factor where people are eating cow testicles and eating worms and throwing up on TV. It's a different time now. The community standard is different."
But what does the fact that the feds have targeted Extreme mean for the adult industry at large?
"What will be significant is if this is the beginning or if this is simply an independent targeting of Extreme because of the content," Douglas analyzed. "The fact that there was only one search warrant executed in contrast to the way things have been done in the past is at least suggestive of the fact that this is an independent prosecution based on content and not the beginning of a dam breaking."
However, at an October 2002 Free Speech Coalition general membership meeting, Obenberger predicted massive Justice Department prosecutions shortly after America went to war with Iraq.
"I think the Justice Department really is serious about this and is really trying to force these prosecutions and really trying to put people in jail," Obenberger said at the meeting, "and it is my hunch that only one thing is necessary for the triumph of evil... and that is that we await the initiation of hostilities in Iraq. Because what I think is going to happen is, they don't want an excuse that can be used as political capital, that 'you diverted important resources from the national defense and our safety to go prosecute pornographers.' So they're going to start military hostilities against Iraq and then sometime after January 1, 2003, we can see indictments. I have received reports from certain U.S. districts in which white collar crime units are being directed to bring prosecutions."
Obenberger credits Internet attorney Greg Piccionelli as the origin of the prediction, but he himself stands by it also.
"I can only say, notwithstanding the kinds of disclaimers they give in investment advertising, that 'past performance is no guarantee of future performance,' what we've seen recently is some action that, from what I'm able to infer, [says that's] the direction they're headed in," Obenberger confirmed grimly. "What I've been telling people since I started doing adult Internet, is, if you see everybody doing 75-80 on a highway where the speed limit is 55, it is lunacy to pass them all at 95, because that's the first car that's going to get pulled over."
Douglas agreed with those points, both experientially and philosophically.
"I regard all obscenity prosecutions as being immoral, unconstitutional and evil," Douglas noted, "so I regard this [potential] prosecution as being therefore regrettable.
"However," he added, "Extreme Associates intentionally took chances that in my opinion are unconscionable for anyone other than the people in charge. That is, if parties are indicted who are simply employees of the organization, then they will have put others in jeopardy whom they should not have put in jeopardy."
Douglas was referring to the Operation PostPorn busts of the late 1980s, where ordinary workers at some companies were busted along with their owners. In one such instance, VCA owner Russell Hampshire took a guilty plea to trafficking charges so that several of his employees who were also indicted would not face jail time.
Contrary to earlier reports that longtime Flynt attorney Alan Isaacman would be representing him, Black reports that he has retained Cincinnati-based First Amendment attorney H. Louis Sirkin to handle the case, in part because Sirkin is familiar with the district court in western Pennsylvania.
Moreover, Black remains upbeat about his and Extreme's chances.
"I know why everybody doesn't like us," Black admitted, "but I've always been one to stand up for whatever we've done, whether it's me being an asshole or whatever we made. I'd just like everybody to kind of get their facts straight when they do go after us."
