Tightfit Productions owner Oren Cohen is an insightful 28-year-old who certainly has a sense of history, but a mind and an eye for the future.
“We’re trying to keep track of people who are making money [in this business] as well as understanding how they’re doing it,” Cohen told AVN.com.
The young entrepreneur's grandfather headed CPLC, a manufacturer and distributor, that played an important role in porn’s beginnings.
Cohen started Tightfit only a year and a half ago, transforming his previous venture, Lucky Media, an adult compilation company that Cohen ran for three years prior. Cohen notes that Lucky Media introduced the foiled and embossed, 20-hour box sets. “Everybody said we were crazy for doing those,” he recalled, “but now everybody is doing them.”
Cohen hatched his plans to helm a full-fledged production company years earlier. “The decision to become a new release company was there even long before Lucky Media was a company, but every time I would get something started, in the 11th hour, something would happen and fuck up my plans.
“We knew it was going to be a daunting task, starting up a new manufacturing company in the wake of hundreds of new manufacturing companies,” he continued. “So I went to the distributors, I went to the cable companies and I went to the broadcast people, and I asked them what their dream product would look like. I asked them what would be the easiest thing for them to sell…and I used that to base my model for Tightfit.”
Cohen explained that his company is dealing with the same logistical problems that all adult companies wrestle with, but at the same time, he is mindful of the industry’s more philosophical tribulations.
“I think we have a number of problems in the industry right now,” Cohen said. “We have the ones that we’re standing right on top of, like the glut of product, and the limited means to distribute that product. And we have the larger problem, which I don’t think a lot of people recognize, which is the very fact the psychological imagery that we’re peddling has lost its charge. I just don’t think that sex is special anymore. And that differs from even five years ago. We ultimately did this to ourselves.”
Tightfit Vice President of Sales, Joanie Lee, said that the company sees strength in diversifying. “We’re always looking toward the future, to a time when the DVD won’t have that big of a presence…even five years into the future. [For that reason,] we’re doing a lot of post [production] work and putting a lot of our stuff on the web.
“But I do think [that the industry] will come out of this down summer,” continued Lee.
“I don’t think the changes [in the industry] are going to be necessarily good for us at first,” added Cohen, “I really think there needs be some kind of governing factor that determines what is good and what is shit, and unfortunately the Internet is like the Wild West, which is what makes it wonderful, but it’s also what makes it a very daunting and large place to get lost in.
“I think the reason why the magazine industry has sustained itself with relatively high sales numbers is that the price of admission was a lot higher than our business. They have a pecking order which will not be disturbed; you have a manufacturer that sells to the national distributor that then sells to the retailer. Everybody with a camera can go and sell their stuff, and in some ways I blame the distributors for that…they sort of dug their own hole.
“[In adult], there is no pecking order, there is no hierarchy, there is no structure. It’s a very primitive system.”
Cohen, who splits directorial duties on all of the company’s titles between himself and Jax, said that Tightfit also pays close attention to what kind of talent it is shooting.
“We instituted a policy to not shoot anyone under 21 years of age, simply because of the fact that I want to see real, mature, sexually empowered women who know what they want and like to get off, rather than a passive fuck-hole that barely knows how to live on her own and is just getting pounded and then getting a check," Cohen said.
"I really think the industry needs to start being called on our shit, and who we're putting out there."
Cohen said that, at least for now, he and Jax will be the only directors for the company, because he doesn’t really see a need to add more. “Unless somebody comes along and blows my mind,” he said. “Ultimately, you can pretty much teach the mechanics of porn to anyone, it’s really in what’s behind those mechanics.”
However, the company owner said he would be open to bringing on a contract starlet, if he could find the right girl. “I’d love to find a contract star, but I want a woman not a girl. And I want a woman that will make other girls drip down their legs and scare the shit out of men…and I’ve yet to find that woman.” He implores, with a laugh, that if that woman is out there, she should contact the company.
Cohen has taken what he refers to as a “wrecking ball” to most of the company’s ongoing series and slimmed down to one series offering called Airtight, with the other seven monthly releases being niche titles.
“I figure if we’re going to offer a boy/girl series, it might as well have some crazy boy/girl sex in it, with every hole filled, and the girl still enjoying it,” he said.
Cohen said that the company also has a lot of future developments in the works that he and Tightfit will announce soon. The company recently invited producers, agency reps and talent to an open house and “old school” casting call at its new, 7,000 square-foot studio. Photographer Joel Jett was brought in to shoot complimentary stills for performers and agencies, as starlets stripped down to pose against the studio’s photo backdrop.
“I think the event went great,” commented Lee. She added that company is also considering making the open house a monthly or bi-monthly event.
Tightfit’s latest release, Sex & the Sybian, stars Gianna Lynn, Aaliyah Jolie, Ariel X, Luscious Lopez, Savannah Stern, Shannon Kelly and Trina Micheals. The company will host a party for the title at Cinespace in Hollywood on Friday. Adult industry and media can RSVP at [email protected].
Tightfit has also recently released The Many Shades of Mayhem 3, Black Mayhem, House Pets and Asian Mayhem.
Tightfit is online at www.tightfithd.com. The company's new studio is online at www.tightfitstudios.com. For sales information, call (818) 785-7858.
