Coming from a theater background in Chicago, Andrew S. knew how to con his way into the porn business. In need of a job, Andrew found a gig creating content for Top Bucks. Two and a half years later, he began HoDough. Recently rechristened HushMoney, Andrew's company now has 25 employees and an abundance of sites. What a short, strange trip it's been.
"I bullshitted Kevin, the owner of Top Bucks, and kind of looked like I knew what I was doing," explained Andrew. "Honestly, I was never in porn, never knew anything about porn, and I just needed the money and totally bullshitted him. It's funny—we laugh about it now: Fake it until you make it."
Faking it, however, did not include lying to his mother. With her, Andrew was candid. "My mother at the time was chief of police and since retired," Andrew said, laughing as he recalled their conversation:
"Hey, I got an offer to make porn movies. What do think?"
"Are you going to be in them?"
"No, I am going to direct them."
"Is it legal?"
"Yes."
"Is it a lot of money?"
"Yes.
"Go make a lot of money."
There was only one caveat: "She was scared to death that someone from our little home town might find out," Andrew said. "But we pretty much kept it under wraps."
Still, Andrew did not expect to stay in the business very long. "My original plan was to bullshit for a year, make a bunch of money, and then get out," he said. "I never expected to shoot content for Top Bucks for two and one-half years. Definitely, I never expected to branch out on my own, nor did I expect it to be the major success as it has been."
At Top Bucks, the concept of filming was simple compared to theater directing, Andrew said. It wasn't long before he saw an opportunity to go out on his own. "I [directed] for a while, [and then] I had an idea to start the website MyDaughtersFuckingANigga. That took off, and I built my own company and stopped shooting for Top Bucks last year," Andrew explained.
Luckily, Andrew said, viewers grasped the website's satire. "It just hit a nerve, because it was irreverent and it was about making fun of racism," Andrew expressed. "It was a fine line, but somehow people got it. To this day, we haven't gotten one letter or email that was negative about our site. We were wondering if people got it and—obviously—they did."
To operate a business comprising 25 employees, Andrew has three vice presidents who oversee different areas of the company: Kim Karr supervises operations, Paul Stevens takes care of the Web division, and Jonas M., handles pre- and post production.
"We're like a factory over here," said Andrew. "Once I got down the system…I trained directors. I basically have a nice little system down, and now we have everything in-house. So we shoot [a piece, and] it goes straight to the editors. From the editors it goes straight to compression. From compression, it's pulled out by webmasters and is posted on the site. It's a complete machine."
Branding also has been important for the booming company. In 2005, "we started off as HoDough. We had to come up with a [company] name," Andrew said. "We were like, 'We have this great site, but we don't even have a name.' We didn't even know what we were doing. After we had it up, [MyDaughtersFuckingANigga] started going nuts. So we threw out a bunch of names; however, nothing was available. HoDough.com was available, so we took it."
With the company's expansion came the need for unified branding. "We grew, and Hush-Hush Entertainment grew on the DVD side," Andrew continued. "That became such a monster that I realized we had to start branding everything as Hush. Hush-Hush what-have-you…HushMoney.com was already taken, so I bribed the owner and realized that would be much more [brand-friendly] than HoDough."
HushMoney officially launched in January after Andrew paid a few thousand dollars for the domain name. Now set with company, crew, and name, Andrew and HushMoney look toward the future. With 15 websites in HushMoney's arsenal at the time of this writing, Andrew is hoping to expand even more…and soon.
"I'd like to take my company and build it into a leader within the industry, constantly throwing out irreverent, cutting-edge porn," Andrew noted. "I don't ever want to get bored and just do sloppy, throw-it-out-there, slap-it-on-the-ass-and-put-a-cover-on-it type of stuff. Because, if none of us likes what we're doing, we'd all just basically quit."
