LAS VEGAS—Often, when people find out that you’re in the adult industry, the first question they ask is, “How did you get in the business?” Veteran adult director/producer Vic Lagina answers that question and more in his memoir Filthy: The Rise and (Pending) Death of Vic Lagina.
“I was living in West Hollywood and I was funding my dreams on credit cards and getting myself into debt—that's how it all started,” Lagina told AVN. “My background is in production. I have two degrees in production. Two unnecessary degrees in production, I should say, and I used to do corporate and commercial production when I was living in Florida. My undergrad was at Syracuse; my grad was at the University of Miami.
“I met a girl who was a model, and I moved to L.A. with her, trying to just get the whole dream of making movies and TV shows—that's what I wanted to do. So, we decided to move to L.A., and it was one of those typical crash-and-burn Hollywood stories where I was funding everything on credit cards. I was working a little bit. She was working as a SAG extra.
“But yeah, she decided to stop that at some point and become a white female rapper, and I thought it was a great idea, uh, because they were looking for the ‘Feminem,’” he recalled. “This was 2002.”
Sadly but perhaps not unexpectedly, his girlfriend’s rap career eventually stalled. With their California dreams quickly going cold, Lagina was low on funds. “So, I started shooting porn,” he said.
After answering an ad on Adult Staffing (now SexyJobs), Lagina met a guy named Ricardo with a speech impediment who wanted to shoot a porn movie. Like many industry newcomers in the early ‘00s, Lagina found himself in the Van Nuys office of legendary talent agent Jim South, looking at Polaroids of available performers on World Modeling’s roster for his very first shoot as an adult director.
“We shot in Pamela Peaks’ condo in the Valley and we shot four scenes that day, one of which included Ron Jeremy. There was the smell of crack being smoked at some point during the day,” he reminisced. “And I remember it feeling pretty filthy, pretty dirty—and I guess you could say that day gave me the idea of how things shouldn't be run, and how—if I were to make a business out of it—I would do it a lot differently.”
Flash forward not too much later, and Lagina found himself back in Florida after Hollywood fizzled out. But once bitten by the porn business bug, he brought a new skill set back home to Miami.
“I had started the porn cycle in L.A., but I really started growing it in the hotel rooms, the seedy hotel rooms in South Florida,” he said. “And eventually, I met the guys who would become Brazzers.”
Destiny had smacked Lagina in the face though, at the time, he didn’t realize he was at the start of a career as a director/producer that eventually would top out at more than 3,000 scenes, pay off his credit cards, and land him in Las Vegas as head of production for Manwin (later MindGeek, currently Aylo). His body of work encompasses the era that saw adult DVD sales give way to the emergence of digital content clips and “gonzo” style, viewed by millions on pioneering platforms including Brazzers, Reality Kings, and, eventually, Pornhub.
Lagina—who claims to have signed no NDAs with previous employers—said that, by 2020, he was no longer on the same page with his employers at MindGeek in regards to where production policy was headed. Before long, friction was apparent between himself and management.
As it says on his X/Twitter profile, “Once upon a time, I was a smut producer who helped build the world’s biggest p*rn company.”
One can only imagine Lagina’s view for the decades he was at the helm, as adult content distribution evolved from DVDs and cable to content clips streaming on user’s mobile devices. A career spent on adult industry sets promises that no day or night is the same, with a cast of outrageous characters putting themselves into situations that few “civilians” (non-industry people) would ever contemplate, might even find horrifying. Yet, everyone enjoys a good story, especially if it’s filthy.
“I'm grateful for that, being able to fill a book with that and I think that was the reason why I was in porn,” he said. “I mean, sure, financial stability, great, you know—but I think I was also there for the stories and to share these stories with the masses because there are a lot of people who are curious about it.”
“Any time I would fly on a plane, you know, the people you start talking to them, ‘What did you used to do? What do you do for a living?’ And you can tell in their eyes right away you can know who you're dealing with. Are you dealing with someone cool or are you dealing with someone buttoned up? And, after a while, didn't care about making up stories anymore about what I did. I just said, “Yeah, I, I'm a porn producer,’ and the look in their eyes would say it all—either they would be disgusted and not want to talk to me anymore, which was fine because they probably weren't cool enough to talk to. Or they would say, ‘I have so many questions!’”
“Because that happened so many times now, I just give them a sticker with the QR code. Here—buy a copy. It will answer all of your questions,” Lagina laughed.
Officially an author, but ever the producer, Lagina has a sizzle reel for Filthy: The Rise and (Pending) Death of Vic Lagina, which can be viewed at his website VicLagina.com. The humorous, ready-for-Netflix trailer stars indie actor James Duval, who’s appeared in movies including Independence Day and Donnie Darko, as well as adult stars including Hazel Moore, Tee Reel, and Marcus London, with soundtrack by The Filth Buckets.
Filthy: The Rise and (Pending) Death of Vic Lagina can be found now at Amazon. For the audiobook, visit Spotify.
