Porn Valley- I spoke to suspension artist Joey Strange the other day. Joey’s now head of sales for Freedom Distributing/Moonlight Video- which is owned by Rex Ryder and Paul Interlandi. Joey and I exchange reminiscences about old times at Bun Boy- an almost obligatory pit stop on the way back from Vegas.
Joey also tells me he was busier than a sonofabitch at Erotica L.A. Then I asked Joey the million dollar question- what ever happened to the “Modified Sexuality” movie that he shot for Extreme Associates at Clive Barker’s studio a few years back. Nothing, apparently.
“I just showed that to the owner here the other day,” Joey says. “Here’s what I can shoot- take a look. It’s still one of my favorite films that I ever shot.” Joey says Rob Black was afraid to release it which is not an exaggeration by any means.
“I use that as my big award,” he chuckles. “The one that Rob Black passed up on. But he paid for the whole thing.” Joey said he offered to buy the movie back from Extreme. “I got a chance where I had an investor that believed in me. I think I offered the guy [Black] $7000 and never got a call back.” According to Joey, Extreme also claims they lost the chromes on the movie. Which isn’t hard to believe because Extreme, since I had worked there, has also lost 49 employees if you count Guy Capo and Dave their most recent salesman who parted company with them.
Joey says he discovered that someone had pirated the chromes for Modified Sexuality whereupon he informed Extreme about it. “I took it as a personal shot- pirated my shit? Let’s go find you.” Joey says the way he got the original deal was by collaring Rob Black at AEE. “I said Rob, I’m going to take the kid gloves off. You give everybody and their mother a camera and some dough to shoot. Why don’t you give it to me? And I’m the only director to ever return money to him. I charged him seven grand. I came in $900 under and I gave it back to him. Do I still shoot there? No.”
Regardless of the way the Extreme deal went down, Joey continues to shoot tattooed and modified porn, according to him. “But way, way more tattooed and modified,” he stresses. “Split penises…” I agreed with Joey that split penises is one of my favorite porn topics next to balls being struck with a baseball bat. “Two dicks no waiting,” Joey quips back.
Besides the Moonlight classics, he tells me his strongest product to sell right now is Real Deal Amateurs. “That’s legitimate new amateur-stuff. Moonlight is a close second- like Sex Trek- we sell those in packs. We sell them all day. Then we have the Rex Ryder-stuff.”
Rumor on the street is that Mandingo who left West Coast may be coming over to Freedom to do a deal. “That would be the first black line carried through here,” says Joey, should that deal go down.