The year opened with the adult industry voicing optimism about its prospects- that is until the AEE Show. And then depending what stories you read or believed, attendance there was said to have been down by at least 40%.
However some filmmakers in Las Vegas were bragging how they enjoyed record business the last few months prior to the show.
“We shoot about 100 scenes a month between the two studios,” proclaimed Nicholas Steele, CEO of Bluebird America. Hmmmm.
The year would also feature memorable quotes from industry players. How could we forget the famous last words of Evan Seinfeld who said in an interview: “Tera Patrick shines a big light that everybody gets to bask in.” Wonder if his divorce attorney’s office features a big light?
But Ms. Patrick was no shrinking violet of self-proclamation, either, when she had this to say: “I get recognized everywhere. It doesn’t matter if I’m in Summerlin or Antarctica. The last Eskimo on earth knows who I am.”
Then we had AVN’s Paul Fishbein saying this in an interview: “This [AVN Awards] is treated with the same seriousness as the Academy Awards.” The fact that AVN as well as the Academy turned down Hugh Jackman this year to host their events may lend some credibility to that statement.
Then we had this quote from Sasha Grey: “I entered porn because I thought there was a void — a lack of quality production. You see the same thing over and over and there was just so much titillation missing from porn.” Guess what? There still is.
Apparently unaware that there’s a recession, Temptations & Teasers Manager Amber Williams said in an interview that sex sales are up because sex is a coping mechanism,
“Sex is always going to sell no matter what the economy is like,” according to Williams who is now serving on the Obama economic policy advisory board. Just kidding.
Always good for a quote no matter how dumb it is, Mary Carey said she was going to solve California’s massive economic woes by “stripping for dollars” on a caravan tour of the 10 major cities in the state. “The more people donate, the more clothes I take off,” Carey said. Perhaps that’s why members of the state treasury have been seen walking around Sacramento in rain barrels.
Then there was the Vaudeville team of Flynt & Francis who figured that the adult industry was worth a $5 Billion bailout as long as Obama seemed to be in the mood for handouts to the corporate needy. Hard to believe but the mainstream press took them seriously as this cockamamie story spread like wildfire and even picked up the half-hearted endorsement from Rush Limbaugh who’s now in a hospital, possibly as punishment.
Max Hardcore was ordered to report to a federal prison in Lompoc to begin serving a 46-month prison sentence he received in federal court in Florida last year.
Stopping just short of the entrance, Max turned to the reporters and cameramen who’d been following his progress and said:
“I’d just like to say, as an American and a guy who really believes in this country and supports it, it’s a real disappointment.”
Prior to exchanging his cowboy hat for prison garb, Max’s attorneys filed a motion asking that he be given permission to drive to the Adult Entertainment Expo so that he could “complete transactions with other members of the adult entertainment business that would allow him to have the financial ability and arrangements to pay the $75,000.00 corporate fine and to otherwise secure his financial matters while he is away serving his sentence.” Request granted.
In the land of dumb quotes Max also showed that he was still king with this other parting salvo: “I’m not down, I’m up, man. This is a challenge I’ve got to face, and face it I will. I know that our industry has been accepted by the public.”
Max seemed to have forgotten that it was the same public in Tampa who sentenced him.
Joining Max in the slam was business owner Andrew Jinks Inglet, 55, who once owned a chain of adult stores in the Houston area. Inglet was sentenced to 20 months in prison for failing to pay federal taxes.
Inglet was convicted of conspiracy to impede the Internal Revenue Service after he failed to pay $328,190 in income and employment taxes between 1999 and 2003. Inglet had been in federal custody as a flight risk since September 2007 when he returned to the United States after living in El Salvador for several years.
Porn performer Emily Evermoor will also be in prison until July, 2010. Evermoor agreed to a plea arrangement [the circumstances were held confidential] and was to serve 85% of two years with credit for time served. Evermoor you’ll recall claimed she was sexually propositioned by then AVN editor Mike Ramone who basically told her, “stick with me baby and you’ll be farting through silk.” Oh, that was Robert Mitchum. Anyways, Ramone subsequently lost his job because of that.
With a different sexual proposition in mind, Natalie Dylan, 22, then decided to auction off her virginity to the highest bidder in order to raise money to send herself to graduate school. Dylan felt the best way to do this was at Nevada’s famous whorehouse, The Moonlite Bunny Ranch which happens to be owned by Dennis Hof, the master of publicity stunts.
In a story that kind of died of natural causes, Cal-OSHA began investigating a complaint regarding a female performer who contracted an STD. It seems that the LA County health Dept. was involved in this case as well.
Creating something of a buzz, Penthouse like Playboy downsized its New York Office. However Marc Bell, CEO of Penthouse parent FriendFinder Networks, insisted it wasn’t a layoff, per se, but a redistribution.
“We downsized the New York office and relocated jobs out to California,” Bell explained. “We have editorial operations out there for our website so we’ll have duplicity.” I think duplicity means something else, but we get Bell’s drift.
Like Kobe Bryant, you can always count on the NBA for a good sex story, and New York Knick Eddy Curry offered just that by being named in ‘Gay Sex’ Lawsuit. Stunning court papers charged that Curry, a married father of several kids, repeatedly approached chauffeur David Kuchinsky “in the nude,” saying, “Look at me, Dave, look” and, “Come and touch it, Dave.”
Curry, 26, also made Kuchinsky perform “humiliating tasks outside the scope of his employment, such as cleaning up and removing dirty towels [into which Curry had ejaculated] so that his wife would not see them,” the Manhattan federal court suit said. As far as we know, that suit’s still active.
Shane’s World also released performer Casey Parker from her exclusive contract. After citing creative and artistic differences, Shane’s World CEO Andrew S. stated that the company “felt it was time to go in a new direction”.
During the course of the year, director Paul Thomas and Vivid would part company after two decades. Not that Thomas’ strange behavior as seen on the Showtime Deeper Throat Reality series didn’t contribute something.
The suspicion was that Internet postings regarding how Thomas treated the contract talent may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Monique Alexander apparently didn’t get along with Thomas and she left Vivid in January. In another instance, Thomas was supposed to have brought Briana Banks to tears.
There was also forum discussions about how Thomas on a shoot said he hated girls with big fake boobs and how it disgusted him and how looking at them made him want to toss his lunch. Banks was about 10 feet away at the time and heard every word. In an interview Banks supposedly referred to Thomas as an asshole.
In another PT faux pas, Thomas while directing the Love Twins, Lacey and Lyndsey in a scene, made an off hand remark, perhaps not realizing the BTS camera was nearby about how stupid they were and how he hoped to never have to work with them again. Apparently there was no love lost between Thomas and Jenna Jameson, either, at the time she worked for Vivid.
Early in the year, the Aids Healthcare Foundation ripped Larry Flynt calling him Public Health Enemy Number One regarding HIV/AIDS for his commercial exploitation of sex.
Flynt also made the news when former Hustler employee Cheryl Oldham sued him claiming her work was disrupted by hearing him having sex with prostitutes and that she, consequently, was a victim of sexual and age harassment. Oldham, who began working for Flynt in 1999 alleged in her suit that she was retaliated against for helping another female employee in a similar claim against Flynt.
Oldham maintained that when Flynt found out she was helping the other employee, he called her into his office and asked her to testify that he did not harass anyone and that she never heard sex noises from his office, but she refused. Why?
Because the prostitutes “made loud, obnoxious and repeated noises of sexual gratification that disrupted the office and (Oldham’s) ability to perform the essential functions of her job,” her lawsuit alleged.
Oldham also claimed she was summoned into another meeting with Flynt, where she alleged she was told, “you’re overweight, unattractive, over 50 and probably unable to find another job. So, why would you do this to me?” The matter was turned over to arbitration.
On the lighter side of lawsuits, a customer named Yusuf Evans sued the XTC strip club in Akron for $25 G’s claiming a stripper-shoe owned by a dancer named Tiara smacked him the nose while she was performing her routine.
As lawsuits go, beware of those hooker ads you see in the weeklies. There was a case involving Disney starlet Brenda Song who brought a libel suit against a company who allegedly used her image in the LA Weekly for an escort service without her permission.
Song filed her complaint against Vibe Media Inc. and its owner, Ali Askari, in Los Angeles Superior Court on April 25, 2008, seeking more than $100,000 in damages for libel, intentional infliction of emotional distress and commercial misappropriation of her photo and likeness. The suit was later amended, also naming Vanessa Senna of San Bernardino County as the defendant accused of taking the photo of Song from the internet and using it in the ad.
The upshoot was that Song got $100,000 in a settlement this year and Senna agreed to pay $16,000 in damages.
Death rumors are always circulating in the business and company owner Kevin Rubio was the subject of one. What actually happened is that someone stole Rubio’s cellphone and mass texted a message that he was no longer with us.
Her career dead in the mainstream where she played villainess Beth Wallace in the NBC daytime drama Passions, former Miss USA 1991, Kelli McCarty, made a big splash on the mainstream gossip sites by saying she loved sex so much that she decided to star in an X-rated film production titled ‘Faithless’ for Vivid.
Returning from the grave, Holly Landers who was supposed to have been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver six years ago, was said to have attended the 2009 AVN Expo in Las Vegas. Landers, according to reports, is now modeling as a Pinup for her website HollyLanderspinup.com
Good trick since the original story of her death reported that Landers was cremated and that her ashes were scattered at sea.
Four talent agencies from the Adult Business also joined forces to form a Feature Dancer network. Adult Talent Managers, A List Talent, Type 9 Models and A-List Features announced they would be handling the bookings for major dance tours across the US.
to be continued