Porn Valley- I spoke to Sam Xavier of www.boobsville.com. The company has just released Leave It to Cleavage. “We’ve got good response on it,” says Xavier. “I’m very glad considering that, it seems that in this day and age, nobody is interested in features any more.”
[Which might be changing because I’m hearing that a lot of companies are re-tooling to do features again.]
“What it seems to me,” Xavier continues, “is that features are not doing any better than the ones where I just put three or four scenes together of big, busty girls. I think the reason for that is not so much because of the [big bust] fetish but because the industry seems to be lending itself to just new phases. There’s no more a track record with a girl who’s good. And there’s really no busty stars around any more. So I’ve put a hold on doing features for awhile just to see- I have three or other features that I have ready to go in the Fall. But I don’t know where it’s going.”
Should the feature pendulum swing back, Xavier said he’d be a happy man. “Mainly because I can shoot these features.” As far as his own productions go, Xavier, whose company doesn’t shoot scenes on the fly, says Steve Drake is handling a lot of those details. “Steve, when we do shoot will shoot three girls in one day,” Xavier says. “A lot of these other companies will shoot one scene today, one tomorrow…”
Xavier states that with a new generation coming into the business, just ain’t the same. “It isn’t sex any more the way we used to do it which I would say was interesting and appealing,” he says.
“It seems now these young people are coming in and basically shooting whatever they could consider as extreme as possible,” Xavier goes on to say. “Every movie that I see coming across- everyone has two or three anal scenes. I don’t shoot anal to begin with. My audience isn’t interested in that. But it seems that there’s such a proliferation of product that I don’t know how anything is selling. It’s a matter of how are these stores and distributors handling this product? Basically I’m told that the studios like myself who’ve been around a number of years have our clientele. We have our distribution networks. That’s fine. When all of these new guys come in, I guess, if it’s interesting, a distributor will pick it up or they’ll just pass on it. With the amount of stuff that’s coming out on a weekly basis, I don’t know how many people in this country can jerk off that many times.”
Xavier’s is a fascinating niche market for which he has an apparent stranglehold. To that extent, Xavier isn’t too concerned about a slow down in the industry. “What is becoming a concern is when you spend $13,000 to $15,000 on a feature like Leave It to Cleavage,” Xavier states. “We used to be able to make our money back within 6 to 8 months. Now it seems like it’s a year and a half to two years. You go out with your initial distribution. You pretty much cover your costs and you’re equal at that point. And then my mail order has to kick in, then whatever I sell, ultimately, on re-orders. If I get out a 1,000 or 1,200 pieces initially, I’ll get out the other 800 in another 6 or 7 months. So it does take over a year to get your money back. So to lay out that much money, after awhile, it becomes a burden.”
Asked if he was still releasing VHS, Xavier says he does for his main feature of the month. On the other three titles, it’s DVD-only unless it’s a re-release and he has VHS boxes. “But basically I’m going up to June with VHS and DVDs,” he says. “Then I’m going to see over the summer what transpires. But as far as re-orders on VHS, everybody just wants price on it. They’ve made it sound like a stepchild all of a sudden. And I guess it’s becoming it so it gets more and more difficult. You actually lose the billing on VHS; and the other problem is DVD has cut the market price. Where I could get $18 on a VHS, now on a DVD I have to go down to $12. And that’s the problem.”