Porn Valley- If you’ve been in the adult business long enough, you may remember the infamous Pure Pleasure Bust of 1993 in which industry veterans like Nina Hartley, Sharon Mitchell and Bill Margold were thrown in jail by Las Vegas vice for putting on a show for their fans during what was known then as the winter Consumer Electronics Show. The charge brought at the time against Hartley and company was a violation of an antiquated Vegas statute known as Infamous Crimes Against Nature.

Ray Pistol, who owns Arrow productions, www.xxxdeepthroat.com lent financial assistance in the case. And the law which had as much to do with lesbianism as anything else was subsequently taken off the books. To commemorate the Pure Pleasure bust, Pistol financed a movie called Infamous Crimes Against Nature which purported to tell the story of the bust and starred several of the women who were originally involved and came to be known as The Erotic Eleven- a name Margold came up with.

Margold himself was not in the cast, Pistol said. “He was up on charges and couldn’t go into Nevada. He could not participate because his deal hadn’t been made and for his safety it was better to keep him out of it.”

When all was said and done, the cast of Infamous Crimes Against Nature included Angella Faith, Ariana, Beatrice Valle, Danyel Cheeks, Jim Sparks, Joey Silvera, Mike Horner, Nikki Sinn, Nina Hartley, Patricia Kennedy, Samantha York, Sharon Mitchell, Shelene, Tom Byron and Trixie Tyler. But, as Pistol notes, sometimes good intentions go in another direction. Pistol’s original story got changed literally in mid sentence by Henri Pachard who directed it. And somehow the whole production turned into a big Bob Vosse movie.

“After they all got busted everyone seemed to be in disarray,” Pistol remembers. “I got a call from Danyel Cheeks and she said they were all in jail. So I went down and bailed them all out.” It was later that Pistol decided to make the movie as a fundraiser. “I would put a pro rata share of the movie’s proceeds against their lawyer fees.” Pistol says an attempt was made to reassemble the cast.

“But they were all paranoid about doing any sex scenes in Nevada,” Pistol points out. “So we were going to do the sex scenes in L.A. We got a little bit behind so Danyel and her husband did a scene in Nevada in their own room. But all the others were afraid that they’d be busted, so they wanted to shoot the sex in L.A.”

At least one of the sex scenes featuring Patricia Kennedy was shot on the California side of the border off the side of the road of a seldom used highway.

“That was the first scene in the movie,” Pistol says. “One of the cops was fucked and because of that he let them go and started the whole chain of the cops- Mike Horner being the lead cop- stalking them. They knew they were up to no good.” Pistol remembers Horner doing a bang up job in that role. “He was this do-gooder cop who had a malevolent streak. I was really impressed with his performance.”

It was then during the middle of production, Pistol observes, that Pachard, taking it upon himself basically without a green light from Pistol, switched the movie away from the original script.

“He put together a new script where he became a gay choreographer,” Pistol laughs. “And it all worked! In fact, both Adam and AVN nominated it for Best Picture of the Year. It was one of those serendipity things where we laid down a good base story and he put this interesting gay choreographer-thing in there.”

Pistol says the first half of the movie was an idealized situation where the porn stars were coming into Vegas and getting popped. “But when everyone got afraid, that’s when Pachard changed the script around and re-wrote it over night. Actually it was a stroke of genius on his part. It still was that yet it was different enough. I’m not sure that it didn’t wind up being better with what he did, then if we decided just to re-enact what actually happened.”

Pistol’s attitude about the whole thing was if they don’t want to do the movie, then there’s no movie. But when the girls got a look at the re-write and decided to proceed, Pistol went along with it.

According to Pistol, the movie also included a love story with Cheeks playing a girl from a small town who was trying to make it big. “At the end they pulled off the show.” The sub plot has the cops following Cheeks with one of them fixating on her.

“He [Horner] had a love-hate relationship with her. He wound up busting all the girls.” In another plot point, Doug Morningstar plays a homeless guy who tries to rape Cheeks but unsuccessfully.

Pistol: “We point out at the end of the movie- and it was true- that because of that movie, that because of that bust and the ensuing legal actions, The Infamous Crimes Against Nature was pulled off the books in Nevada except for a clause where an infamous crime against nature can’t be performed on stage for money.

Because of the movie’s notoriety and the attention that the bust received, the legislature was pretty much left with no choice but to pull the law off the books.”

“The movie was good, and the folderol was big and sensational,” Pistol adds, also noting that the show’s venue was changed the following year to his club, Showgirls.

“There we could manage the girls and make sure that they weren’t mislead. Apparently the people at Pure Pleasure told them that they could do anything they wanted to do which was not correct information. Then when they got busted they didn’t know what to do and they just buried their heads in the sand. That’s when I had to come in and pick things up.”

Attorney Dominic Gentile handled the cases for The Erotic Eleven and pretty much had them all dropped. Ariana, one of the original eleven, subsequently married Gentile.

During the course of production, Pistol remembers renting two cop cars to set up a scene. “We rented stunt cars from L.A.,” Pistol said. “So whoever was driving in, cops would see the black and whites. The cops followed him for like a hundred miles until they got close enough to see a sign that said ‘not in service.’ They would beat their heads against the steering wheel.” A helicopter was also rented for chase sequences along with two convertibles for the girls to come into town in, as well as a slew of showgirl costumes for the final number.

“We spent a lot on that movie,” Pistol states, noting that the entire shoot didn’t take more than three or four days to assemble. “And we had two camera crews- a main crew and a second crew that was picking up the extra shots.” Pistol said because the shoot, for the most part, was going on in two locations simultaneously [sex scenes were shot in California and dialogue scenes were shot in Nevada], some logistical nightmares resulted.

“It never failed,” Pistol said. “The guy who had the keys to all the cars would be on one set when we needed those keys to put them in the cars on the other. It was a mess but it was one of those productions where everyone was committed and Pachard was the hero of that thing as far as I’m concerned.”

[In the next installment Bill Margold adds his recollections.]