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from www.cleveland.com – Kevin Blatt — proud 1987 graduate of Mayfield High School, current resident of Hollywood and self-described “whore whisperer” — is at a career crossroads.
The man the national media once dubbed “The Accidental Pornographer” for his role in brokering and promoting the release of the Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian sex tapes, is looking at a celebrity-porn bubble gone bust, killed off by a post-modern Internet that gives its smut away for free.
When you carry around a business card that identifies you as the “Nation’s No. 1 Celebrity Sex Tape Broker,” that’s a problem. So what’s a digital-age pornographer to do?
Dish celebrity gossip to websites like TMZ.com and RadarOnline instead.
“Scoop is where the money is at these days,” says the 42-year-old Blatt, an affable, media-savvy salesman who left Cleveland in 1996 to pursue his California dreams. “TMZ is the new porn. These days, more people care about what Lindsay Lohan wore during her community service at the L.A. morgue than seeing her have sex. That is really weird. But that is reality.
“So, I’ve kinda moved away from the whole pornography thing. Gossip and celebrity news is where the money is at. All of the news agencies, tabloids, TV shows and websites are all paying for good content these days. And the more eyeballs you get the more money a story is worth.”
Blatt’s porn connections have stood him in good stead in his new line of work. In early 2011, he found himself at the center of the Charlie Sheen media storm, acting as agent for porn-star Kacey Jordan as she peddled her tale of a drug- and sex-fueled party at Sheen’s L.A. home. Sheen ended up in the hospital that night, and shortly thereafter began a series of Internet rants that culminated in his firing from the hit TV show “Two and a Half Men,” and the launch of his crazy one-man “Tiger Blood” comedy tour.
More recently, Blatt says he helped dish dirt on the California woman who claimed she was pregnant with Justin Bieber’s baby. Mariah Yeter claimed she had sex with the pop star backstage at one of his concerts and gave birth to his baby. She filed a paternity suit, which she later dropped, but still claims Bieber is the father of her child. Bieber vehemently denied the claim and took his own paternity test. One of Yeter’s ex-boyfriends, Robbie Powell, came forward, telling TMZ that he was the child’s father.
Blatt won’t say exactly who he was representing in the Bieber media orgy. “But I knew from Day 1 that this was a fabricated story,” he says. “I knew people who were living with her that came forward and told us it was all B.S. I hunt these guys down. I try to get them on television or on the Internet and get them a little money for their story. I take a percentage for that.”
How easy is it to make money selling celebrity news? Blatt says he even got some action in Cleveland when the Dallas Mavericks defeated LeBron James and the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals.
“That was a big story, obviously, a huge story in Cleveland,” says Blatt.
“There was a sandwich at Corky and Lenny’s deli called the ‘King-Sized Corn Beef’ that they renamed in honor of [Mavericks’ star] Dirk Nowitzki. How do you think that ended up on TMZ? Yours truly.”
Cleveland years
Blatt grew up in Beachwood and attended Ohio State University for several years, hoping for a degree in broadcast journalism. That didn’t work out, so he dropped out of OSU and returned to Cleveland, working a variety of jobs around town, including security and “schlepper” at music clubs like Peabody’s DownUnder and the Empire. He sold ads for WNCX FM/98.5, too; he even worked as a DJ at various strip clubs around town.
He and his brother, Darren, moved to San Diego in 1996, looking for “something more conducive to what we liked, namely good weather and beautiful girls.” He worked at a concert club in San Diego, dabbled in music management and wound up as the DJ/manager of a strip club called Pure Platinum. Blatt eventually did marketing and sales for websites in the then-nascent (and very profitable) Internet pornography business.
“I went to work for a computer whiz kid who was 17 and making a $150,000 a month, hosting adult websites out of his attic,” says Blatt. He bounced around in the adult Web biz for several years, even dabbled at selling male enhancement products.
Then the Paris Hilton scandal exploded.
‘1 Night in Paris’
In 2006, the Seattle-based porn company Marvad approached Blatt, saying they had a tape of a then-unknown Los Angeles heiress and party girl named Paris Hilton having sex with her boyfriend, Rick Salomon. They wanted Blatt to help them market it. “I said, ‘Who is Paris Hilton?’ I had no idea who she was,” says Blatt. “But they said she was going to reach a tipping point because she was signed up to do a TV show called ‘The Simple Life.’ ”
Marvad put a blurry, night-vision clip of the video on their website. It went viral, but also created a media and legal firestorm. Salomon claimed that the tape was stolen from his house without his knowledge. Lawsuits were filed by Salomon, the Hilton family and others. Marvad eventually yanked the tape.
In the meantime, Blatt had become the media’s go-to expert on celebrity sex tapes, doing interviews with everyone from “Nightline” to ABC’s “20/20” to Howard Stern. Shortly after that, Salomon sold another, higher quality version of the tape to Red Light District Video. The lawsuits magically disappeared and a full-length DVD, “1 Night in Paris” was released in June 2006, with Paris Hilton’s secret consent, just three weeks before the premiere of “The Simple Life.”
Blatt soon found himself flooded with offers for other celebrity sex tapes.
“I was the public face of the Hilton thing and it sort of put me on the map. I became what you would call an ‘accidental pornographer.’ ”
Blatt’s other coup was helping to broker the release of a sex tape featuring Kim Kardashian and rapper Ray J. He also “facilitated” the release of a tape by Dustin Diamond, who played Screech on the TV show “Saved By the Bell.” And Blatt did publicity on tapes released by actor Tom Sizemore and professional wrestler Chyna.
He was also in the middle of the controversy involving a 2008 sex tape featuring “Austin Powers” Mini-Me actor Verne Troyer and then-girlfriend Renae Shrider. TMZ.com obtained a copy of the tape from Shrider and posted brief clips on its website. Troyer sued, claiming Blatt had facilitated the tape’s release and was trying to help Shrider sell it. The suit was dismissed after Blatt agreed not to help anyone sell or distribute the tape.
Blatt, who moved to Hollywood to be closer to the celebrity action, says he even built a side business keeping tapes off the market. He says his clients have included actor Colin Farrell, Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro and “Baywatch” actor Jeremy Jackson. “You can’t put out tape without permission of the all participants,” he says. “A lot of these things get buried. Sometimes I worked to get the tapes back to the celebrities and they rewarded me handsomely.”
Boom to bust?
Blatt says he is convinced “the jig is up on the whole celebrity sex tape thing,” and that he is branching out.
In addition to selling celebrity dirt, Blatt helps his girlfriend, Sarah Peachez, market her own adult website. He’s working on building a network of “cam girls” who will perform subscription “chats” with fans. And he’s doing marketing for Yowie.com, a no-porn-allowed, mainstream website that allows users to live video chat with friends and the occasional celebrity.
Blatt also brokers celebrity endorsement deals. He hooked up rapper Too Short with the Dos Lunas band of tequila and occasionally books him for private events. He co-wrote a song with Too Short, “Pimp and Ho Dot Com,” which is featured on the “Married to the Game” album.
He’s even branched out into mainstream films.
In 2007, he starred in “American Cannibal,” a mockumentary in which two desperate TV writers pitch shocking, often preposterous, reality-show ideas to a porn producer. Blatt, of course, plays the porn producer, who loves their ideas and puts his money behind their signature project: A reality show called “Darwinian American Cannibal,” in which contestants are starved on a desert island and told to eat one another to survive. The last man uneaten wins.
“It’s a very weird occupation I have today,” says Blatt. “I really can’t define what I do anymore. At one point, I had a card that said, ‘Celebrity Sex Tape Broker.’ But that’s really only 10 percent of what I do these days. It’s a crazy world out here in Hollywood. And I’m loving it.”