Porn Valley- I spoke to Jennifer James over the weekend and James has been contacted by LAPD relative to the Kurt Lockwood-Gram Ponante incident on her set of a couple of weeks ago. The cops apparently also want to talk to Lockwood.
“This has gotten a little crazy,” says James who was directing a fight in downtown LA when a movie broke out. Basically there was a shoving match involving Lockwood and journalist Ponante. And we’re saying shoving match because Ponante’s, now, evidently, showing bruises as evidence from the altercation.
“It’s escalated to the point where the law has been brought in,” James continues.
“I thought this whole thing was silly and no big deal but I got a call from the LAPD- she was a detective and very nice,” continues James.
“She wanted details of the episode and said assault and battery charges were going to be filed. She said Gram had gone in and had spoken to the police dept. He had shown them pictures of bruises and bruises on his chest which I find hard to believe considering I was standing right there. It seems hard to believe that the little shoving match could have caused anything that would have been noticeable.”
In the shoving match, James said Lockwood pushed Ponante and Ponante in turn threw coffee on Lockwood.
“Things started coming off of Gram, like his glasses- it was stupid,” continues James. “Kurt’s point was that this guy had said bad things about him and he should have at least said them to his face. This was one of those situations where both people were at fault. You can’t go around shoving people who say bad things about you. In this business we all have targets on our backs. On the other hand, to be able to say anything you want against anybody, to insinuate and hide it in cute words and clever analogies- that’s really not fair, either. One should be responsible for what one says.”
In James’ conversation with the police, she was told that Lockwood is going to have to make a statement and that there’s supposed to be a civil case against Lockwood.
“This is way beyond anything,” says James. “The police also told me that Gram had indicated to them he was in the process of writing a book. Now I’m SURE there couldn’t be any coincidence between all these events. The detective indicated to me that she was concerned that this whole episode was going to be a chapter. She asked me what my thoughts were. I said, there’s a strong possibility of it. And that’s what the police are thinking.”
In further conversation with police, there was an indication that Ponante had already contradicted himself in certain testimony about the incident.
“They had found a couple of things where some things didn’t add up,” says James. “And there were concerns about credibility.”
James said she spoke to Lockwood and advised him that he’s got to talk to the cops. Accordingly, James said she was contacted by Ponante by e-mail and told to give him a statements of events.
“Basically he wants to use what I might say as a weapon,” says James. “I think his political agenda is to write whatever he wants with impunity. A lot of people who make porn movies don’t think that they need the press. And there’s a number of people in the press who feed and use the porn people. It goes both ways. You just can’t step all over them and make money off of them at the same time. But we who make these things and put our money and souls on the line, we need press as well. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”