Porn Valley- I spoke to the cynical Grand Vizier of Porn this weekend and we touched on several subjects including porn distributors, Elegant Angel, and the various rumors about JKP, depending which one you want to believe.
“The problem with distributors is you’re only as good as them paying you,” TGV tells me, first off, recalling how one distributor, in particular, would operate.
“They used to play the game really heavily,” he says. “What they do, or what they used to do was give you incredible orders,” he continued. “Until all of a sudden they owe you like $50,000. And you’re a brand new company and you don’t have $50,000. So now you’ve got $70,000 owed to you and $50,000 of it is owed by them. So now you start calling them. Then they start sending the stuff back. They send $30,000 worth of stuff. Now you’re going crazy because all this money you were depending on is gone. Now you’ve got nothing and you’ve got a warehouse full of stuff that’s six months old. Then you’re calling them and begging them to pay you in the nicest possible way and you don’t want to piss them off because they give you these huge orders. Then they offer you 40 cents on the dollar. And if they really like your product they’ll run you up to a couple hundred thousand. Then they’ll offer to buy you out and take you over.”
The TGV seems to think rumors of Elegant Angel being taken over maybe BS. “About four or five years ago Patrick was distributing through someone else for about a year,” TGV says. “He was distributing through someone else for about a year. And then he took it back. Patrick has always had his drug problems but I’ve always thought that he’s made so much money that he doesn’t give a fuck. He doesn’t want to walk away from the company because it just gives him tons of money every month. But the time that he had someone else distributing his product was when he was really whacked out. I remember someone telling me that he spent $7,000 flying first class to Brazil, shot one scene and came back. He was so whacked. Even though he’s been pumping out crap for years his name is still a very valuable commodity.
The Grand Vizier also weighs in on the Porn Star Performance website and asks if this vehicle is seriously going to keep women from flaking and directors from hiring them. “Do you think anyone goes to that site to check out the flakers before they book a movie?” he asks. I’m of the belief they might.
On the other hand, TGV thinks not. “Do you think any girl who’s gorgeous and takes two dicks in her ass is not getting work because she flaked on the last six jobs and is on the site?” he asks. “Our industry enables these fucking whores and always has,” he says. “It believes their fucking bullshit. That’s why we keep re-hiring them when they don’t show up. Because the next director is saying she’ll never do that to me. No. she’ll turn up for me. Then she doesn’t turn up. They buy into the bullshit. Tell me. If all this information is so important, who were the big winners last January? Nobody remembers. But they would sell their mother to be one of them. I won performer of the year and my career’s going to change dramatically. Yeah, right. Sure it is. What is your name again? The only thing that matters in this business is people paying their bills.”
The Grand Vizier tells me there’s huge inside fighting over at JKP. “It’s a house of cards, and I think that Jill Kelly is just waking up,” he says. “This guy Bob Friedland is a money guy. I met a guy like him way back. He said it doesn’t matter what you’re making. You take a shell company, you put a business together and you sell the shares. People don’t know what they’re buying. You put this porn company together and put it behind Kelly’s name. Now all you have to do is shut up and stay in business. The company doesn’t have to make any money. The company doesn’t have to be worth any money. The only thing that’s worth any money is the shares. And they just have to stay in business so they can sell the shares and make millions of dollars. Now all they have to do is make porn, but I think it finally dawned on Jill that this whole thing is an SEC scam and she isn’t a genius company owner. So she brings a lawyer in and starts waving papers- get all these people out, I’m taking this company over. Well you don’t have a company to take over. The company is irrelevant. What you’re doing is irrelevant and you’re losing money hand over fist. I think someone explained to her to shut up. I hear a lot. I hear that Friedland wants to get bigger and bigger to keep those shares going. That’s where the money is. That’s what it’s all about. But there is a lesson to be learned. It’s crap in the box but with really acceptable boxcovers. They sell a lot of stuff to Fry’s. And people like Fry’s sell porno movies to people who know nothing about porn. People go in there and buy a big screen TV. The buy a DVD player and then they buy a porno movie. They know nothing about porn movies, but they’re got pretty boxes and they [JKP] sell more to non-porno stores. That’s the lesson to be learned. Pick up the non-porn stores.
“What Jill has to learn in all this is play the game and keep her mouth shut,” TGV continues. “Have you ever seen the office? It’s about 2,000 square feet and filled with friends and cute stuff and great big publicity banners and lots of toys and fluffy things. It looks like a loft and it’s great. It’ll be interesting to see. If they tie Jill up and put tape across her mouth, they’ll stay in business.”