I began my 10:15 AM conversation
with VCA owner Russ Hampshire smiling at the rant by Torris over "Janine's
secret diary," which I reprinted on the front page of my web sites.
Then we discussed the Erotic Film Festival. Russ had no idea why it was cancelled. He referred me to Jeffrey Douglas, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition.
Russ denied rumors that VCA had pulled out of the Festival. He said that he donated $15,000 and that AVN donated $8000.
"I thought the Conference was fine. I wish that there had been more of a turnout. A more educated populace is more willing to accept things [like porn]."
We then discussed an incident over ten years ago when some mafia thugs tried to shake Russ down. Hampshire said he turned them in to the LAPD organized crime unit.
"I read your article on the Mafia. If it is true, it's interesting. I'm not privy to a lot of things, so I don't know. I keep abreast of your site. I download everything you put out."
Luke: "I hear that AIM will no longer draw blood."
Russ: "AIM has made the decision to leave blood letting to different clinics. AIM will continue to work on genealogies, counseling, drug rehabilitation…
"I and a lot of manufacturers are going to donate money to AIM."
Luke: "Anything else going on that I should know about?"
Russ: "Not really. I wouldn't tell you anyway. I'm not going to give Luke the scoop. Honestly, do you know where I get most of my news from? From reading you. I read the bulls--- you put out. Someone has to keep you straightened out. I'm trying."
Luke: "You're the man."
Russ: "Don't give me that 'man' s---. You would use me in a minute like you would anybody else. You know me and I know you, so let's not sit there and jerk each other's chain. I know your agenda [destroy porn]. I have your site downloaded every morning. It's waiting on my desk when I come in."
Luke: "Is there any other site you read every day?"
Russ: "No."
Luke: "As Rob Spallone's been gone for ten days, I've had nothing to write about."
Russ: "I know. It's been boring. Let's see when he comes back, if he will let you back in his office. I'm going to try to get him to not let you back in. We'll see. You know me. I tell it like it is. You're terrible. All you want to do is create controversy. You've got to have something to keep your life full."
Luke: "You're right."
3PM. Reb Sawitz's Pretty Girl International is located in West Hollywood at the crossroad of Santa Monica Blvd and Gardner, diagonally across from Plummer Park. Forty years ago, the leading Hollywood studios resided here in Hollywood. Twenty years ago the place was overrun with drunks, druggies and sex shops. Today the gritty neighborhood is increasingly safe for families. It's flooded with Russian Jewish immigrants. Not as many drunks, druggies and panhandlers as five years ago.
Trudy sits at the main desk playing a card game on the computer. Shylar lies on the couch watching TV. Whenever I see him, he's watching TV.
I saw Reb last Friday at the conference. He participated on the panel on Boogie Nights. Reb's been arrested six times in his 30 year porn career but never convicted. "If I had known what I was supposed to have been talking about, it would've made it easier. I did not know when and where I was supposed to be until 75 minutes before the panel started. I got a phone call from Bill Margold.
"It was good to see Richard Pacheco… R. Bolla. Really nice guys."
Reb plans to purchase a table for the forthcoming 1999 AVN awards for $2000. Otherwise, it is $190 per person.
"I had a few new girls in this week. Business is slow.
"Regan Senter is not legal… We know where you live. We know that your apartment is filthy. All the girls say it. The girls from England are there one day and gone the next. They say you're so dirty and greasy that you don't even need lube when you do your demo tapes. Regan, if you read Luke's column, and you mess with any of the girls listed with me, the sky is liable to fall.
"Alex Sanders owes me about $500. I'm going to have to take him to court. Unfortunately I can't give you his real name because I don't have it on this paper…
"If I was still doing collections, I'd do it for Jim [South]… Just to get out of the office… He's a nice gentleman. We have a good relationship.
"Leanna Hart has five weeks on the road dancing. She has trouble with at least one breast. She got butchered by this guy in Utah. He must know Universal Entertainment (Eleanor…). All their girls are coming out cloned and lopsided."
Reb says he knows no plastic surgeons. He gets no kickbacks from surgeons. He discourages girls from getting breast implants.
Gregory Dark phones up looking for freaks.
"I really appreciate the job the Sheriff's Department has done," says Reb. "They've cleaned up this neighborhood immensely. You can walk outside without getting accosted by a drunk or panhandler."
Reb plans to open an office in North Hollywood/Van Nuys at the end of the month.
I spot a cartoon on Reb's wall by Nikki Dial about Jim South and World Modeling residing in a toilet.
"I've never met any Mafia in my 30 years in the business, unless it's the Jewish mafia, and I still wouldn't know…
"The business would be in the toilet without Russ Hampshire. Whatever he says, I take as gospel. He never lies. The guy's a total gentleman. He keeps a lot of the people on the straight and narrow. He's very concerned about AIDS and AIM… If everybody in the biz paid their bills like Russ does, there'd be an awful lot of happy people.
"Bobby Hollander, you better quit your smoking… I'd like to see you around for a few more years.
"I just talked to Jim? Cole. At age 51, he's going to college in Georgia (pulling straight As) to study nursing. They're moving to Arizona. He looks like Glen Campbell. And I just talked to Jim Gulden. Both studs in the '70s. Jim lives in Palmdale and drives a truck."
3:30 PM. Reb closes shop. All four of us walk outside. Shylar, Reb's long-haired male assistant whose wife serves as Paul Thomas' production manager, tells me that PT starts another shoot Thursday for two movies, including The Statues starring new Vivid girl Devon.
Reb, Shylar and Trudy get into Reb's old model long White Chevy whose license plate reads "OneXXX." The portable top is riddled with holes. "You can tell how well the agent is doing by the car he drives," says Reb, referring to his poverty. Rob Spallone drives a Corvette and his wife a Mercedes sedan. Jim South owns several vehicles including a plush new van.
***
Hart Williams left the Conference disappointed. "The short version is that we entered a half-hour "professional" short in the "Erotic Film Festival" for consideration, which is the ONLY reason that I attended. [It was cancelled.]
"I found very rapidly that the porn people -- some of whom I have known nearly 20 years -- are still the same arrogant, power-trippy jerks they always were. The whole minuet of who greets whom, and how much acknowledgement to bestow is always finely calculated based on one's current level of Power in the Biz, and with whom one has been "seen" and myriad other qualifying factors.
"And, as a sidelight on the Luke F-rd situation, I will state forthrightly that I am HAPPY to see someone making the gladhanding money folks squirm. This business, the convention proved, if nothing else, laps up its own PR with the gusto of a fly for fresh s---.
"The whispered attitude I heard over and over from insider after insider was: HOW DARE FORD SAY ANYTHING AMISS ABOUT US! Look at the ACLU lawyers, and the Sexology PhDs come here to worship us! See!"
FSC director Jeffrey Douglas took full responsibility for the abrupt last-minute cancellation of the Erotic Film Festival at the World Pornography Conference. Douglas said that a box was delivered containing all the submissions (or many), but the ranking sheet was not included. Thus, organizers had no idea as to what films to run.
Hart Williams of http://hartwilliams.com reports:
It is now *Wednesday.* Mr. J.J. Douglas -- the FSC legal counsel who was in charge of the festival -- promised to have some sort of answer on Sunday, after cancelling the "festival"s showing of the winners on Saturday at 6:03PM.
Then, in front of the entire conference, he promised to announce the winners on Monday afternoon. Evidently, the promise was made rashly. At that point (Sunday) I handed him my business card, and asked if he could e-mail the information to me. He agreed.
I spent Monday en route, arriving home at 8 PM. Immediately I went to my e-mail and checked. Nothing.
The following is a verbatim transcript...
Who won? Who knows?
*********************
Date sent: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 20:54:46
Dear Mr. Douglas:
Having handed you a card, and exacted a promise that you would e-mail me a listing of the winners, imagine my surprise at arriving home, beat and hot and tired, and no such message, of course, is waiting.
Perhaps I should spend another $1000 and THEN I can find out what happened to my submission?
**************
Dear Mr. Williams:
I do not know how I failed to communicate to you that I would be unable to inform you of the winners until I found out who they were. While I understand that this is your highest priority, irt [sic] is regretably,[sic] only one of several of mine.
[...]
JJD
*********************
Date sent: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 11:52:22
Dear Mr. Douglas:
I recognize your situation. However, you made the statement to a room filled with people that you would announce said winners on Monday afternoon.
Since it is now TUESDAY afternoon, I am curious as to how you come to the belief that I am in somewise acting irritably, or irrationally.
In my experience, when a man says that he will do something at a certain time, I believe that he will do that, unless there is an understandable problem.
If said person cannot fulfill the promise that he has made, I generally expect explanation...
**********************
Dear Mr. Hart:
[...]
I regret any damage down [sic] to your professional reputation. If you will review your note to me, you may agree that it is also my professional reputation that is suffering.
Thank you.
JJD
*********************
Mr. Douglas:
My name is "Mr. Williams," not "Mr. Hart."
As regards your professional reputation, I was not aware that you organized film festivals for a living.
As such, certainly I owe you an apology. I had thought you to be an attorney who got himself lost on a side-issue; not, as I now understand it, a professional film festival producer whose very livelihood was on the line with this event.
Certainly this must be difficult for you, contemplating professional disgrace and personal bankruptcy...
Luke F-rd - Porn Star?
Essex9999@aol.com writes:
Yesterday, I was glancing over the new releases at my local House o' Smut, when what to my wondering eyes should appear? Not a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, but the name "Luke F-rd" emblazoned on the box cover of a video entitled "The Other Woman." It comes from Adam & Eve Productions and was directed by "Thomas Paine." Common Sense dictated that I rent it to avoid a Crisis and uphold the Rights of Man. The fact that it also starred that cute Michael J. Cox was a mere lagniappe.
Anyway, despite the box cover, Luke's name does not appear in the credits. However, the vid's non-sex scenes include a skinny guy with long, thick, dark hair who looks about 18 and has a strange accent that could be Ausso-Californian. Is that our Luke?
If so, and if you are reading this, Luke, may I presume to offer some free advice? You should get a haircut, as the flowing locks -- although appropriate for that desirable parolee look -- do not suit aspiring Edward R. Murrows, or even aspiring Matt Drudges. Secondly, although my patriotic heart swells with pride at what appears to be your desire to sound American, I think you should stick with your native accent. Americans love Australians, and now that you are apparently all but banished from PornLand, maybe you can use this to your advantage. :-)
Or perhaps this was not Lukus at all, but rather a cheap imitation by a Ford-bashing porn prince looking to humiliate our intrepid reporter?
--Steve, who confesses to thinking that Luke -- or the Luke-alike -- was kind of cute.
Free Speech Coalition president Gloria Leonard, fresh from a triumphant World Pornography Conference, phoned at noon. "I thought it was a terrific opportunity for the worlds of therapy, academia, law and porn to exchange ideas. What did you think?"
Luke: "I had a great time. It was wonderful to see so many people that I either knew or knew of… And it was the cream of the crop - the more happy, more intelligent, the more well balanced among us who showed up…"
Gloria: "Well, I hope to hear you say those things on your web site. How come you never pat us on the back?"
Luke cackles fiendishly.
Gloria: "So you got your first blow job?"
Luke cackles fiendishly. "It's A kinder, gentler Luke… It took all the frustration out of me…"
Gloria: "It will ruin your reputation… I almost didn't recognize you. You don't wear your yarmulka any more. Did you move to a Reform synagogue?"
Luke: "Yes. I got thrown out of my Orthodox synagogue April 14, because of my writings on porn. So now I belong to two Reform synagogues…"
Gloria: "I usually only go on Yom Kippur to say Yizkor [prayer for the deceased] for my parents."
Luke: "I had a great interview with Bobby Hollander [Gloria's ex-husband] a couple of weeks ago. He seems so happy. He has a great smile."
Gloria: "The Free Speech Coalition is going to run with the momentum that we gained from this great event. It behooves us to take advantage of the positive response we received from so many universities and professors for them to do some serious research on the effects of pornography to counter the MacKinnons and Dworkins…"
Luke: "Were their particular moments that were most meaningful for you at the Conference?"
Gloria: "Yes, the huge panel Sunday. Richard Pacheco's reading from his manuscript… I was moved by the gentleman in the audience who said he'd been a therapist for many years and harbored some stereotypical views… And that we had shattered them with our intelligence. He felt the event was run more smoothly than other "professional" events he'd attended… I was very touched by Annabel Chong and her friend [who was moving from male to female]. He/She talked about his positive experience in this industry and how it helped him/her with his transition."
Luke: "Is the condom unity thing holding up?"
"There are still 16-17 companies that are committed to condoms. In the future, companies that do not have condoms in them will look dated."
Gloria works for Private USA. "Odyssey and Private are separate entities. All the gay stuff out of Odyssey uses condoms, as does Shane's World. Private however has implemented a condoms-optional policy. We've seen a few pop up in recent productions. Testing is now mandatory in Europe for Private performers. [Elisa tests every three weeks.]
"I think that it is good for AIM to split off from the Free Speech Coalition. Sharon [Mitchell] needs to spread her wings. We're willing to support her, but she's going to be doing things that aren't on our principle agenda. We got sidetracked with the HIV crisis. We rose to the occasion and did the best that we could do. We now need to rededicate ourselves to the legal problems, and the zoning situations…"
Leonard serves as President of the Free Speech Coalition while Jeffrey Douglas is the paid [$50,000 a year?] executive director. "Jeffrey Douglas is a lawyer, and more skilled in that arena that I. He's paid and I'm not. That's the most obvious distinction.
"We are fighting to oppose the zoning out [of sex shops]. Over a month ago, a bunch of us went to Sacramento to oppose AB (Assembly Bill) 2055 which would've allowed California counties to combine to dictate where future adult businesses could locate. Theoretically, the city of Redding could decide that all future adult businesses must be in Needles, CA, which is several hundred miles away. We feel that we already have [enough] zoning and licensing requirements in place… And that AB2055 is redundant, overbroad and unconstitutional."
Luke: "Do you think this Conference reflects the increasing acceptance of the adult film industry?"
Gloria: "Absolutely. Eight to ten billion dollars a year is significant. It's unfortunate that few people will stand up and admit to consuming adult materials because they fear what their friends, neighbors and family may think.
"As a piece of entertainment, Boogie Nights was fine… But having lived through those years, and known some of the characters… They left a great deal out. Adult material was illegal at this time and you could get busted… PT Anderson is only in his 20s. He doesn't have a good feel for what was going on at that time. I was also pissed off that Nina Hartley was stereotyped, probably given the most unpleasant role in the entire film. I was annoyed that they made her this nymphomaniacal shrew. There was far too much violence in the second half of the movie…thereby reinforcing the sex equals violence trip.
"While I don't like Max Hardcore or Rob Black's work, I think it has a right to exist. If you look at those Gothic romances, the success of all those bodice rippers that women buy, the underlying fantasy is rape. Most women would admit to having that fantasy… If that is acceptable as a woman's fantasy, then what Black and those guys do is no less valid as a male fantasy."
Houston appeared on the Howard Stern show Monday (8/10/98) to discuss her scheduled 2/99 gangbang of 500 guys. Or girls too, said Houston, if she couldn't find enough fellas.
The Metro Contract girl said she was returning to Los Angeles to turn herself in to Ventura County law enforcement for a 45 day jail sentence. She recently recorded her second DUI arrest.
***
Tabitha Stevens told Talking Blue that she is several months pregnant by her fiance. She was accompanied to the FSC's Night of the Stars by her parents and future in-laws.
The 8/98 AVN reports that Seymore Butts contract girl Alisha Klass will do a national commercial for Virgin Cola.
***
Las Vegas TV news last night reported that a local Metropolitan Police officer was charged with "misconduct" for appearing in a porno film with Kitty Fox. They interviewed her and said the cop remained on the force with pay. (Ed Bruce)
French Paper Covers HIV Outbreak
(Translated into English by Mack Lobell)
Protected Actors in Pornoland
(Several Cases of contamination of actors force the porno business in the United States to support the mandatory use of Condoms)
In the valley of San Fernando, to the north of Los Angeles, the hotbed of American XXX for the past 25 years, the subject has regularly been evoked and then avoided. The producers didn't want to resolve the issue.
The actors preferred not to think about it. The porno queens lifted their legs. Because, ever since the appearance of AIDS, the porno family has been almost entirely spared by the virus. Until this year. Now, reunited by a catastrophe in the spring in an atmosphere made by a series of rumors propagated over the internet, around 60 production companies in the valley have decided to make condoms mandatory during shoots to overcome the largest crisis the industry has known since the police raids of the Reagan years.
Five cases since January. Since January, four porno queens and one male veteran have turned out to be HIV positive: the medicine student Tricia Devereaux, the Eurasian Brooke Ashley, the ancient stripper Kimberly Jade, the Hungarian debutante Caroline, and the porno stud Marc Wallice.
"We have constantly worked like animals to avoid these dramas which have afflicted the actors and actresses" complained Bill Margold, an old actor called Father Bear by the young recruits. Three years ago he created the foundation, Protection Adult Welfare (PAW), a sort of mini social security funded by industry sources with Sharon Mitchell in charge of the HIV testing. Since the beginning of the 1990's, the actors have been tested every month. This year PAW has opened its own clinic as a way to avoid frauds and to administer tests to nearly all the 400 porno actors and actresses, who have on average between thirty and forty different partners each month.
An organization which appeared to be so well oiled that in January,
Tricia Devereaux refused to blame her infection on her "second family."
"I don't understand what happened" she confessed to the industry bible, the Adult Video News (AVN). "I told myself that something terrible must have happened at the dentist." This romantic idea dissolved immediately once a crusader of the Internet, Luke F-rd, brought to the community disturbing revelations. From his bungalow surrounded by erotic magazines and Jewish theological magazines this 32-year-old Australian displays at www.l-keford.com his conversations with people in the porno industry and puts out tidbits of information to online discussion groups. The cyberjournalist with the elastic ethics and the easy jokes is also disseminating information on the darker aspects of the business. "The people in the industry have the habit of believing themselves to be
invincible. They aren't in the habit of being scrutinized by other media outside of AVN which is nothing else than a publicity mouthpiece" says Bill Margold.
Panic via the Internet. The last 23rd of April a "scoop" by Luke F-rd had the effect of a bomb. Marc Wallice was HIV positive and was continuing to work. Pornoland panicked. How could the veteran actor have passed the safetynet of the PAW clinic, the censor which verifies all the tests. "Do these people have a medical center dignified to be called a medical center?" exclaimed one of the infected actresses, Brooke Ashley. In February, the Korean beauty shot the last film of her career "The World's Largest Anal Gang Bang" with 42 partners, of whom one was Marc Wallice. Today, unemployed, ruined by doctor's fees, which are the nightmare of Americans without medical insurance, Brook Ashley poured her heart out to Luke F-rd. "It was in the contract. I couldn't use condoms with half the men. And the put a guy with AIDS in my f---ing film?!" she cried. "They have a lot of lives in their hands to allow themselves to not take the test seriously."
The rules are nevertheless strict. When a person is revealed as being HIV positive, PAW establishes the list of this person's sexual partners in the previous month and gets these people to take a PCR-ADN test, which detects the infection in the first phase. After the Devereaux case, only one actor didn't submit this test to the coordinator, Sharon Mitchell. Marc Wallice, sixteen years of career behind him, steps to the line.
Nervous, Sharon Mitchell admitted her error. "Marc swore to me that he had done his test and I believed in him. He is a friend and it is now so long that he is in the business that I believed him." At least until the actors excuses multiplied for not presenting the famous piece of paper that the industry heated up by the rumors on the Internet wanted to see.
Under pressure, Marc Wallice undertook a PCR-DNA test the 29th of April and from the results of the test was under attack. "Because they found that I had worked with these four girls, everybody is persuaded that I infected them" he defended himself. To fuel the controversy, he spent the month of June closed inside a hotel room snoring cocaine "to explode his head." His memory suffered. He had trouble justifying why he had waited so long to go and get tested. He thought he had been contaminated during a shoot, after a cut on his testicles (the actors shave them regularly), and repeated " I lead a dramatic life." "Before this year, about ten HIV positive actors and actresses had been thrown of the circuit.
Pact. Having come to make her career take off in California, the Frenchwoman, Barbara Doll suffered a panic attach after a positive test result in 1995. "The Joan of Arc of XXX she was forced to return to France" commented Bill Margold. At the end of April, three years after the Doll episode and ten years after gay porno, many dozens of big business studios (including Vivid Video and Wicked Pictures which represent a large portion of the 7,000 annual productions in the USA) signed a pact to impose, or in some cases highly recommend, the use of condoms in all "anal" and "vaginal" scenes. The producers had all suffered an attack of anxiety. One of the producers who instigated this project, Christian Mann, President of the Afro-Centric Video Team, specialized in ethnic videos said with a sigh of relief "After this decision, I have put out fifteen videos which have all been sold in the normal way. I only received one letter from a fan in Illinois who complained that condoms didn't excite him at all."
Evan Wright, film critic for the magazine Hustler, outlined in one of his review the secrets of the producers. Above all don't show the girl putting on or taking off the condom. In the film, show the condom in plain action before making it disappear at the moment of external ejaculation. "Some producers have tried to make the use of the condom erotic." In Gregory Dark's Pyscho Sexuals II, a nude girl puts a condom on a penis of an actor with her toenails. This presents the act in a different light and pleases foot fetishists and amateurs of bondage.
Despite the reluctance of some, 60% of the films shot at the moment in the valley will be with condoms. Among those reluctant to use condoms, the producer John Stagliano, creator of Buttman, he himself HIV positive uses PCR-ADNtests every fifteen days instead. "Condoms in films, it's stupid" affirmed from his side the French Producer, Kris Kramski, 33, installed in Los Angeles where he has created for himself a reputation as an avante-garde cinematographer with films on the television like Lisa. "We have as out mission to create fantasies that do not reflect the reality. Therefore the condom has nothing to do here. Already, the porno people are treatED as stupid and have a strong fear of bad things happening. It would be a completely misunderstood by the public to go completely to using condoms and in any case I don't believe in this history of AIDS." For Kris Kramski, the information put out by the scientist are contestable and the HIV virus does not cause AIDS."
"It is incredible the number of people in this business who buy all the alternative theories about this disease" contests Luke F-rd. Latest in this regard, the widow of John Holmes, dead from AIDS at the end of the 1980's, has published a book in which she accuses the American government of having injected the virus into her husband. The star of the Worlds Largest Gang-Bang, Jasmine St. Claire, 25 years old, has no fear: "I don't like condoms, the distributors in Europe don't either, and the fans even less. I try to work with the same actors and I will stay that way. Too bad if I day. I have already lived well." Christian Mann avows that he will continue to import videos from Germany without condoms. He regrets that the big European producers, like the Swedish giant Private, are not brave enough to follow the Americans.
Disgusted by this crisis, many actresses have quit the business. Brooke Ashley has taken on a lawyer but her "friends" in the industry are dissuading her against initiating a law suit against Marc Wallice or the PAW. "They tell me. Be careful. If you do that, you would be better off advised to disappear."
"At 38 years old, I
have to start all over, a job at US$6 dollars an hour" complains Wallice.
He kills time by smoking joints in front of the television. Kimberly
Jade leaves traumatized from one month in prison for driving without
a license and not paying her taxes. Tricia Devereaux has returned to
live with her parents in Ohio. And the American fiancée of the
Hungarian, Caroline has asked her to get married. There is little risk
that these misfortunates will create waves in the San Fernando valley.