I visited the new headquarters for Playboy Cable TV at 5055 Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles (4/8/99). I spent an hour schmoozing with Playboy Home Video Senior Producer Eric Mittleman and Helmetcam man Gary Gray. "Playboy cable TV hit its stride about three years ago," said Mittleman, a bald man in his mid'30s who stands about 5'3". "A lot of it had to do with Jim English [President of Playboy Networks Worldwide] coming into the network." Eric gave me half a dozen videotapes of Playboy shows, including The Profession, a Red Shoe Diaries style series about hookers. "The wraparound is a woman interviewing prostitutes about johns. It's funky and got cool visuals." Greg Dark shot the first two editions a year ago before hitting it big as a music video maker. "The Playboy production process is just like any other TV show or movie," said Mittleman. "Mainly the post-production is much more involved than hardcore. I've visited a couple of hardcore places and they're cutting from camera masters. And they're online [editing] is their offline. There's no real process or preparation there. It's just two people going at it... "About two years ago we hit a production groove of designing stuff for the soft core market. Shows like Nightcalls, Strip Search, Sex Court... On last night's show [Nightcalls], we pushed the limits. I think the host of the show talked on the Howard Stern show about how lawyers come down to the set and say you can spread your legs at this angle, and not that angle. Last night we were able to go this angle [widespread] because we were demonstrating dental dams. The girls were covered with a think pink latex. "Every article you every read about safe sex mentions dental dams. But I've never used one... So I sent my assistant out to get 16 for the show..." Mittleman flipped through the sex channels on his cable TV outlet, as we observed and discussed the differences between Playboy, Spice (owned by Playboy) and Spice Hot, now owned by Vivid. Spice Hot shows penetration but no cum shots or anal sex. Playboy is the softest of the three, but all three are getting raunchier. Spice and Spice Hot tend to air the same movie at the same time, said Mittleman. "This is Playboy's Most Wanted," narrates Eric as we watch naked women gyrate on screen. "And each edition we focus on a body part. This is Private Parts." We watch pussy shots. Regarding male erections, Eric says Playboy has a 45 degree rule. Up to 45 degrees, erections are ok. More than that, forbidden. We have a lot more women at Playboy Channel now... I have no desire to look at erect penises. Women want to see erect penises, at the women at this channel do." Eric has a beautiful blonde girlfriend (and a tall sexy personal assistant). "TeN is Playboy's only competition. Spice Hot is more of a friendly relationship. When we bought Spice, we had to find a buyer for Spice Hot. Because of the longstanding relationship between Vivid and Playboy, Steve Hirsch was the natural person to go to. "If nudity drove people to the magazine, it is sex that drove people to the [Playboy cable tv] channel. "I've been here eight years, doing Hot Rocks, which was non-nude wraparounds of music videos. You might occasionally see a breast or some explicit language... Then I started Nightcalls and Strip Search three years for the new Playboy. Until Jim English arrived, we did no taped movies. Everything was film. And what's been most successful has been the reality-based shows while anything that is narrative is competing with new releases [mainstream and hardcore] and doesn't do as well. "We kinda have ratings, such as buy rates for a night. We purposefully put Nightcalls on a Wednesday night because it was a dead night for us. "Before the channel, they had PlayboyVideo Magazine (in the early 1980s), which, when the channel started, grew into Playboy Home Video. If the budget is under $100,000 an hour, it's a TV show. If it's $250,000 an hourm it's a home video shot on film." Luke: "Is it true that Playboy Playmates have to sign a release that they will not do pornography?" Eric: "I don't think they have to sign a release. But from the Playmates I've dealt with, once you've dealt with women who are going to take some amount of clothing off for a living, they all have that limits. For strippers, the topless girls hate the full-nude girls and the full-nude girls say, 'oh, we don't like her because she spreads.Or does lap dancing.' "Most of the girls who become Playmates, Playboy is all she will ever do. Even to get a Playmate to do her video with a guy somehwere in the video, not necessarily having contact, is a major accomplishment. They do pledge to not do any nude work for anyone else for 18 months. "The internet has taken off so well because it eliminates the gate keepers. The only thing that stops pornography from being multi multi-billions is the gatekeepers. You get jaded in Los Angeles and New York because you can get pornography. If you live in Des Moine, there'd be that one store 20 miles away, a shack in the middle of nowhere. Thanks to the internet, once you punch in your credit card, you get live sex 24 hours a day. "I think the [porn] industry is f---ed in the head because everyone is competing for a slice of the pie that is already there. I hear the same thing from people at every single major porn company. Everyone is thinking, 'how can we get our numbers up, to sell movie A over movie B.' Instead of, 'how do we expand the audience?' "The audience is out there because the curiosity is out there. I literally can't go anywhere without someone asking me a million questions, 'what's it like to work with this person or that person?' So, the curiosity is there but the accessibility isn't. The industry's challenge (and Wicked has done some good things in this direction because many of their girls have hosted shows on E! [channel]) is to get that guy in Des Moine who wouldn't normally buy a porn film. He sees her on TV, thinks, 'wow, she's hot,' and then he clicks on the computer and buys something. "But then there are downsides to the expansion of pornography. It's a Catch 22 because you can only get a real perspective on the business by working in the business. "What's the difference between pornography and obscenity? I don't think it's pornography to watch two people have sex on screen. I think it's obscene to give them $200 apiece and then not pay royalties on it. I just come from an artist's perspective. If you're creating a film of visual entertainment, you should share in the profits, which is never going to happen." Eric Mittleman Eric Helmetcam Man Gary Gray Helmetcam man with (L-R) Juli Ashton, Alexandra Silk, Helmet, Tiffany and Sydney Luke: "Do you really have a big long black dick?" Gary Gray: "That's an actual likeness. Not many people would expect me to have a 24-inch doubleheader down there, but I'm chockfull of surprises." Helmetcam Man aka Gary Gray, for his day job, dubs programs into Brazilian Portugeese, Latin American Spanish, and Castilian Spanish for the overseas branches of Playboy cable TV. I'm responsible for making sure that all the top women in the adult business speak foreign languages. Eric asks Gary for a copy of the tape Best of Night Calls. It's a very small tape. Ba boom. Gary: "We've found that when we language dub it, it looks better than the original because at least they're now moaning in sync." Eric: "The two professional organizations that don't usually do adult content love us - Close Captioning Institute for Night Calls and a translation service." Gary: "Mom and dad didn't know what to name me. They were at a Red Sox game in Boston. They decided that whoever hits the next home run, that's who we will name him after. So Rico Petraselli lines one out of the Park. So they say, so much for that, I guess we'll call him Gary. True story." Eric: "Rico Gray as the Helmetcam man." "I created him." Gary: "He put the helmet on my head. I came up with the personality." Eric: "I was hot off the trail of watching Jenny McCarthy's career, so I figured Gary would be my next one. "It's a typical Playboy story. Nightcalls is a successful 90-minute show. Some bean counter decided that we could do an extra half hour at virtually no cost. I said, 'that's no longer TV. That's radio. As it is, I think Nightcalls should be an hour long.' They said, great, just fill that half hour and spend no money doing it." Luke: "Gary." Gary: "They brought me in for $5 a show. And then I realized what they were paying everyone else, and I got it up to $10. I didn't have an agent. Now the half hour costs them a big bundle of money." Luke to Gary: "Did you ever f--- Jenny McCarthy?" Gary: "I was not inclined to go down that road. I couldn't give her her sitcom deals that she needed." Eric: "Yeah, and you weren't married." Gary: "One of my early jobs for Eric, when Jenny was a Playmate, was picking Jenny up from the [Playboy] mansion and taking her wherever we were shooting when I was PAing for the company. She was one of the first Playmates I met who had a personality. The average girl back then did not have much to say, before Playboy became so multi-media." Eric didn't f--- Jenny either. "From the day we hired her, she was dating her manager behind her manager's wife's back." Luke: "How do you spell his name?" Eric: "P-I-G. No, Ray Manzella." Luke: "She wasn't interested in you, even though you created her?" Gary: "She won't even return his phonecalls, that bitch. "My best Jenny story. We were at a party and talking. And David Spade came over, who's big on Saturday Night Live, and he's trying to work on her. And she says, 'do you mind leaving us alone, I'm talking to Gary.' And he was shocked. I was just a lowly PA then. "My first paying job in Hollywood was as a PA for Playboy, but I didn't know it at the time. I was 22 years old, fresh in town from Boston. I worked on a free short movie and the coordinator really liked me and asked if I wanted to work on this thing next week. So, the day before the shoot, she calls me up. 'I know you're supposed to start at 7AM, but I need you to start at 6AM, because you have to pick up the Playmates.' "I said, 'Why do I have to pick them up first thing in the morning, I'll pick them up tonight and keep them in my house. It seems foolish to get out this early in the morning. Everything's going to be closed.' She said, 'what are you talking about? Not those kind of playmates. Playboy Playmates.'" Eric: "If you meet any Playmate from the '70s, the first thing she'll tell you is, 'you really missed the great days.'" Gary: "I go to my first Playboy shot and am completely flustered. All these gorgeous women are walking around naked." Luke to Eric: "Has success spoiled him?" Eric: "No, Gary is the only one who keeps thanking me for putting him in the position he is..." Gary: "It certainly has jaded me. You can't spend years around these women and not view life and sex differently. I had Houston on my show last night. She just did her 620 person gangbang. Just one more eye opening experience. The best email I got today about last night's show simply said, 'well, that was interesting.'" Eric: "When Jenny's TV series got cancelled, I called her manager and offered her work in craft service. He's not fond of me. "When Jenny left Playboy for her MTV career, she did it in a bad way, badmouthing where she came from, just like Traci Lords denied she was a porn star. Jenny McCarthy hosted Hot Rocks [on Playboy TV] for three years before she went to MTV. The only reason she got to audition for the MTV gig was because of an interview she did on Hot Rocks with Paulie Shore." Gary: "The true pinnacle of interviewing is, can you hold your own against Paulie Shore." Eric: "The only time I've heard Jenny McCarthy mention Hot Rocks was a line in her book. 'The only bone that Playboy ever threw me was that they allowed me to host this cable show Hot Rocks.' She didn't mention all the training we put her through." Gary: "I mention Eric in every interview I do." 7/20/01 Former Playboy Night Calls producer Eric Mittleman phoned from his new job Creative Light Entertainment where he's starting its film division. When his contract expired last November, Eric jumped to a reality TV company that thought up the National Enquirer UNCOVERED show. Eric: "We're doing some softcore movies [at CLE]. And some horror films and comedy. They're basically a film distribution company and they wanted to launch a production division. The guy who brought me here brought me to Playboy ten years ago - Scott Zakran. "I've been here two weeks. "My own sensibilities are more in the PG13-R rated world. We're making adult movies [not pornographic]." Lunch With Eric Mittleman
I've known Eric for five years,
since his days producing Nightcalls and other shows for Playboy, through
his tenure at Danni's Harddrive to his present position at Creative
Light Entertainment. Eric Mittleman (a producer at Playboy TV for nine years who's now producing the E! show Kill Reality) calls me back Sunday afternoon, October 2, 2005, to talk about the Hugh Hefner reality show on E! -- The Girls Next Door. Eric has seen four episodes. "To do a reality show on Hugh Hefner's life is kind of a contradiction in terms because his life is so unreal. "It was bold of him to do it. "I find the show entertaining. The mansion was way different when I was working at Playboy. Obviously they are only showing the fun side of things there. There are things that seem contrived, like in any reality show, such as when Bobby Benton came to visit. "Having said so many negative things in the past about Playboy, and having put some distance between myself and my experience there, I've regretted a lot of things I've said. You really can't say anything bad about Hef. He's a generous guy. He gave the world this wonderful gift of nice girls like sex too. "I'm looking at the show wanting to like it, as opposed to looking at the show wanting to hate it, as many people do. "I went to the mansion dozens of times, but aside from half a dozen occasions, I was there as the help, producing and directing shows. It's way different going there as a guest. Once you take the performance aspect out of it, it's a cool place." Luke: "How would you do the show differently if you were producing it?" Eric: "More well-rounded Hef. The producers of the show probably have the dilemma that this guy is the [titular] head of this multi-million dollar empire and his time is going to be limited and what he wants to expose to the world. "One of my best experiences with Hef was when I produced Comic Book: The Movie, directed by Mark Hamill. Hef did a cameo for Mark, which he was wonderful in. There was no talk of naked women or sex. Just purely a scene where he was talking about comic books. He really came alive in a way that I've never seen him come alive before. "For the past half century, he's been able to have sex with the most beautiful women on the planet. That is a super power that none of us will ever possess. Superman thinks nothing about flying. Hef thinks nothing about snapping his fingers and having sex with a bunch of beautiful women." Luke: "The show's had overwhelmingly horrible reviews." Eric: "I can see why the world wouldn't like it, but I know there's more to the mansion and more to Hef and more to Playboy than what they're showing to the world." Luke: "It's impossible to sell because it's inherently creepy to have this old man leching off these young women." Eric: "It's creepy but it's nothing new. It's existed back to the time of kings and emperors and cavemen. I turned 40 a couple of years ago. You hope that at 70 you have that same ability. What's a little creepy about the show, what I would do differently about the show, is that I don't see the real bond of intimacy between him and the girlfriends. It does seem like they are there for show. We know that circumstance and greed breed a different type of love, which is what we see on the show. We're not seeing what lies beneath and where that true affection is. We're seeing unnatural relationships. Married porn stars have always been a mystery to me. Marriage is supposed to be about monogamy." Luke: "Hefner has the bond of intimacy with the girls that an old man has with young women he pays to have sex with. It's a hooker-john relationship." Eric: "If that is the bond, that should be explored and celebrated. When people hide from things, that's when the audience turns on them, which might be happening with the show. Whatever that relationship is, whether it is hooker-john, the father they never had, any of the stereotypes, that bond needs to be more openly explored and embraced by the participants on the show. "Based on my experience with Playboy and Hef, I don't think that's a bond that would ever be explored openly. I don't think anyone looks down on Charlie Sheen for admitting he abused Heidi Fleiss's services. This is a different flavor of that type of relationship. "A couple of years ago, Hef sold 2% of his stock and got $50 million. I don't know what I would do if I could get $50 million. I'd probably go nuts. I'd probably take you to Vegas and go to Smokers. How different is that from Hef? "I've never heard a bad word about Hef from those who knew him best. The guy's carved out his own world (which he thrives in and has warped his perceptions) which might be why the show hasn't synced with its audience. He really hasn't been in the world in the last 30 years. The girls are not really in touch with the world either. They're one step from dumb. Surrounding yourself with women like that... The best part of leaving Playboy was becoming friends with smart women who do not look like Playmates. Some of them are plain-looking. I'm plain-looking. That's my position in the world. "The aspect of nudity and being on the softer end of the sex business alienates a lot of people. "Hef is smart. He does a disservice to himself by not surrounding himself with smart women like he did in the 70s. If you look at the magazine in the 70s, it had all the celebrated intellectuals. Now it is all pop culture, and not even the luminaries of pop culture. It's bubblegum." Ray Richmond writes in the Hollywood Reporter:
5/2/06 Eric Mittleman (emittlema@playboy.com) Returns To Playboy He calls me back Tuesday afternoon. He's producing Jenna's American Sex Star reality show after six years out of porn. Eric: "It's American Idol for porn stars and the prize is a year-long contract with Club Jenna. "My challenge is to bring more mainstream elements into it, more elements of reality TV. The shows last year seem too fantasy-driven. "I've known Jenna Jameson for over ten years. She worked for me at Playboy. I referred to her as the Jenny McCarthy of porn. "A friend of mine ran into Jenna at Fashion Week in New York a couple of months ago. She said hello to me through him. It got me thinking about her career. If people want to talk about the mainstreaming of porn, she's a case study. "She's a cultural icon but she doesn't carry herself like a cultural icon. The only thing obscene about her was her watch. It was big, gold, jeweled. I'm sure she worked hard for it." Luke: "Why did you come back to Adult?" Eric: "I had a hole in my schedule. They met my quote. There's no reason not to go back. I had left Playboy under strange terms. Now that I have perspective, it was nothing against the company, but it was a conflict with another producer. I was warmly welcomed back. "I've spent the past couple of years working with sci-fi icons such as William Shatner and Mark Hamill. Jenna is an icon. I run into 23yo girls on MySpace who are obsessed with Jenna but have never seen a movie. She's like Hef was in the fifties." Luke: "Weren't you glad to be out of Adult?" Eric: "I was hugely glad to be out of Adult. You need a balance in your life. One of my favorite quotes is from Ice-T: 'Life is rated XXX, not R.' "I've produced a thousand hours for Playboy TV that I can't undo. Producing four more hours is not going to destroy me." Luke: "What happened to your mainstream career?" Eric: "I have a bunch of mainstream projects in the works. When I did The Scorned movie and Kill Reality TV show last summer, it knocked me into another league. The projects are bigger but they take longer to come together." Luke: "Will this hurt your mainstream career?" Eric: "I hope not. It took a lot of thought for me to come back and it took a lot of thought for me not to use an alias." Luke: "Is this show primarily masturbation fuel?" Eric: "When I left Playboy TV, the producing and editing styles were all aimed at shows you can masturbate to. A Jim English thing. The network now is more about interesting sexy TV. I tried to masturbate to one of the shows and was not terribly successful. It did eventually work and I thank Brea Bennett..." Luke: "You want to make entertainment that people can watch with their pants up?" Eric: "They can watch it however they enjoy it most. HBO doesn't tell me how to watch the Sopranos." Luke: "You don't feel you're sullying your soul by doing this?" Eric: "My soul was sullied a long time ago. We're not pulling a waitress out of a restaurant and making her an Adult star. All the contestants in the show are already in the Adult business and want to be contract girls. Morally, I'd have a problem taking some waitress and convincing her she should be a porn star." Luke: "How would you compare and contrast reality stars and porn stars?" Eric: "Porn stars are easier to deal with. There's a short list of reality stars who would be porn stars if it weren't for reality TV. Different things drive both groups but the common thread is the desire to be seen and noticed. Porn stars are more fun and reality stars have more issues. "There are many types of porn that are the ultimate form of reality TV. Even on Kill Reality, people were obsessed with who was sleeping with who. You just weren't seeing it, unless you had the raw footage like we did. On the Real World, same thing." Luke: "Do you think Jenna Lewis was in on her porn video?" Eric: "There's a constant level of game play with reality stars, even in their day-to-day lives. Jenna had me convinced at times she had nothing to do with the distribution of the video but you can't deny that reality stars are good liars. I hope she made a profit from it. Otherwise, that just makes her dumb. "We're going to cast the show in the next couple of weeks. Any porn star interested in competing should email me at emittlema@playboy.com. The show airs in July." 6/13/06 Lunch With Playboy TV (American Sex Star) Producers Eric Mittleman, Derek Harvie I show up to the Playboy TV studios in a 90065 industrial park in Glendale. 12:20 p.m. I walk up to the receptionist. She's on the phone. "He doesn't say on his voicemail that he's Hugh Hefner, does he?" I sign in behind Hugh Hefner's brother Keith Hefner (about 60 yo) who does voiceovers. Eric's assistant leads me on the long walk to his office past dozens of cubicles. On Eric's wall, Sasha Grey and a couple of other girls are scratched out from the American Sex Star show. Most of the girls are from LA Direct Models and none have of them have dropped out. Mittleman's on the phone. "This is a real voice-over just like the first one," he says. Playboy TV's employees have the relaxed manner of most people in porn who realize they aren't rocket scientists and they aren't curing cancer. They're in the business of stimulating masturbation, about the lowest of artistic endeavors. Derek Harvie joins me in Eric's office. He says Ann Marie hosts the 30-minute Night Calls Hotline show which follows the regular three-hour Night Calls (hosted by Kirsten Price and Jesse Jane). "It's half an hour of phone sex with Ann Marie," Derek says as he leads us on a tour of the studio. "We take a couple of girls from Night Calls and they take phone calls." Luke: "Do you give spread-legged action? Girls going down on each other?" Derek and Eric say that Night Calls and other Playboy TV productions are officially X (single girl action) with XX clips -- meaning everything but anal and a pop shot. Derek: "Night Calls is single action except for special occasions." Eric: "We broke down a wall last week." Derek: "We had sex toys. We had the f---ing machine guys come in. Unfortunately the giant robot malfunctioned." Only on clips is there a penis entering a vagina. Next door are the Spice studios and they show hardcore (but not anal nor pop shots). Eric: "When we go to porn sets to shoot the girls, we have to shoot it soft, Austin-Powers style." Playboy radio (broadcast over Sirius, with over one million potential listeners, perhaps one or two thousand of them actually listen at any one time) studios are down the hall. They provide about 14 hours of original programming a weekday. Ann Marie hosts a show. Christy Canyon and Ginger Lynn do three hours a night of Night Calls Radio. If you have a Sirius subscription, you don't automatically get Playboy Radio. You have to call and opt-in. None of the programming on Playboy TV or Playboy Radio is gay. Eric, Derek and I have lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant. I eat some rice and tofu. I don't want to even name the strange little critters going into the mouths of my mates. I want to develop on my theme from last week (and over the past decade) that porn is a refuge for the lazy (in many ways, I am lazy and slovenly and porn suits this part of my personality). Luke to Derek: "How would you compare the stress levels of working at MTV and Playboy?" My thesis is that all achievement comes through stress. Derek: "Playboy is much more relaxed. At MTV, people were always fighting because everyone had conflicting visions and everything was subjective. At Playboy TV, we ask ourselves two questions: Do we have naked girls? Check. Are they naked? Check. "A former producer at Playboy TV said, 'Give me a hot chick standing next to a bag of s---, and I'll give you a TV show. "We had so many rules at MTV. At Playboy, the basic rule is no anal. "I didn't think I'd be here [in porn] this long but at this point I can't see myself going back to the real world. "My wife and kids are gone for six weeks. I'm going to turn my home into the Playboy Mansion - Encino style." I ask the gents if Playboy requires drug tests. They say no. "But what if you were drug-tested?" I persist. Derek: "I'm clean." Eric: "Depending on the month." Mittleman says he has a doctor's note to smoke pot. Derek says he's allergic and throws up if he smokes pot. Penny Flame was interviewed on American Sex Star and on the first question she says she didn't finish college because of cocaine. She goes into detail about her drug problems. She showed a level of honesty that can inspire all of us to be better people. The girls take it hard as they get eliminated from American Sex Star. They start crying. They can become vindictive. Codi Milo was balling up. Jenna came up to her backstage and hugged her. Jim Powers plays the Simon Cowell role on the show, a porn ripoff of American Idol. He teased Angie Savage about the wing tattoo on her back. Last year, one girl got a pail of water and was going to dump it on Jim Powers. She was intercepted by McKenzie Lee who ended up receiving the pail. Neither Eric nor Derek fear obscenity prosecution for their work. Many of the rockers who come on Night Calls end up with the porn stars. They have a higher rate of success with the ladies than the stand-up comics. Eric's creepiest shoot for American Sex Star was at an extended stay hotel where numerous out-of-town porners reside. The hallways were lined with garbage and dirty linen. Eric remembers a sweet little Playmate from the mid nineties who opened her purse and a .38 special popped out. We discuss the explosive relationship between hot chicks and firearms. Eric: "When I was in Scottsdale, I wanted to get footage of Jenna at a shooting range. Her brother owns one. Jenna's a phenomenal shot." Derek remembers shooting at Taylor Rain's house. Taylor, the longtime queen of porn's potheads (though she may have brought this under control over the past few months, since her retirement, and gained 20 pounds) reached under the bed, and instead of producing the expected sex toy, came up with a shotgun three feet away from Derek. Another time Derek took four porn chicks out to the desert and got video of them shooting off automatic weapons. Eric says he wants nothing to do with porn stars and automatic weapons. Eric: "I should add that question to their profile -- what kind of gun do you own?" There's no pot smoking nor drinking at the Playboy studios. Derek: "Our show is like a day off for porn stars. They don't have to have sex. We bring them in in the morning. We dress them up. We put them in make-up. We feed them. We have a chef. They play all day. We look after them. Our host arranges play time for them. It's like day care. "And we pay them." Eric: "It's like Burke Williams (day spa) for porn stars." On the drive back to the Playboy studios, we stop at the lights and an army of kids in school uniforms cross the streets. Derek says this afternoon he has to shoot Roxy Jezelle doing man-on-the-street interviews about anal sex. I hope they leave the kids alone. |