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An Interview With Ken From Mike Hott Video

Duke: "When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

Ken: "I wanted to be a rock star."

Duke: "What happened to that dream?"

Ken: "I came down to LA and realized the realities of the music business. I thought the next best thing to goof off in life and get paid for it was to get into porn."

Duke: "How did you get into porn?"

Ken: "My sister was dating an editor for Mike Hott Video. I asked him if I could come down one day and check out a set. I was always a fan. My life wasn't going anywhere at the time. I had a lot of time on my hands. He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, whenever. I never thought it would happen.

"A couple of days later, he called me up and asked if I knew how to use a camera. The second cameraman on a shoot couldn't make it. Can I be down there in 20-minutes? I said sure, man.

"This was 1996. My first day on the job was nuts. It was everything I thought a porn shoot would be -- chaotic, tons of people on set. We were shooting a gangbang. There were 15 naked guys and two girls. I didn't know what I was doing. I went with instinct. They told me, you've just got to point at something and keep it on the shot for a little bit. Try not to move.

"I guess I did all right that first day because they hired me fulltime."

Duke: "What did you come to love and hate about your job?"

Ken: "I loved that it was always about the girls. They had great attitudes back then. They were gungho. They were doing it for thrills. If you sprung something on them from out of the blue, or if you wanted to make stuff up as you went along, they were gungho with it and had open minds. It wasn't a process like it is now where if you decide to do anything different from the program it is a constant negotiation. Their agents have a lot to do now with how they think and where they go and what happens there. It's about not getting ripped off and not getting taken advantage of. The girls are defensive now. Whenever you decide to do something different, it's a constant struggle. It's pulling teeth. They think that you're getting too much. Why are you taking too many pictures? Back then, there was none of that.

"The girls never flaked. I was shooting out in Duarte (in the San Gabriel Valley, where the 405 meets the 5) and girls would come out just for auditions. They would always be up for anything. That's what I love. I still love this business but it is more of a business now. Back then it was more fun.

"You're always going to have girls who want to be there and girls who don't want to be there.

"At Mike Hott Video (yes, there is an actual Mike Hott), we were paying them on a day rate (say, $1000), which you can't do these days. We'd be able to do whatever we want. We'd say, well, we've got you for the day. We really don't know what we're doing but it is probably going to be a lot. We'd make it up as we went along. The girls just wanted to do their best. Nowadays, you can't even pull s--- like that.

"If the girls was really good looking, we'd shoot her for two days and do two different kinds of gangbangs, five boy-girl scenes, a hand job scene, a blow job scene. And no one ever complained."

Why can't girls be more reasonable about these things today? The work ethic of the new generation has gone down the toilet. Porn girls are just not as easy to abuse as they used to be.

Duke: "Perhaps you guys are single-handedly responsible for this change in attitude?"

Ken: "Exactly. We educated them out of day-rates. The girls are a lot smarter."

Duke: "More difficult to take advantage of."

Ken: "Yeah."

A whistful tone creeps into his voice.

"They weren't taken advantage of. It was just an economical way of shooting stuff.

"Mike Hott, the owner, would come up with ideas on the spot. The girls now have to have an outline of what they're doing before every shoot.

"I was on a shoot a few weeks ago. We were just taking stills of this girl. And she just needed to do a toy for four or five shots and she completely freaked out. 'Nobody told me.' It was a little dildo. I couldn't believe that kind of attitude.

"I'm now a co-owner of Mike Hott Video but we don't do much production these days. I freelance. I work for Pure Play. I shoot for Cousin Stevie."

Duke: "Do you think you were taking advantage of the girls when you would pay them by the day?"

Ken: "No, because I didn't know any better. Mike Hott set everything up. When I came into the industry, I had no idea what was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. Then it didn't seem like the wrong thing to do because these girls, their attitude was spectactular. A lot of it happened to do with that we auditioned them beforehand. They'd come out a day early so we could talk to them. We'd ask them the sickest questions. If they were gungho for it, we knew that we had our girl.

"Mike had high standards, not in looks, but in how far a girl was willing to go."

Duke: "Do you enjoy your work as much as eight years ago?"

Ken: "No. My world was more of a party atmosphere back then.

"Mike was a pioneer. He helped originate the gonzo style before every unemployed gas station attendant had a camera and a girlfriend.

"Back then we were doing stuff that nobody was doing. The cream pies. Mike had this great idea of instead of doing one cream pie, doing a gangbang cream pie. Then we'll get a girl to come in and eat it out. He was going on and on."

Ken describes other innovations that make me too queasy to list.

"He would just come up with this stuff right off the bat back in 1995."

Mike Hott was truly a man ahead of his time, sort of like Gallileo.

Duke: "Did any of it make you nauseated?"

Ken: "No. You got jaded quick."

Duke: "Did you get blowjobs on camera?"

Ken: "Oh sure."

Duke: "Where is Mike Hott today?"

Ken: "It's another porn cliche. We had problems with distribution and money owed us. We license stuff over the Internet.

"Mike Hott didn't go to awards show or functions and he absolutely didn't [cater to] XXX film reviewers. He was paranoid. He only trusted one distributor who ended up f------ us in the long run. They are out of business now. Major Distribution out of New York.

"I don't think any of us realized how much the business would expand. Mike was happy with a low profile. He wasn't big on socializing and ingratiating himself with people. He didn't think that advertising was necessary. And now that is all it is because everybody is shooting the same stuff. Now it is whoever has the better advertising wins the game.

"Mike Hott was the first one to shoot many of these girls who are really big today. Did you ever hear of our C--- of the Month series?"

Duke: "Yeah, it was a great honor."

Ken laughs. "It was the pinnacle of success for a lot of these girls. Stephanie Swift. Sunset Thomas. She was our Marilyn Monroe C--- of the Month. She came to our day barefoot and pregnant. Cheyenne Silver. Tina Tyler. Rebecca Lord. These were training grounds for up-and-coming porn sluts.

"Mike Hott Video muddied the waters for porn. We set the standard but everyone else took from us and became more famous.

"Mike Hott was responsible for the separation of niche themes to all of the videos. You always knew what you were going to get. For example, if you like girls who swallow you would rent "Girls Who Swallow..." If someone liked creampies they would probably be interested in the series "Cum In My C---" and so forth.

"Another example of how great the girls attitudes were back then. During an interview with Nancy Vee we asked her to drink multiple loads of --- out of a coctail glass. All she cared about was if there would be one of those little bamboo umbrellas in there.That was pretty hilarious. We have over 200 of Mike Hott Video titles on AEBN .net with another 400 going up in the upcoming months."

Duke: "What are your ambitions?"

Ken: "I have none. To start producing stuff for Mike Hott Video again. We have a lot of our legal problems behind us now."

Duke: "Have you dated any of the girls in the business?"

Ken: "Just a few. I learned my lessons from that."

Duke: "What lessons did you learn?"

Ken: "Valentine's Day when you are sitting around with candy and flowers for her and she's getting gangbanged. It's not a good feeling. It would irk me that I would be stood up by a girl who was swallowing loads in another part of town. It would come in waves. Sometimes it would get to me. I am mainly interested in civilian girls."

Duke: "How many porn stars did you date? Who?"

Ken: "Three or four. Kate Frost."

Duke: "What do you tell strangers about what you do for a living?"

Ken: "At first I thought it was something to hide, but I got tired of that. This business is mostly mainstream already. You say that you produce erotic material. It goes by people much easier than it did before. Nobody really cares anymore, or people say, wow, that's really interesting. My friends think it's great.

"My parents wanted something else, but if it was between this and my trying to make it as a musician, they were down, in a bad way, on that. This is to them the lesser of two evils. My mom was a musician (pianist) and she will tell you how hard it was.

"I am a drummer. I still play."

Duke: "How do civilian girls react to what you do?"

Ken: "They don't. The second I tell a civilian girl what I do, they are interested at first. But no matter how you tell or whatever aspect you tell them you are in this business, whether you are directing or producing or just photographing, they always think, this isn't really the guy I want to be dating.

"It's a double-edged sword. You go through so much trauma and heart ache with a girl who's in the business and then you go outside and the girl is never going to accept that you are in the business in any capacity.

"When I first got in the business, I had a girlfriend. She increasingly became more paranoid and delusional and thought I was banging chicks every time I went off to work."

Duke: "Were you cheating on her?"

Ken: "Not at first. Not until she became psychotic and accused me, then I said, I know this relationship is going to be ending soon. Once you plant that seed in your head, it's hard to remove it."

Duke: "This is a big problem. This is isolating and sad."

Ken: "Yeah, but it could be worse. I just don't tell civilian girls what I do for a long time. I'm sure there are women out there who will be accepting. I just haven't met them yet.

"It's not something to leave the business for."

Duke: "If you met the right woman, would you leave the industry if she asked you to?"

Ken: "I'd probably tell her I was going to, and then just stall. She'd have to be some kick-ass chick."

Duke: "You seem passive about your life."

Ken: "I just go with the flow. I've always thought life was about having a good time. I choose not to sit around and dwell on what's coming up next. What have I done? What have I accomplished? What have I not accomplished? Though I do do that. But it seems futile. Instead I see wherever life takes me."