AVN President Paul Fishbein On KSEX

Thursday, Jan 13. 5-6PM. I was hoping that Gene would transcribe all this.

Paul on the AVN Awards: "I'd like to open up [the voting] to more freelance reviewers who don't even write for us, but you have to get to know their work and that they are actually watching this stuff.

"It doesn't get easier because all the people who advertise get angry when they don't get enough press, or they don't get good reviews. Certainly when they don't win awards. This has been a bad week.

"One in particular I ran into at the Venetian Mall on Sunday, and I knew her. She was with her boyfriend and I was with my fiance. I felt awful. My heart sank."

Paul on what his staff likes in porn: "The staff is divided. You have your Mike Ramones...who, the dirtier the better. Heidi Pike-Johnson likes everything. Jared Rutter likes everything. I go towards the features. I like beautiful women. I like that movie Loaded. The story works. Tim Connelly likes everything. Mark Kernes likes the features. I can watch a dirty scene but I don't want to watch girls drinking cum out of bowls. I don't want to see girls' faces stuffed in toilets. I like girls being treated like women. For Mike Ramone, the more the girls sucks cum out of the toilet, the more he likes it."

Harry: "Mike Ramone looks like the kind of guy that would like that. He [looks] like a scary [guy]."

Paul: "Mike's a gentle guy."

Paul: "We [Philadelphia Eagles] are going to the Super Bowl."

Brian, Cytherea's boyfriend: "Mike South wants to understand why he doesn't win every year."

Paul: "No. Mike South understands. Mike South is a good guy."

Harry: "There's a lot of harping about the fans being let in. There's [a suggestion] that booth space should be free if we are going to play to the fans."

Paul: "Mike and I were discussing that earlier today. The exhibitors at the show want the fans. They ask for the fans. They may have gotten more than they expected... People don't understand the costs of putting on a show like that.

"We're in business to make money. We couldn't give out free space. We'd lose money. We do make money off the fans. Some of the money goes to the Free Speech Coalition.

"I think we're going to have to go with more business hours. I think the exhibitors need more time to do business.

"We listen to our customers. What our customers want, we want.

"When we started the show, everybody left CES to come with us. All the big companies said, we want the fans."

Harry: "Slightly wider aisles."

Paul: "Next year we're going to have two halls. We're going to have plenty of room.

"We're also getting complaints that the music is too loud. We're going to have put some severe limits on the individual booths."

Harry: "I heard there was more than one exhibitors upset with KSEX [broadcasting live from the show]."

Paul: "You'll have your space to do your thing. Relax. We're not going to get rid of you. It's that loud thumping Sex in the Studio 2 music. I liked the music but across the hall, nobody could do business. That's why we all lost our voice. Nobody had a voice come Sunday."

Harry: "Do you think there was a reluctance to vote for some of the extreme sex this year given that we had three HIV-positives?"

Paul: "Interesting question. And during the nominations process, it came up. Everybody was very sensitive towards the creampie movies, the internal cum shots. Everybody was queasy about it. Should we reward movies...

"We said, we have to review the movies as the movies. It is not the only dangerous behavior in the business. There are plenty of movies that are nominated where what happened on the set wasn't exactly the best working conditions. You wouldn't know by the nominations that we decided not to nominate a creampie movie because Darren James [HIV-positive] was in it.

"However, the issue comes up about the working conditions. It is something we need to do more about. To write about more. To push for better working conditions. We have that whole HIV-situation, and then everything went back to normal. People will forget again. People will be sloppy. People won't do the proper testing and sure enough, it is going to happen again. You're going to have the Health Department... It is important that we stress to the talent to be vigilant to protect themselves.

"In the nominations, everybody was queasy about it and not much of that stuff got nominated.

"It is always safer not to cum inside."

Paul says about AVN: "We're trying to be an objective voice. Give everybody an avenue to report the information. We're not hard-hitting. I think we were somewhat hard-hitting, at least in our coverage of the HIV. At least we got the information out. We're not an investigative magazine. We're a trade publication. We don't get a lot of protest. They're not out in front of our office.

"We have information going up ten times a day on AVN.com."

Paul says about AVN's profitability: "There were a lot of lean years where I lived on $50 a week, was in debt, went to my parents for dinner because I couldn't afford..."

Harry: "But you're doing all right now."

Paul: "It didn't happen overnight. It was a long slow build. The early editors of the magazine did a great job helping take it to the next level."

Harry: "Did you reach a crucial crossover point?"

Paul: "I can pinpoint the moment -- Bill Clinton getting elected. We moved here in 1991 -- myself, Mark Kernes and Gene Ross. Everything seemed to start to build from there. When we moved to LA, we were in the mix much more... We had just moved through the horrifying time when most of our customers were on trial."

Harry: "Was there a time when Paul Fishbein said, I'm going to give back..."

Paul: "Give back income? I'm Jewish. I don't give back income.

"I don't think I am as public as other people do... I know I do TV appearances...but I live a private life. I don't aspire to be in the limelight. I'd rather let my staff take the limelight. But I somehow became this de facto spokesperson. I'm probably better at talking to the media than some of the people in the business. I probably do it so that somebody else doesn't. I don't aspire to be known and I don't think I am except within this industry."

Harry: "Who was the bigger star? Jenna now or Ginger then?"

The questioners on the show (except for Cytherea) seem to do more talking than the guest, Paul Fishbein.

Paul: "Jenna now. She is really a mainstream star. Ginger was the biggest star of her era. A Cytherea walks down the street and she's accepted whereas a Ginger Lynn in 1984 was a porn chick.

"I'm marrying a girl [Cherry Rain] who was in the business. Fifteen or twenty years ago, I would never have thought of it."

Harry: "Because of social stigma?"

Paul: "I just didn't think that I would ever hook-up with a girl in the business and fall in love. She's the most normal girl I've ever been with, and this is my third marriage. She's amazing. She's 25. She's a child of the video era. To her, sex is very natural. Sex isn't an issue. That's a generational thing. It isn't a big deal. She was very safe. She did mostly girls."

Tod Hunter concludes at the end of the show: "That was a waste of time and bandwidth."

Paul Fishbein says, "Tod Hunter is a waste of a person. How low he has sunk. He has officially become one of the bottom-feeders of the industry. How sad."

Tod Hunter replies:

My statement – "That was a waste of time and bandwidth" – was based on the fact that I was not enlightened or amused by his appearance on KSEX. I didn't learn anything I didn't already know, except for some trivialities that I didn't care about. In the chat room, Jay Moyes at least confirmed that the 2006 Adult Expo was going to be at the Sands Convention Center instead of my oft-predicted Mandalay Bay, so maybe I was a little harsh. But just a little.

Paul has shown himself to be a liar – I can still hear him telling me "You'll never be fired, you're grandfathered in" – and a sad little man chasing after his lost youth. He has gathered around him a group of yes-men and sycophants who tell him exactly what he wants to hear, and he dismisses those who no longer toe his line as "bottom feeders." He obviously has no clue about the contempt for him and AVN out there, and it's not up to me to tell him. And if he "doesn't read the sites," as he averred to me the last time we spoke, how does he know what I'm doing on Tod-Hunter.net?

The less said about the theft of tod-hunter.com the better, as far as I'm concerned.

I would say that a rich 50-year-old guy hooking up with a twentyish pornchick to be his third wife has his nerve calling somebody else a "bottom-feeder." But I have no intention of getting into a pissing match with Paul. He can keep his hand-picked crew and I can do my thing. If I make a living, I'll be okay.