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Phil Harvey Interview

I spoke to Phil Harvey (owner of Adam & Eve) Friday, January 7, 2005 at the AEE (Adult Entertainment Expo) in Las Vegas.

Luke: "I overheard one of your sales reps say last year that business had been down 20% in 2003 because of the Internet and increased competition. I suspect that fewer people are ordering through mail-order."

Phil: "You're certainly right about that. The first adjustment is to be on the Internet. Our website is active. It now accounts for about 25% of our sales. It is also true that sales through traditional mail-order have dropped by about 25%, which means that our sales volume for the past four or five years has been approximately flat."

Luke: "Were you guys slow to get going with the Internet?"

Phil: "I don't think we were. We weren't out front. We were about average. We made some major investments about three years ago. I think we've caught up. That we have an establishment fulfilmment and customer help system has been a big help in competing with others on the Internet."

About the only time that I bought porn through mail-order (aside from a minor rip-off in high school) was with Adam & Eve in the fall of 1995. Though the service was excellent, my work enabled me to get more porn for free than I ever wanted to watch (and by the Spring of 1996, I never wanted to watch porn again).

In the ten years I've been around the business, Adam & Eve has always been a pleasure to work with. They are the nice guys in the industry. It might have something to do with being based in North Carolina. They have that Southern sense of courtesy and don't traffic in the particularly degrading stuff.

Phil: "It is hard and it takes many years to be good at fulfillment and customer service, but it is simple if you have a good catalogue fulfillment program to transfer those skills over to Internet fulfillment."

Luke: "I also heard last year one of your people say that you shouldn't be in production because various shooters have taken advantage of your niceness."

Phil: "I think our road to producing movies has been about as rocky as it would be for any one. As you learn your way into a new aspect of the business, you have to expect that not all relationship are going to work out perfectly. I'm not really familiar with this side of the business. Bob Christian is. I'd say we've had normal growing pains. We're certainly committed. However content is delivered three, four, or five years from now, the content will still be required."

Luke: "I understand that Digital Playground will have worldwide distribution rights to the new movie they are making with you because their distribution contacts are better than yours?"

Phil: "I'm out of my depth. I don't know."

Luke: "You guys are distributing a harder material than five years. Nastier."

Phil: "I think you are mostly wrong. Our review standards haven't changed. We still rely on the same outside reviewers, sex therapists and counselors. They apply the same standards they did five years ago. I'd say our standards haven't changed in almost 20 years.

"It may be that the nature of the market is changing and there are some edgier plots but it hasn't affected our standards as to explicit sexual depictions."

Luke: "Would you be uncomfortable selling product that features urination?"

Phil: "It would depend on whether the urination was part of sexual activity and a necessary part of sexual satisfaction. If it were those things, no, we would not be comfortable. If it was a shot of some guy taking a leak in the woods and turning around having a screw ten minutes later, no, it wouldn't bother us."

Luke: "There are movies now focused on female urination."

Phil: "If it is a movie focused on female urination as a method of sexual satisfaction, we wouldn't handle it."

Luke: "What about the sexual practice known as ATM [ass-to-mouth]? Do you know what I am talking about?"

Phil: "I know what you're talking about. We're very careful with that. We prefer at least a scene break where washing would be possible. It is a touchy area. There does seem to be a demand for it. I don't know why. But we are careful with it."

Luke: "Are you concerned about the increasingly nasty edge of the business?"

Phil: "There's clearly a market for very nasty stuff. We don't sell it. We would probably make more money if we did, but our policies on this are clear. We leave that part of the market to others. I don't think the existence of the market for nasty material is doing anything to diminish the demand for mainstream material."

Luke: "Does it make you cringe to be a part of an industry that distributes things like Piss Mops and hardcore movies with rape scenes?"

Phil: "What other people do doesn't bother me. We're also part of the movie industry and the toy industry."

Luke: "I got from your speech yesterday that no honorable person could oppose the sale of pornography and sex toys. It seemed that anyone who opposed that was bad."

Phil: "No. I think that people who are profoundly anti-sex are not necessarily bad. I have some sympathy for them because I think it arises from a fear of sexuality. It is a mysterious phenomenon."

Luke thinks to himself: "There's nothing mysterious about it. Every society has sexual taboos and every traditional form of morality and religion has frowned on masturbation (the purpose of porn). Civilization to flourish must make men stick around to raise their kids, and that will only happen if every form of sexual expression outside of heterosexual marital sex is stigmatized."

Phil: "The people who are the most adamently opposed to pornography and other evidence of sexuality, such as a nude beach, or an adult bookstore in their community, tend to be people frightened of their own sexuality and of sex in general. I don't consider that to make them evil or bad, but rather sad."

Luke: "Why do you conflate opposition to pornography, nude beaches, masturbation, and adult bookstores with opposition to sex?"

Phil: "The people who are uncomfortable with any outward display of sexuality don't become enthusiastic and sexual people within their own marriage. The people who are uncomfortable with sex are uncomfortable with sex inside marriage or out."

Luke: "About half the country despises the porn industry."

Phil: "I don't think that's true. I think about half the country would be uncomfortable to be associated with pornography but I don't think half the country despises it or even opposes it. I don't think it is any more than 5-10% of the population who despise the industry."

Luke: "Do you think it is possible for any of these girls who star in these productions to go on to lead normal lives?"

Phil: "What's normal? They're leading normal lives now, many of them. Talk to someone like Nina Hartley. What's normal for her involves a high degree of sexuality. I have no doubt that there are performers in this industry who are not happy people but most of the ones I know are quite happy. They enjoy sex. I don't see it as destroying their futures."

Luke: "I don't know any porn stars who've been able to sustain a relationship. And if you can't sustain a relationship, it's hard to lead a fulfilling happy life."

Phil: "The length of marriage among porn stars isn't that different from the length of marriage among movie stars generally. The entertainment industry by its very nature has a hard time matching up with long marriages."

Luke: "Has organized crime tried to muscle into your business?"

Phil: "We've been in business 33-years and I've never heard one whisper from organized crime. They're in the construction business in New Jersey and the garbage business in New York but I don't think they are in this business much at all."

Luke: "What have you learned from your dealings with the mainstream media that would be useful for the rest of the industry?"

Phil: "Don't ever have anything to hide. The media love uncovering ugly secrets. So don't have any. Second. The media instinctively respects the First Amendment. We've generally had good treatment, largely for that reason. The media don't like censorship."

Luke: "What do you love and hate about your work?"

Phil: "I love being in a controversial business. I don't know why. But making waves has always been part of my nature. Even my non-profit work involves the marketing of contraceptives in developing countries where that is controversial, as it is in the United States, particularly these days. I am as prone to occasional bouts of embarassment as to the nature of Adam & Eve's work as anyone else but they don't last long and I don't worry about them. I love being in the management of a company of 300 people who are tremendously diverse racially, gender, age, background, religion but all sharing a tolerance for each other. A sense of humor is essential to a happy life and a lot of people at Adam & Eve really are funny. I don't find anything to hate."

Luke: "How about the rampant dishonesty in this business?"

Phil: "That's part of life. In the performance of any work, you are going to run into cheaters and liars. I don't think there are any more in this industry."

Luke: "Is organized religion your enemy?"

Phil: "Organized religion represents some aspect of humanity that is important. It tends to be more divisive than harmonious. The amount of killing and slaughter that has been performed in the name of God is staggering. Pushed to the wall, I would say that organized religion has caused more mischief than good."

Luke: "Do you believe in it?"

Phil: "No. I see no reason to believe in it."

Luke: "You don't believe that you have a soul that will continue after your body dies."

Phil: "No. I see no proof of that. I have no reason to believe that whatsoever."

Luke: "Are you an atheist?"

Phil: "Yes."

Luke: "Are you happy?"

Phil: "Yes."

Luke: "How can you be happy if life is essentially meaningless?"

Phil: "It's not meaningless. It just ends when it ends. Seventy years is a long time. I believe we have an obligation to live those years by certain principles that make it possible for us to interact with other human beings in a productive way."

Luke: "How do you know what is right and wrong? Where do you get these principles from?"

Phil: "From the Golden Rule, which I realize comes from a religious text. I believe human beings have an obligation to make civilization function harmoniously."

Luke: "How do you get other people to subscribe to that if they are not in fear of an all-powerful deity?"

Phil: "There is no correlation between religious belief and moral behavior. People who believe in God devoutly are no better than people who are atheists. This is a tricky area of research and people are afraid to take it too far, but what work has been done suggests there isn't any difference. Morality doesn't depend on a belief in God. So I think the question misses the point."

Luke: "So if you were walking down a dark city street in a bad part of town, and you saw ten young men walking towards you, would or would you not be relieved to know that they were returning from a Bible study (question by Dennis Prager)?"

Phil: "I might be under those circumstances but it would reassure me just as much if they just returned from a workshop on the role of atheism in modern philosophy."

In 2001, Prometheus published Harvey's book The Government Vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve:

Publishers Weekly wrote:

Harvey's defense of the sexually explicit material sold by Adam & Eve is equally spirited, but somewhat less convincing. He contends that sexually explicit material as long as it is consensual and nonviolent is harmless, even salubrious, but even Harvey clearly senses the limitations of the sexually explicit. When the jury is asked to watch six hours of adult films, he concedes, "I am acutely embarrassed in this context, with the jurors forced to watch all this material in our presence and in the company of each other." Equally facile is the condemnation of world religions: "[O]rganized religion has caused more mischief in the world than it has done good." Despite these shortcomings, Harvey writes engagingly and provides an excellent anecdotal way to get a handle on the ongoing pornography debate.