Family Business Turmoil 11/18/04 Seymore Butts aka Adam Glasser has not been popular with various members of his camera crews in the two year history of the Showtime reality show Family Business. Two crews quit entirely. At least one producer is not happy with his star and he tells people the show is cut to make Adam look better than he is. Adam's ex-GF Alisha Klass refuses to have anything to do with the show because she hates Glasser so much. She claims he can be violent. From talking to both of them three years ago, it sounded like the end of their relationship was a nightmare. She claimed he threatened her. He said he was tired of his private life getting played out on the Internet gossip columns. I've found Adam a difficult person to understand. He speaks slowly and carefully when I want him to just gush everything out. Then sometimes he can surprise me with his brutal frankness. He has a temper. He's had more than his share of enemies as well as fierce friends such as Bill Margold. He's living the life he wants to lead and anyone who doesn't like it can kiss his ass. I don't think his Showtime success has changed him. The only things that I have noticed that have changed him (in the eight years I've known him) have been wearying public gossip battles with Alisha and others (I remember the fatigue in his eyes and manner at CES) and his wearying battle with the city of Los Angeles during his obscenity trial. That taxed his emotional as well as financial resources. Perhaps, over the years, Adam and I have found our separate though uneasy peace. Seymore Butts Interview Thursday afternoon, I published some information and views of Seymore Butts's Showtime series Family Business. This came to me via someone who had worked on the show and said Seymore (who's never been married, contrary to what I published earlier) was difficult to deal with. In the course of which, I published information that was factually incorrect and, even if it had been correct, it did not belong on the site as it was an invasion of privacy and not relevant to the show and to the contents of this site. I apologize to Seymore for my bad taste and my bad journalism. Seymore aka Adam Glasser returned my call at 11pm Thursday (after filming in the evening for his Showtime show): Seymore: "I don't know anything about two full crews quitting in the past. I know we work with multiple different crew members in our three seasons, but I would attribute that more to the six-month hiatus period between each season. "Maybe I am difficult to work with...[particularly] for a producer. We're going on 30-episodes of positive content about the industry. It's a lot easier to go after the negative in our industry. For a producer who is not linked to the industry and does not give a ---- about the industry, some things make better television to them than to me. And that's too bad. They're going to move on to some other project that has nothing to do with our industry and never think about it again." Do you have final cut over what shows up? "Yes. Certainly we've had creative differences and I generally win them. "Is the show cut to make me look better? If I see things that I don't like, I'm going to mention it." No. It's your show. "If someone comes up with an idea that is going to put me or someone else in a light that I consider unacceptable, I am going to say something. "I would love to hear comments from crews that work on other reality shows such as The Osbournes and The Simple Life. When you are behind the camera, it's different from the front end of the camera, where you are having your life recorded." Were their repeated efforts to get Alisha Klass in the show? "No. Never. I wouldn't even let anybody ask." Earlier I confused Alisha for Taylor Hayes, who was going to be in the show, until she backed out of both the show and her relationship with Seymore. Taylor was Seymore's girlfriend before Alisha. Taylor has been among porn's most erratic performers and had a severe drinking problem. She made some nasty comments about Seymore in the NY Post a couple of years ago. Luke: "I made a huge mistake earlier in my post about you and Alisha..." Seymore: "That's because you are an idiot and you don't check your facts." Luke: "Guilty as charged." Seymore: "Right. I know that. Are you saying that I tried to get Taylor involved in the show? Yes. She backed out. [Taylor] has left her own legacy in this business. She has accused me of some things in the past, as have many people. Violence is one of them. But do you have anything other than someone has accused me of something?" No. Seymore: "There have been accusations that I killed Emilio Estevez's dog. Has anybody seen any dead dog photos? No. Do I have a temper? Yes. Have I been violent in the past? Yes. Who has it been with? Men. If somebody does something is not right or is hurtful to me or my family, I will respond accordingly." Adam said I reminded him of Scott Fayner. Seymore wrote to Scott (who will not publish Seymore's name on his site l-keford.com) 6/22/04:
Scott says that as a Jew he would never use crack and he resents that charge. I wrote earlier about Seymore:
Seymore: "I don't ever remember saying to you that I am too tired to fight. I remember pointing out to you that you tensed up when I approached you [at CES 2000]." True. "I put my hand on your shoulder and I said, don't worry. Relax."
Seymore: "Your intuition is wrong. You saw me come to the party with her, sit with her, leave with her. She got me drinks all night." I thought it was for the cameras. "No. Jackass! You're wrong. "Are you a gossip columnist or a journalist? In my opinion, you are an excellent gossip columnist but a mediocre journalist considering what you printed today." That is a fair assessment. Twelve years ago, they were the first couple of pornography. They made many of the funnest, funniest and most popular reality porn videos. Then they broke up. Today they both make porn and they seem to be friends. Shane writes on page 161 in the new book Naked Ambition: Women Pornographers and How They Are Changing the Sex Industry:
Seymore Butts calls me back Thursday morning. I read Seymore the bad stuff about him in Shane's chapter in Naked Ambition. Seymore: "When we met, I was in porn fulltime. I had done seven movies. It was the sole source of my income. Yeah, we didn't have a joint account. It's difficult to explain. One of the problems I had with Shane was that she didn't want to look at this as a job. If I said to her, 'Do you want to work on Thursday? We have Mark and Chris coming over.' She would say to me, 'I don't know. I don't want to make it so it's scheduled. I just want to jump in if I feel like jumping in.' "That was hard to run a production... I thought our relationship went bad because Shane didn't want to commit to it being a business. It was impossible to run a business trying to make it all fun. "The money point of view? We lived in a beautiful house and basically got anything she wanted. She certainly did a lot more shopping than I did. "I don't know why we didn't have a joint bank account. It was twelve years ago. I just know that it wasn't a case of poor Shane, she has nothing, and look at Adam, he has everything. "She was able to go off and start her own company. I couldn't have left her that high and dry. "When things broke down between Shane and Jenny (who owns Shane's World), I was called in to be the mediator. I sat with them for hours trying to talk them through it. "Our kids play together. They go to each other's birthday parties. I don't know why she would seem bitter." Luke: "Were you surprised she was able to run her own production company?" Seymore: "Not only did she surprise me, but she made me proud. She was the first [woman] to do it. She took a lot away from our relationship, aside from contracts and phone numbers. "When people are in love, it changes everything. "To this day, Shane is a friend of mine. I think so. She calls me as much as I call her. I care about her still." Luke: "How come she doesn't appear on your show?" Seymore: "We did take a trip to Chicago and do a radio interview together. She was filmed for the show. The producers felt it was too much to explain. They cut her out. But you can see her in the interview." Luke: "Whatever happened to Alisha Klass?" Seymore: "That's a good question. I would love to know. She's done such a good job of staying out. I've heard everything from that she lives in a cabin in Big Bear with her husband to she married a music executive from BMG and they spend time between their houses in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara." Luke: "Whatever happened to Taylor Hayes?" Seymore: "She's still the mother of my son. She's not married, though she did have another baby in May." Luke: "What does she do for a living?" Seymore: "I don't know. I don't worry about that. I just worry about the money I have to kick over, but now that I have 100% custody, I don't have to pay..." 5/17/06 Seymore Butts Bumps Heather Veitch Of JCsGirls From 'Attack of the Show' On G4 Gaming Network Heather calls me Wednesday morning. "I was going to do this show with Taylor Wane and Seymore Butts. They did not tell Seymore I was going to be on the show. He comes in the green room. I'm like, 'Hi, I'm Heather Veitch.' And he says, 'I know who you are.' "He says, 'I've read a lot about you.' "Immediately he goes outside and has a big long talk with [the producers]. He didn't want to do the show with me because of the religion. They were trying to tell him that she's not going to bash you. "It wasn't necessarily Seymore's fault. The show didn't tell him I was coming. That's the worst. That happens on shows. They try to trick you. You think you are going to be talking about this but it's something else. Seymore was like, no way, I'm not going to be talking about religion. "So I was bumped off the show. "I told them I'd rather not do the show and not offend him. My priority isn't doing television shows. In fact, I'm so sick of media. I started turning down a lot of things, even Christian shows. It takes up so much of my time, I can't do the real ministry." 5/18/06 Seymore Butts On Big-Breasted Evangelists Adam Glasser aka Seymore blogs 5/18/06 on MySpace:
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