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Gail Harris's Falcon Foto

5/21/99

Gail Harris comes by, a pretty English blonde who I’ve watched all convention but was not sure who she was.

From Yorkshire, Gail came to the US in 1986. She appeared in numerous Roger Korman B movies and layouts for such photographers as Ken Marcus. About 1990, she formed her own company, www.falconfoto.com and www.falconfoto.net.

"I came up with [the magazine] Barely Legal. I put the package together and took it up to LFP. I produced the first few issues. They were responsible for publishing it and getting it out on the newsstands. It was so successful that they took it in-house. They bought me out a couple of years ago. My name was on the masthead as Gail Zachary, my maiden name. I am single again [divorced]."

Luke: "Is it hard for you as a woman working in a male dominated industry?"

Gail: "At first people didn’t take much notice of me. It took me a while to persuade them to go with Barely Legal. Once I did that, and it was a phenomenal success, I have publishers making me offers on magazines before anybody saw it… I have major publishers asking my advice about certain fetishes and why their magazines aren’t working, etc…

"After Barely Legal, I started Hotel Girls. I’m now starting two new ones. One’s young girl magazine and one is a completely new concept.

"We shoot videos too [single girl masturbation]. Mainly we shoot stills. And then, since we had to fly a girl in for a few days, we decided that we might as well also do videos. We have 225 videos. We sell them by mail order and to the Playboy catalogue.

"We divide by niches. Big boob, young girl, asian, black, butt… When a girl comes to see us, she never does a general girl. We always find some catch. If she has nice legs, we shoot her for a leg magazine. If she looks young, we shoot her for a Barely Legal type magazine. If she’s busty, we shoot her for a Busty magazine. The hardest girls to sell now are the pretty girls unless she is absolutely stunning.

"We studied the niches. We have standing orders at the antique stores to buy 1950s stockings and lingerie. We have shoes made in England with six inch heels. We concentrate on what they want, the different angles that the guy wants to see, and all the different tweaks that you need to do to get the leg guy interested. And not every photographer gets it down. One photographer may be great at legs may not be good at young girl stuff."

Luke: "How young do you go?"

Gail: "They have to be legal. Over 18. Looking young. It’s a fantasy. A lot of guys say to me, ‘I like your young girl stuff but it’s not hardcore.’ And I have to explain to them ‘that the guys who like the young girl series like the fact that they are sweet and innocent and naïve and she’s not really sure she wants to do it. If a girl comes in and does three guys, she’s not young, sweet and innocent anymore and the whole fantasy is blown. I see this in letters from readers all the time.

"We deal with every talent agent in LA. We advertise everywhere. We’ve shot about 4000 girls. And we also buy out other people. I own all the Penthouse material from the 1970s and 1980s and some unusual British photography. We’ve just started selling to websites. Our business has been print for years. Now the internet has come up and we’re digitizing our photos and color-correct it.

"I don’t really have any competitors. Most of my competitors are individual photographers. And I’m one of the few who owns a library. We have over a billion images."

Luke: "What do you your parents think?"

Gail: "My mom helps me in the business. Some of my friends from school know and they think it is cool.
"Guys come to work for me and think it’s going to be exciting. And after a couple of months, they’re "I don’t want that as my screen saver, give me a beach scene.’

"I’ve become more open-minded. I realize that guys like all types of women."

Luke: "Do you now think of men as perverts?"

Gail: "No, quite the opposite. I find it interesting to get into the mind of the guy and find out what he likes. And that’s what we have to do to shoot something he likes. If he’s into plump women, we have to put our mind in that arena, and think ‘what it is it he likes about them? Is it the touch of the stocking, the smell, the legs, the feet, the heels?’

"Female sexuality is probably just as disgusting. Female sexuality is more cerebral. They think more. As a woman, I have an outside point of view. As a guy, you probably have a taste. If you like pretty young girls, it’d be hard to understand the guy who likes leg girls or butts."

Luke: "I have a fetish for blonde business owners [like Gail Harris]."

Gail laughs. "That’s kinda what my new magazine is about. You’ll have to wait to see."

Luke: "They’re behind the desk, they have computers and power. Women on top."

Gail smiles: "It has to do with power."

Gail shows us a photo of an old lady in lingerie. "She’s our top selling video," says Harris.

Paul: "You’re kidding."

Gail: "She outsells our pretty girl videos ten to one. We get a lot more money for our fat bitches and our pregnant women. Anything that is more unusual."

Paul: "When you want to find a 70-year old woman to do this, where do you start looking?"

Gail’s assistant Tig Pena, a pierced young man who sat across the aisle from me on the flight back to Los Angeles, says: "We advertise locally for plus size models, over 40 models, and you’d be surprised how many women… It’s an ego boost to them."

Gail: "I’ll send a team to swinger conventions and find people there. We used to pay agents a dollar per year… So if they found a 75-year old woman, we’d pay them a $75 finders fee.

"It depends on how you shoot it. If you’ve got a girl with nice legs, it’s important that you shoot them at the right angle."

Paul: "I can’t imagine what the shooting aesthetic would be for that woman [a grandma type]."

Gail: "They want to see them in lingerie."

Tig: "And they want to see them take off their clothes. They want to see them in old lady dresses, and corsets…"

Gail: "And the older woman section mainly appeals to men between the ages of 20-28."

7/18/01

From the Chicago Tribune:

"I was working in made-for-cable and 'B' movies before I developed this sideline business," said Harris, 36, who broke into the skin trade as England's "Marlboro Girl" and posing for a tabloid's "Page 3" feature. "One day, I asked my boyfriend, who was a photographer, if I could take the images he'd thrown in the trash, and try to find a use for them. I went down to a newsstand, collected a bunch of men's magazines, and shipped off the pictures to the addresses I found.

"I sold everything."

While also acting in such straight-to-video epics as "Cellblock Sisters: Banished Behind Bars," "Sorority House Massacre II" and "Virtual Desire," Harris used her modeling connections to initiate an exchange of photo collections with agents on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Instead of paying the photographers she represented a small commission on occasional sales to magazines, she would agree to a flat fee up front for all rights to the images.

It didn't take long before Falcon Foto owned the copyrights to tens of thousands of photographs, which she then syndicated to magazine publishers around the world. When the Internet began to explode in the mid-'90s, Harris already had viable business and distribution models in place, and she prospered, along with the rest of the adult-entertainment industry. Today, the privately held company owns 1.5 million mostly soft-core images, yet it remains one of the best-kept secrets in the constantly expanding world of adult entertainment. The www.falconfoto.com Web site offers consumers and other Web masters dozens of niche photo galleries from which to choose, plus streaming videos, CD-ROMs and stories.

Casual observers might assume that skin magazines retain the rights to the photographs they use, and, as such, have stacks of pictures stashed away for creative dry spells. In fact, with the exception of Playboy and a few other publications, most skin magazines only own first rights to the handful of images they pick from each portfolio.

Freelance photographers, then, can peddle the dozens that are left unsold to other magazines and Web sites. Or, they can make deals with archivists, like Falcon Foto.

RPM writes: Luke, wondering about the following: Did that Falcon Foto article mention that the company is currently for sale? If not, then the reporters were suckered into providing some nice sales material.

12/21/05

What Will Gail Harris Bring To LFP Internet?

Sexycity writes on JBM: "That's a blessing. Hustler's site tours are wretched for a company that has so much amazing content in its vaults. They just got hosted galleries this year, fancy that."

Best I can see and from what tattlers have told Gail Harris is acting as something of a business development and clean up consultant to Larry Flynt. She has been a behind the scenes player for years. Her own company Falcon Foto is one of the largest suppliers of images to the web and to magazines.

Gail has been rumored to be going through the company finding ways for Larry to make more money and grow out the business.

She floated a list of ways to trim fat in the Internet division and its now making more money. Rumor has it that next year will be even bigger. Gail was the one who originally brought Webquest to Jim Kohls to design the sites; Webquest must have convinced Kohls to let them run the whole thing instead.

She is currently working with the video division. Gail has been around since the beginning of the Internet and has a history of knowing who to put in business with each other. She created Barely Legal and Hometown Girls and knows what she is talking about when it comes to knowing what sells and who can best sell it.

Her bio found in an old Internext guide says:

GAIL HARRIS - Gail Harris was rated the 12th most important person in the adult industry by the UK’s Arena Magazine and who USA Today ranked among the Web's most innovative and profitable entrepreneurs, is an icon having created, developed and produced from conception the Larry Flynt publication Hustler’s Barely Legal, one of the most prolific publications and brands standing second only to Hustler Magazine by outselling all but one of Flynt’s 50 or more titles. The launch of Barely Legal revolutionized the industry with 22 copycat titles appearing, as well as format changes in established publications and in the video medium. Gail proved her vision again with a second title Hometown Girls published in partnership with Flynt and equally coveted in the men’s magazine world, currently Flynt’s 3rd top earner. Falcon Foto’s third announcement of a new title Virgins Magazine created a bidding war before the concept was even released. At the same time, Gail founded Falcon Foto, which today stands as one of the world’s most prominent providers of soft adult entertainment material to the publishing and Internet industries with a library covering a vast diversity of models in over 17 main niches. Today, until Ms. Harris’ management, Falcon Foto serves as the major licensor of adult material to the print publishing groups contributing approximately 50% of all content in the industry and as one of the largest providers of adult photo content on the Internet.