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6/00 I talked to two suave sweet-talking black men Sunday at the Bedtime Productions booth in Erotica LA at the LA Convention Center. Johnny Handsome owns and operates the company, located at www.bedtimeproduct.com. JH: "We're one of the few black owned and operated production companies in the industry. We provide big booty urban videos... But we're for people of all ethnicities. We have Trinity signing." Trinity, from Florida, is a tall busty blonde from Florida, a favorite of internet critic Roger Pipe. Dapper Dan: "It is interracial multiethnic stuff." Dan's worked for the past 12 years as an editor of ethnic stroke magazines, largely for New York's Magna Publications. JH: We come to Los Angeles often to shoot as well. We work with Tony Eveready, Lexington Steele and Sean Michaels... They are all friends of mine. I've known them for a long time. And they want to work with me as well. I started Lexington Steele in the business. He did a photo layout for one of my magazines.. A couple of years ago in Atlantic City, I introduced Lex to Michael Raven who wanted him to come to LA to f--- his wife, Sydney Steele. "I gave Champagne a few years ago a cover and a centerfold and she used that to get in the door. "I edit Black Portfolio for Magnum Publications. They own Swank, Genesis, Velvet. That's Lou Perretta's organization. I started at Genesis 12 years ago. Then I was at Black Tail. I made that a succesful book. I came up with the concept of using dancers as models and doing club shoots... Now I'm paying attention to the video market to improve that. Because I didn't like what I was seeing." Bedtime has released 50 videos, and puts out about two videos a month. JH: Dan and I met in the early '90s when I managed such stars as Ebony Ayes, Domonique Simone... Johnny and Dan direct and perform scenes. They tagteamed Trinity once
in "My Cock, Your Wife."
JH: I saw a niche for portraying ethnics in a positive manner... LF: Instead of all the in the hood stuff... JH: Hos, bitches... You won't find any of that... Dan: It is derogatory and condescending. JH: Our presentation is unique. LF: Most black material seems derogatory. JH: Yeah.... Even Jake Steed, who has a series called "Freaks, Hos and Flos." We sell adult videos so we still include graphic shots on the boxcover. But we won't put out a boxcover where the girl's face is covered in cum. We'd rather show women in a more positive light. Luke: What's the difference between all black and all white porn? JH: The subject matter tends to be different. We shoot from an urban perspective. The storylines are differnt... The talent respond differently. Dan: In NY we have Russians, Koreans, Asians, Indians, Latins... I've found that companies here are looking to NY for our talent. JH: We shoot girls that are largely unavailable to the rest of the industry, which is mainly located in LA. Luke: Black girls seem to have more meat on them. Dan: They're healthy. JH: In our ethnic community, we emphasize big butts. I know that culturally Europeans don't. Some of them don't want to see it. We're the Big Booty Bandits. In the ethnic market, the big butt is the calling card. Dan: The LA girls seem to have a similar look, a clone look with their hair and makeup... We emphasize East Coast girls who are naturally sexy, without the implants... Full figured, full rounded... JH: We found that a lot of the black women portrayed in productions on the West Coast have a European look. Dan: They're white girls, except they're black. JH: A lot of our actresses have said, I've always wanted to get into the adult industry but I didn't think I had that look. I didn't think I was slim enough. I thought my butt was too big. I thought my boobs were not big enough. I said no, that's more of a European version of what beauty is. We're giving the world another view. And it's going over well. It's an untapped market. Don't tell anybody Luke. Give me another five years before you let it out. JH: We all love banana splits but every now and again you might want a chocolate nut sundae. Luke: There's a popular conception that black men are hung. JH: That's been my experience. That that's a fact. That's what women have told me... Certainly at Bedtime Productions we have done nothing to dispell that rumor. "We realized a couple of years ago that we were sending our best talent to the West Coast from the East, who were becoming the top performers in the industry, male and female. We decided to develop the talent here [in NY]. "We've used Tony Eveready in about 20 movies. We use Jake Steed, Santino Lee, Byron Long, Devlin Weed, Porsha... "We're being distributed by Frank Korestky and International Video Distributors. Previously we had arelatiionship with Russ Katz at GVA Mid Atlantic but we would like to get one distributor who distributes our product nationally. We'd prefer to concentrate our energies and efforts on production." Luke: "Many people have strong feelings about black guys with white women. Some people love it. And often the reason they love it is that it is transgressive and nasty. And others hate it for the same reasons." JH: "We've based a lot of what we do on interracial coupling. About 80% of our videos are interracial, with black men with white women, or with non-black women. We think it is a very good way to make a statement about the hypocrisy out there regarding interracial attraction. We know it exists. We have no problem at all finding women for our videos. And two, it is our effort to form a stronger bond between the two communities. We'd like to see no divisions, no lines, no separations. We're doing what we can to blur that line further. And we say big ups to people who concur and big downs to people who don't." Dan: "If it is going to bother you, don't look at it. "Sex is sex. As long as it is a hot sexy video, it should not matter who is performing in it. Even in the publishing industry, everything is separated. There are the white girl books and the ethnic books. They don't mix them. I've been fighting that for 12 years and it has been very frustrating. Because my boss and everybody sticks to the same rules." JH: "One of our secrets is that a lot of people who enjoy adult videos enjoy interracial videos. Don't tell anyone though. We've never had a complaint about our interracial videos. Nobody has ever said, 'Hey, I think your stuff is very good except that I am tired of seeing all those beautiful white women with those handsome black men.'"
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