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"AVN didn't know what category to put it in," remembers Stone. "So they started a new category called Gonzo [means brash]. "We worried about how it'd be received but it went over great. Now the format has been beaten to death. I'm sick of it." Mark grew up in upstate New York and moved to California with his brother Gary in 1980 to form a rock'n'roll band. After telemarketing for several years to support his rock habit, Mark began working in porn production. His first set was Lust in the Fast Lane starring traci Lords nad Ginger Lynn. "Jackie (Traci Lords) and Bill (Tom Byron) decide to get away for the weekend. They head toward Las Vegas on a back road and get a flat tire, but they have no spare. Seeking help at a lonely country house, they are greeted by Jake (Eric Edwards) and his wife, Louise (Ginger Lynn), who are in the midst of a swapsie party with friends. Jackie and Bill are quickly involved in the fun and games. "Traci Lords and Ginger Lynn were the hot porno stars of 1984. They can't act, but they have beautiful bodies, and soon they are in the sack ecstatically moaning and screaming as they taste and finger each other's tits and vulva in an extended, flesh-toned, shot-on-video sequence.... Eighty minutes of detailed examination of vulvas and pricks and anuses." (Bob Rimmer, X-Rated Videotape Guide, p. 471) "It was the wildest set I've ever been on," remembers Mike Stone. "Traci Lords, unbeknownst to us, was 15 years of age at the time but she seemed like an experienced champ. She got into a contest with Ginger Lynn to see who was the f--- queen. "I spent time talking with Sheri St. Claire. She seemed sweet. She said that in her real life she was a one-man woman who loved intimacy. Then she got called for her scene. It was a DP with a third guy getting a blowjob. I'd never seen anything like it. My jaw was on the floor. A one-man woman? Christ! I watched this huge circus act until she came back covered with cum. "Jesus Christ," I said to her, "you're a one-man woman?" "Can't you tell I was just acting," she replied. "We're talking a little while later and Sheri asks me what I do. I told her I was a musician. She stood up and yelled at me, "Musician, scum!" And she walked away. It was a flipped-out day." "On most sets, when the scene is done, the action stops. But on my first set, I walked into a room to announce lunch and I see Eric Edwards sitting down watching Tom Byron eat out Traci Lords. She's wriggling and screaming and acting like she's possessed by the devil. "It's lunch," I called out. 'Kentucky Fried Chicken and it's finger lickin' good.' "During the whole weekend, there was sex everywhere." Scotty Fox directed Moonlight's first five years of movie releases. "He was a good director and cameraman but he wanted to do mainstream work. He wanted to make movies and get through the sex scenes but that's not how our business works. "At first we wanted to do couples movies, heavy with story. Our first was Reckless Passion starring Blondi and Tony Montana. It was hilarious because they couldn't act. But we figured out with Tony's strong accent to cast him as Ricky in an I Love Lucy ripoff called Lucy Has A Ball. Cash Markman wrote it and we shot it like a sitcom with a laugh track. Then we did My Bare Lady, adult's first musical [in many years]. I wrote the music and lyrics copying My Fair Lady. "Though we've done ok, the big fast money was to be made at the front end of the video revolution and we missed out." After sitting through AVN's boring three hour awards show in 1986, feeling like slitting his wrists, Mark told AVN publisher Paul Fishbein that he'd like to produce the next show. Mark did, it went well, and he and his band The Stingers have been running it ever since. "For a business that has a hard time clapping each other, we put on a good time." Mark Stone sings, plays guitar and writes songs. "It's a great test for the band because we play everything during the show from classical to the blues to hard rock. Dyanna Lauren is an excellent singer and she's been with us the last two years." Since taking over the camera in 1991, Mark's concentrated on hot gonzo sex and few movies apart from the well-received Sex Trek series. "Most movies concentrate on either the face or the genitals. I shoot so that you can see both. You want to see a beautiful woman getting f---ed and her face is the reaction to the action. Her face is your gauge to see whether she's getting off." Born in 1955, Stone has never married. "I'm avoiding the noose. I may be 40, but I feel like a 28-year old. Until I feel like I'm 40, I will keep acting like I'm 20." Adam Film World reviews the original Radical Affairs. "The first release of a Pro-Am video magazine has our host J.B. taking us into the sales office of Moonlight Entertainment where Chanel and Steve Hatcher have sex on a desk. A brief news segment follows, then we get an interview with a segue into a girl-girl with Nikki Dial and Kelly O'Dell. The heat comes across, though at times it has to fight the high testosterone levels and lowbrow sophomoric humor J.B. injects into the proceedings. Catch this one for the multiple squirts Chanel puts out, the fiery backhole f--- probe of O'Dell and the backseat pop of North. Fun, in a dumb teenage male way." (AFW 96 Dir. p. 265) "In Star Trek IV: The Next Orgasm, High Cheese of the most sublime order is provided by Mark Stone in the hilariously campy, near-trademark-infringing continuing exploits of the Starship Intercourse.... Such a loving satirical recreation of the television series, any Trekki can't help but swoon. "Witness as Steven St. Croix, the youngest porn actor around, makes a side-splitting inappropriate stand-in for Patrick Stewart, trying to twist his barrio mumble into a stiff-upper Brit bark. Anna Malle plays cute...as extra-dimensional nymphomaniac Cute, who rolls her eyes in the most sap inducing way when St. Croix plugs her twitching ass. "The video quality of Sex Trek 5: Deep Space Sex is high, and the costumes, computer graphics and score are all outstanding. Delivered by a cast mostly notable for their Ed Wood-style deadpan aplomb, the script's jokes are shameless and constant, except during the sex scenes... which are average. Don't expect any masturbatory epiphanies." (AFW 96 Dir. p. 168) AVN Publisher Paul Fishbein: "When Mark Stone created the first Radical Affairs, we didn't know how to classify it. It wasn't a feature and it wasn't an all-sex tape. It wasn't amateur, yet it didn't have a story. It was a magazine tape, but so were vignettes, shot on Betacam in a studio. It was confusing. "Enter the totally-invented term, "gonzo," which hearkens back to the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson and seemed an appropriate term for adult video that we weren't able to categorize. John Stagliano created a genre for his Buttman series, but we called them features. Ed Powers founded his wacky world of Dirty Debutantes, but we called them amateur. Wasn't it all the same thing? "We split hairs and defined and redefined our sections over and over again. Couldn't we just put them all together? But how do we reward those those spending money on their features, or shooting on film. How can you compare More Dirty Debutantes 48 with a lesbian feature from Lipstik Video? What made Sodomania, reviewed as a feature, different from Private Stories, reviewed as gonzo? Private Stories has a huge budget and is shot in exotic places all over the world on the highest quality cameras. Creme de la Face, until recently, was shot on a Hi-8 camera. How can they both be gonzo? "Maybe AVN created a monster because the term "gonzo" is now part of the pornography lexicon. After several years, gonzo has been considered a legitimate sub-genre of the adult industry. But now everything seems to fit that category, and it's too bad. "Gonzo exists because the ease with which people could purchase and use video cameras spawned a whole new generation of video makers. Witness America's Funniest Home Videos. Pets falling out of car windows became more interesting and funnier than a scripted sitcom. Real sex - the amateur generation - became more interesting than seeing Johnathan Morgan playing a detective in a one-day wonder... Amateur video...begat pro-am which begat gonzo. It's all practically the same thing." (AVN 9/96) Mark made 1996's Face To Face. "...Between sport and reality TV, Face is a good natured raunchfest... Stone's graceful camera captures not only the requisite physical mechanics but many telling moments of lust. "Nici Sterling giggles at the wit of everybody's favorite semi-elderly surfer Randy West. Alex Sanders, who soon will grow up to be Randy West, gets enthusiastic all over French twist Channone's mug… Finally, Dallas D'Amour does Roy the Shipper in the Moonlight warehouse and does Roy look happy with Mark's idea of a Christmas bonus." (AFW 97) 12/09/98 Deep Throat writes: In a costly decision, AVN moved last year’s award show to Caesar’s Palace, thus upping the ante on award show tickets because of Caesar’s incredible overhead. The move, however, was made simply to cater to heavy metal music musician Mark Stone’s whims. Stone, head of Moonlight Entertainment and the brains behind the awards show, apparently had long harbored a dream of playing Caesar’s Palace. Fishbein, and the rest of the industry, paid for the dream. A former Moonlight employee still close to Stone, says that Stone pushed for Caesars in the belief that a high visibility venue would secure a record deal for him. Stone apparently was being scouted by a record company and wanted to be seen performing in a prestige venue. But nothing came of the deal, says the source, because Mark’s talent is all in his head. He’s a garage band musician at best. I talked to Mark Stone by phone just after 11AM. He burst out laughing several times as I read stuff to him. Mark: "That's very entertaining. I found much humor in that. I must tell you that the decision over venue is not based on my whim. We [the AVN Awards] pretty much go where they'll take us. There are only a few places in Las Vegas that can handle the show and during the CES, a couple of those places are always booked every year. "We make deals when we can where we can. Some years there are a couple of places that will take it, some years we are forced to go where we can. One prime example is when we were at the Aladdin. If we didn't do the Aladdin, we weren't doing an Awards show. We were relieved to be at Caesars, there was nowhere else really available to us. "I've been doing music for years. I know record companies. I am not naive enough to think that if a record company sees that you've played at Caesars Palace, they would sign you. Two. When we do the Awards show, it isn't even the real band. It is a specialty gig. I don't see how anybody could sign a band from that." Luke: "Do you think the AVN Awards are fixed?" Mark: "We don't have anything to do with the awards. We just put the show on. But from my experience of being around it, the awards are not fixed. Fishbein bands over backwards with the voting... I believe in the integrity of the awards. Otherwise I might've won one or two awards over the years. They always invite people to look at the balloting. They keep the paperwork in the AVN office... I've looked at it. You see people signing off on their votes for every award. Believe me, people have won that I know for a fact if Paul Fishbein were just doing the awards based on his thought, they would've never gotten the awards." Luke: "Are you a garage band musician at best?" Mark: "Music is in the
ears of the beholder. We're out there with our balls on the line...
I'd challenge any band on the face of the earth to do the wide range
of stuff that we do at the show. I'll let the "Dyanna Lauren plays with us now. We've got four or five tracks recorded. And when we get the CD done, who knows what may happen. "I take umbrage with the heavy metal description. That would insult heavy metal guys everywhere. I'm more of a heavy blues slash hard rock player."
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