Porn Valley- I spoke to Tiffany Holiday Monday afternoon. Holiday quit L.A. Direct Models Friday over sets of circumstances which included their allegedly holding some of her money and “verbal abuse” which Holiday claims she had to put up with.
Holiday says she had no choice but to quit, that it was impossible to work any longer for the agency. Holiday, who lives in North Carolina, claims L.A. Direct was holding $5,000 of her money. She also claims she was told she could pick it up but since she had quit the agency, she was required to pay a $1200 cancellation fee for a Shy Love shoot.
Holiday says she paid the penalty but later found out that it really wasn’t necesssary. “Shy Love told Derek that she didn’t want my money, that she wanted nothing to do with it. This was through another party that talked to her. She said, no I didn’t want the money. This was something Derek was trying to get out of me because I walked in there and quit.”
Another situation adding to the tumult was the fact that when Holiday flew into town she was told that there was nothing immediately scheduled for her. So she took that to mean her time was free for awhile so she went to the beach with some friends. “They told me you didn’t have work so I figured I had a day to myself.”
But Holiday says L.A. Direct then called her around 11:30 in the morning telling her she now had a shoot with Shy Love scheduled at 1:30. Fed up with the way things were being handled, Holiday did the shoot then quit the agency immediately afterwards. That’s when she was tagged with the $1200, according to her, because she had also been booked with Love again the following day.
“But it had been in my mind to quit for awhile,” Holiday states. “With Derek screaming at me on the phone I just picked up my stuff at the office.” According to Holiday, the agency was supposed to have opened up a savings account for her but she didn’t want them doing that. “I told them I didn’t want you opening a savings account- I don’t want you doing any bullshit like that. I just want my money and I want to leave. He was making it impossible.”
Holiday said she encountered a similar instance the last time she tried getting her money before going home. “My mom was puting all my money in a savings account,” she said. “But Derek said no. He said either you can take this money and leave. I’ll take you to the airport. Or you can leave it here and have a job and be able to work in this industry. I’m thinking being fired from L.A. Direct would look really bad so I went along with it. Finally I couldn’t put up with him being vulgar and calling around like an obsessive agent telling my friends they can’t hang out with me, they have to go to North Carolina to see me. That right there made me think that this man was going a little bit too far.”
Commenting on the $1200 that was supposedly taken from her, Holiday says, “He [Derek] had my money there, and payroll checks take two weeks- a lot of the work I did before I left was payroll. So some of those checks are still to be collected. I called the companies and told them I don’t want to work for him any more, I want to pick up my checks that are waiting. But L.A. Direct had picked them up after I quit that day.” Holiday says she specifically told several porn companies that she didn’t want L.A. Direct picking up her checks. “But they picked them up after I quit. That right there was a bad sign.” Holiday managed to pick up one check from Metro but claims she was told by L.A. Direct that there was a warrant out for her arrest for doing so. “And that was money that was entitled to me.”
Holiday says she figured without a lawyer she was screwed to begin with. Holiday claims she also called the cops. “The only way I could go to L.A. Direct and collect any of my money was to call the cops and say, hey, come with me. This man is withholding my money. The accountant knows it. She wanted to give it to me but Derek wasn’t there when the cops were there. The cops then had to go but came back ten minutes later. But Derek wasn’t there so they couldn’t dispute it with him. And they couldn’t do anything without me getting a lawyer. Those checks were made out to me. That was my money. I can do what I please with my money no matter whether you want to try and open a savings account or what. It’s my money. I work hard for it. I do the best scenes I can for it.”
Holiday says another $600 was being assessed to change locks, but that bill was ultimately reduced to $198. “But I found the key before the locksmiths got to the house,” she says. “I said here’s your key. This was ridiculous and a long drawn out thing. He just didn’t like how I went in there saying, hey, I’m firing you. Agents don’t fire talent. Talent fires agents for not doing something right.”
Holiday calls the verbal assaults inhumane. “He was always pretty harsh with me and other girls. It was me and all the girls who made the most money he was the harshest on.”
Holiday says girls from out of town would generally work twice a day. “There’s only a couple of days you don’t double,” she says. “And he’s really obsessive of making sure you don’t go anywhere, you don’t get into any type of mischief. You don’t go out. You can’t go out past this time. This isn’t a personal relationship where you can tell us where we can go. We come out here to work and when we’re not working, we should be entitled to do whatever we want, not answer to some agent. That’s weird to me.”
Holiday says her friend Lucy is repped by Chris from Fox Modeling and now wants to check things out there. “We’ve been talking and he seems like a pretty cool dude,” Holiday says. “Nobody I know has any complaints about him.” Holiday says L.A. Direct was her first agency that prior to that she had freelanced for 8 months.
But in all of this, Holiday just finds it remarkable that she had to pay “cancellation fees”.
“People cancel on me plenty of times and I don’t see them paying my day rate.”