Porn Valley- I spoke to Uncle Lanny Mitchell Saturday morning. Lanny is with a company called Yes Dude and they’ve had a falling out with Arnold Stein over at Trampas/Old Pueblo Distribution. It’s over money. How unusual. Lanny, last week made his communiques with Stein public indicating that OPD’s financial records keeping has been a mess and that Stein has failed to meet his accounting and payment obligations to Yes Dude. Stein posted a rebuttal instantly and Lanny claims it doesn’t tell anywhere near the story. Lanny says he would have preferred a different way to make acquaintance but felt his story needed to get out.
“Arnold has misstated facts,” says Lanny, bluntly. According to Lanny, he first made Stein’s acquaintance at AVN 2004 and there were subsequent meetings set up in Tucson with the company owners and Stein’s chief editor.
At the trade show, one of Lanny’s people heard Stein talking about being from Tucson and that they were distributors.
“He brought them over to me and that’s how the introductions were made,” says Lanny. “Arnold was told about the kind of product I was producing and Arnold was very interested. He wanted to meet and shortly after at my house here in Tempe, Arizona we had a meeting.” According to Lanny, the partners in the company also attended the meeting.”We met and Arnold told me I needed to give him five or six completed shoots,” said Lanny.
Stein told him he would handle the editing, make a boxcover, replicate the product and distribute it. Because of the nature of the deal on the table, Lanny suggested a 60-40 split with Stein getting the 40%.
“The reason I gave him the 40% was because he said, typically, there was a charge to edit and author and I said I understand that,” Lanny goes on to say. “I said how about we go a higher price and he said it was fine. He considered me to be a friend and, frankly, I considered him to be a friend which is why I put up with a lot of difficulties that we had with the money.”
In his rebuttal to Lanny, Stein is quoted as saying, “Uncle Lanny product wasn’t a great a line for me, I am being kind here by saying great, it was barely a good line for me. I am more than happy to stop all distribution of Yes Dude, llc and move on.”
“Barely a good line means to me, okay, on a grading scale maybe it was B-minus,” is Lanny’s response. “But still it’s a good line.” And then the obvious question is begged, if the product was barely a good line, why then did Stein strike up a deal with Yes Dude in the first place? Lanny wonders that as well and the fact that at the time of the release of the second DVD, Stein, March of last year, wrote a very glowing press release.
“He always told me it was great stuff bearing in mind that content is subjective,” says Lanny. “You might not like something that someone else would like. People who are looking for the Vivid girls aren’t going to want to see my stuff. I really go out of the way to get the real, true amateurs. Most of these girls are first timers and there’s a feel to that and that’s what I produce. If you like it or don’t like it, that’s fine. But the quality of my shoots is good. I’ve been a photographer and cinematographer for decades- I know how to light; I know what kind of camera to use to get the best quality and the quality is good.”
But Lanny’s also philosophical to the tune realizing that the best way to fail especially in the adult industry is trying to please everyone.
“I’m sure the numbers aren’t the best that’s ever happened out there, but certainly more than acceptable.”
Lanny also can’t understand the strike that Arnold took at Summer Haze in his rebuttal when Haze had nothing to do with his agreement with Arnold. Haze and her husband Craig Valentine have had similar issues with Stein.
“I didn’t think it was right to take that shot,” says Lanny.
All of this being said, says Lanny, he’s had problems from day one getting paid from OPD.
“I would have to say 50% of the time he told me he was going to send a check, the check would arrive after I had to call him numerous times and getting stories like, oh, it went out. FedEx must have lost it- I left it on my desk, I forgot to mail it. Then it would be for half the amount he owed me. Then the other 50% of the time, the money would never show up at all.” Another problem, said Lanny, involved getting reports on the numbers.
“Maybe we got them five times over a two-year period. That’s hardly a weekly basis.” The straw that broke the camel’s back, according to Lanny, was Stein telling him before the last AVN, that he would send Lanny a check between $1500 to $2,000.
“He said that wasn’t all he owed me but that’s what he was going to give me,” Lanny states. “I called and called and never got it. I saw him at AVN and he told me that I would get it when I got back. I said, okay. Let’s get this thing on the road. We’ve had problems. Let’s move forward.” When he got back, Lanny called Stein and was told by Stein that he had good news- that he was going to replicate the third disc.
“We’re going back to the fact that if this isn’t a good product, why is he making a third disc?” Lanny asks. “He never mentioned to me about this not being a good product.” According to Lanny, Stein was also talking about a deal involving North American distribution rights.
“He was talking about an amount of like $12 to $13,000.” Lanny said he didn’t know if his partner wanted to go with something like that and suggested to Stein they needed to talk.
“I specificially told him don’t replicate the [third] disc until we talk,” Lanny continues.
“From that point on and this was at the end of January, I was never able to have a call answered or a call returned. And I left many, many messages on his office machine as well his cellphone. Not a single call was returned. Then one day I pulled up his site, the opdshop.com and there’s the release of As Real As It Gets #2 which is my third disc. This was a March release and I didn’t even get a copy of this disc until last Thursday when he sent me back a good number of my product, including this third one and the boxcover inserts. There were actually no boxes. That leads me to go back where he says 2,000 units sold of one title and he got 800 back. If he got 800 back, I know he doesn’t ship to retailers on spindles with inserts. The product is produced, packaged and shrink-wrapped. I didn’t get it back that way. Where are they? Then on Friday I got about 15 pieces of varying titles that were in boxes and shrink wrapped. But only 15 of them. Everything else is on spindles. Where are these 800 pieces that came back? That’s a question that I would have.”
Stein, in his letter, also talks about money to edit and that Lanny is in breach of contract. Stein writes: “I also would like to state, that I was given raw footage, no images and an idea to work with to make these movies, We did the editing, artwork and authoring at no cost to Mr Mitchell or Yes Dude, llc. This alone was a breach of contract that I was willing to look past, as I believed that with time and effort, we and I truly mean we could have made his product a much better sellable dvd than what I was given to sell. OPD charges $2500 to Edit, Author, do menu’s and box cover for projects such as this.”
“There was no breach,” Lanny protests. “He had already agreed to a deal. That’s why he charged me 40%. Now he did charge me half of the costs of replicating, shipping and all that.” According to the contract, says Lanny, the two companies would mutually decide on a number of copies being duplicated.
“It was his decision on how many copies went out,” says Lanny who was also given stories that OPD had various problems with different replicating companies.
“It’s been a constant thing that I’ve been going through,” Lanny continues. On another note, Lanny said he wasn’t going to attend the 2005 AVN but Sein insisted that he be there.
“He said I really want you there,” Lanny goes on to say. “I want you at the booth. He said I have a block of rooms. Your room is paid for. I said okay, I’ll come up. I came up and spent all my time at his booth. I helped extensively with setting up and moving things. Arnold had problems with the Teamsters because you’re not allowed to move anything with wheels and bringing stuff into the convention. That’s obviously how the Teamsters make their money. So I helped carry in a lot of stuff and spent all my time there. When I received my final spread sheet, it was very skeletal and nothing was really broken down including how much the movie made and what the costs were. But in there was a charge for $1,000 for my room when I was at AVN! There’s nothing in here that would indicate that I had to pay for that. He told me I’m paying for the room. Now he’s charging me.
“He told me in December he owed me $1500 to $2,000- I never got that check,” states Lanny. “But he sent me what he calls a final payment stating that he’s terminating the agreement. Well he didn’t terminate it. I did.” Lanny says the check was for $1600 and change- a check which he has not deposited and won’t until this matter is straightened out. In a letter to him, Stein tells Lanny that as of 4/19/06, all has been resolved and Lanny’s now paid up in full.
“Nothing has been resolved,” Lanny insists. “And I certainly haven’t been paid up in full. There are discrepancies and Yes Dude has been doing an investigation for almost a year now into what he’s been doing with my titles [including unauthorized VOD deals].
“He has sold stuff of mine overseas that I haven’t been paid for. Even on the last spread sheet he sent me, there’s gross discrepancies from the one I had just received. If he indeed owed me from between $1500 to $2,000 back in December, he sent me a check for $1625.61. Since then this third title has been released and according to his numbers, he’s showing approximately 600 of them being sold.
“Obviously there’s more money, if from no place else, just from that. I would like to settle this with Arnold. I have found out without a doubt that he owes me much more money than he’s giving me. I don’t believe I’ve found out all the money that he owes me and I don’t know if I ever will, since this is all over the world. I don’t believe I will get all the money that he owes me. I do believe I will get much more than he’s offering me as a final payment here with the kind of numbers he’s putting up. If this third title was released around March 7, I think 600 units is a pretty good number. It’s not a Paris Hilton video but he doesn’t seem to want to give me my share. I don’t understand why he did this.”
Lanny also points out that he specifically didn’t give Stein authorization to release that third title.
“I told him that in January when he was sending it out for replication,” says Lanny. “I said don’t send it until we nail down the numbers.”
Lanny continually stresses the fact that if he can keep this matter out of the courts and the legal system he’d be willing to do that.
“I want to put this behind me but needless to say I’m certainly looking for a new distributor,” he says. Lanny also says he did the deal with Stein in the first place because Stein came off as a very personal guy and seemed like he’d be a great salesman for the product.
“I thought he’d be someone I could work with,” says Lanny. “But this seems to me to be a guy who’s struggling and is in a panic. The bottom line is, give me my money. I don’t want to hear from him and he sends me an e-mail saying I don’t want to hear from you. He seems to think his word is the final word, but I have to do everything I can to collect the money he owes me.”