Porn Valley- Nick Manning was a guest of The Sports Swami this past Friday. A porn star and co-owner of Platinum Blue, Manning was asked in his wildest dreams did he think it would be this good, this fast.
“No,” said manning. “What we’ve done in the last year has been really impressive and I thank my partner Skye Blue for doing a really good job.” Swami pointed out that Blue along with Manning have reputations- good or bad- for being strong-willed, take charge individuals.
“It’s almost like two Brahma bulls leading a charge,” said Swami. “How do you co-exist with the other in terms of ideas even when you guys disagree?”
Manning said the situation has been great because Blue is his best friend.
“We used to date,” he said. “That’s really where the partnership came from. I went to Skye about three years ago and said, you’re my favorite director, we should do something together. Instead of getting in business together we wound up fucking. It took awhile. But after that relationship was over we stayed in touch and then we put the company together.” Manning was asked what his role was in the organization.
“I’m chief investment and marketing officer,” he said. “That’s basically my title; and I get involved in the executive production of the movies as well as I star in the movies. It’s a team effort because there’s only three of us. I’ll also get involved as much as doing the quality control on the movie after it’s done.” Manning was asked what it was like to have the realization of his own company booth at AVN.
“You guys are one of the top young companies in the business- what was the feeling like?” Swami asked.
“There’s a lot of challenges,” said Manning. “And because we’ve been around and had some experience- what I like to say is that the dumbest guy on Wall Street is the smartest in porno. So we were able to put the egos aside and do some good things.” Manning was a baseball player and got hurt.
“I tried to follow that career and it just didn’t happen,” Manning said. “So I finished grad school and I went to work on Wall Street. I was a success at it but I was never happy. Then some people in New York talked to me about doing some regular acting and modeling; and that’s what I did. That’s how I got started, doing modeling in New York. I moved down to Miami Beach and I did the same thing there and I did some TV shows and some films. When I came out to LA I did a Playgirl issue and a spread. It was a boy-girl with Laurie Wallace who does some stuff for Hustler from time to time. So that was my first foray into adult. From there Vivid called me and said we’d like you to do some things with us. Then Wicked called and it kind of steamrolled from there. Back in the day, someone coming out here without a girl- that was just unheard of. I’m the last guy in the business that I can remember who came in on his own.”
Manning was asked what the average day in his life as a performer is like.
“There’s good and bad days,” said Manning. “What I’ve noticed is there are other people in the business who don’t approach it the way I do. Or maybe don’t have the luxury to approach it the way that I do. What I like to do is train like a professional athlete. I eat, I train and I fuck girls- those are the three things I concentrate on. And I have a team of people that pretty much manage the rest of my life so I don’t have to get bogged down in the day-to-day taking out the garbage and doing shit like that. I just focus on what I’m good at.”
Swami said that it was difficult to fake it as a male performer.
“The fireman ain’t coming out of the house, the fireman ain’t coming out of the house.”
Manning conceded that having sex on camera would be intimidating to a lot of people.
“But that’s not the part of the job that troubles me,” he said. “The part of the job that gets to me is the daily grind. Anybody can be a porn star once in awhile or three days a week. But to do it five, six, seven days a week, every week sometimes two scenes a day- sometimes there’s weeks where you’ll do 10 scenes in six days. To do it full time like that and be on every single day and have to thrown down- it’s just a grind and what it does to your body. Especially when you’re doing this on little or no sleep because you’ve been on set for 8 hours somewhere.”
Manning says it does take a toll and he tries to take care of himself. To wit: the night before he had a four hour massage.
“You have to approach it very seriously from a physical standpoint and make sure you’re in the best condition you can be in if you want to be successful,” Manning said. Swami said some people have described Manning as suave and others have called him an arrogant SOB.
“What should fans know about you that we don’t know about you as a human being?” he asked Manning.
“I’m just a real private person,” Manning answered. “I’m just a guy from the Midwest. To me integrity and those types of things are important. When I don’t respect someone, I can’t associate with that person. It takes me awhile to get to know people because they have to earn my respect over time. That’s just not something I give away right away. I can probably tell you that there’s a lot of people that misunderstand me or don’t know me very well or whatever is. And in terms do I care about that or think about that? The answer is no because I’m focused on what I do. I leave the critics to be the critics.”
Manning was asked how someone would go about being a close associate and be set apart from the sponges.
“Dean Sussman is a perfect example,” answered Manning. “He’s a partner and handles sales at Platinum Blue.” Manning went on to tell a story about how he didn’t know Sussman at the time.
“He was working at Private in sales- he came up to me and introduced himself. He just wanted to meet me,” said Manning. “Over the time we developed a relationship and we talked. I didn’t just blow him off because he’s in sales and probably has some value to the things that I thought were important in my career. And six years later we have a business together. It just depends on the person and whether or not they’re the fiber or the character I choose to associate with.”
Manning also has a website, www.nickmanning.com and was asked what active part he takes in it and what was the website all about.
“I don’t have the answers to any of those things,” Manning laughed. “I will tell you- the only thing that I can do on a web page is answer my e-mails.I try to be really good about answering my fans e-mails; I don’t always get to it every day but there are days when I’ll get on a couple of times a day and return e-mails. It just depends on the schedule. I don’t really have all that much to do with the website nor do I want to because that’s not my area of expertise. I’ve got a staff of people and that’s one of the things that they handle; and for what it’s worse, the website has been a pretty lucrative business for us.”
Being one of the top male performers, Manning was asked what some of the weirdest requests are that he’s received from women.
“I get propositioned a lot,” Manning said. “I’ve had everyone from Pamela Anderson to Victoria Silvstedt and the problem is I’m busy. I’m working a lot so I can’t just drop everything and go have sex with someone just because they send me an e-mail. I don’t care who they are. I’m pretty dedicated to my craft and I like to maintain my discipline around that. A couple of months ago I was getting e-mails from Ice T’s wife, Nicole Austin- she wanted to hook up but that’s not something I’m interested in at this point.”
Swami delved into Manning’s love life and asked how difficult it was having a relationship being a performer and a company owner.
Manning admitted that even if he wasn’t putting in a lot of hours, he’s horrible at relationships and that he’s not boyfriend material. Manning thinks maybe whether it’s the job or just him he has a way of tapping into the craziness of people.
“Given what I do I can’t have that kind of influence in my life,” Manning continued. “It’ll start messing with your head and you’re not happy; you’re thinking about your dick and you’re going crazy thinking about working with your ex. There’s a myriad of things that can happen. Whether I have a relationship or not is going to be up to the other people rather than me.”
Swami brought up the Internet where shit runs rampant and asked Manning what’s the worst thing he’s encountered as far as the ‘net sewing circle.
“You’d probably laugh if you knew the limited amount of time I spend on any of the gossip sites,” said Manning. “Anything I find out is what someone points out to me. Hey, man, did you see this? I’m not that interested in it. My free time is my free time and I’m not going to spend it delving into porno gossip.” Whereas Swami said many of the other male performers follow the sites and are about to start instant food fights if something is written about them they don’t like.
“I learned from sports that you can’t read your headlines,” responded Manning. “It really doesn’t affect me, my performance, or my life based upon what somebody wants to say. I won’t even validate it by responding.”
Without mentioning specifics Manning talked about the time he got involved in an imbroglio with a deejay’s girlfriend [the Chef Jeff-Kinzie Kenner rift on KSEX].
“He [Jeff] called me a pussy,” said Manning who felt that he had to go to the station and face Jeff. Swami said while Manning isn’t the size of an NFL lineman, he goes a good size.
“How do you know when to push or when to work hard when you’re working with a Rio Mariah or a Victoria West- dainty little girls, five feet tall that you toss around like stuffed animal?” Manning said it was funny because he had just got back from a trip to Japan where the women he worked with went 80 pounds.
“You really can’t perform like you can in the US with the home girls,” Manning said.
As far as Platinum Blue is concerned, Manning said even the company is misunderstood.
“It’s not the kind of company that most of the companies model or emulate,” he said. “Basically it’s my own business model and I have certain things that I feel are important. I’m a profit-driven manager. I make money for us and for our investors. That’s the goal of what I do. Platinum is a distribution company that produces. It’s not a production company that distributes. And the way you think about those things, it’s night and day versus your actual outcome. We probably only distribute two of our own movies a month and probably put out two to three of somebody else’s. Production companies are more focused on just producing volume and worry about distribution later. My goal when I started Platinum Blue was to make everybody a lot of money.
“It wasn’t about making movies I starred in or any of that because I can do that for other people. What I wanted to do is I wanted to make high quality movies that shouldn’t cost a fortune- $100,000 budgets certainly not in that ballpark- but could draw revenue streams from all over the world. I don’t like to call it a vanilla product but it’s a real high quality product that is demanded by different segments of people.”
Manning said part of the reason why he went into business with Skye Blue is that she’s always been one his favorite directors and performers.
“I can tell that she’s devoted efforts to some of the smaller details that go into making a good movie,” he said. “Set design, production, casting- a lot of the things that get glossed over when you’re doing lower quality or lower budget films. We took a lot of time to dedicating ourselves to working harder on those areas so our movies should be a little bit better.”
Manning went on to say that he would rather work for Blue than any other director by far.
“We’ve worked together enough to where it’s almost a quiet scene,” said Manning about working with Tyler. “She doesn’t say much; I don’t say much and we just go about our business because we’ve done it and we understand what’s expected.”
Noting that Manning went from being an All-American high school and college pitcher to a Wall Street banker to a porn star, Manning was asked how his family reacts to all of this and how they handle the lifestyle he lives.
“Even Skye calls me reckless and maybe I am,” Manning conceded. “But I’m just a guy who likes to work hard and play hard. I do everything at a real hyper speed. It’s hard to relax and I’m a workaholic. It’s hard to chill out. People see my behavior at times- maybe reckless is the word. And as far as my family goes, well that disturbs them. I’m not here to make friends and I’m not here to impress anyone. I’m just living my life the way I want to live it. Porn gives me the opportunity to do those things.”
Manning was asked if he’ll lend advice to someone in the business who may be heading for disaster with wanton partying.
“People respect my opinion and what I’ve accomplished,” said Manning. “They respect the way I live my life. Like I said before, maybe I’m reckless. But one thing I do do is I do everything in moderation. I think part of the reason why I can get through to some of these people that are having issues and why they seek out my advice is because I’m not going to tell them don’t do drugs or don’t drink. What I’m going to tell you is whatever you are doing, don’t let it affect you. Don’t become dependent upon those things. Don’t have an addictive personality. Don’t do too much. Whatever you’re doing, yeah, have fun. Let’s go have fun. Yeah I understand. You’re 25 and this is what you do. But never let it get in the way of your career.”
According to Manning, Platinum Blue is expanding its pipeline of customers worldwide- in all different forms- hotel, motel, cable and DVD sales.
“But as far as personal goals I have for the organization,” said Manning. “I’m in the process of doing some co-productions with different people. I have a philosophy that I like to collaborate with others- the people that I respect in this business I like to collaborate with them. And I’d like them to take some ownership of what they do. I can hire somebody to come do a movie with me and they come give me a scene and a day rate and blah blah and go their merry way. But I like to work with people who want to own their own titles and want to produce some things. And then because they own it, the level of the product and the quality gets better because they’re more dedicated and they want to dome some of the behind the scenes work that we’re doing and be involved in the editing process.
“We’re also in the process of hiring some bands to do some music for us,” Manning added. “Just different ideas that haven’t been explored in adult, I’m trying to bring those things to fruition this year.”