Back in the day before Toni English got started as a director in adult films, she was a documentary filmmaker. And, in that capacity, English had the unfortunate situation of being clocked by one of the security guards who had been working the AVN awards show.
English subsequently filed suit against the security company and Ballys, the casino where the award show was held. Feeling the heat from Ballys to make the suit go away or else, AVN began putting a little pressure on English to drop Ballys from being named. English did, but Ballys showed AVN the door, anyway.

Gene: I don’t think the entire story’s ever been told.

English: I had just started directing. I directed for Vivid probably two months. I came into the business from a completely different background of documentary. I didn’t understand anything in the business, I didn’t know the power-issues, anything. I came into the business as I was in the midst of doing a documentary about the adult business as everybody does now. Our culmination was to shoot the AVN awards- I and two Australian filmmakers I was working with. We were shooting and there was this security guard by the firm that Paul always hires for the AVN awards. It was the end of the night and Chi Chi Larue had done the closing stage act which had him being fanned by a bunch of boys in leather. The show’s over.

It was the boo-yah year. I remember Jonathan Morgan doing the boo-yah and we’re interviewing the winners and the losers. We notice this security guard who’s just out of control. They’re folding all the chairs and tables and he’s picking them up and throwing them into the wall. As people do you try to reconcile that in your mind as being somehow normal activity. We’re looking at the guy and going, how odd, then ignoring him then coming back, wondering why is this guy throwing chairs into the wall. He was obviously really angry and he came walking by me and I was interviewing someone. And, just as a journalist, as he walked by me I said something like you seem like you’re really mad about something. He walked past me, and I turned with the camera and he goes I think it’s time for you to leave. I saw him move his body, I had the camera up here and he hit me here (English gestures to the left side of her face).

He’s a big guy. An ex Navy S.E.A.L. And because I didn’t see it coming, I didn’t brace for it. So I was so loose when he hit me. I spun into people’s arms. So I didn’t even fall down. It dazed me a little bit. So he turned around and ran. A bunch of people saw what happened including Jim Enright, who, to his credit, and I will always love him for this, Jim ran after him. And when Jim got to the door, the other security guard barred the doors and let this guy get away. Now the head of the security firm (Larry Carpenter) shows up. I’m a little dazed by now and police have been called. Bally’s is freaking out. The head of the security firm shows up and stands right in front of me. I’m sitting on the ground, all I can see is his snakeskin boots. He pulls a wad of hundreds out and holds them under my nose: ‘I think we can resolve this can’t we?’

I said no the fuck we cannot resolve this. Get the fuck out of my face, you asshole. Cut to a few days later. The police had come down and told me if I was his [the assailant’s] girlfriend, we’d issue a warrant and pick him up for domestic violence. But because you don’t know him it’s misdemeanor assault. How can that be? It’s less of an offense to beat up a woman you don’t know than it is to beat up a woman that you do know. How harebrained is that. They said, look, we’ll issue a bench warrant. They had a charge for him but it was only if he got stopped that he’d be picked up. In the meantime I started a lawsuit. And as lawyers always do being that they’re pretty wily, they understood that the security firm had some amount of money and insurance; but Ballys had more. This is an independent security firm that had been hired in and was Ballys liable for anything. The suit named Bally’s and the security firm.

Steve Hirsch called and said his good friend Paul (Fishbein) was freaking out. Bally’s is threatening to pull the show. Steve told me, look, Ballys is bringing a lot of pressure on Paul and that Paul had called him asking him to talk to me. I said what’s that supposed to mean, that I withdraw the suit? Or what? That I’ll never direct in this town again or I’ll never good a good review in this town again? He said I’m not going to tell you what to do. You do what you want to do. ‘I’m just telling you that Paul’s under a lot of pressure. He doesn’t really know you. He knows that you’re under contract here and he wants me to talk to you.’ But you do what you want to do. You got to pursue it, pursue it.

So I called Paul. He said, listen, we don’t know that we can get the show anywhere else. We’re at Ballys. It’s a great place to be. They say that if you drop them and don’t name them in the lawsuit everything’s fine. But if you do name them, everything’s going to be horrible. I’m ruined. It’s going to be a big nightmare, na-na-na-na-na. In fact I called the attorney and said drop Ballys. I was a little conflicted about it. My lawyer said you’re an idiot. You’re an idiot if you did that. After what happened, you’d be a fool to do that. I said I’ve just started in this business and I’ve put a lot of people in a very precarious position. I don’t really want to do that. I don’t know how fair it is to Ballys; but I really don’t know how fair it is to Fishbein and AVN. We dropped the suit and Ballys kicked Paul out anyway.

For the longest time whenever I’d get bad reviews from AVN, I’d go to Steve and say it’s that Ballys thing! And he’d go, no, no, no. Paul would never do that. And I would go Paul still resents me for that Ballys thing. He holds me responsible even though I had nothing to do with it. I don’t know if that was true but whatever. The suit was dropped. Ultimately the security firm paid off. I think $30,000 or something and split it with the Australians. Which, in retrospect, I’m wondering why should I have given them half of it. Because they didn’t get punched. But I thought that was horrible of Ballys. Had they done that earlier on I would have re-named them in the lawsuit. Because I thought, as a business practice, it was just despicable that they had made that suit being dropped contingent on keeping AVN and dropping them anyway. To this day I won’t go into Ballys for that reason, not that they care about my two dollars.