Porn Valley- I spoke to James, one of the owners of Anarchy this afternoon. Obviously the company is very upset about the impression lent by Skeeter Kerkove that they were going to drag feet with Chico Redfield’s widow on a past due invoice.
James is saying the story has been blown completely out of proportion. “From what I’ve been hearing Skeeter was just flying off the handle about the whole Chico death and about us not paying Lisa Durand [Chico’s widow],” James said, wanting to be sure that Anarchy’s story gets out there because he’s been receiving what-the-fuck phone calls from people in the industry asking how they could not be squaring up.
“I just think this is wrong,” says James. “Yes, we are closed for the holidays. Half of the porn industry closes for the holidays.” James said, contrary to what impressions are out there, Anarchy has been in close contact with Lisa Durand since Chico passed away. “My partner Guy told Lisa that Chico was our responsibility and don’t you worry. We will take care of everything.” James said Anarchy had an arrangement with Chico and Lisa’s editing company. “They did our editing; they did our authoring. And from time to time Chico directed and shot camera for us.”
James says the arrangement was always net 30 and that Anarchy settled up within those 30 days. “Apparently what is happening here is she needs money for a burial or whatever,” says James. “But she never straight up asked us for the money.” James is under suspicion that most of the information is going back and forth between Skeeter and Chico’s sister.
“Skeeter Kerkove doesn’t like us to begin with,” says James. “For some ungodly reason he wanted Chico all to himself. But, yet, we gave Chico a start. We were the ones who put the camera in Chico’s hands. We’re the ones who said, hey Chico, we’e going to put your name on boxes. Use us as the stepping stone to get to where you want to go. If Skeeter was Chico’s best friend and mourning over him, don’t use his name for p.r. Let the man die in peace. Not one time did you ever see Chico’s name on a Metro box, or a Sin City or whoever it was that Skeeter was directing for. He never went to bat for Chico and said, hey, this guy is a great cameraman, he’s got great ideas. He’s going to be an upcoming director.”
Even though Anarchy is closed for the holidays, James said Lisa had both his and his partner’s cellphone numbers. “She has been in direct contact the whole time,” he says. “Basically we had an arrangement where we paid them weekly then all of a sudden, she doesn’t want to be paid weekly and she wants to hold our camera masters hostage until she gets paid in full. Somewhere along the line she had this drummed into her head where we weren’t going to pay her. And that stems from one person only. And that’s not cool. You can ask any talent that works for us. You can ask Johnny Thrust. You can ask Cailley Taylor. You can ask Dick Tracey. You can ask Cytherea. We do business with these people all the time. You can ask one talent who we owe money to, one agency that we owe money to. We don’t owe anybody out there a dollar. We weren’t planning on screwing Lisa, or the editing company. And we certainly wren’t planning on screwing Chico. We were he ones who gave him his jump start.”
James said another comment made that got to him is that everyone was driving new cars and a bill was going unpaid. “Don’t use a man’s name in vain right now who has just passed away,” says James. “He was all of our friend.”
According to James, when Chico passed away, the first person contacted was Guy. “Guy said don’t you worry about a thing. I have an arrangement with Chico and this arrangement will pick up where it left off. That’s what he said. It’s our responsibility and now you are our responsibility.” James remembers the time that AVN did a big piece on Anarchy. Chico, says James was asked to be part of it.
“I told him that he needed to do the things to start making a name for himself. Chico straight out told me no. I said why not. He said because Skeeter wouldn’t like it and that he put a lot of money in his pocket. Well, I’m not going to be the one to take money out of someone’s pocket and he probably did work more with Skeeter. But Skeeter does not like us. He tried to put Chico down for coming over to direct for us and working for us. He said we were a joke of a company. I think that what happened is that Skeeter got on the phone either with Lisa or Chico’s sister and started slamming us saying you were never going to get paid. Panicking, she [Lisa] held our camera masters at bay.”
According to James, what exacerbates the situation is that the story is coming from “an attention whore who wants his name in lights.” James said at midnight last night Guy was on the phone with Lisa trying to calm her down. But this morning Anarchy got a call from Lisa’s sister stating that they wanted to be paid in full and weren’t giving up any of the masters until they got it.
I have one invoice past due,” says James. “It’s for $4100. I’m not going to beat somebody out of $4100. We gave them about $143,000 last year. This is what irritated me about the whole situation- having one person out there who’s a total attention whore. And to put his name in lights, he’s using someone’s name in vain who just passed away. This is sounding like we didn’t care for the man. But we were the ones who put his name on boxcovers because he’s talented. We didn’t say to him just shoot behind the scenes and pick up my goo rag. We did not do that. We actually wanted him to have a career in this industry. He was a bright, talented man. We were the first ones to let him carry a full movie. We didn’t see him as a behind the scenes camera kind of guy shooting what someone said they had for lunch.”
James questions that if Skeeter loved Chico so much why didn’t he go to Metro and go to bat for him. “This guy is freakin’ talented give him a start. He didn’t do any of that.”
Nevetheless, James anticipated the entire matter being resolved in full today.