Muncie, Indiana- After reviewing an erotic film produced on Ball State University campus more than a year ago, university officials decided not to press charges against the movie’s director.
Director Christopher Gregory said the controversy over the film was “much ado about nothing.”
After the February 2007 release of the film, “Vampire Diaries,” Ball State officials threatened to press charges against Gregory, a Muncie native, for filming on campus, Provost Terry King said in a 2007 interview.
Gregory said the officials, however, have not contacted him in more than a year.
The erotic horror film was made in 2004 in the Kitselman Center, which includes the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry, Gregory said.
“It was an ideal place for the plot of the story,” he said.
Tony Proudfoot, associate vice president for marketing and communications, said Gregory did not follow the proper procedures to gain permission to produce the film on campus.
“If he had gone through the right channels, he would have been denied permission and this whole thing would have never happened,” he said.
Officials reviewed the film for any identifiable connection to Ball State, Proudfoot said.
Because nothing identifiable was discovered, Ball State’s legal representatives decided not to press charges, he said.
“Unless you had read the media coverage, you wouldn’t know it was filmed here,” he said.
Proudfoot said he was still concerned about how Ball State was represented, regardless of whether it was clearly identified in the film.
“It’s still a big deal to us even though we aren’t pressing legal charges,” he said. “It’s something we never wanted to happen.”
Preventative measures have been taken to make sure Ball State is never again the backdrop for such films, Proudfoot said.
“We have disseminated information on how to deal with these issues,” he said. “Now everyone knows exactly how to handle it.”
Gregory said in an interview last year that Joe Trimmer, director of the Virginia Ball Center, gave Gregory permission to film there without knowing the film’s content was pornographic.
Proudfoot said officials and administrators know now to review the subject matter of each film and read its script.
Despite the buzz generated by the controversial film, Priscilla’s sold a few copies during the first three months after the film’s release, Sales Representative Tom Beversdorf said in an interview last year. Store representatives could not comment on current sales.
Chris Ortho, sales associate for Pleasures on Godman Avenue, said recently the film hasn’t fared much better.
“I think it’s a novelty,” he said. “People wanted to check it out because of all the buzz around it, but once they saw it was the same as everything else, it died off.”
Emily Holt, sales associate for Pleasures on Wheeling Avenue, said both locations stocked about 10 copies of the film in May 2007.
The Wheeling Avenue store sold the last of those copies this month after marking it down to a discounted price, she said.
“They didn’t do very well because of the story line,” she said. “Our best-selling movies have more a of a scene-to-scene style rather than a story plot.”