Las Vegas- Craig Valentine and Summer Haze, www.clubsummerhaze.com have already arrived in Las Vegas. I talked to them as they were attempting to hunt down their luggage which was lost by Continental.
Valentine says he has lots of announcements coming up this year.
"We're gearing up for a big year this year," predicts Valentine. "We've also got four feature films planned out- I've got the rights to four regular movies that were put in the theaters. I've got permission to do parodies. Ron Jeremy's in all of them and Wankus is in all of them." [Or will be.]
Some of Valentine's news this year also includes a court battle that comes to a head January 12th. But Valentine's not at liberty to say who it's with, though.
"This is something where I'm sure a lot of people in the Valley got burned," said Valentine. "I tried to get an attorney in Los Angeles for this because the attorneys in the Federal District court out of Atlanta read the same law but translate the law completely different. The Federal judge is like the law's the law- there is no translation in a Federal case. "Copyright law says if you write, direct, shoot, edit and put the movie out- unless you sign a work for hire agreement- you're the owner of the film. In Los Angeles, the attorneys tell me if somebody pays you to shoot a movie, it's their movie no matter what. But I got the judge telling me something else. Who's right? Is the word of the law right, or is what the attorneys are saying, right? Because I don't think anybody in Los Angeles has tested the law. The thing is, I've shot a lot of movies for a lot of people and they didn't finish paying me or they've dicked me over. I won't release the films for them. Or the films are out being sold and the federal courts are telling me it's my movie. Until I sign a work for hire agreement, they're my films. The attorneys are telling me no. The Federal judge is telling me yes. So who's right? I don't have a ruling yet but the federal judge is pulling out book after book after book because nobody's ever tested this law since 1984."
The case is being heard in Ft. Lauderdale Federal Court.
Meanwhile, in Vegas, Haze will be spending a lot of her time at the Dane Productions booth as well as Adult Choices and probably Liquid Ice.
"But we're primarily going to be at Dane," Valentine says. "Since the demise of Lava, they got the distribution deal for the gangbang. www.adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=12767 . They've [Dane] got a couple of my lines that I gave them. They're decent people and Ed pays his bills."
Valentine tells me about some of the deals he cut last year which are enough to make you wince because he's collected maybe 15% on those receivables. Again, the multi-billion dollar porn industry.
"Plus I got people VOD'ing my movies," Valentine states, noting that companies are taking liberties who have no accounts with him. "But my movies are out there on VOD."
Valentine, who's based outside of Florida, is telling me how he's rebuilding after hurricane damage this year. He and Haze have also formed two new production companies and have deals in the works with Platinum Bucks, Adult Rental and Hot Movies.
"We need to beat the industry over the head," says Valentine, as far as getting the word out is concerned.
If he had his druthers, Valentine would also like to see a new sheriff in town as far as the way porn girls get their bookings in strip clubs.
'There's these [dance] agents who know nothing about our industry," he says. "The four of them are governing the strip clubs. If you don't treat them like gods- and they'll tell you they're gods, these girls don't work in the clubs. Or they make sure you don't get work."
Valentine says he heard a report that agents took in something like $6.2 million in bookings which includes 60 to 70 porn girls on the dance circuit.
Valentine's also telling me about Real Sex Radio technology, another project he's involved in..
"We can broadcast real video in the tenth of the bandwidth and you can watch it just like you're watching regular television," he explains. "This is a thousand times better quality at a tenth of the bandwidth." Valentine says he'd like to see KSEX have this technology.
According to Valentine, between himself and other porn companies in Florida, there's something like 200 shoots a week going on.
"It's pretty substantial down there," he says. In any given week, Valentine has 15 different agents that will come by his office bringing from 5 to 10 new girls for him to check out.
"Icy Porn runs about 10 to 50 shoots a week," says Valentine. "We run about 10 to 20 a week." Then there's Bang brothers Azure, Scoreland and others who are shooting.
"We're Porn Valley East," he says. Another plus as far as working on the east coast is concerned, says Valentine, is the issue of pulling permits.
"You'll have a $900 a day permit in Los Angeles- and where I'm at in the southern part of Ft. Lauderdale, my license is $250 for the year." Valentine says there's a couple of swingers clubs down there including one in Atlanta that have become very popular venues to shoot.
"The work is pretty good down there plus the talent works for half the price in LA- where a b-g is going to cost me $800 just for the girl in California, I can shoot a b-g in South Florida for $500 to $600."
In a discussion of the 2257 regs, Valentine tells me he's already had two visits from the sheriff's dept.. But since he's pretty meticulous as far as records keeping goes, he welcomes the visits.
"You saw the package you have to fill out on my set- there's seven pages in it," says Valentine. "Everyone's saying what do we have to do, write a book? Damn right. You want to be on this set you have to write a book. I'd rather have more than have less and have to go collect it later."
In one instance, Valentine got paid a visit by a Federal marshal who came to his office with two state troopers.
"They came to do a records inspection," he says. "This happened about six months ago- they showed up at the office. They said we want to see your records. I said there you go. They were actually looking for files of girls that were from out of the country because they were raiding the strip clubs. I'm like here's everything. They go, you want us to go through all that? Basically they went through everything and asked is that Ron Jeremy's real name? Then they left after maybe a half-hour. Then they came back a second time because one of the girls being shot had a Florida ID but I guess when she was working in the strip clubs she came up from Brazil. She had her AIM test. I had a record of it. She had her Florida ID. She had a social security card. We didn't ask her if her ID was fake. They said her ID was real. She got her citizenship- she married somebody. That wasn't my concern because my records were in order."
Valentine remembers another instance of taking a photostat of some girl's social security card.
"But it got damaged in Katrina," he notes. "I asked for a second copy of the ID just so I had better copies. She flipped out and her attorney called the police on me. They came over." Long story short, the sheriff's dept. was going to charge the girl with wasting resources. Valentine actually prefers the law coming to his offices.
"After so many times they're not going to bother you any more," Valentine reasons. "Let them harass me. I encourage it."
Valentine suspects that Homeland Security will be very prominent at AEE and subscribes to what Bill Margold says about not shooting in Las Vegas.
"Everybody and their brother is advertising that they're filming in Las Vegas," says Valentine. "Don't they realize that the cops read the same websites that we post on?"
