Porn Valley- With the long blondish hair, Attorney Michael Fattorosi [photo from www.lukeisback.com] looks more like General Custer than general counsel, but the Encino attorney who specializes in civil litigation keeps making fascinating inroads in the adult business.

Fattorosi and his partner have just launched an Internet TV station called PrimeTimeUncensored.com, www.primetimeuncensored.com, which begins airing tonight at 7PM. Before we get to that, I was asking Fattorosi about another enterprise he seems to have his hands in- a P.R. agency, Sinsational P.R.

“I have to get back in touch with the woman,” he says. “She was a p.r. agent out of San Francisco that did a lot of mainstream work. Unfortunately, for almost a month she fell ill and was hospitalized. So we were moving along those lines. But after a month of her being ill, I haven’t talked to her. So it’s not a p.r. agency I’m trying to launch, really. It’s something that she was going to take some of the clients I have from the mainstream. I haven’t backed off from it. I just haven’t done anything with it. I’ll release some stuff under Sinsational P.R. And I may revive it. I’m not sure.”

Fattorosi explains that the idea for PrimeTime Uncensored.com grew out of his involvement with Wet Radio in Las Vegas, an internet station.

“There was a legal dispute with the owner and they had to go off the year,” said Fattorosi, who had a show, indicating that the dispute had nothing to do with him but was more so involving a non-compete clause.

“Eventually he had to disband the network but I really enjoyed doing the show,” says Fattorosi. “That went down but I didn’t want to do radio. Radio is fun and all but I want to do something live- something a little more interesting. And I started toying with the idea of doing a live video show. But I don’t want to compete with KSEX. I don’t want to compete with Playboy. I want to be something completely different where it’ll be a TV format.”

I hasten to remind Fattorosi that he’ll be competing with those entities for an audience in those time slots, anyway.

“I’m competing with friends and every other network,” concedes Fattorosi.

“In that sense. Anything that’s on the air.” And the fact that Fattorosi’s got a show addressing legal issues- what with 2257 on everyone’s mind, that ought to be a source of non-stop amusement.

“If my show is the worst show I’ll be the first to pull it,” he laughs.

“And so I’m really looking to see what the ratings will be like.”

Accordingly Fattorosi had a chat with FBI agent Joyner who spoke at Xbiz’s conference last week and hopes to have him on a future show.

“He said he was happy to come on and all I had to do was clear it with his supervisors which he didn’t think would be a problem,” Fattorosi states.

“By the time we get him on we’ll have a live chat available so anyone who couldn’t attend Xbiz and ask questions could then log in and we’ll field questions. It’ll be interesting. My first show won’t have guests. It’ll be more of a get-to-know the audience. But really I want to do hot topic, controversial things like racism, religion – the things that revolve around the adult industry but aren’t really about porn. I don’t want to get into the ticky-tack, day by day fights of the industry- I want to deal with some of the bigger issues and bring on people from the industry and people outside the industry.

“I would love to be able to have a debate where I’ve got someone like Rob Black who would be a wonderful guest to have on versus a religious rights standpoint. That would be interesting I think to see those two go at it and kind of moderate the debate, make sure no fists fly.”

Fattorosi hopes to have a mainstream feel to his program scheduling and talks about a future Sunday night show devoted possibly to independent movies.

“Where independent movie makers who are not always able to get their movies into festivals or have them distributed will give us their movies and we’ll broadcast them live stream,” explains Fattorosi.

“The Dakota Fanning movie would be an interesting topic,” I suggest, and Fattorosi wholeheartedly agrees.

“We’ll do things like that,” he says. “Some of the times we’ll talk about the small topics and as news develops, we’ll let them grow into whole shows. We’re also going to be very interactive with the fans- what do they want to see us discuss. What do they want to hear from the show. Overall, we’re going to try to put on a good blend of mainstream as well as adult and not just be all about the porn industry.”

Asked what brought him into the adult arena, Fattorosi was friends with a couple of principals [one who is his partner in PrimeTimeUncensored] who were going to start an adult company.

“They came to me and said be our lawyer,” states Fattorosi. “I knew other people in the adult business. When I was in law I actually dated Milton Luros’ granddaughter. She was also in law school and I used to sit around listening to the stories about how he was prosecuted- three Supreme Court cases in his name. So when these guys came to me and wanted to start an adult company, I had experience in the mainstream, my own firm and decided I’ve got the time- let me start digging into this and really seeing what it’s all about.

“When I found out what it’s all about, they decided not to do it. So here I was with hours upon hours of study and information. I found it very interesting and it brought me back to when I used to talk to Mr. Luros about it. I didn’t want to go into it from a constitutional, free speech standpoint because those guys have been doing it for years and I didn’t want to be the new guy on the block and compete with them.

“You need to grow up in that type of firm to be able to do that type of law,” Fattorosi feels. “You need to work underneath one of those guys for a good five to ten years before you can even think about going against a federal prosecutor. But what I did have experience in was business litigation and civil litigation. I saw that there were civil litigation attorneys in the industry but, for the most part, a lot of people had made their name and their dollar and built their firms upon First Amendment. Basically I came in with the attitude- my partner and I- we said we’ll take the crumbs that nobody else wants. And that’s why we also represent a lot of talent. [Think about that comment- it’s kind of funny.]

“There’s a lot of attorneys who are locked into some of the bigger firms and it would be a conflict of interest so I developed my practice somewhat around talent,” Fattorosi adds.

“I think in the next five years, there’s going to be a fundamental change. At least I hope there’s a fundamental change in the way talent is treated. I think when you see movies like Digital Playground’s Pirates and now you’re talking about 2, 3, 4, $500,000 features, you’re going to need actresses and actors that actually can act and not just have sex. That pool of talent is going to be very small. As this kind of content becomes more accepted, I think you’re going to see mainstream actresses crossing over and doing adult to further their career.

“You’re seeing Dustin Diamond doing it. With a movie like Pirates paving the way, now you can see the money is there. Now the companies are like we can hit a home run and make as much money as though we were a mainstream production company. With that comes the fact that talent’s going to have to be better paid. If you have a small pool of talent that can work in that kind of movie, they’re going to eventually, go, hmmm, day rate’s just not enough any more. I need to have a little bit more. Not a piece of the pie, but I need to make more than what I would make if I stayed here in LA and shot just a regular sex scene. I think that’s the maturing process of an industry. And I see this industry maturing over the next five to ten years.”

Fattorosi has been actively diving into adult forum discussions and recently made a comment where he thought a porn performers’ union would be an eventuality.

“If the industry matures, it has to,” Fattorosi argues. “In order for this industry to explode- and people have thrown around these figures of dollars in the billions and no one can figure out what this industry makes- but to support even further growth, I think what’s going to have to happen is that it’s going to become more corporate. Sort of how like Vegas did. The best example I can use is with Las Vegas starting off as a sawdust, on the floor saloon, the mob moves in; they get some nice casinos, they get some good talent and now it’s all corporate. Vegas got to the point of where it was so acceptable to be a gambler that it was bring your family there. And they had to cut out that P.R. and go back to whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Because people stopped going and it didn’t have that connotation any more.

“At some point this industry is going to mature, and I think it’s going to be more acceptable. And once it becomes more acceptable, it’ll grow but there will still be pressure on the industry to treat the actors and actresses better. When I was up in Sacramento with the Free Speech Coalition, I got a lot of questions by staffers and by different assemblymen: when are you guys going to provide health benefits? When are you guys going to provide workers compensation insurance?

“Even your migrant farm worker has more benefits than your typical adult actress,” Fattorosi contends. “So we have to hit that hurdle first. And once that hurdle is hit, I think it’ll go further than that.”

“The only time you hear this talk about unionizing or health care benefits is when you have an HIV crisis,” I tell Fattorosi. Fattorosi disagrees, pointing to a think tank that was conducted at UCLA attended by attorney Greg Piccionelli.

“He wrote an article about it in Xbiz- and they had members from Cal-OSHA there and they made it quite clear to everybody there that these [porn performers] are employees. According to them they are employees and need to be covered. And if they’re not covered it could result in fines and shut downs.”

According to Fattorosi, to cover a typical boy-girl sex scene, insurance-wise, is $21.24.

“It’s not a lot of money,” he says. “It’s not like the industry would be wiped out and financially bankrupt because of work-comp. There’s really no excuse not to do it.”

“So you’re talking between $150 to $175 per movie but yet at the same time, companies have been notorious for pinching pennies” I tell Fattorosi.

“The problem is you have to do risk assessment,” Fattorosi feels. “If somebody does get AIDS on your set, it’s going to come back and potentially harm that producer. He won’t be able to declare bankruptcy and walk away from it. It’s something that could follow him. Especially if he has any type of money out there. It’s really $150 for peace of mind. It’s protecting the owner of the company. Even a company owner that says well I don’t shoot my own content, I hire somebody to do it, well we have something called general and special employers. If you’re a contractor and one of your sub-contractors hires a guy and he doesn’t have work comp and he gets hurt, well he gets to skip over that subcontractor and go right to the general contractor.

“And the same argument can be made here. But that’s just one example of how the industry, I think, needs to mature. And once it does mature, more and more people will be able to buy into it.

“You’re taking more arguments away from the religious right for why porn is bad. If you can show that it’s run professionally and that the actors and actresses are well treated, have health insurance and have 401 K’s…. this is a legitimate job. It’s recognized by the state of California. We’re employers. We pay taxes. It takes so many arguments away from them to say you’re trafficking in women, that you’re disgusting, that this is women being taken advantage of. This happens in any industry. I don’t care whether you’re a defense contractor or if you’re someone who produces adult content. There’s always going to be that element.

“But from a professionalism standpoint, that, I think, will make the industry grow. It’ll make the product more palatable to so many more people out there.”