Porn Valley- I spoke to Black Widow’s Ric Williams on the Team Tyler shoot last week. www.adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=10748 Team Tyler is the first American producer to come aboard Black Widow.
“We presented our deal to them- they liked what we had to offer,” says Williams. “We’re excited to have them aboard. We signed a six movie distribution deal with no time limit. We’d like to get one a month out. That’s our goal. But it depends on the shooting schedule.”
According to Williams, UnFaithful Secrets, the first Team Tyler production is scheduled to come out in September. “It’s already on the boards at this point.”
There was talk last week about getting Tyler Faith back on the Stern show to hype the movie. Williams, himself, has an MBA in marketing from the University of Washington. “The marketing part I know,” he says. And Williams talks about ads being readied to promote the movie.
“We’re really big into publicity and p.r. and getting them on radio and TV – whenever we can,” Williams adds. Williams’ background is actually in distribution companies for high end automotive parts like Mercedes and BMW’s. He got laid off and was dating Scream Queen Linnea Quigley at the time. Quigley asked Williams to manage her. How Williams met Quigley peals off a layer of yet another onion.
“I actually bought her house,” says Williams. “That’s how I met her. I was married at the time. A year later I got divorced and all of a sudden I started getting all this mail coming to the house for Linnea. I guess after a year your forwarding address expires. So I went on the web, found her website and e-mailed. I told her I have all this mail. Where do you want me to send it? She was living in Florida at the time. We started communicating and all of a sudden she came out and moved in with me for awhile. We were dating.”
In any event, Williams started up a talent management company with Quigley, WQ talent management. “Then reality TV hit as well as offshore production and I couldn’t make enough money to live,” Williams says. “There was an opening at Private. A friend of mine worked there and said you should put your application in here. I did, not having any adult experience. I came in second to Bob Johnson for the job. I didn’t get the job. All of a sudden I get a call from Kenny Guarino at Metro. Kenny heard about my background. I had an MBA plus I had mainstream experience. He hired me to do the operations part of Metro and Joey Wilson was doing the production part. I did that about eight, nine months. Kenny and I decided not to work together any more. He let me go on a Friday. On Tuesday I got a call from the president of Private, can you meet me in Beverly Hills on Thursday. We met. On Monday they went into the office and fired Bob Johnson and Mara [Epstein] and a bunch of other people. I came in and took over running Private.”
Williams kept that job until Private decided to shut its American offices down, Private North America.
On adultfyi.com I had written that Private had been padlocked. Second guessers said that was the wrong story but Williams says that, essentially, was what it was.
“I was more surprised than anybody,” he states. “I was in New York putting a national magazine distribution deal for Private. On Thursday night I flew home. I checked my e-mails. My e-mail said your contract with Private his hereby terminated. “I go what does that mean? My contract’s terminated. Does that mean I’m fired? I don’t know. I didn’t have a clue. Everything was going full speed ahead. I e-mailed Spain. They said it means exactly what it says, Berth Milton will talk to you on Monday. I kind of felt I was canned so I went in Friday- they didn’t want me to go in there, but I went in and cleaned out my office. I’ve been through these situations before where all of a sudden your office is padlocked. I cleaned out my office. And then Monday they were there with the padlocks and everyone who came to work- they had severance checks for. No severance check for me, but I have a contract that calls for a rather large amount. We’re in litigation right now.”
Williams says there was no clue nor forewarning, and sales were good. “As I understand it, Berth Milton just decided that he did not want a physical presence in the United States anymore,” says Williams. “He wanted to get out of the physical distribution and be just a content provider.”
What makes Williams story even more interesting is the fact that he was in Barcelona last year when Berth Milton approached him at the time Williams was still with Private. “We have this line GGG that wants to do a deal with us,” Milton told Williams but Milton didn’t want to put it under the Private banner. Williams was asked if he had a company. Williams had a small production company called Black Widow and planned on doing some movies but nothing concrete. The decision was then made to put GGG under the Black Widow banner.
The contracts were drawn up and Williams signed as president of Black Widow with GGG. Then a month later he got canned by Private. Even though Williams had the GGG contract, Pure Play wanted GGG as well. But Williams, unemployed and looking for a job, just decided to roll with Black Widow with a part time assistant. Williams worked out of the Madness Pictures warehouse. “We started October 18th,” says Williams. “By December it just grew so much that I had to rent another warehouse in North Hollywood.”
Last month, Williams brought over his partner Bob Goodman from Europe. “It’s been growing really good,” Williams says. “We’re quite pleased with it.”