Porn Valley- Forget the rumors. One thing's for sure. Hillary Scott ain't pregnant. And if she were, I don't know where she'd be hiding it. Cryin' out loud, you couldn't hide a fart on Scott who's so petite, director James Cameron will next be announing the opening of her ossuary.
Scott was over at the TTS studios Wednesday afternoon directing her second movie for SexZ Pictures titled Creamy Stinkstars, a concept that practically smacks of elegance and sophistication. Boss Bo Kenney was also in town. If mainstream were casting a porn guy, Kenney's it. Dark glasses, thick neck, the demeanor of a two by four and more money than God.
The more money than God part is where Scott enters the picture. Kenney, whose company took the big award this year for Corruption, has just announced that Scott is under exclusive contract to him [sort of] and that she has become SexZ's first million dollar superstar.
I ask p.r. guy Jeff Mullen what this is all about. Does it mean that Scott's contract is like a debit card and every time she directs or acts in a scene, she's left with a new balance?
Of course I'm kidding Mullen and having my way with him. But Mullen with the seriousness of brain surgery answers as though this is a totally valid question. For one thing, the "sort of" part of Scott's exclusivity is the fact that Hillary still gets to do Britney Rears movies. Otherwise, Bo's got her. And Mullen's also saying that if Scott fulfills all the conditions of her contract, then she walks away with a million bucks. This is starting to sound like pro wrestling but Mullen won't go into specifics of said contract.
Otherwise, there's a bukkake of industry journalists hanging around the studio for Kenney's announcement. I'm having a chat with producer Marc Kramer and Tony Batman walks in. I say hi to Batman, and Kramer whispers to me, "Is he press?"
I tell Kramer, yeah, this is Tony Batman.
"What the fuck is a Batman?" Kramer asks with enough innocence I know he ain't kidding. Kramer has just been filling me in about all the love he has for Eon McKai. This scenario takes Kramer back to when he left Hustler under a cloud of Internet suspicion. Kramer says he was being accused of everything from extortion to white slavery and selling stolen cars.
Kramer began his career eight years ago with Vivid and I ask if he ever entered a Howard Levine lookalike contest.
"C'mon I don't look like my bro, Howard. What are you talking about!" Kramer roars, knowing full well the comparison is often made.
Back to subject, Kramer says a lot of the Internet shit had to do with a movie McKai was shooting for Hustler.
"I gave a budget to Eon McKai to do New Wave Hookers," Kramer explains. "It was roughly an $80,000 budget to do a remake. A lot of the money, obviously, was appropriated for set building, wardrobe and things of that nature. I think it was the second day of the shoot, I went on the set and noticed the stuff that he had. The expenditures were not there."
From all accounts, it sounds like McKai had padded the budget and Kramer was calling him on it.
"He had used a lot of the props from his other movies and I could see that the wardrobe- all the kids that he had on set were bringing their own rag wardrobe," Kramer continues. "He hadn't bought wardrobe. Basically he said to me I have you in the budget for assistant director. I told him no. I get paid by Hustler. But from what I see that you're doing here I want all the receipts tomorrow on my desk.
"This was a Sunday," notes Kramer. "So what he does on Monday morning, he called Human Resources at Hustler and told them I tried to extort him. Meanwhile, he tried to give me an envelope with money on set in front of my crew, which of course I didn't take. I told him that wasn't my money and it's supposed to be spent on the movie. The next thing I know Human Resources is calling me telling me this and that.
"What he did was take the blowtorch and put it in my face to take the onus off of him," says Kramer. "I don't know where the money went but I know he didn't spend it on the movie. Then he refused to turn the receipts into Hustler and from my understanding, he's never turned the receipts in. Then I heard people talking about how he was laughing about how much money he made off the show. That could be hearsay but I can tell you in fact he did not spend the type of money he clains. If you've ever seen New Wave Hookers, there's no way $80,000 was spent."
What exacerbated the situation was the additional drama on the set involving Kramer and Joanna Angel who Kramer describes as basically a flunky for McKai.
"She backed McKai's play," says Kramer. "I guess she called Human Resources and told them that I touched her inappropriately when we were alone. Well, you can ask anyone I've produced for and I've been doing it for eight years and probably 500 shows at least, I don't have a reputation for that. Yes, some people might say I'm a hard individual, I'm an asshole. But I get the job done at the end of the day. But I've never been accused of fondling girls or touching girls. That's not my style. I pride myself on my professionalism and what I do is my career. I try to do things professionally and see that they're done right. So that was a total lie. I asked where was I supposed to have touched her? Her arm? Did I put my hand on her pussy? It's ridiculous.
"Then McKai told Hustler my crew and me were getting high on narcotics. Which is a total lie. Nobody was getting high on anything on set or doing anything of that nature. So with that type of ammunition, he took the focus off of him. And that was a small part in the reason why I resigned. That wasn't the main reason, obviously. I had other problems there with the politics and how Hustler does things. The corporate type of stuff wasn't for me. So I decided to go back to the companies I'm happy to work with and make movies for. They let me do what I do which is producing and being a production manager on the shoots."
Kramer says the sad thing of it all is the fact that Hustler didn't back him.
"Maybe they would have but I didn't wait around for that," he states. "I just got fed up and resigned. I'm going to move on. This is not for me. I'm not a corporate individual. I don't dress up and come to the office and have meetings about meetings. I was finding myself having meetings with people who had no idea what we were doing then having to bring them up to speed. And also the fact that he [Flynt] had people in place which I told Larry not to hire. Which, in fact, within three or four months after I left, all these people were fired.
"He brought people in who had no idea of production. Not a clue. He also brought in a p.r. guy that did p.r. for his casino who had no idea and had never done anything in our industry. I tried to explain to him that AVN and other people have to know you and be able to trust you to have that type of communication and free flow of what's going on. And they didn't know this guy.
"I told Larry this was not a good idea and those people have long gone by the wayside over there. I have no animosity toward Larry or toward any of the Flynt family. I just think it wasn't the right thing for me and wasn't the right thing for them. My forte is making movies and running the set and getting done what needs to be done. That's basically what happened. I was trying to protect their interests and their money which is the job I was hired to do. There was no way the money in that movie was spent on production."
Besides, said Kramer, he personally brought in 14 different directors to Hustler.
"They all got kicked to the curb."