Porn Valley- Skeeter Kerkove and I had a couple of conversations this week that ranged from Max Hardcore to Naudia Rio. This one started off with the economics of directing.
“Let’s say you or I shoot a movie that’s selling $29 retail, maybe $39 retail. Why pay for that when you got three or four websites where you get 50 movies for that price per month and 30,000 pictures?” Skeeter asks.
“If your screen’s good enough and your Internet connection’s good enough, then that’s the way to go. Look what you get versus buying one fucking DVD. This is my opinion.
“You have a collector- me, I’m a collector- I want to look at a girl with a big fucking ass, so there are people who are always going to want to hold some type of DVD in their hand. I remember when I was getting used to DVD’s, I felt broken hearted because the VHS was bigger, that I had more of a trophy. It felt bigger- there was a bigger picture on the front. That’s being a collector.”
“But when is it not going to be cost efficient any more to create a high definition DVD because there’s now 500 new releases this week? That’s retarded to have so many releases.
“Playboy made a lot of cuts at their studio so now they’re hiring direrctors to work for way, way less. The Bud Lees, all those people are gone. And we know Playboy will never break even on the ClubJenna purchase, even after 20 years. Never. Even Bud Lee warned them and he loves to spend money. He warned them- this is not worth half of what you’re going to pay. And then after you pay it, you get Justin Sterling- we’re paying his exorbitant rate to produce and direct these movies that you can hire anybody to do.
“You can hire someone else at 1/3 what they’re paying him and have a better movie,” Skeeter contends. “Now Playboy is really stepping down the budgets. And before Justin Sterling met Jenna, how many movies did he direct? One? Two? And she lived in a townhome then with a roommate. And things were bad and they had to put up deposits to have dancing gigs from burning clubs so much. The thing that saved their ass was Video Secrets.”
Based on his own experience regarding the expendability of directors, Skeeter says, “If you get a website built up big enough you know what that means? Fire your director, tell him his stuff is no good any more then go out and hire someone for half price. You already started the site. You already got the crazy sick traffic; it’s good, you follow the same formula. It’s all good.”
“You got Internet companies that are taking big name directors, combining them all into one site for free- that really affects your site because now it’s being offered for free on 40 other websites that people visit. That means checks are going way down.”