Porn Valley- Robert Lombard of Creative Image Management, www.creativeimagemgmt.com paid a return visit to KSEX Thursday night. This time it was on Cytherea’s Show.
Introduced as the former tour manager for Van Halen, Lombard corrected the information to say that he produced all their music videos. Lombard produced probably two of Van Halen’s best known videos- Jump and Pretty Woman.
Brian said he was probably as big a fan of the group as Scott Fayner. Lombard said, that being the case, Brian would have to be put on the list for goodies because Fayner comes in and out of his office. “I constantly give him stuff. I just gave him a drum set that we built for midgets.” Brian remembered fucking a mother & daughter team on the Van Halen 1984 tour in the parking lot at the San Diego Sports Arena. Brian remembered that year as MTV also premiering the Hot For Teacher Video. Lombard said he and the group had gone their separate ways by then. “I was starting to get a little old and couldn’t keep up the pace.”
Weiss imagined that Lombard had some great midget stories to tell. Lombard said last time he was on Wankus’ show, which was last year, he went over some of them.
“Nobody ever watches Wankus’ show,” said Weiss. Lombard said that’s not what he’s told and mentioned that adultfyi.com covered that story with Lombard getting a handjob. Lombard said no doubt if I was recapping Thursday night’s events that I would offer a link to that original story. www.adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=4072
Brian also ventured to say that performers from Michelle Lay to Cytherea owe Lombard one big giant blowjob for all the work he’s done on their behalf in the mainstream. Lombard said it dates back to Chloe- her being the first adult star that he crossed over. “The first movie that was done with three adult stars- they weren’t allowed to use their names. I went on set in the middle of the day looking for the three [porn] girls. One was Dru Berrymore. One was Tina Tyler and Chloe was the lead.” Lombard said the girls were being respectful of his wishes that they weren’t allowed to let people know who they were.
“They were going to use different names and I wasn’t comfortable with it.” Lombard figured because he was going to give them more exposure in the soft world than they would ever have received in hardcore, they had a right to use their names.
Even though he knew he was going to get chewed out, Lombard said, on lunch break, he brought all three girls out to where they had set up the catering tables. “I said, listen, I need to make an announcement. I’m not trying to pull wool over anybody’s eyes but I want to introduce you to Chloe, the VCA contract girl at the time; Tina Tyler and well known German porn star Dru Berrymore. If I would have had a camera, and the camera was just on that crew, they were hi-fiving themselves: going I knew it. They knew but they just didn’t know what to say. From that moment on it became that they could use their names. It went on for awhile.”
Lombard noted that Chloe was chosen to be a Showtime series regular for Lay Chatterly about six years ago. “She read and got the role over 20 people who were being considered for the role.” According to Lombard, three episodes were shot when he got a call one Sunday evening from the main guy at Mainline Releasing. “He said we got some bad news. The main guy at Showtime came off of vacation- saw the first three episodes of the dailies and said there is no fucking way that this girl is going to remain the series lead. He had a meltdown.”
Lombard suspected it was because of who Chloe was, being a major porn star and the anal queen. It was Lombard’s job to make the call. “What was so amazing about the call is I took it harder than Chloe.” Lombard was told by Chloe not to feel bad because she didn’t think she’d get away with it for three episodes.
In a full circle situation, Chloe was subsequently chosen as lead for an HBO/Cinemax series, Sex Games: Vegas. “That is the first time to my knowledge that a major adult star has gotten a series lead in a late nite cable series,” says Lombard.
Cytherea has also worked for Lombard. “It was for a small role- she had five lines of dialogue,” Lombard remembers. “It was at the Marilyn Monroe house. Then she did a movie for me where she had a co-star role. Then she did Porn Star Blind Date.” To give an idea of the popularity of such shows, the normal buys says Lombard are between 44,000 and 64,000 people. Whereas Deadwood might get 1.3 million viewers. “And that’s a subscription-based cable service,” says Lombard. “People get that in their package. This is a pay-per-view series where you have to make a choice on your remote to buy the show.” Lombard says these are good numbers and the fanship of porn girls doubles in the crossover. “Syren’s a great example of that because when she goes out on the road she’s actually met more people that have seen her on the softcore channels. Even though she doesn’t fuck a lot, there’s a girl who got away with all this for three years. She didn’t have sex on camera for three years. She was a major contract star who did not have sex on camera for three years.”
Lombard also thanked the adult news sites for being very supportive. “The only company that does not take my press releases is AVN. Why I don’t know.”
[The reason is that it’s generally hard to re-write Lombard’s style of press release then claim a byline for it.]
Lombard also said he won’t buy ads for the privilege and mentioned that Steve Nelson’s site Adult Industry News was very supportive from the beginning as was Don Benn’s Porno News Network. Lombard conceded that AVN might be the highest ranked adult news site, “But how quickly do those releases leave the face of the computer? Within a half a day or less.”
Brian saw what Lombard does as a labor of love and asked what his motivation was. “The sexual content is a given,” stated Lombard. “There’s no question that the sexual heat is going to be far better than what the old mainstream girls used to deliver.” Lombard said the other side of the coin is the fact that he genuinely cares about the girls. “And the few guys that I cross over.” Lombard said the girls are like children to him. “They are children in most cases and I mean that in a very good way.” Lombard said he’ll hear comments that these guys fuck for a living. “But there’s no reason for me to communicate with them that way.”
The biggest frustration, according to Lombard is coping with porn’s exasperating schedules and having the girls available. In another for instance, Lombard said if he tries to book Evan Stone now for mid-September, chances are he’s booked. “Same with a Steven St. Croix or a Randy Spears.”
According to Lombard, Chloe was the soft market ground breaker but a little known fact is that Gina Ryder was the second girl. “She was great- she’s long gone from the business now.” Other popular girls now in that market are Dee, Cytherea, Michelle Lay, Jessica Drake, Syren and Ava Vincent. “God love her,” said Lombard. At the mention of Drake, Lombard said he’s been very successful with Wicked who’s been very cooperative with him. Lombard gets information all the time that people who have never bought a hardcore title, have now because of these crossovers.
Brian alluded to some drama at the Marilyn Monroe house involving Cytherea. With everyone talking all at once, the story wasn’t clear. Lombard was saying something that Cytherea doesn’t drive but, nevertheless, got in the car to get Margaritas.
“It’s an area that I’ve never been to on Laurel Canyon- where do I find Margaritas? That’s a question that someone had to help her with,” said Lombard. Cytherea was talking about delinquent girls and someone volunteered Wankus’ name as the culprit. “Wankus had nothing to do with this,” said Cytherea. “It was those two delinquent girls bringing drugs on set.” Cytherea said one girl was a hairdresser and the other was a teacher.” Lombard said it’s been his experience that girls who come on a set and get high are doing to stuff their feelings. “They know they have to get naked and really don’t want to get naked.” On the other hand, Lombard said Cytherea gets high because she enjoys it. Lombard, being 16 years sober, knows it when he sees it. “I can see the behavior.”
Lombard then predicted a moment at an AA meeting featuring Cytherea. Cytherea said she’ll never be her family.
“As long as you don’t drive, I feel more comfortable,” said Lombard. “There are three areas that we end up as alcoholics,” continued Lombard. “Dead, in an institution or jail.” Cytherea said she didn’t drink any more.
Lombard went on to say how he had to reinvent his business because he was running out of girls. Girls would come on the sets with boundaries such as prohibiting the male actors from kissing their nipples. “You can’t do this, you can’t do this- why fucking bother? With porn girls in the beginning it was the opposite where I was getting phone calls on the production side saying we have a problem. What’s the problem. The girls are taking it too far. Especially in the girl-girl scenes. You take an adult girl and put her front of a mainstream girl, their mentality- and I mean this with respect- is that they’re fresh meat.”
Harry Weiss remembered an instance where Cytherea was on set studying her lines and getting ready. “And then they hand her this giant looking bandaid.” Cytherea didn’t know what to do with it. Lombard said it was the wardrobe girl being respectful and that you didn’t have to wear it if you didn’t want to. Cytherea said that wasn’t conveyed to her. Weiss also pointed out that male talent are given socks to wear over their dicks.
Lombard observed that because girls are being paid essentially $400 to $500 a day, that wasn’t enough to show their pussies. Lombard said those bandaids are handed out out of respect to the girl and the guys. “When we were crossing the girls over, the mainstream guys were, hmm, porn girls. I’m going to get laid. I had some issues in the beginning and I had to weed them out.”
Earlier, Lombard had casually put Cytherea, delinquency and the AA in the same context. It must have clicked as she took him to task for it. “I don’t want you to think that I’m irresponsible,” she pouted. Lombard said the latest she’s been on a set was 30 minutes. “And I keep track.” Cytherea claimed she was held up in traffic on the PCH. Along those lines, Lombard said there have been girls he’s used once that he’ll never use again.
“It wasn’t worth the aggravation,” he said. “The perfect example is Ava Vincent. Here’s somebody that I’ve known for six years. I’ve been through hills and valleys with her, with her crazy choices of boyfriends, with her supposed drug problems that she doesn’t have [according to Vincent]. But I’ll always give Ava a shot. I know that if I hire Ava for something, I’m going to have to get up two hours earlier than I normally do, call her, wake her up and get her to the set. That means for me to pick her up or an assistant to pick her up or whatever. I will go through that with her. It’s worth it. Because she’s worth it. She’s someone who can act, carry a movie and she delivers the sex.”
Weiss says Cytherea will now tease mainstream guys into hard ons and walk off. Brian joked about that being behavior you’d refer to as delinquent.