Porn Valley- Guy Capo's lost a lot of weight- and that's not just the hair he's shaved off his head. I had lunch with The Cap over at Jerry's Deli in Woodland Hills this week, and Guy's telling me he dropped something like 35 pounds. He did so after the doctors told him he had a fucked up thyroid. Capo, who was directing for DVSX at the time, couldn't figure out what was wrong with him at first. He had no energy, no initiative and thought, logically, at first it might be porno burn out.
Capo didn't even want parts of the KSEX show he had on Tuesday afternoons. And Capo loved doing that show. And I loved listening to Capo doing that show because he would raise hosts of provocative issues about the business and dish out some uncommon points of view.
A lot of our chat was about money and who's getting it and who isn't. Capo, who's shot three of the best porn movies I've ever seen- Payback, American Gunk along with Sex, Drugs & Rock n' Roll voiced utter amazement about some of the deals he's seen come down the pike- with money basically being lavished out to untested commodities. However Capo has room to talk because he's been doing a lot of editing lately and sees some of the footage being turned in. He says a lot of it is basically crap.
This is not to say that the Cap wants to be put on the porno dole as well so he, in turn, could make high-budgeted crap. On the contrary, he'd like to sit down with company owners and show them where they're pissing their bucks away and maybe just maybe give them something of value.
"For once I've really had the time to sit down and really analyze what's going on out there," Capo says. "I think as a director it's important to put yourself back in touch with everything else that's going on. Because you get kind of self-consumed just keeping up with your own productions, you don't really take the time to look at what else is out there. Now that I've actually sat down and looked at other product out there and what's being done, I can't help but feel there are easily 10 or 15 companies who are just pissing away budgets on a daily basis with well known, well critiqued and well respected directors whose shit I'm seeing on a very intimate level."Capo used to work for a company, Extreme Associates, that pissed away $1.5 million on wrestling so he's seen it first hand.
"I'm looking at this product," Capo continues, "And I'm thinking to myself I can do better than this with less money. Where is it all going and how are these people getting it? What line of bullshit are the owners eating that they're actually paying for some of this product that's out there. It's staggering to me and really discouraging. You'd think that it would be motivating for me because I'm confident about what I do. I know I can do good work, and you would think it would be inspirational to me to see so many other people producing crap. But for some odd reason it's very discouraging and I think it's because so many of the mainstay companies in this business- the companies who are producing the most, who are the most popular, the ones who do the most advertising, the ones with the most shelf space- the ones who should be leading the way, are the ones who are continuing to throw good money after bad on the same frickin' movie."
Put another way, I remind Capo, you have some companies making the same movie over and over again. Only the locations change. And sometimes not even that.
"They keep making the same movie," Capo agrees. "And therefore in my eyes, they keep making the same mistake. They keep making the same mistake over and over and over again. And it's back to the same formulaic problem that this industry has suffered from, from decades and I'm not trying to change that. There is a reason why that works and I understand that. Basically all your doing is shooting something that's pretty much one-step above Internet content.
"Gonzo these days is Internet content in waiting," Capo feels. "That's all it is. Because it's only a matter of time before that becomes part of a catalogue that gets bought up, chopped up in a million different ways and distributed over the Internet. This is definitely the way we are headed with the exception of the cable deals, the softcore guys, the guys who are shooting hard and soft and making actual story stuff. Everything else is just content waiting. That's it. As long as that's all there is to it, why is everybody spending so much money on it? Why am I hearing budgets of anywhere between twenty and thirty thousand on GONZO? Somebody is lying. Either directors are lying about what they're getting; or companies are just ignorantly pissing away money every single day.
"If I could make an open statement to the industry, with all the money that's being spent day in and day out, whether it be $15,000 on something that's just a cunt hair above content to the '$100,000' I hear being invested at a time- whenever these companies are ready to stop pissing money away, you come to me with resources and you will win. First guy to come to me with decent resources wins. That's it."
By the way, Capo has nine nominations this year on what he considers to be his "mediocre crap" or what he lovingly refers to as fodder at the bottom of the hardcore feedbag.
"Nine nominations on the best three and a half stars that was made all frickin' year with the rest of the three and a half stars that everybody else got," he laughs. "Whenever these companies are ready to stop being so wasteful on all the names that I'm seeing in the ink day in and day out, I am a mere phone call or e-mail away. Open your window and shout my name- I'll hear it. You let me know and I'm ready. That's been pretty much what I've been trying to get my head around the last three months as I've watched all this other product come out with big ink on some of this shit. You see some of the reviews on it then, God forbid, you actually sit down and watch the video and wonder where did all that money go and how are some of these companies going to make it back on that mediocre-at-best piece of film. I'm doing the math and it's just not adding up. I'm tired of seeing other directors be handed big resources to work with. Big crews. Big budgets. They spend more on craft services than they spend on scenes."
