By the time I went to work at Extreme Associates, the company became this revolving door of bodies- somewhat like the way the George Steinbrenner Yankees of the Billy Martin era used to operate.
For amusement, I’d keep score of the new people that came through the doors, each with their own idea of how they were going to make their marks in porn only to vacate the premises, in some instances, only days later. Perhaps out of sheer frustration, money issues, maybe over promises unfulfilled. Or simply because they hadn’t played ball the Extreme way.
Basically playing ball was keeping your mouth shut. Not like the early days of Extreme, however. Back then Rob Black’s former office girl would rat out to Luke Ford almost on the hour.
[I remember how Black was going nuts trying to shut off the spigot of gossip that was flowing out of his office when it became so obvious, who and how.]
With the troublesome secretary out the door, the company grew, moved out of Chatsworth, then out of Van Nuys and the body count began really mounting in delirious piles. The personal tally I had of former employees was now at 86 in my two years over in North Hollywood where the company ended up.
Why people left became eventually the repeating story of money. Towards the end, I had eight paychecks that bounced, although I wasn’t alone because accounting had this system of determining whose checks were going to squeal like a pig that particular week. It was like Russian roulette, only with you not knowing which week was yours to phone the bank.
By then I was working out of my house on a new project- a news portal. It was an insidiously devised gimmick created by another to be ex-employee Smiley Johnson, [aka Turd Ferguson], all of which lent the impression that it was a legitimate news site. But the further you navigated, that’s when the porn and porn advertising was supposed to kick in. Except the project was eventually abandoned. So basically I was spending hours a day on a fool’s errand fetching content and prepping for the big launch which never materialized.
At Extreme, the money, not the ideas, eventually ran out, pissed away mostly on wrestling. Over $2 million from what I’ve been told. The prevailing thought on the matter was that Rob Black in creating the XPW, had become so imbued with the delirium of the sport that he believed his own hype.
At the same time, the spirit of his wrestling character developed for TV [XPW shows were programmed locally] as this cruel, sadistic potentate with greasy dreadlocks and a thirst for blood and revenge. Black eventually became his character in real life in some ways.
[In one instance, one of the XPW wrestlers, The Messiah, just like in the movie The Pope of Greenwich Village, lost his thumb but for real to a couple of thugs in a scenario of hushed origins. No fake, this was a genuine bit of business – on a Sopranos level, almost – and it far exceeded any bizarre, wrestling storyline you could make up. Who was responsible for calling the hit, no one was saying. Wikipedia merely mentions that The Messiah was “assaulted”. The Messiah then later gave some cock n’ bull interview that he left the company because he was uncomfortable because of its association with porn.]
Not to be outdone, many of the XPW matches [held at the Olympic Auditorium] on their own terms were these excruciating to watch barbed wire, glass and torn flesh spectacles. If you’re not familiar with wrestling as a blood sport, you’ll get some idea of the barbarism by watching the Mickey Rourke movie, The Wrestler.
This was all a far cry from the Rob Black who used to direct for Elegant Angel. That Rob Black was a casual, very funny guy, the kind you could relate to and have a few belly laughs with. This other guy, the wrestling guy, the company owner, basically went from creating socially unredeeming movies featuring women in wheelchairs, completely over to the toxic side where pregnant ones got drop kicked in the gut. Granted, some people could mistake this for entertainment.
Yet Black, whose penchant for hocking tobacco juice into empty soda bottles was conversation stopping to say the least, would have his moments of clarity. On Thursday nights he’d treat his office staff to weekly dinners at a Japanese restaurant in the Valley and have them over to his house for Christmas and other holidays. Rob Black could be this generous, sweetheart of a man but frustratingly cavalier when it came to handling other peoples’ money.
[Talent that were due paychecks could tell you about the ignoble hours they were required to spend waiting in the Extreme reception area to get them – sounds idiotic, but often that was the only way to guarantee being paid in some cases. Frequently these complete wastes of time were played to the tune of some of the most absurd and transparent alibis ever concocted. Only that’s how business was run.
Black eventually snapped out of his hallucination, but by then it was too late. [Which was a point Black’s attorneys kept making during eventual legal proceedings, that he had reformed and realized the error of his ways.]
The educated guess is if Extreme had stayed focused on porn, had not gotten totally crazy with portraying rape, grim urban horrors and pigtailed school girls having sex with their relatives, and thus allowed the wrestling angle to develop of its own accord at home without the hyper injections of money to expand unnecessary territories in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, there’s no telling what a power house it might have become.
It certainly had the directors. Like a modern day Murderers’ Row, besides Tom Byron [a partner] you had Tom Zupko, Brandon Iron, Van Damage, [another partner], Slain Wayne, Francesca Le, Luciano [aka Michael Stephano], David Luger and Jewel De’Nyle.
Contract girls were a dime a dozen and amazingly adaptable to the most bizarre fantasies imaginable. For comic relief, there was Kid Vegas who made caveman porn movies, rolled out 500 pound women on fork lifts and engaged in impromptu pissing with girls on the receiving end in a wading pool kept back in the warehouse for such purposes. The late Wanker Wang was the webmaster, and porn fans know the sad end to his story. Between Wang and Zupko I never knew a human body could consume so much alcohol without there being a damaged liver on a cold, hallway floor crying for help.
[Not to mention the time I came into work one morning at 6 only to find a naked girl running around the halls, a porno megabigwig in a backroom getting a blowjob and me being handed money to run to the 7-Eleven to fetch an 18 pack. I don’t know about Vivid, but that would be the beginning of a normal business day at Extreme.]
Part of the bigger reason for Extreme’s downfall, though, was a federal raid of the premises. I was heading over to Extreme that morning to pick up a check to cover some of the rubber ones which had turned into a basketball. Except there was way too many cars parked in the lot for that time of day, and a bad vibe was issuing from the premises. So I drove on.
I came back the following morning – more out of curiosity – and one of the remaining guys filled me in on what had happened. There was speculation in the ranks- and I just say speculation- that one of Black’s business partners had ratted him out to the Feds in the Pittsburgh jurisdiction because of money owed him. The fact that this business partner coincidentally lived in Pittsburgh gave the story some credence.
In porn you never know what the real story is, but if true, Black’s history with rats was coming full circle.
Another reason for the bust was pretty clear – Black had gone on TV [a PBS documentary] and challenged then Attorney General John Ashcroft to a duel. Like Cagney in The Public Enemy, Black essentially dared the Feds to come get him. They did. In hindsight sometimes it’s best not to tug on Superman’s cape or pull the mask off The Lone Ranger.
Arguably, a lot of this insanity might have been avoided. Zupko, who was also doing P.R. for the company, had the brainstorm to invite PBS into the den of iniquity. I told Black and Zupko this was not a good idea. Zupko giggled, Black snickered. Black said what do I know, that I was an old man.
Maybe so, but I know you don’t talk to the mainstream press, especially when it doesn’t get the fact that porn is conducted pretty much like wrestling. As proof, just look what happened in Pittsburgh.