Porn Valley- In news this week hardly worth mentioning, PrimeTime Uncensored, www.primetimeuncensored.com elected not to air Wednesday evening, thus cancelling Maria Menendez’s show at 5pm along with Wankus’ show and Michael Fattorosi’s Breaking the Law program.
According to Fattorosi, PTU had server problems most of the day. Those were resolved by 4:30, except Fattorosi elected to scrap the evening’s schedule just to be on the safe side. Except someone forgot to notify Nautica Thorn who showed up for Wankus’ show where she’s the co-host.
> Judging by what happened to Rod Fontana and Jenna Jameson, porn folk will have to be mighty careful in the future about what they dish out to the mainstream media – because someone’s liable to call them on it.
In Jameson’s case she told several national outlets including the NY Post that a deal with Scarlett Johannson to play her in a biopic was pretty much a done deal. Except Johansson’s people are saying that’s not the case at all and Johansson would never agree to be involved in such a project. Meanwhile, Fontana, in a lengthy interview, told the NY Times he was studying to be an Episcopal priest and had sanction from the Los Angeles Diocese to open a mission for wayward porners. Only now the Bishop of the Los Angeles diocese, in a polite way, while applauding Fontana’s intentions, is contradicting most of what Fontana had to say about his contacts within the church.
> Some shocked ears greeted the news that Leisuretime- probably the most financially successful adult company of all time- was scaling down its operations and moving to smaller digs. I spoke this week to The Grand Vizer about that story and the one about CDi’s releasing Totally Kascha, essentially a compilation of old material which has now been released on DVD.
The Grand Vizier comments: “They’re saying the initial numbers have been fantastic. Is that an increase from 200 pieces to 250? This is not even good nonsense. In Kascha’s heyday she laid there like a board. She only fucked her husband. Get a life. The absurdity of that story is just off the hook.”
[I remember when Kascha did two comeback videos for the company. They were directed by a famous TV/movie personality who wanted to fulfill a porn fantasy. Besides refusing to have sex with anyone, Kascha showed up overweight with swollen breasts. Asked what happened, she said she didn’t have implants but a car accident.
“I hit my boobs against the dashboard and they got inflamed.” Another time she was at a house in the Valley shooting a movie and didn’t want to sit on a toilet seat because she claimed she saw cat hair and that she could get AIDs from that. Even thought there wasn’t a cat in the house. The last anyone heard from Kascha, she was giving hula lessons. And no one knows what happened to her husband, Francois Papillon.]
“A couple of companies are downsizing big time,” continues TGV. “New releases are now below 500 pieces. And I don’t know if this story is true, but the head buyer at General Video got his check on a Friday and just took off. Disappeared. Didn’t even turn up to say I quit. Is that story true? I don’t know. And Howard Levine was with Vivid. Now he’s with ClubJenna. They traded him to another ball club and got his salary off their books. I know Stevie Hirsch had some kind of contract in there for his $150,000 a year salary. My assumption, the day after the contract was up, they traded him. Salaries like Howard’s and Eric Gutterman’s [Leisuretime] $250,000 a year aren’t being substantiated like that any more.
“Vivid now took the guy that was under Howard and promoted him to national sales guy where DVDs are 10 or 20% of their gross product. Eighty percent of their income is from franchsing their name.”
“People are bouncing off the walls saying this is the worst time ever for the industry,” TGV continues. “The distributors are hyperventilating into paper bags. They don’t even create the product. They’re saying they can’t collect money. And another thing you’re hearing are people saying if I can get out I would. Someone get me out of here. A lot of people want to pull the plug.”
“And there’s nobody merging,” TGV adds. “The reason I think that won’t happen is companies don’t trust each other. Nobody trusts the other guy. I don’t know where the next five years are going to go. I think a lot of companies are just going to sell off to the Koretskys who are the national treasury of the adult business.”
“I also heard that Pulse was releasing Redlight and those numbers are ‘more than disappointing.’ Redlight’s done and Anabolic is making their money by commercial real estate. It’s wild. People seem to think it’s over. Not necessarily. You’re always going to get new guys. There’s always the new investor who doesn’t know. There’s always some guy who needs to wash some money that doesn’t know. But it’s going to be more diluted.”
“There’s Internet companies making more money than us,” TGV adds. “Not all of them- some of them- they came in way after the “private club and handshake” nonsense that used to run this industry. Meanwhile, guys on the Internet- ne’er do wells so to speak- are making a fortune.”