Porn Valley- On his website www.johntbone.com, the director has alluded a couple of times to a deal that went south with Damaged Pictures. Here’s what happened. I interviewed Bone last year regarding this situation. And this is what he told me at the time.

“They [Damaged] haven’t been paying me,” he said. “They don’t answer the telephone. We can’t talk to them. They come up with excuses after excuses but the bottom line is they ain’t paying me. And now I find out that they’re suddenly manufacturing product with my name on it and they’re making four-packs with my product. They’re making other entities that they’re selling with my name on, without my permission. We’re discovering that they’re selling in other areas that they’re not allowed to. They’re understating the sales that they make. I just got an e-mail from Brazil telling me that one of my movies is being premiered on the adult channel on New Year’s Eve making a big deal out of it. I didn’t sell it to that channel. We now find out that Damaged has a deal with Marc Bruder. They have an exclusive contract with Josie that she has all exclusive rights for all of their product for all foreign and broadcast but they also have a deal behind the back with Bruder and they’re putting my product through Bruder that they don’t have the right to represent for broadcast.”

I tell Bone that last bit of information is kind of confusing, please explain.

“Didn’t you shoot for Damaged?” I ask.

“No, I shoot the movies for me,” said Bone. “It’s my money. I shoot the movie and I have it edited. And I own it. Then I allow them to sell DVD’s in America. Period. Josie sells broadcast all over the world, then she sells country by country, the rights to other people for them to replicate DVD’s and sell them in those countries. They’re selling my DVD’s into countries that they don’t have a right to sell in. So a guy comes to me and pays me $3,000 for the exclusive rights to distribute my movie in his country and then these guys sell DVD’s into that guy’s country. So Josie sells a country- she sells Spain; she sells Italy, etc. So the Italian guy buys Italy. He now has the exclusive rights for that movie for Italy. Nobody can sell in Italy. Damaged did. They sell into Italy. They have no rights to. Their contract says they can sell in America. Period. They now take my movies and give them to Bruder to sell broadcast rights. They don’t have the right to do that. It’s the same as you picking up my DVD’s and going to Bruder and saying, hey, sell me foreign broadcast on these movies. You don’t have the right to do it. They don’t have the right to do it.

“My deal with damaged was very simple,” Bone continued. “I deliver them a completed master and pictures. They do the artwork and I approve it for the boxcovers. When I’ve approved the boxcover, they then replicate the movie, they print the insert and they sell them and thirty days later they deduct the cost of the inserts, the cost of the replication and they pay me the difference which is my money. That’s what they’re supposed to do. They haven’t paid me for the last four movies.”

“So those four movies you’re seeing all over the place?” I ask Bone.

“Oh yeah,” he replies. “First of all they have stopped getting my approval on boxcovers. Now they just do a boxcover and put it out. I don’t like them. But, apparently, I don’t have a say any more over my product. Remember it’s my movie. They haven’t thrown in a dime. It cost them nothing. They sell it, take a 25% commission and are supposed to pay me the 75%. They’re not. They’re keeping it.”

At the time Bone was ready to issue a cease and desist. It read as follows:

“As you are now delinquent on four payments for product and you have contravened the terms of our distribution agreement, all verbal arrangements are null and void. You have severely breached your distribution contract, and as such, one, you are ordered to cease and desist selling any and all John T. Bone product immediately. Two, you will not represent yourselves as owners of or agents for John T. Bone product for domestic sales, foreign sales, broadcast sales or any other area of exploitation worldwide. You will immediately deliver all masters, printed inserts, replicated DVD’s, box or unboxed and any and all ancillary items…

“You will supply us immediately with all sales records of all John T. Bone titles in every every area you’ve exploited along with a full accounting of monies…”

“This is bullshit,” Bone continues. “At the end of the day this is the point. They have sold my movies. They have collected money and have kept it. They haven’t paid me. They have sold my movies into markets where they’re not allowed to thereby fucking my deals with other people. And then I sit down with their salesman one day. And he says to me, John, you have to do Tabu number 2. It’s the best-seller we’ve ever had. I said, really? He said, yeah. We’re in our third replication of it. we’ve sold over 4,000 pieces. I said, really? He said, yeah. It’s flying off the shelves. I said the amazing thing is they told me that they [Blaine at Damaged] sold about 1800 pieces.

“So their salesman tells me we’ve sold around 4,000 pieces. So I go to Blaine and say I hear we’re doing really well with Tabu. He said, nah, you know, we did one run. We sold about 1800 pieces. I said, really? You haven’t run more? ‘No, we’ve still got it sitting on the shelves.’ Who’s lying to me? Louis [Adams] tells me that mine was the biggest selling product they have that they sell their other product by virtue of selling mine. That without my product, the company would have been in the shitter already. he told me that when they first opened the sales were so bad that if it hadn’t been for my first movie, Tabu, the company would have collapsed four months after it started.”

Except Damaged is still around. Then, again, Bone is still around and Tabu Too is out on the Platinum Blue label.