2007 AVN wrap-up: "A fine spray of legitimacy"

The best movie didn’t win; it often doesn’t. But what made this AVN Awards better than in previous years was that the best movie didn’t win for reasons different from the other times the best movie didn’t win.

We’ll get to that later.

Prior to the Adult Entertainment Expo, many were worried that the companies who declined booth rentals (Lexington Steele, New Sensations, Sin City, others) heralded the Expo’s decline, that the hazy Return of Investment numbers used as evidence by those companies in not renting booths signalled a lack of interest from fans.

It is true that booths were spaced farther apart in the Sands Expo Center to give the impression of vastness, but this only allowed the thousands of fans who attended more legroom than their Southwest flight afforded them. Were there fewer fans? Probably. But the extra walking and cameraphone space made this year’s 25-dollar price hike seem worthwhile, and the place sure seemed crowded.

In other words, unless fans knew that companies had pulled out of the Expo and that adult DVD sales were down across the board, they would not be aware of the schadenfraude felt by “industry insiders” that 2007’s convention made less money than in previous years.

What they saw instead was that AVN is still the journal of record, despite Soviet-style pretension and logistical gaffes that make the adult industry look, at best, quaint. And challenger XBiz did not take this opportunity to cover the event like an equal, but instead ignored it like a jealous rival.

A reader writes:

You may or [may] not know the XBiz editorial policy regarding AEE/AVN
Awards coverage—I don’t—but I have to say that, as an observer who was
not in Vegas and needs both sites for my porn news collection needs,
they dropped the ball and bad. Their coverage was next to nothing.
It’s 10 am the day after the adult industry’s biggest annual event and
their headline is ‘Eroticy Revamps Affiliate Program.’ What? Who? Huh?
Who the fuck cares?! The XFanz lead is ‘Visit Virtual Amsterdam.’
Fascinating, I’m sure, but not something the folks that weren’t at the
show last night are looking for.

Do you think this is a matter of policy, not wanting to give AVN
press? I’m guessing it is—there’s no other excuse—and if so it’s bad,
bad policy. You can’t be the voice of the adult industry and just
ignore the AVN Awards. That’s petty and reeks of insecurity and
ultimately is a disservice to readers that forces us to go elsewhere
to get our news—right back to AVN, the very place XBiz is trying to
beat.

Beyond all that, this was an opportunity to one-up AVN. AVN ALWAYS
fucks up their coverage. [XBIZ publisher/former AVNOnline editor Tom] Hymes knows that. By just putting up a list of winners XBiz could have beat them by eight hours. It would have kept people like me from going to AVN.com at all AND driven [AVN president Paul] Fishbein fucking insane! You want to beat AVN, you have to fucking beat them.

Does the foreign press ignore the Academy Awards because they already
have their Golden Globes? Does MTV ignore the Grammys? Did the Beatles
ignore the Stones, or the Beach Boys ignore the Beatles?

But, of course, we must remember that this is porn. They do things
different out there in Porn Valley. There is tolerance and celebration
for things that under no circumstances [should] be tolerated or celebrated,
while a monstrous shadow of insecurity and incompetence lingers over
an industry that doesn’t even know how to pat itself on the back
properly.

Press

Without question, the most press-friendly porn company is Digital Playground. It provided access to its people and actively sought out coverage. In a business in which Skeeter Kerkove still finds work it is absolutely true that all publicity is good publicity. I have often been critical of Digital Playground, including but not limited to Robbie D.’s arm, Jesse Jane’s animatronics, and the company’s sometimes-unsettling need to spin and control its personnel, but every time I write to complain about something Digital Playground does, that’s five more times (I am America’s most-read adult journalist, a great though dubious achievement) that I’m writing about Digital Playground. That Pirates, a good movie, has outsold every great and small adult movie for two years is testament to DP’s Best In Industry marketing prowess.

Still, as I mentioned earlier, it was probably a bad idea to experience Consumer Electronics Show press registration in the same week, because the CES process was so much more efficiently run.

A reader writes:

Why does AVN make it so hard to register as press? I know that every person who gets in free is one fewer paying customer, but if people like Fishbein pay lip service to mainstreaming the business (as he did when talking about Pirates at the show), then he should understand that well-placed articles generate lots of interest and, through that, at least a fine spray of legitimacy.

My CES registration, for which I was a walk-in, consisted of proving I wrote about technology in a legitimate journal or web site. It took five minutes. I have been covering the adult industry for (Jesus Christ) almost five years and was pre-registered for the Expo and it still took knowing people and 45 minutes to get one of the three required badges. Further, my legitimacy needed to be approved beforehand; it’s an illegitimate person who calls everyone else a bastard.

AVN’s red carpet (I needed another badge, and was told to hide my Expo press badge for some reason) was much better than in previous years. Managed as it has been for five years by Sue Procko PR (they normally handle mainstream television DVD releases), the major improvement this year was a man who ran up ahead of red carpet walkers to announce to the [mostly] mainstream press who these people were and what they did. I was with a crew from G4TV and I found this service very helpful when Vivid or ClubJenna girls showed up.

Parties

I made it a point this year to not go to parties in casino clubs, so I passed on everything that listed “bottle service” as if that was some kind of plus. Instead, I went to off the beaten track events and they were wilder, had smaller crowds, and were much more satisfying.

My favorite party was thrown by Black Widow Talent and Pornoweek director Gary Gazzman. It just so happened that Paige turned 18 the day the party was thrown and Gazzman was there to film her first blowjob scene. There were also a number of UK residents attending who had paid a certain amount of money to watch a porn scene being shot. It turns out that Paige was icing on a cake that included an already-scheduled pooltabletop girls’ threesome featuring the juicy 19-year-old Kiara Marie, who knows how to work a room.

A close second was a pair of wild soirees at a suite at the Venetian hosted by Editrix Abby and Gent magazine. I didn’t take any pictures because I’m groovy like that and the people getting naked weren’t porn performers (so there’d be no way of proving their age if subpoenaed to do so).

Ron Royster‘s Eroticist Films threw a couple of wingdings, and they were characterized by their refreshing non-pornishness. Certainly there were a lot of sextastic people in attendance, but not one smelled of Ax body spray, and it was a welcome surprise to emerge into the cold Vegas morning thinking “I also enjoyed talking with that woman.”

The XFanz (a division of XBiz) party at the Empire Ballroom was low-key and not cheesy. XBiz president Alec Helmy was there, shaking hands and remembering names. It was a classy move. The red carpet was moved inside because Vegas was uncharacteristically nippy/nipply this week. Party planner Dusty Marie (no relation to Kiara Marie but imagine if they were sisters? Oh My God) said that she didn’t want people freezing to death. It is rare that such concern is shown for party guests in this cold business.

I and America were invited to the Corruption party near the top of the Mandalay Bay. Best Director Eli Cross/Best Actor in a Non-Sex Role Bryn Pryor believed (and I heard this from other people, too) that his movie didn’t have a chance at anything except a Best Supporting Actress award for Alana Evans, which also happened.

Pryor’s speech at the Awards show, in which he thanked his partner Kylie Ireland, was as touching and sincere as Larry Flynt’s earlier tribute to lawyers. (That sounded sarcastic – it really wasn’t. Larry Flynt loves lawyers.) And the party, which immediately followed the awards, was both jubilant and way too crowded.

I arrived as a friend was leaving. “Don’t go in,” she said. “It’s a hell-pit in there.” Indeed the temperature rose by about 20 degrees upon entering.

“I’ve never encountered a more meta experience,” Pryor said. Pryor, as Mark Logan, was AVN’s editor for several years in the late 90’s and early oughts. “I walked backstage for my award and no one from AVN knew that I’d done their jobs before them.”

This is the first year the AVN Awards will be personalized with the winners’ names. AVN employees are relieved by this because they no longer have to keep stashes of unclaimed trophies. It also gives creedence to AVN’s assertion that the awards aren’t decided with the cashing of a check. In previous years the awards were engraved at the Philadelphia trophy shop of the brother of AVN pariah (and former AVN editor) Gene Ross.

Sex Z Pictures, Corruption‘s producer, is a newer company.

“I know Paul [Fishbein] is going to get some angry calls about this one,” Pryor said.

The talk at the party was mostly about shock and joy. The people who put Corruption together – including publicity firm All Media Play partners Jeff Mullen and Scott David, who stood on the stage behind Pryor when he accepted Best Video Feature – were amazed that the movie, which was co-written by Pryor and Alvin Edwards, himself a former editor of both AVN and AVONline under the name Ken Michaels, could be allowed to win despite all the potential cries of conflict of interest.

The fact is that AVN has been cleaning up shop of its embarrassments this year, firing both Heidi Joy Pike and the man who [claims to have] driven her off, Mike Ramone. Both were long overdue for dismissal, and though senior management at AVN knew for years that Ramone was soliciting porn performers for “consideration” and that Pike handled whatever her job was with belligerent ineptitude, the company deserves credit for burning its warts.

This impetus for improvement probably comes due to the arrival on the scene of XBiz, which has been slowly but decisively taking up chunks of AVN’s formerly inviolable real estate, including publications, a fan site (XFanz), award shows and, starting last summer, a convention that will be repeated this February in Hollywood.

People talk about how absurd it is that a porn publication presents porn awards. “Can you imagine Variety handing out the Oscars?” is the way Renaud West, founder of competing convention/awards show Adultcon, puts it. “Everyone knows the AVN Awards are fake.”

The AVN Awards are only partially fake, and the industry is not big enough to support an objective media cottage industry (other than myself). In general, well-made movies like Corruption do get the consideration they deserve, and even if Sex Z Pictures owner Bo Kenney took Paul Fishbein to the SuperBowl last year and that the movie was written, directed, and starred by former AVN employees, the triumph of Corruption is still a Cinderella story compared with the sweetheart deals that characterize the industry. The antics of people like Ramone are exceptions to the rule of generally aboveboard dealings at AVN.

NB: My method for determining the ratio of exceptions:rule proving is a simple minority of exceptions.

I asked Corruption co-screenwriter Alvin Edwards if, like Fashionistas, Corruption would open a Vegas revue.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” he said.

In the 90’s AVN instituted what has become known as The Dingle Law barring its employees from participating in adult films. AVN Senior Editor and lunchroom namesake Mark Kernes appeared with Sharon Mitchell in the 1995 movie The Secret Life of Herbert Dingle, which garnered adult industry criticism for its illusion of impropriety. So AVN does respond, eventually, to complaints.

The Show

Its lease up at the Venetian, the AVN Awards were held this year at their “new home” at the Mandalay Bay. About 7,000 people attended and parts of the convention and show were broadcast by outlets as diverse as Playboy and G4TV (of which I am an occasional employee). The show was better this year than in the past, mostly for reducing instances of drag and unprofessionalism. The interstitial movies, particularly “Pornco’s Dick Magnet”, were actually funny, and many of the awards were given offstage.

The show was hosted, as it has been in previous years, by a comedian with a porn star foil. This year that duo was Jim Norton and jessica drake. Norton was an excellent host, making drake laugh several times, and she was an able and elegant straight man.

As usual, very few presenters thought to speak into the microphone, and each celebrity appearance, save for that of Dave Navarro, fell flat. Gene Simmons is looking more and more like a broody character in a head trauma unit’s version of “Tony and Tina’s Wedding” every year, and “Mind Freak”‘s Cris Angel and Carrot Top didn’t know what to do with themselves or the material they’d been presented. Only Dave Navarro gave the porn festivities a legitimacy-by-association feel.

Luckily Navarro was there to defend himself, because Eddie Van Halen, winner of Best Music for his work on Sacred Sin, wasn’t. The most famous guitarist of the 80’s got his name spelled wrong on the slide announcing his victory. Will Playboy replicate the error on its broadcast? Probably.

A weird moment accompanied Eon McKai’s picking up his Best All-Sex Release Award for Neu Wave Hookers. The movie tied with JacktheZipper’s Blacklight Beauty. Both directors are former VCA talent, so LFP/VCA’s production head, Drew Rosenfeld, came up to accept the award for McKai.

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to even be here,” said McKai meekly. Rosenfeld called McKai, who left VCA for Vivid-steve shortly after Neu Wave Hookers came out, a “talented director”.

Under Rosenfeld, Hustler this year won the fewest trophies of any major studio and the fewest AVN Awards in the company’s history. Its Beaver Hunt won Best Series but its Best Sex Comedy (Joanna’s Angels 2: Alt Throttle) was developed with another company (Burning Angel) and the only other award it received was directed by someone who left the company in disgust.

Amy Ried accepted both her awards despite having retired from the business (but so did Eve Laurence but there she was at the Naughty America booth). I was in one of the eight skyboxes above the show floor so I can only say her look was inscrutable, especially when Vince Vouyer intercepted her award for Best Anal Scene in an uncomfortable show of dopiness, especially as the trophies presented were temporary and they’ll both get real ones anyway.

Late 90’s band Buckcherry finished the show to a quarter-capacity room. The AVN Awards usually empty out early, but this was a show people really should have stayed for, if for no other reason than the John Stagliano-choreographed opening dance with a hundred dancers and his Fashionistas mid-show break.

I feel for Fishbein in the way one always feels sorry for people suffering from a crisis of their own creation. He exhorted fans to see the stage version of Fashionistas, probably because Fashionistas Safado: The Challenge only got three minor awards (update: Fishbein denies this. “It is a really good show,” he said). He looked uncomfortable when Larry Flynt came onstage, as did Flynt. I hope the broadcast preserves these moments, because embarrassment can be an excellent motive for change. That is why I no longer wear Christmas trees dangling from my testicles.

Personal tragedies

• Dana DeArmond, one of porn’s nicest people, learned via a MySpace friend that her L.A. house had burned down, apparently due to a neighbor’s candle in a plastic cup. I was given this news while I watched Dana dancing at the Expo’s Pink Visual stage the day after it happened. She was smiling all the way through. She’s a tough chick. Fans with cash may donate here.
• April Storm, publicist for PurePlay Media, was bitten by a brown recluse spider and had emergency surgery, preventing her from attending the Expo or awards show. She is recovering.
• Upon returning, I found that my trial size container of Gold Bond powder had exploded in my suitcase onto my undergarments. Of all the things it could have exploded onto, however, undergarments are best.

The line for Southwest Airlines, the unofficial carrier of the porn community for the Burbank/Vegas route, stretched a quarter mile at McCarran Airport. Luckily I was only dropping someone off.

After sleeping for 14 hours, I can’t wait to go back next year.

Just remind me to bring some groceries for the press line.

See the gallery here.

Previously: AVN wrap-up 2006
See also: AVN Awards