AVN Wrap-up: I will never spread my commentary on the 2008 AEE again

Each January I spend a week in Las Vegas for both the Consumer Electronics Show and the AVN Expo. The big hits at CES this year were the Taser holster/mp3 player and a software program that allows users to read others’ text messages on a computer. But nothing compares to “I will never spread my legs in this industry again.”

Read the exhaustive report after the gap.

Once again, I was very impressed with the lunches served to the press (sponsored by Verizon) but am dubious about the backpack I received from Toshiba HD-DVD. Not only did the one I received last year begin falling apart in June, but HD-DVD is now dead in the water.

CES was held in several buildings across Las Vegas, not only in the Sands/Venetian complex but also at the Las Vegas Convention Center. It was the latter venue that was most crowded and, because AVN would also be held at the Sands on an overlapping Wednesday and Thursday, I visited the LVCC on Monday and Tuesday and wandered over to the much more compact, sedate, and controlled Sands/Venetian area Wednesday, where there was better access to lunch and the press room did not look like a post-Katrina Superdome.

But you’re not here to hear about CES.

What is instructive to remember, though, is that the AVN show was once part of CES. It might seem odd now, as electronic products are a very small portion of the adult industry, but the AVN Expo used to be held in a corner of one of CES’ many rented halls. When that changed, AVN grew and CES attendees became embittered, because they would much rather see half-naked women in high heels than the latest in South Korean metric screws.

To AVN’s credit, its own coverage of the show skimped on hyperbole. There were no stories about the “biggest Expo ever”. Numbers have not been released yet, but it was clear to the naked eye that there were fewer people attending the Expo than in previous years. This made for a more enjoyable trade show, as there was easier access to everything from the performers to the bathrooms to the food.

And numbers were not down so far that the event ceased to be exciting and crowded.

In terms of companies represented at the Expo, there was not a noticeable drop from last year. It seems that the companies most in need of maintaining a strong presence at the Expo, like Wicked, Vivid, Digital Playground, Hustler, Adam & Eve, and Evil Angel, kept their booths in the same place. If any of them had been gone, people would have thought something was up.

“Put it this way,” an Evil Angel employee told me, “no one makes money from being here. But we’ve got got be here.”

Smaller companies literally on the fringes of the Expo floor did well with foot traffic, such as Juicy Entertainment, as did companies with gimmicks, like classic porn company VCX, which posed its models on a ’68 Camaro.

The Naughty America booth, as always, was the most striking with its multiple backdrops. Upload producer Sex Z Pictures continued with its open-ended booth design which created confusion as people mistakenly walked in and out of it. It looked less like a studio booth (there were no screens playing its movies) than it did an improvised business area.

Unlike previous years, the space of the Expo floor was managed more efficiently. Whereas previously there were large chunks of open space, this year the dividing curtains were pulled up almost to the back of Andrew Blake’s booth.

Expo newcomer Abby Winters received a lot of attention with the company’s AstroTurf motif, with the barefoot Aussies clamoring over each other in cotton underthings with an innocence belying the horrible secrets detailed in the comments of this post.

As always, the AVN Expo was a chance for people who’d been talking by e-mail and telephone all year to meet face to face and, based on looking each other over, strike or not strike business deals.

In that way Las Vegas in January becomes a much-needed boost of adrenaline for industry players on the verge of being forgotten. For them, they need to come to the AVN show so that people will remember they’re alive.

“I just need to show my face in a few places so nobody thinks I’m selling dishwashers somewhere,” one director told me, even though he would be a better dishwasher salesman than porn director, in my opinion.

For others, Vegas is nothing more than a yearly reunion in a familiar place with a captive audience; if everyone is going to be in the same casino complex, it’s much easier to get them in the same room than if you’re trying to collect them in the San Fernando Valley.

Otto Bauer became the Man in America for a Dutch hardcore company, several independent producers switched distributors, a number of attendees were hoodwinked into a free bus ride to a Pahrrump-area brothel and then told that the hookers were extra, and a surprising number of people told me they’d picked up products at the unlikeliest booth of all: a company selling 400-threadcount Egyptian cotton sheets.

The most thought-provoking booth was that of the West Las Vegas Libertarian party.

“Everyone tells me that the Republicans should be kicked out,” the rep said, “and that the Democrats were better for the porn industry. But just as many, if not more, lawsuits were brought against the adult business during the Clinton administration than in Bush I or II.

“And maybe Jenna says she supports Hillary, but would Hillary ever support Jenna?”

Press

For the past several years press concerns have been handled by several organizations. Home Entertainment Events, which actually owns the Adult Entertainment Expo, takes care of press registration for the Expo.

“A woman came in from some scrapbooking publication in Sandy, Utah,” said HEE’s Sean Devlin. “And she wasn’t pre-registered but she showed us her publication’s website with her byline and picture, and she told us that our industry was on top of technology and so on, and that today’s scrapbooks employ technology, so we started registering her, despite misgivings about how she could cover us. She started looking around at the posters in the press room and she said, ‘You have a lot of porn in this room,’ and we said, ‘Well, it is a porn convention’ and she got very red and told us she thought we were CES. She ripped off her bracelet and demanded we take her out of our database and then ran out of the room.”

How this woman walked the hundred yards from the entrance of the hall to the press room without figuring out there was something seriously porny going on says a lot about Utah.

Sue Procko PR handles both red carpet access and show tickets for press, so any media representative who wants to visit the Expo, get on the red carpet and go to the AVN Awards needs to register three times. This aspect of the system is seriously flawed, but within its constraints the staffs of both companies were very efficient dealing with multiple requests from freelancers, even brilliant ones, like me.

Among Procko’s other clients is Anchor Bay, which re-releases horror classics like “Dawn of the Dead”, “The Evil Dead”, and “Phantasm”.

“We’re still looking for that great crossover between Angus Scrimm and the AVN Expo,” said Procko’s Tim Williams.

My advice to potential press attendees of this series of events is to never trust that an AVN employee will make the call for you. AVN employees are not only overworked and overstressed, but also it is not in their best interest to help you. A colleague thought that it would be a good idea to go through a high-ranking AVN employee to get show passes and watched his tickets evaporate the day of the show.

AVN v. XBiz

Competing adult trade puiblication XBiz has been covering the AVN show for years, and this year sent its largest contingent ever to Las Vegas. The difference between the two staffs was striking: I never saw an XBiz staffer not dressed well, whereas many AVN employees walked the floor or attended dinners in t-shirts, jeans, and ball caps.

A visitor from another profession would conclude that the XBiz kids were all go-getters and that the AVN staff were slackers, but this is porn, an industry founded on the principal of Clothes Don’t Matter. Still, it was impossible to look at the two staffs and not think of a Before and After photo.

XBiz has for the past two years accelerated its acquisition of properties that are more similar than different from those AVN possesses. While next month’s XBiz Awards does not have nearly the number of nominations AVN announces, its awards are getting bulkier in number and also covering more of the same ground. It sponsors the novelty show LoveLA in Los Angeles at the end of the month (this is a correction from an earlier post in which I said XBiz was launching this show) and, like its rival, has a magazine each for the video and Internet sides of the adult business.

In a growth cycle marked less by invention than copying AVN’s ideas and executing them better but with less of AVN’s charming fandom, XBiz’ biggest innovation this past year was its Erotic Film Festival, something AVN has never attempted and which was generally well received. Its most egregious copycatting was the launch of a website called Adult Video Index, or AVI. Sure AVN doesn’t have a copyright on the term “Adult Video”, but AVI seems grasping.

XBiz engineered its presence at the AVN show by donating banner space on its site. It would be interesting if AVN covers next month’s XBiz Forum and Awards with the same zeal XBiz displayed last week.

Parties

I lost my voice early this week from spending too much time at parties that were loud. Having been born already, I never understood the fascination of spending too much time squeezing through sweaty obstacles. I wear a suit, I look good; why do I want to emerge from a party with your body spray and eyeliner all over it?

The only party I attended of this nature this year was XBiz’ Players’ Ball (which, naturally, was once an AVN staple) at the Empire Ballroom. I hung out in the VIP room with people dressed as pimps like historical interpreters. Even pimps don’t dress like pimps.

The best part of the party was the means by which I got there. Best Retail Site winner SugarDVD rented the largest vehicle in Las Vegas short of a plane. Named The Intimidator, the Ford vehicle held 22 people in slightly cramped comfort. It is the type of vehicle to overwhelm and terrify enemies.

Do you know how to tell people in rented limousines versus people in limousines they own? People in rented limousines don’t drive down The Strip screaming “I’m so wasted!”

Business-related parties I attended included a Digital Playground fete at which I met Adrianna Lynn and was seated next to Stoya. Both women are great fun, but I have to give the edge to Stoya because she stole my camera when I visited other tables and made me some memorable shots. I feel like the hobbyists who first shot Bettie Page when I downloaded the photos.

On Wednesday I ate with Fleshbot. Since its employees live in different parts of the country we rarely see each other. This trip, in that it also included staffers from Gawker Media sites like Jezebel, Defamer, and Gizmodo, featured the biggest collection of my coworkers I have ever met. Our main discussion was about what would be this year’s “Dirtpipe Milkshakes”.

Later I attended an Adam & Eve dinner at which I sat next to Jamye Waxman and across the table from Ira Levine and Nina Hartley. I wish conversations like this on my dearest friends. At one point Playboy Radio’s Farrell Hirsch, who had lost his voice too, leaned over with a note that read: “Shouldn’t Nina be required at every party?”

Nina told me that my dimples wouldn’t go away if I became fat. This is why the world has a crush on her. She also told us how, at conventions, she gives everyone ten seconds of undivided attention.

The next night I went to Morton’s Steakhouse with Harmony Films. It was the best steak I ever ate, save for the cow I hunted, killed, and cooked myself during my vision quest. If Harmony’s Gazzman were American, he would be a national treasure. Since he is Scottish, I think I’ll have to check the CIA’s field book but I’m pretty sure he’s my enemy.

I couldn’t make it to Tera Patrick’s or Jenna Jameson’s party, was detained on the way to Nikki Benz’ party, and was not invited to Wicked’s and AVN’s parties. Vivid-steve hoodwinked (my words, not anyone else’s) Fleshbot into “sponsoring” their party, but I did not attend. I was not invited to a Village Voice party because I’m not cool enough.

I stopped in at a number of other parties and I wish I could have stayed, but the meter was running.

Finally, an annual Venetian suite party hosted by a mysterious cabal was my final stop of the convention. It was a fitting way to cap a week of aberrant behavior. People drifted in and out. Sunny Lane, a gloriously naked Satine Phoenix (she wasn’t nude – she was naked), Abby Ehmann, whom I sent sobbing from the room, Joe Gallant, who was there and then he wasn’t, Jamye Waxman, who had to catch a plane and I cursed the plane, a lot of sexy checkout girls from Albertson’s, and Ron Jeremy, who interrupted a conversation I was having in the only way he knew how, were just a few of the characters.

But the only thing I found shocking was this: in response to not finding herself on the guest list, a colleague of mine called security. I would have taken the little “press” card out of my hatband and mashed it into the carpet in disgust, but instead I went back into the party and had, like, ten more drinks.

People

I especially enjoyed my conversations with Adrianna Lynn, Stoya, Nina and Ira, Jamye, and the delightful Alix Lakehurst. I enjoyed, despite everything, meeting the Abby Winters girls and Jean Laconia, or whatever her name is. Gazzman and his partner Dave West are people to watch, even in PAL format. It is always great to see Lorelei Lee and the people in her orbit, like Bobbi Starr, Adrianna Nicole, Madison Young, and Annette Schwarz. I also enjoyed the comic stylings of Porno Jim and once again didn’t talk to his wife, Dicey, enough. I talked with Sasha Grey and Kimberly Kane outside of a bathroom, because that was all G-d had ordained. Aiden Starr couldn’t come to the final party, despite her dress, and that ensaddened me, but at least I met Hillary Scott’s mom at the dollar slots, and I’m hoping Gia Paloma and Tommy Pistol will let me name their child Amerigo Ponante the Destroyer.

The only person who refused a photo was Matt Zane. I asked him if he would wave to me, while suspended from hooks, as if I was a guest at his barbecue.

“No, I won’t do that,” he said, and somehow managed to twist away. Some people have standards.

The Show

A lot of industry people like to say they don’t and won’t attend the AVN Awards, but I always enjoy myself. This year (again, with no official figures) saw the highest attendance for a show more streamlined than in years past, and with some great hosting from Greg Fitzsimmons and Tera Patrick.

If I am correct, this was not actually the 25th annual awards but actually the 25th anniversary of AVN. Next year will be the 25th annual awards. Regardless, few chose to correct this and as such the show could have done better to hype its history. While there were a few Best Of clips, they were not comprehensive. What would have been interesting is something like an onstage reunion of the “Scoundrels” cast from the first awards, or a group picture with the last several years’ worth of Best New Starlets and Male and Female Performers of the Year.

Either due to a lack of organization or the inadvisability of a porn star showing his or her age, this will never happen.

Jenna Jameson

Having met Jenna only three times, I was impressed with how nice a person she seemed. Distancing herself from porn the way she is doing, but making her announcement of never again spreading her legs for the porn industry at that industry’s biggest function shows how hopelessly tied to that industry she is. But cut her some slack. The adult industry made her, but doesn’t own her.

A reader writes:

“I watched the clip and don’t understand the hoopla. Yes, she was inelegant and dismissive and perhaps could have been more articulate, but at the end of the day she’s a porn star. Regardless, the crowd that sat there snacking eagerly on finger foods and drinking champagne as they waited to find out who won Best Anal expected something more from their creation and lashed out when they didn’t get it. The industry media that trashed her for the last year erupted when they weren’t shown more respect from the girl who would be nothing without them. (They should have been thankful that she gave them a moment of entertainment during the never-ending show.) How can Jenna ever thank them enough for letting her suck cock in the adult industry? Seems only sucking more cock will do. Just like the mainstream, the adult industry will never see her as anything more than a whore. And we wonder why she wants out?”

Rumors and blind items

I heard that the entity who said to a reviewer that “There’s an army of people who like my movies” is also going to be out of a job next month. I heard this rumor via a person who has been known to present wishful thinking as fact, so I am, as ever, dubious that the Right Thing will happen.

A number of companies are royally regretting their decision to release exclusively on HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray. If it’s any consolation, porn on either format looks like ass. Hard to appreciate the deeper blacks on your MRSA patch.

I heard the AVN show got/is being sold to HotMovies. No confirmations.

I heard the AVN Expo is moving to Los Angeles. No confirmations and I hope that never happens. If it does and AVN starts poaching former XBiz employees, the power has shifted.

While Playboy broadcasts the red carpet, Showtime filmed the AVN Awards. Whether or not this type of show can ever be aired is a question no one at Showtime is answering. They did very little to promote Vivid’s “Debbie Does Dallas” miniseries and, with no official releases touting their involvement (it should have been all over the news for the past month), I doubt anything significant will happen. AVN deserves a more involved broadcast partner.

See also: Gram’s Gallery

Previously: Gram’s Index: The only numbers you can trust; AVN 2007 – last words; AVN 2007 – “A fine spray of legitimacy”; AVN wrap-up 2006

About Gram the Man 4399 Articles
Gram Ponante is America's Beloved Porn Journalist

3 Comments

  1. Mr. Ponante. there are people I think should be famous, and you are one of them. Are you famous already? Don’t be offended if you are already famous, for I am Swiss and we don’t get out much.

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