Case Study: Porn rumors and how to handle them

I try to get a few independent sources before I print anything I hear as a rumor. That is why I print very few adult industry rumors; it makes for a less titillating site but I comfort myself that at least I can spell “titillating” and I have a huge schlong.

I am on the august “Board of Governors” for the June 9 debut of the Adultcon Awards. That means that I had a part in selecting from a list of pre-nominees the final nominees for awards in various categories. Now that the nominees have been chosen, the dignified American Academy of Adult Arts and Entertainment chooses a winner.

Also on the BoG are my acting partner Roger Pipe from Rog Reviews, someone from AdultDVDEmpire, and someone from Gamelink (the world’s largest online retailer of adult films and one of my employers).

Last night I got an e-mail from April Storm, who is Tera Patrick’s publicist. April had received an e-mail from Evan Seinfeld, who is Teravision’s CEO and, more importantly, Tera’s husband. He was angry that Tera didn’t get nominated; wasn’t April supposed to be on top of that?

Evan knew that Roger Pipe and I were people who regularly covered April’s clients, so he mentioned us by name as people who had stiffed his Tera (and not in the good way).

This concerned me, because all I had been told about the Adultcon Awards was that they weren’t fixed; that ballots were secret and tamper-proof. Adultcon’s CEO, Renaud West, had assured me of this.

If what Seinfeld indicated was correct, West or someone at Adultcon had divulged voting records.

Here’s the twist: I had given Tera a high vote in her category for Teradise Island. Why was I being thrown under the bus?

I won’t say what anyone else voted, but I did some checking. While I gave Tera high marks, and one other person definitely did, yet another gave her a low mark. If the fourth vote was either very low or otherwise not high, that’s how Tera didn’t make it in. Wide differences of opinion are felt the strongest in small groups.

The following questions emerged: Did Evan lean on Adultcon to find out the votes? It would be in character for someone like Jaz Hoyt. And did Adultcon then cave in? If so, why would my vote be misrepresented? I’d have no problem with Seinfeld trying to find out voting records; that’s how we East Coasters roll. We are from a land of political machines. It’s how the Brooklyn Bridge was built and how Harry Truman became president.

But I couldn’t stay on the esteemed BoG if my votes were divulged.

So I called and e-mailed Renaud West. He e-mailed me back that, while the BoG members were known to freedom lovers everywhere, their votes were not. He also asked if I got this “BS” from my “good friend April Storm”.

I contacted April Storm. If someone had spilled the beans about votes, then someone was lying. How did Evan know about the voting, and why would he have been given the wrong information about mine?

“I have no idea,” she said. “That’s what confuses me.”

She said that she knew of at least one other voter who gave Tera a high vote. It was still possible that Tera wouldn’t get nominated if she got two lower marks. Evan, she said, was upset.

I needed to talk with Evan Seinfeld. I had his number somewhere, but I asked April for it. If she didn’t give it to me, or if she stalled, that would have been a problem. She might be making up scores to appease her boss. She gave the number to me immediately.

So Seinfeld is a businessman, regardless of the business he’s in. It is in his interest to want to know who voted what, even though he shouldn’t be given that information; as long as he’s not told, it’s OK that he asks. I needed to know if he was given the voting tally, because if he had I wouldn’t have anything to do with Adultcon.

“Renaud told me who was on the Board of Governors but he didn’t tell me the votes,” Seinfeld said. “I assumed it was you and Rog (who voted low on Tera).” Seinfeld then explained why he assumed these things.

“There’s a lot of bullshit in this business,” Seinfeld said. “I don’t believe rumors.”

So Seinfeld was looking out for Tera. When West found that Tera hadn’t been nominated, he called Seinfeld.

“I didn’t want to make that call,” West said. “If this thing was fixed, wouldn’t I fix it for Tera?”

So much trouble can come from irresponsible research and the willingness to believe everything one reads.

In the wake of an incident on a movie set two months ago in which I was assaulted by a performer who said, erroneously, that I’d called him a “fag”, the blogger Luke Ford posted a libelous and ill-conceived story on his site, attributing the homophobic words of Ann Coulter (referring to John Edwards), to me.

Ford then wrote that, because of this, I was dumped from several of my writing gigs. He falsely attributed his story to the Associated Press.

I was called by several people, including an LAPD detective, who had read Ford’s story, which was at that time not labeled as “satire”.

“You told me you hadn’t called (the performer/defendant) a fag,” the detective said, fuming (it would have meant I’d lied on a police statement).

“No,” I said, for the fifth time that day. “It was mostly a fabrication. The story would have been a complete fabrication had he not used actual quotes, but they were someone else’s quotes attributed to me.”

“Does he do this sort of thing a lot?” I was asked. “It wasn’t even funny.”

“Yes,” I shrugged.

“Why do people still read him?”

“The adult industry has very low self esteem.”

When I returned to my office that day there was an e-mail waiting. It was from Adultcon.

“Without going into details and due to certain outside influences, we have decided best to let you go. In light of the curent situation, it is the best way maintain the integrity of the show.

We hope you understand and thank you very musch for your past support.”

It turned out that West had read the Luke Ford piece and believed it immediately.

It got resolved, but I am still defending myself against this story. Someone wrote me about it last week. That story has wasted as much time for me as the assault that preceded it.

“Crazy story,” AVN president Paul Fishbein said when I mentioned it to him. I also asked him why AVN didn’t seem to have any interest in covering physical assaults on porn sets or juicy libel cases. “Ultimately, you know Luke’s real colors. Always an agenda and usually not nice.”

I’ll continue to send Luke Christmas cards.

In the end, I told Seinfeld the vote I gave Tera. It was easier than telling him I gave her a low vote, but I would have done that, too.

I realize that in telling Seinfeld my vote, even in the effort of trying to determine if the Adultcon Awards were easy to sell out (they’re not), I made it easier to figure out how the other three entities voted. That was a mistake I won’t repeat, but it was for a larger goal.

That’s the latest from the rumor mill. In other news, the Kim Kardashian sex tape is still an awful movie.

Previously: InTERActive: choosing the blue pill, yellow bikini; Mooninites descend on Boston; Cleopatra of the Nile wants you to die
See also: Adultcon, Tera Patrick