You can credit or begrudge X-Play, the production team of Jeff Mullen (clothed, above, directing “Not Married with Children XXX” as Will Ryder) and Scott David, for the wave of porn parodies that, along with minor-celebrity sex videos, have been the two rickety crutches of the porn business over the past few years. And this week saw X-Play asserting itself both in the porn world and the real one with a couple of unlikely skirmishes.
1. “Not” your father’s trademark case
What began in earnest with X-Play’s “Britney Rears” trilogy and continued with the “Not the Bradys XXX” saga grew into a frenzy, as most adult companies have tried their hands at parodies with varying degrees of success. X-Play itself has made movies for other companies as well as distributed its own proprietary content through Hustler and Adam & Eve, everything from “Not the Cosbys XXX,” “Not Married with Children XXX,” and “Flight Attendants,” which has been retrofitted as “Not Airplane XXX: Flight Attendants.”
This week X-Play announced that it had managed to convince the U.S. Patent And Trademark Office to grant it a trademark on the use of the word “Not” vis a vis porn parodies.
I spoke with X-Play founder Jeff Mullen. It seemed crazy – and just the sort of legal weirdness that makes porn an unlikely precedent-setter time and again – that a company that brushes up against the copyrights of established brands was itself seeking protection for the use of a single negative word.
It made me think of a burglar that sued another burglar over the right to rob a certain neighborhood.
“Is this a joke?” I said.
“No joke,” Mullen said. “Although we live in a world of parody – making this protective decision ironically funny – we want to make sure other productions by other companies good or bad cannot use our tag opening word ‘Not’ as their beginning of their title.”
“I decide what’s ironically funny around here,” I said.
“We had to gently ask companies over the past year or so not to use the word ‘Not’ in their adult movie titles and a few companies agreed and changed their titles,” Mullen said. “However with the proliferation and popularity of the porn parody by so many companies it became more important than ever to protect our ‘Not…XXX’ brand and we now have legal rights to keep others from using the word ‘not,’ especially at the beginning of their movie title.”
Because of X-Play’s example as well as longtime distributor Hustler’s legal trailblazing (and lawyers on retainer), the porn parody ground rules have been more or less established. Whether the title begins with “This Ain’t..” “Not…” or “Not Really…” (the Vouyer Media “Dukes of Hazzard” parody that X-Play cited), all discs are clearly marked with “parody” inside and out.
2. Pimp hands across Porn Valley
With studios churning out parodies as if the Porno-Industrial complex depended on them, and with X-Play picking up awards for its work, the company has become a major employer and recently clashed with Derek Hay (who up until recently performed as Ben English), owner of L.A. Direct Models, the biggest talent booking agency in the business.
Porn talent agents can be compared to their Hollywood counterparts but that would be misleading. Both the adult agents and the talent they represent expect different things from the deal.
The Porn Valley agent does collect a percentage – usually ten percent – from every booking. But in many cases the agent also fronts money for STD testing, provides transportation to and from set, and allows new or visiting talent to stay in company housing. For a fee.
And porn agents are also lucky to work within a scheme in which there is a standard rate for sexual act performed, with tweaks to the formula that account for drive time, length of workday, whether there is a script, or how many days the performer will work on a particular production.
Porn Valley performers’ rates are overwhelmingly the same, as set by mutual agreement among the agents. The exceptions are the few performers who have a studio contract and the fewer working models (Sasha Grey is one) who control their own rates.
X-Play got into a fracas with L.A. Direct for offering a lower rate to a performer or performers, and this resulted in a public war of words on porn gossip blogs.
Mullen sent the following press release this week:
In what amounts to a prominent adult movie agent still living in yesterday’s booming economic times, LA Direct owner/agent Derek Hay has blasted Jeff Mullen and X-Play for hiring actresses for their award-winning movies for less than the financial rate that he would prefer to charge.
It is no secret that the adult movie industry is in a tremendous financial spiral due to the proliferation of free porn which is causing numerous companies to shut down or drastically reduce their movie production output yet Derek Hay continues to insist on charging what many producers consider impossible talent rates even at the expense of actors who might get passed over for great roles without ever knowing they received an offer for a prospective movie role; sometimes in very high profile blockbuster movies.
“I would normally never comment publicly but Derek Hay recently posted a public blog criticizing me after he read a generic comment I wrote on Lukeford where I didn’t even mention him by name,” stated X-Play producer Jeff Mullen. He and I spoke to set the record straight yesterday but he later went ahead and sent out an email message to his entire talent database blasting X-Play for hiring girls at rates that make financial sense for our company but not for Derek.”
It appears that both parties are chastened and wary, as Mullen now says the issue is “water under the bridge” and that X-Play still works with L.A. Direct. But to be clear, Mullen said that:
“I have been accused of low-balling talent. The truth of the matter is that I offered $1800 for one of [L.A. Direct’s] girls for a package that included one [boy/girl] sex [scene] with dialogue scene plus two dialogue-only days. Three days of work for $1800 and it gets turned down? I hardly think this is low-balling or expecting the talent to work for ‘slave wages’ just because X-Play wins awards. We live in a declining business model and a responsible business owner must control his costs or risk becoming a non factor but at the same time I have no problem with any agent or talent turning down any offer they think is not good enough to accept. The ‘going rate’ for talent is decided by the purchaser in an open free market and I have exercised my right to purchase or not make a purchase. These rebuttal arguments that I want a $2.00 coffee but only want to pay the cashier $1.50 is nonsense. Great theater but nonsense nonetheless.”
A Hollywood agent is required to tell clients of any offer, says Magnolia Pictures filmmaker Chauncey Boyd (not his real name). “Of course, he can say to his client that ‘you definitely don’t want this,’ but he is obliged to tell the client about every nibble that comes in.”
“But when I was a huge Hollywood actor, no agent ever set up rides for me or let me stay in his house,” I said.
“And is that why you gave the finger to Hollywood?” Boyd said.
“No, I said, “It was because I am phenomenally untalented.”
Among Mullen’s complaints about the L.A. Direct flap is that Hay rejected some offers without telling his talent.
“Well, that is definitely against the social contract of a Hollywood agent,” Boyd said, “but then Gwyneth Paltrow wouldn’t get creampied for less that $25 million.”
“I’m sure she would have if she got to work in ‘Flight Attendants,'” I said, obviously beating a dead horse.
Whether Mullen’s rebellion has made a dent in the “going rate” or if – much more likely – there is now an exception between gentlemen, is unclear, but one thing, as always, is certain: it’s never just one person getting fucked in the ass.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: “Flight Attendants“; The Ropey Volley Awards 2009; Life in a porn dorm isn’t all pillow fights and orgies; “Fly Girls”: When you have a choice in airport-oriented porn comedies
See also: X-Play, L.A. Direct Models
soon someone will be in pre-production on , “Not Mulen XXX.” Will be using NOTScott David to do his production design thing, have NOTDerek in one od Scott’s wigs playing the title role. Hire MOTall media play to do the PR for the project and then make a deal with NOTA&E in conjunction with NOTHustler for distribute thru NotCED; shoot it all on my cell phone with available lite and ask Mullen to NOTsue me for using ‘NOT’ in the title…. anybody remember Very Knotty?
Does this mean my scripts for “This Ain’t/Not The Fountainhead” and “This Ain’t/Not Atlas Shrugged” will forever languish in porno development limbo because of politics? One more example of the establishment keeping the artist down.
You have always been the Ellsworth Toohey of Porn, Wayne. I hope the first line of your “Not Fountainhead” is “Howard Roark nutted on Dominique Francon’s face.”
I work in the “legit” industry, and this stuff has always fascinated me. I’m shocked that Porn Valley agents only take ten (although I assume that’s not a plus-ten)–a lot of non-union agencies in LA and elsewhere will take a full twenty, and these agencies don’t strike me as any more scrupulous. On the other hand, they are doing things with these fees that would cause a legit agency to lose its franchise if not its outright license.
And the pay scale, don’t even get me going. I don’t know if it’s porn’s relative ubiquity and hence disposability (which obviously contributes to the “declining business model,” I say to my own perverted detriment), but I’m sure your Boyd can confirm that an actor doing (even just a single line in) a commercial over the course of a three day shoot is going to make nearly $1800 in session fees, scale, and that’s before thousands of dollars of use fees/residuals. What a world we live in where what is ostensibly an actor gets fucked on one of those days and they see the same amount of session but no future use (and I can imagine the safe and san clauses in these contracts are no great shakes, either, hardy har).
Lesson, as always: the porn industry is not the same as entertainment.
Oh hell yeah JR,
When I began writing for AVN in 2002, my first full-time porn job after working for some websites and freelance gigs here and there, I noted how many people in porn would stress how they worked – once – in “mainstream” and could go back any time.
Eight years later I notice this much less, as the worlds have overlapped (and I think it is because of social networking more than anything else), but some things remain different.
Whereas friends and I can still get a residual check from things we did five years ago on basic cable, no porn actor, unless he/she has an affiliate link on her own website, will ever see another penny from the work she does.
But remember also that the life of an L.A. actor is by all accounts considered a lucky one IF he gets an under-five and a few days’ work. That is the majority of them, wasting gas and L.A. rent and a lot of their parents’ money on endless classes and auditions and headshots all for the shot at getting a walk-on on “Scrubs.” If that’s still on.
It is the rare actor who gets to be the Verizon “Can You Hear Me Now?” guy.
In short, the majority of L.A. actors would envy porn money.
Even thought the porn girl will never see a residual check (unless she joined AFTRA for a cameo on “Californication”), in her brief porn career she will make a fuckload (ahem) more money than 99 percent of her agemates in L.A.
The tardeoff is that, unless she is both savvy and lucky, she will never have the opportunity to speak of this porny time in her life ever again in polite company. It is the rare person who can walk between the worlds.
The consensus around the water cooler this morning – all based on personal experience – is that Hollywood agents are, by and large, worse than porn agents. Because at least with porn agents you know what you are getting. The exploitation and the services rendered are in plain view.
Not only that, but in porn the ratio of hard work:success is actually much more manageable, whereas in Hollywood one can bust one’s ass for years in pursuit of an ass-fucking that one’s porn counterpart gets out of the way immediately and at least gets a nice leased Lexus out of.
Health risks, absolutely. Jeopardy to future relationships, likely. But more and more we are seeing the new breed of porn star who can negotiate these challenges and make it out in better shape than when they came in.
But who has measured the scarring that a single walk-on on “Everybody Loves Raymond” over a 10-year “career” in Hollywood will cause, especially while the actor was putting off developing any of the other skills (marketing, editing, website development, travel – even as a hooker – lighting, etc.) that her porn counterpart was picking up along with Herpes?
At the end of the day/career, is 500 cousins of “Dirtpipe Milkshakes” any worse or better than once being an extra on a commercial that played during the SuperBowl?
And I think it’s time that we learn from Ice Cube that “pimp” is not a bad word. All agents are pimps, and it is the degree to which they are successful at getting agreeable work for their clients that makes them good or bad pimps.
No, I agree with a good chunk of what you said there, which is why I tacked on my “lesson, as always” caveat. I, and others, might want to compare the two, but it’s ultimately apples and oranges.
But it still kind of goes back to what I was trying to get at (and I’m not judging here, because I have no answers–I can’t figure it out for the life of me, in fact): porn performers expose a part of them (literally and figuratively) that very, very few “legit” performers can attest to (and even then: Chloe Sevigny, for instance, can at least pretend that her on-screen beej was about the art. Relatively few–I won’t say not any–porn actors could say the same about their body of work). And what is the value of that? Of those health risks, and relationship barriers, and societal aspersions? I don’t know, but it strikes me that it should be more than what I hear it is.
I know you’ve talked about the inflated profit numbers tossed around regarding the adult industry, but even if the real numbers are but a fraction of that, it still seems that porn actors get paid proportionately the least on average out of all the performers in various mediums and fields under the big tent of entertainment. And to me, the crux of all this is, beyond even the work, their personal sacrifice is so much greater than the sitcom bit-player, or movie background, or summer-stock actor, or football bench warmer, or whatever. Nobody doesn’t let their children play with the neighbor kids because they found out the mother next door once did supporting roles in Quinn Martin productions.
So what keeps these rates so seemingly low? The financial compulsion behind being in porn? The surplus of product? The surplus of talent? The relative lack of skill or training required? The character of the people in the industry? Again, I’m passing no judgments (these are all reasons why rates in legit work could be relatively too low as well); I just don’t know.
Interesting stuff.
Also, I should say that I would disagree with your assertion that agents are “pimps.” An agent is an agent. They might not always be the most scrupulous when it comes to their job, and they may occasionally even talk tough, but they don’t collect talent to their stable nor subsequent monies from that talent’s work using intimidation of or outright violence. And though I’m not entirely familiar with that fascinating world (I do know that a pimp’s love is different than that of a square), I’m willing to bet that Iceberg Slim and his colleagues took more than even a sub-standard 20%.
I talked with agent Mark Spiegler, who tells his clients, “If you have to make a choice between the money and the fame, take the money. People think that Fame means Rich. It ain’t true.”
Good advice. Of course, that’s why Orson Welles ended up drunkenly stumbling through Paul Masson commercials.
If only his estate was seeing use fees on YouTube clips of outtakes.