So control of the iconic Falcon brand falls to Chris Ward. The irony is, of course, the films he directed for Falcon in the late 90′s were sold to Steven Scarborough, with the exception of the one or two Mustang movies (and I believe one of them stars Chris Steele, head of Jet Set. Wow, small world.). I guess Hot House is next for AEBN?

Faced with the imminent trial from the Jim French breech-of-contract lawsuit against Prowest et al, Rutherford and Settle made a last bid effort to try and retain control over their company, get relief from their debts, and give them some hope of salvaging their business. Prowest was placed into Chapter 11 (typically a re-structuring) while Rutherford and Settle filed for Chapter 7 (liquidation).

However, salvaging Colt is not going be an easy task by any means, as Jim French is not only the largest creditor with a listed debt of $1.45 million, but the only secured creditor for Prowest. Since Rutherford and Settle personally guaranteed the money owed to French, he is also the major secured creditor for their personal bankruptcies as well. The only other major secured creditor is Wamu-Chase which holds the mortage on their house in Sonoma, which tragically will likely be sold in this whole process. French will certainly try to do one of two things

1) Get everything liquidated immediately including the Colt name, stock, and library and stock both old and new

2) Attempt to take back any and all assets, and sell them at some point in the future.

Either way, French has a good deal of leverage, although he certainly will have to negotiate with whomever the Court names as the trustee, and may have to give up a few things to get what he wants. In addition to some significant inventory, and works in progress Ruthorford/Settle have about $250,000 equity in the Sonoma home, so that’s where French will likely go. Part of the problem is that the Colt intellectual property is affixed to the substantial inventory of DVDs, toys, lube, clothing, calenders, etc. A liquidation of which could also damage the Colt brand. Maybe a “white knight” could swoop in and payoff French, but I wouldn’t count on it.

But unfortunately for Prowest that’s just the beginning. For the uninitiated in the arcane rules of bankruptcy, creditors are lined up according to their priority to collect what’s left of a debtor’s assets. Secured creditors come first, and after they have been satisfied, unsecured priority creditors come next, and then regular unsecured creditors come after that. So whose next after Jim French and Wamu-Chase? That would be the government. Prowest owes the IRS over $600,000 in payroll taxes, and the State of CA EDD over $100,000. Things that make you go hmmmm? Any reasonable business person might say “how the fuck does that happen?” In a Chapter 11 bankruptcy the IRS still expects to be paid, and you only got six years to do it. So for Prowest to continue, they’ll have to cough up about $11,000 per month every month for the next six years. That’s like leasing a fleet of Bentleys. Ouch!

After that come the great unwashed of unsecured creditors who service the porn biz (Paladin, A Bright, Breen, Fedex, Mansion, FutureWorks, Marty Stevens) which adds up to another $600,000, the majority of which is owed to Paladin and its owner Stan Loeb in the form of advances on product, and a seven year old personal loan of $130,000.

Add all that up together, and despite releasing a new movie last week, the company will have a very difficult time continuing as a going concern. In 2008 Colt had sales of $2.2 million. In 2009 sales dropped 28%, and the run rate for 2010 indicated a drop of 36% for this year.

All in all a very difficult situation.

What went wrong for Prowest et al? Often one bad decision can sabotage an entire effort. Rutherford and Settle simply wanted Colt so badly that they way overpaid for it. Then because French held the note with Prowest’s and their personal guarantees, they ended up building a house on land they didn’t really own.

Colt was never worth the $2.2 million they promised to pay French. Colt was a moribund brand which did have a storied history, but came with a library more about still photography than video tape. The movies in the Colt library were either softcore, or shot with an eye towards projection. A vastly different style than what handheld cameras and flat screen TVs provide today. Prowest tried to revive a brand whose customers had mostly died off, and build on an aesthetic that no longer exists. Maybe 40 years ago a Colt belt buckle or hat was hot, today’s gay boys would rather hock everything they own to get a Dolce & Gabanna wife beater to wear to the club.

Also, “New Colt” just didn’t taste anything like “Classic Colt.” Rutherford’s initial films were basically carbon copies of his Falcon work, and Falcon was all about pretty boys. Sure some of the guys were muscly, but who ever thought of a midget Asian as a “Colt Man?” The Colt mystique was all about super-masculinity, best summed up as muscles and fur (in all the right places of course). Titan and Raging Stallion had already been killing each other over that segment for five years when New Colt arrived. In fact, to die-hard Colt fans (what’s left of them), the body shaving scene in Muscle Heads is practically sacreligious. (http://www.coltstudiogroup.com/scene.php?clip_id=15852).

Rutherford’s ultimate goal was to create a gay mega-brand. Colt was a good fit for the strategy, but a poor fit for the filmmaker. But even discounting that the strategy was fatally flawed. There’s no such thing as a gay mega-brand. Gays have become assimilated, and with that they want the same brands and to shop at the same places as everyone else. Last year a 20-something gay friend asked me about the hanky code and what they meant; when I sent him a link with the definitions he said “wow, how did you remember all this.” Whether it’s hankies or green carnations, gay men no longer have to signal in code with a belt buckle or shirt. They just put it all out there on Xtube, or Manhunt, or DudesNude. Also, you want lube or a sex toy? Amazon will happily ship it for free.

Rutherford was a name director when he exited Falcon, he should have saved himself a lot of money and used it. Clearly he thought he could avoid the years of work of building a company by affixing a well known name to his product. But the product wasn’t really Colt, and it wasn’t much different then Falcon, Hot House, or Chi Chi LaRue. Combine that with downward pricing pressure, piracy, and the competition from online, bareback studios, and traditional retailers and there was really no way for Colt to successfully execute.

Good Luck fellas, you’re going to need it.

First is the big news from Colt, which my co-blogger Ronnie so aptly covers. Condolences to John and Tom at this difficult time.

IML banned bareback porn from the leather market for the first time, sort of like shutting the gate after the horse has left the barn (oh wait, they did make an exception for the bestiality video booth, since neither the dogs, horses, nor men in these videos were wearing condoms). Nevertheless the consequences were reflected at the event. For the first time in my memory, the host hotel sent out an email 3 weeks prior to the weekend and redacted the 3-night minimum stay requirement. The hotel was roughly half-full, and the lobby, usually a shoulder-to-broad-shoulder wall, was empty enough to breeze in and out regardless of the day or time. The leather market itself was “dull” and “dead” according to several attendees, and a commenter on Joe.My.God suggested that old-time vendors were awol (aside from bareback porn companies). Of course, the economy still sucks, so it’s no shock that attendance is down. Nevertheless, in the face of discrimination based on politics, officials felt it so important to show their inclusiveness, the winner of the pageant was a transman in a wheelchair (congratulations and no disrespect to Tyler McCormick).

Meanwhile, Raging Stallion announced they had an agreement with one of the two major competitors to their owners, signing with Malefilxxx to stream what is, so far, the pre-AEBN acquisition/older movies (clearly, it’s what Maleflixxx could quickly restore from backup). The move signals that things are not going well for Chris Ward. With sales on the condom side of the industry dropping 25% per year, maybe AEBN said enough is enough and decided to cut their losses. I doubt, however, that it was of Ward’s volition. Since Ward would feel compelled to run around telling everyone he bought his studio back if that were the case, we can discount that possibility. No, this seems like a scramble for strategy amidst the knotted mumus. To whit, in the press release announcing their Grabby wins, he neglected to thank his partner Mo. And, of course, Chris Ward’s PR-stunt offering Ricky Martin $1M to do a hardcore scene with Austin Wilde now makes much more sense. It was either the event that precipitated the split, or was Chris stretching the wings he was compelled to keep tightly held. The interesting and telling question is what movie Malefilxxx puts up next.

Titan Media won their lawsuit against Antelope Media LLC (MonsterCockTube.com), although perhaps a pyrrhic victory since the two main defendants reside outside of the US and claim to be governed by German law. The Court ordered that the domain names not be transferred until the judgement is satisfied; my guess is the defendants have already moved on to use another domain long ago. Nevertheless, the suit revealed that the two defendants own the AlphaMaleCash affiliate program… and despite their otherwise good reputation, their affiliates are abandoning them. Oops.

Finally, on a lighthearted note, anyone remember Tag Eriksson? Gawker outed the realtor, Fredrik Eklund, who sold Daniel Craig a Manhattan loft and appears to be Tag. Interestingly, Eklund/Eriksson’s firm is featured in HGTV’s insane Summer series “Selling New York.” I wonder if he’ll make an appearance?

Titan will be successful because gayforit has a financial interest in the streaming of the content. It is selling access to that content on a subscription basis. It leases/controls the servers @ LeaseWeb, and it is making editorial decisions at minimum about some of its content. It is a financial model built on pirated content plain and simple.

To add insult to injury, GayForIt also runs Cop-CMS, a service they claim fingerprint content, and which they, along with other tubes use to filter their material. This is a fraud. They claim that Treasure Island is a customer, but here are the links to 3 TIM scenes on GayForit.com

http://www.gayforit.com/video/79078/Treasure-Island

http://www.gayforit.com/video/33317/Treasure-Island-BB

http://www.gayforit.com/video/21642/Jesse

[April 2012 update: Titan et. al. wins, seizes domains and removes them from the web. Links no longer work.]

These 3 videos represent 57 minutes of Treasure Island content including movies by exclusive models Dawson and Jesse O’Tool. COP-CMS is a FRAUD!

Even if a producer wants to check out what content is on the site, they have to buy a membership. One content producer told me. “Why should I have to pay these guys a membership, just to police my own content. They are blood-sucking scum, and deserve what they get.”

Bravo Titan, CR1, and Corbin Fisher.

In the coming months, Britain’s likely to pass it’s own stricter copyright enforcement laws. GayForIt.com et al may be labeled “repeat infringers” which will make it easy to cut off their access to the internet.

My conundrum is that I want to remain anonymous.

There’s not much point in trying to claim this, but I am not Damon Kruezer, and I have nothing to do with him. I’m aware of who he is only because his site popped up in a search when I was looking for some information on a Michael Lucas lawsuit and he happened to have blogged about it. It says something about his site that he showed up in a search at all; he must be getting some traffic for the linkage in google, since the site is formatted so poorly and updated sporadically, from what I can tell. I followed his site for a short while, but frankly it grew tedious when he got involved with Mark Wilson at Great Atlantic Media. It’s not the side of the business I’m interested in writing about; I try to keep out of model drama, and only, foolishly, spoke up when I saw something objectionable — but more on that in a moment.

Nevertheless, you can’t prove a negative, so I’ll leave it at that. Believe me or not; you don’t want to follow me? Don’t. My blog is about the business side of the industry, and I’ve written about such fabulously interesting topics as why Titan Media pulled its content from AEBN, and why AVN should give up trying when it comes to the gay market. I don’t even post any explicit pictures that aren’t incidental to my topic, such as when I posted on Falcon using the term “bareback” instead of the more accurate — true — term, “pre-condom.” Wow, I’m sure you can start to see the similarities between what I’ve written and the crap gossip on KAN.

Since last night I’ve been amused that I’ve been thinking about “coming out” on my blog. I haven’t thought about coming out for 20 years, and the flood of memories… oh, another post perhaps. Regardless, I’ve decided to remain anonymous for a couple of reasons.

First, I work in the gay porn business in San Francisco. My views are my own, and they are not in accordance with my colleagues nor the company where I work. I don’t want or need their stamp of approval on my views, and likewise, I don’t want to associate the views I express here, with them. Out of respect for them, I remain unattached in so far as this blog.

Second, my views need no imprimateur to be valid or worthy of expression. In fact, sometimes an opinion piece has more punch when you aren’t aware of the author’s standing otherwise.

Finally, I’m just a guy who finds it therapeutic to write about my work and what I see going on around me. The hypocrisy in this business is astounding. The fabrications are surreal. If someone doesn’t poke some holes in the tissues of lies and misinformation, then it becomes the official story of the business and no one knows otherwise.

An example of what I’m talking about arrives from Kurt Wild, who in a drunken binge went on a rant on cam4.com and really made a fool of himself. But hey, he has the right to say whatever he wants, just like me. I agreed with a few of his points, but thought he went too far as well as exposed his own lack of knowledge about who and what he was ranting about. No big deal, he’s just expressing his opinion. And for 9 minutes, it was riveting.

But I was shocked when, at the end of the clip (at least, the one I saw; it was stop-motion and had full audio, but I’ve also seen a screencap on thesword.com that I didn’t catch in the video, maybe a result of the inferior quality clip I saw) he picked up his child and kissed him/her. In this clip, you couldn’t see the child’s face; in the screencap I mention, thesword blocked out her eyes, but you could clearly see that it was a small child, probably no older than 3 or 4.

Cam4 is a sexually oriented site. Their terms of service clearly state the age of majority requirement. Load the frakkin’ site… it’s adult! It doesn’t matter that Wild and the child were fully clothed, that there was nothing untoward. It all comes down to context and according to the Supreme Court’s application of the laws surrounding pornography, the mere suggestion that an image might be sexually exciting is sufficient to constitute child pornography. The Court held:

… that there was no nudity requirement in the statute: “the statutory term “lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area,” as used in 18 U.S.C. � 2256(2)(E), does not contain any requirement that the child subject’s genitals or pubic area be fully or partially exposed or discernible through his or her opaque clothing.

In other words, any picture of a child on a site where there is hardcore sexual imagery constitutes child pornography. This is a topic that really gets under my skin, because gay men are consistently accused of being pedophiles; in fact, I had an disagreement and Twitter & email exchange with JRL about their posting of a story about a man in Las Vegas being arrested on child porn charges, and their rationale for posting the story on a gay porn business news website was simply that the accused is allegedly gay! As I pointed out to them, the last thing we need in this industry is anything that the radical right can point to in order to demonize gay men. A gay porn industry website is just about the last place that should be posting stories about child molesters.

And then, along comes Wild.

I didn’t say anything or even comment on this when I saw it come up first on thesword. At first glance I blanched at the image and thought about writing a post for my blog describing the discomfort I have with any mixture of children and porn. I didn’t want to draw the lines for anyone, so I let it go. Then, Wild began posting on Twitter. I again ignored the matter, hoping it would just go away. Maybe everyone else did, too, but I get the impression that nobody following the matter understood the gravity of this incident. Wild seems to view it only with respect to himself, and nobody disagreed, at least not publicly, where Wild was posting. In fact, it seems that everyone sees Wild as the victim here, and not that he’s placed the industry at risk.

And again, late Saturday night Wild comes on Twitter again and starts talking about it:

Ok, here is what I am sleepless about………..

Blogs posted nasty photos of me, video of a drunk night, and a picture of my daughter on the banners of their sites when she ran in the room

-snip-

Just want everyone to know how I really feel about the image of my daughter all over the web. That accident wont happen again

And I won’t allow further usage of any of those images AND VIDEO because of the crossing of that line.

And I replied:

@kurtwildxxx The issue is that you broadcast images — that you now claim copyright — of your own underage child in a sexual context.

@kurtwildxxx That’s child pornography, plain and simple. Stupid on your part, and you’d be wise to shut up.

-snip-

@kurtwildxxx No, I’m trying to tell you that you’d be wise to shut up about the incident rather than continuing to keep on everyone’s mind

which is not to say that the conversation didn’t go on, but this was the gist of my remarks: he made a big mistake, admits it and says it won’t happen again, but then can’t move on. And continues to bring it up in a public forum. Even this afternoon, he confirms that he owns the copyright to these images, tweeting such confirmation from cam4.

Let’s review: Wild is a straight, married father of 3, gay-for-pay porn model who appears in explicit hardcore porn films. There are moving pictures floating out there on the internet of Wild ranting for nearly 10 minutes about various issues in the industry, and then holding up his minor child on a live webcam displayed in tandem with hardcore sexual imagery. Wild has acknowledged his mistake and accepted responsibility for it, and has even claimed that he owns the copyright to those images. Wild correctly expresses his shame in exposing his child through these images, saying “that accident wont happen again.”

Am I the only person in gay porn that sees the peril Wild has placed himself, cam4.com, and the entire porn industry? And with help publishing the incriminating evidence from thesword no less… republication of child porn, for Christ’s sake! Is this not a recipe for a massive crackdown on the porn business?

Twitter is one of Google’s latest indexing discoveries. Pick any one of your own twitter posts for more than 12 hours ago, and google a few words. You’ll be shocked to see that Google fully indexes the context-rich Twitter, and makes available to anyone looking the context of the conversation, all organized according to keyword.

Let’s look at two scenarios where this might not be to the authors’ benefit. Firstly, Wild lives in a conservative state (the story about the Subway firing was in TN, if I recall) and we’re about to head into a tough midterm election. Anybody want to wager the benefit to the conservative candidate if he went on a child porn eradication crusade?

Second, and I mean absolutely no disrespect to Wild and his family, but let’s suppose that Wild’s wife decides to divorce him and seek sole custody of the children. Anybody want to wager how quickly her attorney could find these images and present them to the court, clearly showing Wild’s possibly criminal negligence, not to mention that he was intoxicated and chain smoking in the child’s presence?

I don’t care about what models say or do, how wild their antics get, who they fucked or who fucked them… but if I can’t speak out about a model putting my livelihood in danger in a drunken rant on the internet, then don’t follow my tweets and don’t read my blog.

But I will not let the record go unchallenged, that nobody cared enough to object to this negligent behavior. I object to Wild carelessly allowing his child to get drawn in to the situation no matter how innocent and unintended, I object to thesword reposting those images, and I object to Wild’s constant inability to shut. the. fuck. up. about it, file the damn DMCA notices to thesword to take down the images, and let’s all hope that nothing really bad comes of this mistake.

Now, first, I have a problem with JRL. Frankly, they seem a bit too willing to give their advertisers positive coverage. Make that exclusively positive coverage. I respect their charts (as oposed to AVN’s, which are a joke), and afterall, JRL is trying to cover the dwindling wholesale market, and they have built some credibility on this front.

A couple of weeks ago, however…

…I stumbled upon a piece they’d posted about a child molester, and traded tweets and eventually emails with Paul Goldberg, questioning coverage of the subject in an industry journal. It’s not appropriate for such content, period. There is already a false link ^{2, 3} between homosexuals and child molesters, and given the rather delicate predicament of the gay porn industry vis-a-vis underage performers, it seems to be inviting trouble to post links to police reports simply because the accused is allegedly gay, or the crime involved a man raping a boy. Paul said they’re expanding their coverage. So much for propriety.

But back to the Titan post. What irked me here was the lack of information, as though Titan pulling their content from anywhere is worthy of Keith Witchka’s breathless reporting.

Every writer knows that the lede in any news piece should answer who, what, when, where and why, and it’s the missing why that intrigued me. I’ve received no reply to an email I sent Keith, but instead, did hear back from Titan’s director of internet activity Keith Webb, saying… “no comment.” However, AVN picked up on the news and two quotes from Webb shed quite a bit of light:

According to a studio spokesman, annual gross revenue from the severed deal amounted to “seven figures.”

Really? Titan films — an impressive 165 titles — really brought in over a million dollars a year, and they’re pulling them as though a million dollars per year to any gay porn studio is nothing?

Let’s examine this quote for a moment. AEBN is a big company, with annual revenues in the estimated range between $250 and $300 million per year (although the most recently attributable numbers I could find online was a $100 million annual sales statement from Scott Coffman in January 2008) which is mostly straight content. Assuming that gay content accounts for 20% of AEBN’s sales, Titan’s portion of that $50 to $60 million would account for about 10% if my understanding of the 20/80 split between the studio and AEBN is correct, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. AEBN would have — should have! — been fighting to keep Titan if this is actually the case.

I don’t think it is.

… We will be rolling out an innovative and completely redesigned VOD website in late spring 2010 that will surprise a lot of folks in the industry.

said Webb, and here’s the real news that JRL missed: Titan is launching a competitor to AEBN/NakedSword, and intends to go head-to-head with them. Now, this is pure speculation on my part, so let me state that for the record. But it makes sense.

When AEBN bought NakedSword, they said nothing was going to change, that the NS team was going to continue programming that site, and would be a separate entity and operation in San Francisco uninfluenced by Charlotte. We all read this to be that NS would not show any bareback content, unlike AEBN’s gay theater (which, for example at the time of this post had 9 of the 10 most-watched titles as bareback, and the remaining one was an all-oral film from Treasure Island). Well, that was then. NakedSword’s top most watched films at the time of this post were lead by Breeding Ian Jay from Treasure Island, although I don’t know how much stock to put in this presentation since the list also includes movies some of which were released more than 10 years ago. Now, I like me some Ken Ryker and even an occasional Falcon classic, but if this is among the most watched films on NakedSword, they have more problems than losing Titan!

I think the competition with bareback movies got to Titan. They haven’t been shy about proclaiming their disdain for bareback ^{3 4}. But seeing their titles juxtaposed next to what Titan’ says are mere imitations of porn must have been …difficult.

NakedSword was the last holdout, at least online, that refused to include bareback films in their roster, and what with the failing economy and all, the AEBN overlords sent down the edict leaving what choice for NakedSword? What, Tim Valenti is going to buy it back?

Well, I’m not holding my breathe, and something doesn’t smell right. I guess we’ll just have to wait until late Spring.

I counted fewer than 4 pages of content, including one full page of reviews. The book was 300 pages this issue, due mostly to it being a show issue. Of course, only two gay companies are bothering to exhibit at the AVN show. Wow, we’ve gone from being pissed about being shoved off into the corner to not even meriting a mention in the index.

And they wonder why nobody buys ads.

Everyone in the industry bitches about piracy and content theft, and at least a couple of studios will go after theives (and there’s always Titan), but these infringers of copyright have been getting away with it for years.

click for high reslution pdf.

What gives Bel-Ami, Staxus and Falcon?

A “leaked” clip of an “envelope-pushing” scene. Wow, who woulda thunk it? Liked the “evaluation copy” watermark, nice touch. I’m sure it made the one or two people out there who aren’t familiar with jwplayer are now convinced that the clip really was “leaked.” Sure is interesting how that guitar player happened by to strum a few notes (and over, and over, and over…) while the gay-for-pay fucks the other one, all nicely edited into a smooth-flowing segment leaked for sensation.

I’d say please, grow up but…

I wish I’d downloaded and saved the article in the edited form appearing on The Advocate’s website. (And to be honest, when it was removed, I thought it was that Regent Media wanted you to buy the magazine to read the content, or at least subscribe to the digital issue to read content that wasn’t in the current issue.) If any reader has it — the original form, not the version I linked to and is widely linked across the intertubes — please email it to me. It had a couple of prescient quotes that fit nicely with an piece I’ve been kicking around for a while on bareback porn. But alas, the piece was pulled, and now we rely on the version that has several errors that I don’t remember from the Advocate’s version, and most notably, the quote that I was most interested in has now changed as well:

“We assume everyone is [HIV-positive] and if they say they are not, we assume they are lying.”

-Kent Taylor, Raging Stallion Studios

Leaving the meat of my anticipated piece aside for a moment, Taylor goes on the make the most honest remark to come from a safe-sex producer I’ve ever heard:

“we are terrified [testing] will open the door to expectable bareback porn.”

although, I think the quote is inaccurate — Webster’s defines expectable as probable or certain, and since bareback porn already exists, I think what he said was “acceptable” or even “respectable” and therein lies the reason I argue that the article was pulled. Even in the edited form, the article was headed towards this point, that Taylor seems to be confirming the industry’s greatest fear.