Do porn people know how to party?
No. But they do it all the time anyway. After 30 years in the music business and another 22 selling XXX movies, I’ve been to enough parties to recognize a good one when I’m standing in the middle of it. You’d be surprised at how similar backstage band parties and afterhours porn parties appear at first glance. They’re actually opposites: At backstage rock ‘n roll parties, the band looks like grungy unemployed 30-somethings pretending to be teenagers and the groupies look like pornstars. At porn parties, the girls who look like pornstars ARE pornstars and the groupies are the grungy guys. Both kinds of parties are usually loaded with drugs, alcohol and people behaving badly, and for many horndogs that’s all it really takes to constitute a ‘party’. Me? …I’m a little more particular.
Whereas rock and roll parties are all about getting high and picking up girls (who are themselves trying to pick up someone in the band, or after enough drinks…maybe a roadie), at porn parties the bigger stars are usually paid to be there, and the other girls that show up either want to BE pornstars or are completely freaked out to be there at all. You can circumvent this dilemma by pretending to be a porn producer or director and at the least, you’ll have the rapt attention of all the wanna-be’s. If you try and pick up, or even speak to one of the girls who is freaked out to be there, you’ll just confirm her darkest fears and she’ll warn all her friends that you’re an asshole. If you’re a master flirt and look like Ryan Gosling, or throw money around with reckless abandon, it doesn’t matter what party you’re at – you’re getting laid.
The AVN (Adult Video News) show used to take place in Las Vegas as part of CES – the Consumer Electronics Show, a convention that draws several hundred thousand attendees from around the world each year. Because it was at the LV convention center which is managed by the teamsters, all adult businesses had to cover any female nipples on artwork, posters, and even adult DVD covers that were visible to the public. Male nipples were of course, OK. They actually had these teamster guys (think ‘Goodfellas’) walking around with pockets full of red stick-on dots so that everyone would comply. They were affectionately known as the nipple police. All the electronics nerds and business people would enter CES, and immediately head past Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Sony and the others, and go straight back to where all the ‘adult’ stuff was. Now THAT was a party. Watching a crowd of businessmen 8 deep crush each other to snag an autograph of last year’s AVN award winner for ‘Best anal scene with a zucchini’ is hard to beat. However, nothing pisses off high-brow main-street global companies like losing customers to the low-brow draw of naked women…even without nipples. The tension reached a head when somebody at CES posted a hand-written sign on the bathrooms that read “These bathrooms are used by members of the adult industry including talent”, implying that us nasty porn people were putting the ‘normals’ in grave danger of catching an STD or worse…a hard-on. That was the last year of adult at CES. After that, AVN took over and moved the show to the Sands. All the CES people still came, at $60 a pop, and the convention floor was still the best party in town.
I attended an after hours party hosted by Wicked Pictures during one of the AVN shows in Las Vegas. There were lingerie and bikini-clad girls pole dancing throughout the building, in plexi-glass boxes on risers, serving drinks and snacks on gold platters, and two more luxuriating in a see-through bubble bath, all to the throbbing soundtrack of electronic dance music. When you walk into a party like this, even someone as jaded as I find it hard not to be impressed. Loud music, hot babes everywhere, free drinks…what’s not to love? But eventually, the dancers get sweaty and leave, the bar switches to no-host, and the chicks in the bath start looking a little pruney. The purpose of convention parties like this is to sell adult DVDs. I placed a few obligatory orders and had a decent time, but to be honest, I had a lot more fun a week later at an 8 year old’s birthday party… It featured free food and drinks, a DJ, jugglers, a bouncy castle, and a roving slight-of-hand magician. One particular highlight was strapping inflatable boxing gloves onto the kids and watching them bash each other silly in the bouncy castle. You can see where my priorities are at.
I went to a party once hosted by ‘ACE’ (the Association of Club Executives), the guys who own big chains of ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ like Spearmint Rhino, 4-Play, Hustler, Penthouse etc., and who lobby for laws friendly to their businesses. The party was held in ‘the mansion’, a super secret 6,000 square foot suite hidden away in the bowels of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. This place had high-end artwork, a grand piano, an indoor pool and hot tub… and oodles of art-deco Hollywood chic. I’m told this is where MGM normally hosts visiting ‘whales’, those gamblers who regularly bet 1 million dollars and up. I had a friend at the time who was a ‘high roller’ which means he was in the 20k-100k betting range. They put high rollers up in some pretty nice rooms with elevators and views of the strip and comp all their booze and meals …but the mansion was reserved only for whales and groups like ACE, who rented it out for some ungodly sum. My friend was SO envious of the mythical reputation of the mansion that the first thing I did when I arrived was call him and gloat. It’s a character flaw. Except for the over-the-top location, the party itself was a bit of a snoozefest. Most of the wealthy club owners were in their 60’s-70’s and were married to former strippers they’d employed early in their careers. I’m going to keep it polite and just say that some people never learn how to be rich. I was again reminded of the movie ‘Goodfellas’. We schmoozed for about an hour then left, and headed to the strip.
The granddaddy of all porn parties I attended was one Christmas at the Hustler offices in Century City. The Hustler building is around 15 stories with Hustler occupying the entire top floor, and the Hustler brand ‘LFP’ (Larry Flynt Productions) emblazoned across it. Century City is the land of $1000 an hour attorneys and a who’s-who of corporate America: UCLA, USC, Apple, Disney, Universal, Space X, Bank of America…you get the idea. Larry Flynt, porno-disrupter that he was, planted himself right in the middle of all of it. Everyone who watches, works in, or sells porn, owes Larry a debt of gratitude. He fought the US government all the way to the Supreme Court over the right to look at naked people having sex and won. A sniper’s bullet cost him his ability to walk, his health, and eventually, his life. His place in history however, is assured.
Upon entering the Hustler office, my senses were immediately assaulted by the sheer gaudiness of the place. Carpets reminiscent of a Las Vegas Casino, colorful stained glass lamp shades, wing back chairs, Louis the XIV credenzas, framed pastoral art and tapestries occupied every inch of available space in a crazy cacophony of color. Interspersed was the requisite Hustler naughtiness: A 14-inch-high sculpture of a couple locked in a perpetual doggie-style embrace, a phallus here, some breasts over there, a derriere across the room. The overall feeling was one of total excess…fitting for a guy who came from nothing and built an empire made of smut. Statuesque porn star Tera Patrick, at the pinnacle of her career was there holding court with directors and other porn people, the toes of her substantial feet sticking out from her high heeled pumps and spread out on the carpet. Representatives of every major studio, distributor, and adult media were there, along with a bunch of new girls wanting to screw for Larry, and their hangers on. Alas, Larry was not. We made the rounds, took a brief peek inside Larry’s opulent office, congratulated ourselves and our vendors on another great year, and snuck out to go find a place with some live music. Time to party!
JB