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Who's Who.04.13 3/19/13 2:49 PM Page 27
MOM-AND- POP SHOP | By Peter Warren
Family Ties Jodi and Jay West corner market on Forbidden Fruits
Jodi and Jay West may not be the best-known couple in adult at the
moment, but if the success of their relatively young production company,
environment, we found out that there were not a lot of people willing to
take a risk on a small niche company like ours,” Jay said. “With no track
Forbidden Fruits Films, keeps up the way it has, that could change soon-
er than someone announces a Jodi Arias porn parody.
“In the last 10 years, I haven’t seen anything like it,” said Howard
Levine, whose Exile Distribution began carrying Forbidden Fruits late
last year. “The line has taken off like crazy. All four titles sold out in two
weeks, which is unheard of.”
Those four titles are Blended & Twisted 1 & 2, Who Needs Boys and
Mother’s Indiscretion. The studio’s fifth DVD release, Mother-Son Secrets,
which streeted in February, was the second most pre-ordered title on
AdultDVDEmpire, according to Levine, until “it moved to number one,
overtaking the Digital Playground pre-release of Code of Honor.”
Quite astounding for a little amateur company out of South Florida,
to be certain. So how did Forbidden Fruits Films come to be, anyway?
Explained Jay West, who directs and edits the company’s productions in addition to
sharing administrative duties with Jodi, “We ran into Howard Levine when we were first
starting production in 2010. His words of advice to us were, go home, shoot for a couple
years, build up your content, then see me.”
So that’s just what they did. “We started offering clips on one of the amateur clip sites,
until we became one of the top studios on that site,” Jay expounded. “We then talked
our way onto the larger VOD sites. Once we earned top studio status on sites like AEBN
and HotMovies, we had a little more pull to get our DVD line started.”
Not that it was easy to get to that point. “In today’s very competitive adult business
record, we had to prove ourselves through sales every step of the way.”
But prove themselves they did, and with the help of Exile, they’re
now well on their way to conquering the DVD market.
Perhaps Forbidden Fruits’ runaway success can be attributed to its
unique subject territory, which Jay describes as “realistic characters when
bad judgment and un-quenched lust crashes into opportunity. Albeit
farfetched, our storylines are no more absurd than what is in the tabloid
news on any given day. Manipulation, seduction, betrayal and overall
bad decision making are the trademarks of our stories.”
These out-there scenarios have resonated strongly with the studio’s
fans, Jay said, and he and Jodi have worked hard to keep giving them
what they want.
“We have some of the greatest fans out there, and solicit their input and feedback con-
stantly,” he asserted. “Being a niche studio, our fans are often very specific on what they
like to see in our movies. Although we have refined and developed our shooting style and
editing to a more polished level, we have kept our storyline and realistic, amateurish feel.
... This has been essential in developing an extremely loyal following.”
This approach seems to have worked out smashingly thus far, and as Jay put it, “We
would like to keep building a company that does business ethically, treats the people we
work with fairly, and puts out a good, quality product that people will continue to buy.”
To order Mother-Son Secrets and the rest of Forbidden Fruits Films’ titles, visit
ExileDist.com or contact Howard Levine at (818) 576-9464 or howard@exiledist.com.
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