Page 50 - AVN February 2016

analysis of the marketplace, when they’re based
on emotion, sometimes they’re inspired decisions;
sometimes they’re just bad. Any time you take a
60-year-old brand and gut its DNA or try to cut
its DNA out from its molecular structures, I think
you’re in trouble.”
Holland also had some strong thoughts on
Measure B, the mandatory condom law promoted
by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which Los
Angeles County doesn’t even want to enforce,
as well as the current lawsuit against the federal
record-keeping and labeling law, 18 U.S.C. §2257.
“Measure B is this tragic example of an obsessive
man’s crusade, so misplaced under the guise of
healthcare of adult performers—it has nothing
to do with that; regulating an industry out of
control that’s not out of control; it has nothing to
do with that, and it’s really vigilantism,” Holland
concluded. “It’s a personal obsession on his part
that he can’t put down and it’s irrational. So it has
driven the industry to a point, in the city of L.A.
through Measure B, to going underground, which
in fact has now brought about exactly what he
would tell you rhetorically is his concern. So now
you have an industry that is shooting underground
in L.A., they’re not getting film permits—I think
film permits were down by like 80, 85 percent, 90
percent, and we have lots of runaway production,
and that’s affecting the healthcare and safety of
our performers and our crew in the adult industry.
When you have them shooting off-permit, then
they’re less likely to carry production insurance,
because it was the permitting process that required
them to carry production insurance. When they
don’t carry production insurance, then you have
exposure that goes along with that, and you start
to slowly deconstruct all the infrastructure that has
been built underneath production for the last 15
years.
“When I first came into this industry, my first
movie that I directed was for a big company, a
company that I still respect and still admire the
person that owns it, Steve Hirsch of Vivid Video,”
she explained. “I came in to do a movie and I was
coming from independent mainstream production,
where we sort of did everything by the book and
I said, ‘Okay, we need to pull a permit.’ And they
said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, and we’re going to
need production insurance.’ ‘What?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’
and they said, ‘Well, we don’t do any of that.’ And
I said ‘Well, you’re going to have to start it now.
It’s a modest cost, a few hundred dollars, four
percent of your production budget, but you’re
going to like have to come out of the closet and
into the sunshine because if you’re going to be a
mainstream player and an aboveboard business,
FEATURE
50 | AVN.com | 2.16
Our digital publication is going to be really
interactive, and we’re really excited about that ...
but saying that we’re launching digital is not to
imply that we’re suspending the print publication.
you have to act aboveboard; you have to play the game
the way we play up here,’ and that started that process
with Vivid, and every company I’ve worked with, every
company I’ve owned that’s done production has always
carried production insurance, gotten permits, done
everything by the book. Why? Because why would we
not? Why would we apologize? Why would we hide
in the shadows? Why would we run this industry as
if we’re renegades who have something to hide? We
don’t. We’re a sector of the entertainment industry and
we have to operate like that.
“Now, you have this fanatic who has pushed the
industry back into the shadows, kicking and screaming,
and now you have a lot of people who are operating
off the grid without the infrastructure, and when you
stop getting production insurance and you stop getting
permits, the next step is, it’s really easy when the
girl shows up and says, ‘Oh, my test is like two days
expired,’ and everybody looks at everybody else and
goes, ‘Ah, that’s okay.’ Because if you start to let things
fray around the edges, it starts to collapse. There’s a
great line out of Fear of the Walking Dead, where the kid
says, ‘When society and civilization start to unravel,
the whole thing collapses faster than you think.’ So
this fanatic, this vigilante, this obsessive conservative
has pushed this industry into a much less safe position
for its performers and its crew than where he entered
the picture. I think it’s ironic and I think it’s so
counterintuitive that in 2015-16, we’re still on this
kick, and I tell you the new measure he’s floating is
preposterous; it’s a thousand things that would never
pass muster when challenged in court, and I would like
to see him now apply some of the demands that he’s
embedded in this outrageous measure—now go sell it
to HBO and Showtime and Dish and Direct, because
now he wants to hold them accountable for airing
things. Now go play with the big boys and see how it
works out. It’s one thing when you come and try to
beat us up; we’re an easy target because it’s so easy to
paint us with the pornography brush. Now try to go
impose those regulations on Direct and Dish and Time-
Warner and Comcast and the broadcasters like HBO
and Showtime who use our cut-down softcore versions
as programming, and he wants to make all those
groups liable. So he’s a very unfortunate and unhappy
individual, and I hope he finds peace somewhere in this
universe or a parallel one, but preferably a parallel one
so we can all move on and do what we do.”
Holland’s thoughts on 2257 were equally insightful
and direct.
“The 2257 situation has been absurd from the
beginning, because of course, 2257 was the outgrowth
of the Traci Lords experience, and nothing about 2257
could have ever prevented Traci Lords because she
worked on a fake ID that was a good fake ID,” Holland
stated. “So this entire hundreds of millions of dollars of
apparatus and record-keeping that has grown up around
this industry, has all at the end of the day not addressed
the underlying issue that provoked it originally.
“You know, Bang Bros, two or three years ago, had a
15-year-old that worked for them on a phony ID. They
ultimately were not prosecuted and they ultimately
would pay the family to, you know, ‘everybody calm
down,’ but the same thing happened: the girl had a
good fake ID. You could argue that somebody might
have looked at her and went, ‘Whoa, she looks young;
maybe we should check again,’ but nothing about 2257
can prevent the underlying cause of what 2257 is there
to ostensibly protect against. So there needs to be
mechanisms, there needs to be safeguards in place; no
one would deny that, and the business and the industry
is highly respectful of that, and when you get into the
bigger companies who operate inside this environment,
adhering to all the regulations and are highly sensitive
to any accusation of exploiting underage girls or people,
I think everybody takes that very, very seriously. That
said, 2257 does not address the problem and there
are much simpler regs that could be put in place that
would.”
The latest development in the Penthouse saga, of
course, was the recent announcement of a Penthouse
digital edition, which will be offered free to print
subscribers and available to anyone for a fee.
“We have some interesting, cutting-edge technology
for digital print,” Holland noted. “Our digital
publication is going to be really interactive, and we’re
really excited about that, and we’re working on that,
but saying that we’re launching digital is not to imply
that we’re suspending the print publication. I think
announcing that we’re launching digital coupled
with the fact that we’re moving our print operations
from New York to Los Angeles was somehow an easy
suggestion that we’re closing print, but we absolutely
are not.”
Penthouse Digital will feature embedded videos and
moving .gifs, and will allow Penthouse to interface
more with social media and have more feedback from
fans and subscribers.
“This is a perfect moment to be continuing on with
print, because now, frankly, by default, we own the
space, thanks to—I won’t question my competitor’s
decision to take nudity out of their magazine as a
response to free porn; however, I am not in agreement
with that position. I think that’s a very wrong analysis
of the marketplace and a very wrong analysis of brand
and the positioning of the magazine, so we are happy,
we are applauding The Bunny in that decision, and we
are happy to occupy the space they are vacating.”
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