Page 52 - AVN August 2018

FEATURE |
Greg Lansky photographed February 2018 Vixen Angel Abella Danger on the streets of South Central L.A.
“She looks very nice but she does all the suing for us,” Lansky reveals. “She’s a copyright
blackbelt and she’s the one who helps us enforce our copyrights all across the United States—
another smarter person than me in the company.
“I’m telling you, it’s all about surrounding yourself with smarter people than yourself.”
Often surrounded by stunning models in exotic places on his larger-than-life Instagram feed,
Lansky has cultivated a polarizing public persona that keeps him squarely in the adult industry
conversation. But when he’s in the office he likes giving credit to his staff that’s grinding with him
behind the scenes.
“It’s not about him all the time,” producer Moz assures me. “People have a lot of
misconceptions about him.”
Moz adds, “As far as I know, he hasn’t stepped on anybody. He hasn’t bullshitted anybody.
There’s no shenanigans. From the inception of this it was, ‘Let’s do things the right way.’”
Not unlike the sports and entertainment world’s most notorious personalities, porn’s resident
Instagram Bad Boy isn’t afraid of the spotlight or the scrutiny that comes with winning.
“I’m a whatever-it-takes kind of guy,” says Lansky, who drives a silver Aston Martin Rapide S.
“I knew that in order for me to take our brands forward I needed to be at the forefront. So I
don’t give a shit. People live in the belief that they’ll get noticed for free. That’s not the way it
works in any business. You’ve got to give a piece of yourself, and I surely fucking did. I put myself
out there. Yeah, I wear fucking Versace shirts. I get helicopters—all that shit. But they noticed.
They fucking noticed. They talked about it.”
Indeed, Lansky knows people are talking—and that’s the point.
“There’s nothing worse in the world than essentially being ignored. Now everyone knows Greg
Lansky. No one’s ignored it. Some people like it; some people don’t like it. And that’s fine. But,
you’ll never get noticed for free.”
FEATURE | LANSKY
52 | AVN.com | 8.18
“IT’S ALL ABOUT
SURROUNDING YOURSELF
WITH SMARTER PEOPLE THAN
YOURSELF.”
—GREG LANSKY, FOUNDER,
VIXEN MEDIA GROUP
‘MR. POSITIVE’
Lansky experienced bitter disappointment at a young age. As
the eldest son of a stay-at-home mom and a father who worked in
the real estate business, he enjoyed a comfortable, even privileged
childhood for the first 12 years of his life. That ended when his
father suffered massive losses during a slumping real estate market
in France in the mid-’90s.
“When I was around 12-13 years old my dad lost all his money
and we were left with practically nothing—my mom and my
brother,” Lansky explains. His brother, who also lives in L.A. and is
working to pass the bar exam, is eight years younger.
“There was a real estate crash that definitely was very heavy in
France at the time and all throughout Europe and that led to my
dad’s real estate company just sort of unraveling. We had to sell the
apartment we were living in.
“I still remember as a kid all our stuff taken away. Like the debt
collector coming in and taking all your furniture away. And by law
in France—it’s a funny law looking back at it—they have to leave
you one chair. I don’t know why. So they just took everything and
left one chair.”
One day when Lansky got home from school, law enforcement
officials—accompanied by France’s equivalent of the IRS—
confiscated the boy Lansky’s bed, desk, his collection of pro
basketball team hats, his Nintendo and even most of his clothes.
“I had this feeling like this shit is not happening to me,” Lansky
recalls.
“We found ourselves having to sleep at friends’ houses for several
years until my mom could afford an apartment again. That was not
an easy time. I don’t have great memories of that time, put it this
way.”
Lansky says his father never fully recovered from financial ruin
and the family’s money struggles led his parents to divorce.
“My dad passed away last year in a very painful and sort of
a semi-humiliating way, which was difficult to watch,” Lansky
continues. “And this is why, when people say, ‘You’re so positive.
What’s up, Mr. Positive?’ Because I’ve seen the devastation of being
a depressed person and I don’t want to be part of that.
“And when I look at all the people that are more successful than
me—and there are many—I’m not jealous. I’m not envious. I’m not
hating on them. I don’t think they’re cheating me. I don’t think
they’re taking away from me. It motivates me. It motivates me to
do better. And that’s truly the life I want to live.”
He remains close with his mother, who along with his brother is
“very supportive” of his career.
“I have a fantastic relationship with her,” Lansky says. “She likes
to take every article written about me and translate them using
Google Translate. And sometimes it doesn’t translate right and
she’s like, ‘What was that about?’”
He admits he wasn’t the most studious kid. In fact, he went
against the grain as a matter of routine and got kicked out of more
than one high school until eventually he stopped going altogether
at 17, about two years before the graduation age in France.
“I didn’t feel like I really belonged in high school. I didn’t feel like
I was learning anything,” Lansky says. “I’ve always had a problem
with authority. I don’t like following rules. I don’t like being told
what to do. …
“I feel bad for my mom. I was just a fucking delinquent little