Page 55 - AVN August 2018

Adriano used his personal connections to arrange
for shoot locations.
They hired Lafait to do the videography and
Holmes even loaned them his wide-angle lens,
offering technical pointers wherever he could to the
porn novices. Lansky produced and directed, and
Adriano performed along with Holmes.
“I had production experience a little bit from TV
but I had never shot a porn,” Lansky says. “It was
so bad, so much fucking stupid shit happened. But I
had the heart. I still do. I still have heart.
“And this is why when I interview people working
for me I always take heart above skills. I always take
passion above diplomas. Always. Maybe I’m biased
to it but I see a lot of people with diplomas and this
and that and they never quite have the same drive.”
Holmes remembers how green Lansky and
Adriano were on that set.
“They were relying on Fabien and me,” Holmes
tells AVN. “Mike was kind of shy; he was in front
of the camera and he wanted to fuck the girl. But
when I told him, ‘Let’s DP her,’ he was like, ‘Oh,
no, no.’ And I was like, ‘Come on, it’s easy. I’m
gonna anchor. I’ll put her in a good position, you
just come and stick it in.’ So we did his first DP
together.
“And Greg was directing, but of course he was
depending on the input we gave him—Fabien and
me. So actually we had a good time. We got along
very well. They treated me super nice.
“So when we finished the production they were
very worried what to do next. So they said, ‘What
do you think? Is it good?’ Fabien was shooting
camera so I couldn’t tell how the footage looked but
I knew the scenes were all pretty OK.
“So finally when the production was over they
were like, ‘What should we do next?’ I told them,
‘You edit it and then you sell it,’ that’s obvious. But
they had no clue where to start.”
Holmes took a liking to the hungry pair and told
them they could stay at his place in Budapest and
use his editor to finish the movie.
“They came here, edited all the stuff, put a nice
trailer together and then they had their first movie
and then they said, ’What should we do next?’ I
said, ‘Now you sell it.’ [They said], ‘To who, we
don’t know anybody?’
“That’s when I told them, ‘It’s close to the Venus
Show in Berlin. I will be there anyway. If you want,
come with me, walk with me. I can introduce you to
some people.’”
SKIN IN THE GAME
When Lansky got to Berlin for the Venus
Show in October 2005, he believed it was
a do-or-die situation.
“With the flight to Berlin and the cost of the
hotel room I barely had any money to eat. It was
that bad,” Lansky says.
Adriano came down with food poisoning and
couldn’t make it to the show on the first day, so he
had to go it alone.
“So I get there and I remember my mindset when
I got into this convention was like I don’t care what
it fucking takes, I will sell this fucking movie. I was
like I’m not leaving until I sell this movie. And I
did,” Lansky says.
Holmes made a few introductions for Lansky
during their first hour on the show floor, including
one to Wolfgang Embacher of EroticPlanet.
“Wolfgang always liked me for his movies,”
“I AM EXACTLY WHERE I WANT TO BE AND
I’M DOING EXACTLY WHAT I WANT TO BE DOING.”
—GREG LANSKY
Holmes says. “He booked me for a lot of his movies.
So when I stopped in I said, ‘Hey, Wolfgang there are
these friends of mine, they shot a movie in Spain. I’m
in all the scenes. Let’s have a look.’”
After Holmes introduced him, Lansky said, he
proceeded to give Embacher “the most ambitious
sales pitch of all time.”
“It was a crap movie, which I oversold,” Lansky
says. “… And I pretend that I have all these offers.
I can’t even buy myself ramen noodles for tonight if
I don’t sell this shit. And finally he’s like, ‘OK, yeah
how much do you want for it?’”
Lansky says he doesn’t remember the exact dollar
figure, “but I can tell you that I remember the total
profit for the movie was something around five-
thousand dollars for four-and-a-half months of work
that I have to split with Mike.”
“So 2,500 for four-and-a-half, five months of work.
Not great. Below minimum wage. But I really didn’t
care,” he adds. “At this point I felt so alive. I didn’t
care what the profit was because I felt I was exactly
where I wanted to be.
“You hear people say, ‘Oh I want to be a
mainstream director and I want to be this.’ I don’t
want to be anything else. I want to be Greg Lansky.
I want to be me. I am exactly where I want to be and
I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing.”
The next day they returned to the show, where Holmes
brought Lansky and Adriano to meet Scott Taylor, the
president of New Sensations/Digital Sin.
“I told Scott the same thing because New Sensations
books me all the time,” Holmes says. “I told Scott,
‘There’s a movie. I’m in every scene. These are my friends.
They shot it. They already sold it, but if you like it they can
shoot something similar for you.’”
Lansky says he had to come back several times before
getting anywhere with Taylor.
“He was really busy,” Lansky says. “He wasn’t trying to
be difficult. I came back five times that day—five times.
And he was like, ‘You never give up, do you?’ And I was
like, ‘Never.’”
It was nearing the close of the show when Lansky finally
got to pitch Taylor on directing for him.
“He’s like a very cool, chill, laid-back rock ’n’ roll dude,”
Lansky says. “So he’s like, ‘Alright, listen. If you come to
L.A., I’ll give you a movie to try out.’ And on that promise,
I moved my entire life.”
Two months later, in December 2005, Lansky and
Adriano took the same flight to L.A. They were roommates
at first, living at Bella Vista on De Soto Avenue in
Woodland Hills. Lansky says he moved to L.A. with 350
dollars and the hope that Taylor would give him a chance.
Greg Lansky says his team made a conscious effort to maximize its social media
marketing—on Instagram alone he and his brands have amassed 3 million followers.
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