SKINFLICKS The Inside Story of the X-Rated Video Industry by Jennings David

Author:Jennings, David [Jennings, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Erotica
Publisher: David Jennings
Published: 2011-05-03T14:00:00+00:00

More maddening than the falling prices and low sales figures were slow collections. Some of Superior’s clientele had legitimate reasons for bad checks and late payments. Larry Field, one of our most reliable customers, lost his warehouse to arson. When Allyssa asked a New York distributor to please pay his bill, he flew into a rage; Allyssa hadn’t known that two days before her call, the man’s partner had been murdered, with sixteen .22 slugs in his head. Ferris Alexander, head of AB Distributors in Minnesota, was preoccupied with the aftermath of an anti-porn demonstrator immolating herself in one of his bookstores.

With their profits squeezed by falling prices, Superior’s 30-day distributor accounts were taking 60, 90, and 120 days. I couldn’t help but laugh when a General Video check came with the instructions, “Please don’t deposit until April 1.” Without Allyssa to browbeat them, some accounts wouldn’t pay at all. “They’ll only pay for their last order when they want your next title,” Harry Young of Select/Essex told me. “If they want your next title.” Hollywood’s major studios, also feeling the crunch, were putting pressure on one-stops to maintain sales quotas. So some of the one-stops were dropping the smaller adult lines.

I found myself sinking the money I’d made from Superior Video back into the company: $8,000 here, then $3,000, then another $5,000‌—‌all on paper as “loans”‌—‌just to stay afloat.

The financial crisis made a bad check from Tony Romano for $10,525 all the more infuriating. As my attorney dunned VEP, I’d lie awake nights fantasizing about bursting into my ex-boss’s office with Maggie spewing .357 slugs‌—‌especially after my attorney gave his opinion that Romano and his partner Norm Berkoff were “raping their company” of cash. But I didn’t think they were gloating about screwing me; they were in such a money crunch that even their in-house bill collector turned against them. That story was one of the industry’s few current chuckles. The collector, a muscular tough named Ron, had ended an argument with Berkoff by punching him out. According to a VEP saleslady, “Tony came in, drunk as usual, and goes, ‘What’s Nahmy doin’ layin’ dere on da flahr?’ Someone tells him Ron punched Norm out. Tony just shrugs and says, ‘Hey, dese t’ings happen.’ Then he goes into his office and locks the door. A couple hours later, his secretary looks in. There’s Tony with his head on his desk, fast asleep.”

My attorney managed to get only $4,000 of the bad check amount out of VEP before the company filed Chapter Eleven‌—‌joining my ex-clients Select/Essex and Marty Krause of Video Home Entertainment in bankruptcy. There were rumors that even the conservatively-managed “General Motors of Porn” Caballero was about to go under. Caballero president Al Bloom insisted the company only suffered “temporary cash flow problems,” but the leviathan had fallen so deeply in arrears that for a brief time AVN stopped running its ads.

VCX, too, took refuge in Chapter Eleven. My bankrupt former boss Marv was in far worse shape than my bankrupt former boss Tony.

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