Expert: Charles Taylor - 7/22/2008

Question
I'm curious as I've never seen this asked or discussed here or anywhere; I'm in the planning stages of putting together a small adult amateur website based in the San Francisco Bay Area and I was just wondering about when is the correct time to pay the talent? Business sense tells me that it would ideally be after services rendered when their scene(s)were finished shooting but wouldn't the performers, like most other sex workers, prefer to be paid before the act?

What I'm worried about is paying an actress and then having her flake out of having to do the scene and not getting my money back but I could see a similar concern of actresses being worried about not getting paid from flaky producers after their work leading to some sort of stalemate between both parties.

I think paying via cashiers check (also for tax/accounting reasons) would be fair but from what I'm hearing, this is a cash only business, no?

So have you had to face any of these issues; if so, how would you suggest the pay situation best be handled?

Answer
Any scenes that I have been involved in for and any set that I have been present on...talent always gets paid after the successful completion of the scene. Naturally if you are going to be shooting for weeks and/or it’s not a local shoot then you would have to provide some types of food and beverages. But like I said.....unlike hookers…..we in the biz in this section don’t fall into that category.

Payment for 90% of all work that I have done was cash. The other 10% was "payroll" check. So you could actually have a payroll account with a bank...and use it that way for any type of accounting purposes.