Expert: Fox - 1/29/2005

Question
Hello Fox, my name is Bob-O and I live in St. Louis MO. I recently filmed an adult film in LA with a few big name porn stars. My backround in film producing has to this point been limited to extreme sport videos. I havent made much effort yet as far as aquiring all the "legal" stuff i need to sell this film that I'm working on. I began this project thinking i may be able to duplicate, market and distribute my own films. the only thing that I've done so far is incorperated my company name and bought my website domain name. Please, any advice would be much appreciated.

Answer
Bob,

I'm not very familiar with the legal advice area, as I've said before. The best advice I can give you is to contact an entertainment lawyer (there aren't too many in St. Louis, but someone has to represent Nelly, Chingy, Marc Bulger, Marchall Faulk and Torry Holt, right?)... and see what they have to tell you. Most lawyers will give you a little free advice (even if their secretary says they won't) if they think you might hire them.

Congratulations on your first porn film. You might (if it's a good film) want to consider contacting Metro Video, Wicked Pictures, Vivid Pictures, Sin City Productions or VCA Platinum (all in Chatsworth, Van Nuys or Canoga Park, CA) and see if they would pay you for the rights to your movie. That is always one option.

www.avn.com has lots of links to inside adult agencies, manufacturers, distributors and the like. I'm not sure about online materials, but there's so much of it out there, that your movie might drown in the sea of online porn.

If you really have big names in your movie, then you should definitely get a decent price AND A PERCENTAGE OF SALES - which is a must - if you contact those companies or others, and see what they say. If you have to send them the product, for god's sake make sure it's copyrighted, and if you really want to be sure it doesn't get ripped off, keep it with you and go back out there to try and sell it in person. Make appointments before you show up at the studios and such.

One more thing: I will never tell a soul - I promise - but which pornstars are in your movie? Only because a lot of them are friends of mine, and I'm always curious as to how you can get them to do "non-mainstream jobs" as it were, ot was it mainstream?

Sincerely

Fox Salehi