A volume of books could be written on the impact that this story could have on the industry. I do want to post some thoughts.
I liked Lisa Ann’s piece we should be reminded that he is innocent until proven guilty but the court of public opiion is nothing new and there are a Lot of unanswered questions.
The first thing that concerns me is the floodgate of allegations that happened, and how similar they were. add to that the fact that the companies he worked for the most abandoned him quickly and decisively left most people with the idea that they knew what was happening. To avoid civil liability they pretty much HAD to bail quickly, in other cases it makes sense that advertisers would not want their ads appearing next to his column in the frisky for example. Indeed I would not be surprised to find out that Kink is reviewing every single scene he has ever been in and pulling it if there is any indication of improper conduct.
And what about the awards…wouldn’t it be ironic if James wins for “Stockholm Syndrome”? Will AVN disqualify him? quietly drop him? they are in between a rock and a hard place, if he wins and they change it, it looks suspicious (not that AVN Awards arent suspicious anyway….if you made a movie this year you got nominated) if he wins and they dont change it it looks like they support him…..How would the industry re-act if they announced that he is being disqualified across the board….judge and jury….Interesting to see what happens there.
I spoke to a retailer and the owner of the local store told me point blank that for all the hype around Deen his titles didn’t sell or rent very well. He said of all the Evil Angels titles he only orders the minimum amount of James titles and that he has to count on sell through and bargain bin to get rid of them ever. So maybe some of these companies were just looking for a good excuse to get rid of him, either way.
I can also tell you that it has other performers sweating…many of whom cant get hard if they aren’t abusing the girl. There seems to be a real backlash in that new scenes are being closely scrutinized and choking, slapping and other aggressive assault style scenes arent being shot at all. In the end this may be something that helps bring porn back in terms of sales. The most common complaint I have heard about why former fans abandoned porn is the violence that seems to be the norm these days, I know its true for me.
After some of the on set pieces I read I was surprised, if he had pulled any of that shit on my set I’d have kicked his fucking ass all the way to the parking lot….Case in point he spit in some girls face before the scene even started, he just assumed it was acceptable even though he was told it was to be a very vanilla scene. I make it very clear to my performers what is acceptable and that if it is not stated as acceptable assume it isn’t.
Everything I have read in terms of personal accounts indicates that James doesn’t like being told he can’t do anything and on doing so he displays childish behavior, the exception being Lisa Ann, my thoughts are that it was clear that she was the dominant in that relationship, which is why he behaved appropriately with her. I am glad she wrote that piece because it made me rethink things and no other female performers were standing up for him.
In fact I wouldn’t convict him based on all of this, but I would put him under a microscope.
32 Responses
James Deen What Is Next My Thoughts https://t.co/YA0yWpz1cu
Good piece.
AVN awards are a joke. On LIB its posted Joanna Angel/Burning Angel Entertainment got 28 nominations in 22 categories. Almost all porn made now is gonzo or parody with no scripts (or it takes them 5 minutes to think up a scene). How the fuck can these companies get so many nominations. Reminds me of peewee sports where every kid got a trophy just for playing.
Good piece, Mike, as was Lisa Ann’s. This is a remarkable situation. You know the industry and I don’t, but from what I’ve read I’m not sure that brick and mortar retail sales tells the story. What I’ve always read is that Deen’s real fan base was teenage girls and young women – Deenagers. They’re probably online customers and not traditional retail customers. At the same time, I have no idea whether his presence in a scene drives subscription sales. For me, it was the complete opposite. Frankly, most of the regular male performers – Xander, Deen, Johnny Sins, Mr. Pete, Johnny Castle, Jules – put me off but Deen was at the top of that list.
The sameness of the allegations is striking, and none of those young women, including Stoya, have anything to gain. If anything, they have something to lose.
And yes, the fact that a number of companies dumped him so quickly, including companies that do hardcore and violent scenes like Kink and Evil Angel, is troubling. The reason is that, to be honest, I think this really is an inside the industry story. The casual porn watcher probably has no idea who is James Deen, and doesn’t care. He just wants to see some hot, naked chicks do the nasty. More passionate fans have already made up their mind about whether they’ll watch a scene with Deen in it or not.
Last, I hope you’re right about putting a stop – or at least slowing down – the production of violent porn, with spitting and choking. I for one find it a complete turnoff. Of course, if there was an audience, people wouldn’t keep producing it.
Maybe one of the problems with so much of this style of porn is the directors are reading Adult DVD Talk too much. You get thread after thread and post after post celebrating girls crying, being emotionally broken, spit, shit, piss, punched, bleeding assholes, you name it. I contend that group of men is just a small portion of the porn buying market.
Mike is right, and you hear it all the time. So many of the porn guys can’t even get hard unless they are inflicting some sort of degradation on the girl. I wonder if that is driving the directors to make more of this stuff too.
Why can’t porn attract more men that actually enjoy women and want to fuck them for pleasure; not as a means to take out life’s frustrations and “give that whore what she deserves”. There are women that get off on that stuff, but often from my experience it is more that they have been conditioned by their past boyfriends to think that is the only way to get a guy, and that is “what they really are”. Can you imagine teenage girls now having to please guys who have been raised on “Gape my ass and spit in my face #4″; they think that is the way to their men’s hearts
Very perceptive on Lisa’s relationship with Deen. She drew the line and he followed it; because she was a dominant figure to him. It is interesting that she had to stop having sex with him completely; so while he was listing to her ‘Stops”, he was clearly continuing to push the envelope over and over again until she just had to terminate it all together. So, while defending him, she also has verified what the general narrative is across the industry.
Do porn fans out side of the few groupies that go and take 1000 photos really care about AVN awards? I mean, there are a 1000 categories each with 1000 nominations. Just ridiculous and pointless more than anything else.
Fantastic post Mike. I think you hit all the right points, and I’m so glad that you wrote all that. People will pay attention now. That’s important. Keep up the good work!
@BT considering the small sample size of available information…..we can follow the trend line of Mike’s example of Mike’s visit to the retailer. I wouldn’t discount it merely because Mike publicly gave one example. Dig deep enough with the right resources, I guarantee that trend line follows through and through. Interesting point about the Deenagers, another example of data that we can throw in the “girls who didn’t know better” category. Compare and contrast that data with young women and their sexual experiences, conduct interviews of how many of them found it difficult to say no, and how or why they didn’t know their sexual boundaries. I recommend, if the industry would like to fix this problem, is to really gather data, and send anonymous surverys to current and former industry members, ask for input, review with the right smart people, and adjust the workers bill of rights.
@joe I suspect, the problem lies in the industry as a whole, burying their head in the sand. It’s easy to point fingers and make someone a scape goat like Deen, when Deen is just a cog in the machine…and representative of only one facet of the industry. Simply put, this is a very complex situation with many moving parts, why can’t the industry attract better guys? We could go on and on and on. But the fact of the matter is, sex work lives in the grey zone, in that nebulous boundary of legal and illegal…ah…you do the math. Public opinion on sex, is another matter. We gotta stop calling women whores for wearing short shorts, and stop victim blaming them when they come forward with rapes. Are there crazy girls who will lie about rape? Yes. Are there hookers with bad attitudes, bad souls and money grubbing whores? Yes. That’s not a personality flaw – that’s a psychological one. Maladaptive they call it. Hm. Will be interesting to see how the industry adapts to this situation.
After seeing your post I got curious and did quickly browse various online retailer top sellers list. Granted, it wasn’t a in-depth study I did, but I struggled to find more than 1 or 2 movies produced by Deen on those lists. No clue how popular scenes featuring him on various subscription sites is, but he rarely seem to pop up on them these days tho. Maybe his website has a huge number of members? Could just be that teenage girls and young women don’t pay for it.
RT @MikeSouth1226: James Deen What Is Next My Thoughts https://t.co/YA0yWpz1cu
“In fact I wouldn’t convict him based on all of this, but I would put him under a microscope.”
@mikesouth I will add I also think this was a great piece and the quote above I actually agree with. While I have defended James Deen, I agree that if he sticks around in porn he needs to be under a microscope and scrutinized. TBH, his best bet is to probably make his own films like he has been doing through his website previous to these allegations.
@karmafan I agree that AVN’s are a joke, but I actually think the plot and story behind “Stockholm Syndrome” is the most creative thing to come out in porn in 2015. Not saying thats a good thing, porn has taken such a dip in quality between 2013 and now. But Deen cast Remy Lacroix who played her role beautifully and SHOULD get the Actress award if there is one given.
Why do I like Hardcore Films personally? I remember as a kid watching porn and seeing what guys like Dirty Harry did. The way they just mentally toyed with those girls. I don’t know why it turns me on. I can’t explain it. But it does. I like seeing a girl take 5 black cocks in her ass. I like seeing a girl like Jennifer White do a 50 guy bukkake gangbang. Am I in the minority? I don’t know, but I think the key to being a good male talent is being able to read a situation, read a scene and try to make a girl feel as comfortable as possible, even though she is likely making 5-7x as much as you are.
Come to think of it, maybe if the male talent got a little bit more credit and/or cash for what they go though, then maybe this industry would improve as a whole.
I’ll be damned before I see any of these little Teenage Brats running around this industry acting like they call the shots. Like Lisa Ann wrote previously, girls nowadays and pick and chose exactly who they want to work with. I want to see more Old Man/Young Girl Porn.
Bring it Back!
@mdxx Hot damn, didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I’m board with what your sayin. I think you have great insight into this matter, CONGRATS! Haha I’m super happy for you bro.
This is, litterally, the best thing you have ever written. Ever.
” but I think the key to being a good male talent is being able to read a situation, read a scene and try to make a girl feel as comfortable as possible, even though she is likely making 5-7x as much as you are.”
If Deen faced a criminal charge this would be a whole different ballgame.
If Stoya went to the cops to make the claims she tweeted the companies that dropped him like a hot potato might have stood by him and said innocent until proven guilty and insisted their hands were tied since the (hypothetical) charges were about an incident in his personal life and unrelated to his work for them. Advertiser situations might be the same.
Rawalex was spot on days ago when he said it all comes back to what’s too much. It was too much with the SF Weekly article that asked for a response to the first allegation that something happened on a kink set.
They didn’t suspend Deen to look into the matter they admitted he had previous complaints and this new one was the straw that broke the camels back.
What’s next is lots ‘broke ass blue balls’ aka limp dicks pissed the FDA keeps seizing bobo brand dick pills and crying cuz they can only break a filming partner within the bounds of consent which of course defeats the purpose.
So gonzo reality porn will be self regulated and before long sportng shiny stickers ‘no human performers were harmed in the production of this content’ and standard performer contracts will have more happy horseshit clauses that work to cover reality TV producers asses.
@lurkingreader that’s frightening.
@mdxxx
“I’ll be damned before I see any of these little Teenage Brats running around this industry acting like they call the shots”
They do and porns biggest mistake was using teenage brats to try and defeat regulation… it’s their body and no one has a right to tell them they can’t say no 🙂 oooh snap
@Ivy
That’s real. How many times has a performers partner gone to the cops and pursued criminal charges and nothing happened because it wasn’t on set?
How many men have been blacklisted because they went ballistic at a private porn event? How many would have become consumer content if things didn’t get out of hand?
Acworth got it right sacrificing Deen at the first public onset allegation but it never should have come to that and I’ll never be convinced it had anything to do with Stoya’s allegations. I think people blaming her for the backlash is bullshit that discourages assault victims from speaking up.
About the awards thing, let me paste my answer to “Should Deen lose his awards nominations?” on XBIZ.net
No, he shouldn’t. In fact, if it is true that the awards are assigned by merit as Howard and others say, Deen should get awarded, if considered the best of the lot in his categories.
What is this guy guilty of, at the moment? To have spitted on girls faces in his scenes? To have shot rough sex scenes? Wasn’t he nominated exactly for those rough scenes? Didn’t everybody know about, film, edit, release, distribute his dominant scenes? Wasn’t his rough, abusive attitude against women on film already awarded the past years? I mean, i don’t understand the message that should pass here, if his noms were dropped: that the industry rejects a certain idea of men being rough towards and dominating women in bed? Without Stoya’s tweet Deen scenes weren’t still carrying that same idea?
Did John Stagliano lose his director of the year nomination in 2013 while subjected to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court for the reasons we all know? Did anybody drop him because of that lawsuit?
I thought that being innocent until proven guilty was not just an opinion but an article of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
For what we know Deen hasn’t even been pressed charges against yet. The awards should be focusing on the merit of the submitted works, not on Twitter accusations. Unless somebody knew and knows already something that some of us don’t know…
If Twitter accusations are enough to take someone out of the competition, it might become very easy for someone nominated next year to win. Just tweet bad stuff about your competition and voila.
The way i see it, both AVN and XBIZ are not sleeping well these days. If you drop the nominations, you are a hypocrite; if you don’t award him, the whole castle of the awards being assigned by merit crumbles (please, nobody try an tell me that Deen wouldn’t have won any awards this year without the Stoya’s tweet); if you give him an award you open a can of worms. The less of the evil is of course to leave the noms on and to not award them, pretending that there were better works than Deen’s works, but in reality showing that the pool of independent critics called to assign the awards is not so independent.
The correct thing to do, instead, would be to award him if considered worth, can of worms or not. It would be a great message to those like me who criticize the transparency of the whole awards system.
In the past couple of years we have become a rabid PC frenzy world. What was OK for someone to say and do a couple of years ago is now poison in this PC world. Make a joke about African Americans, Hispanics, or Gays a few years back and some might have laughed and some might have said its wrong. Accusations of possible rape were just that… accusations.
Fast forward to 2015 and if you make that same joke about another group (Blacks, Hispanics, or gays) and it is instant death to your career and you are now dead to most people in your profession. With the advent of social media (and at the same time) we have become much much much more aware of diversity so even a hint or rumor that you have done something wrong will ruin the rest of your life. Only James, Joanna, Stoya, and the others involved really know what happened. Same with Charlie Sheen, Bree Olson, and Brett Rossi and their HIV+ he said/she said situation.
But those of us that follow social media have already decided to judge James Deen even without hearing any evidence.
@karma I’m just going to say….if you think Stoya and all the others (I believe it’s up to 8) are lying or somehow misinterpreting what happened to them, taken with the fact that all these companies have dropped Deen….you know honestly I don’t know what to say. How many women had to come forward before you were open to the idea that Cosby may have actually drugged and raped all those women?
Blame social media all you want, but you should blame the entire internet as well.
Do you all REALLY want to go back to an age before the sharing of free information? Do you really want the governments, corporations, and Scrooge McDuck’s money vaults to control your information? How about magazines, do you really want to wait once a month for information in Time magazine, that may be heavily biased on the editoral side?
Wow people. I don’t even know what to say about all that. Thank god Mike is a libertarian, is about the only thing I can say without getting angry.
@Ivy. I don’t think that;s what karma means. Do you know that Deen is guilty? If you know something we don’t know, please, elaborate. Otherwise, so far, he is innocent. I can’t stand James Deen; not a fan, i don’t like his look, i don’t even like his dick, judging from pics. But hey…a tweet is something that everybody can type. TO ME, a tweet is not enough to behead someone. My understanding is that karma is saying the same. I’ve donated my money to girls who claimed to have terminal cancer, just to see them with a brand new 500USD Louis Vuitton purse two years later. Twitter is cool, but it’s not a court of justice.
@sabrinadeep I have posted about this a lot, so I don’t wanna reitterate to much, but basically the woman who came forward, I believe them. That’s all I need. And my reply to karma became generalized, because there is a significant amount of writers here who are basically saying “this wouldn’t have happened without twitter”. Anyone can have an opinion, that’s fine I welcome that because this is a free society and that’s how it should be. But again, I believe Joanna, Stoya et. al, and that’s all the proof I need. I listened to Joanna’s radio interview, I read many news articles that detailed their stories, from different sources. Based on what I have personally read, I believe them.
@Ivy lets go down part of the list of the women who came forward against James Deen:
Bonnie Rotten – Shoots some of the most hardcore scenes in the industry. Is now pregnant, and realizes she will make zero dollars filming porn after she pops out that baby and all her tatoos become stretched out.
Amber Rayne – She did a 50 guy gangbang once. Was one of the most hardcore performers out there. No one has heard from her in years until this……15 seconds of fame?
Lily Labeau – Was supposed to be a model, Spiegler convinced her to do porn, she was always too pretty for porn. Now she is a psychopath just like Lindsay Lohan and Kagney Linn Karter. I wouldn’t trust her with a pet cat, let alone her story on what occurred during a scene.
Tori Lux – Saw her posting on Redbook, Backpages and Eros for $300 an hour as recently as a couple of months ago. How long was she in the industry again? Oh that’s right now a very long time, because Bonnie Rotten and Christy Mack were hotter and took all her scenes.
I can go on and on and on. I know a lot about this industry. James Deen’s career will not end because of this. It will blow over by the time AVN’s begin and by then there will be some other new STD or HIV scandal we can all talk about.
I’m not saying that a girl doing a gangbang on camera makes it right for people to go out and gangbang her in real life. My point is the girl is there to do a job, signs some paper work. I don’t think a studio would let a girl get abused and just let it slide. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think even though there are a lot of scum bags in the industry, I don’t think allowing women to be abused on set is one of the things they allow to happen on a regular basis.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
You’re wrong. That’s, in part, why Cameron Bay is suing Kink. And before someone chimes in and says, well, she signed on with Kink, she knew what she was doing, remember that Peter Acworth has said publicly that things happened on that shoot that never should have happened and Xander has conceded that he kept shoving a bloody penis in Cameron Bay’s mouth.
@BT
There’s the other lawsuit too. They both focus heavily on consent and how Kinks business practices work to ensure the limits of consent are respected.. Kink didn’t come out and ditch Deen to support Stoya or admit there was any proof to the allegations in the alarming pattern. The threw him under the bus to say see how we don’t tolerate the crap were gonna fix in the coming months 🙂
I want to clear something up…Bonnie Rotten, to my kn owledge has ONLY spoken to me and in that conversation she was very clear that she didn’t want to be seen as a victim or anything. her statement was that there were only a very few people on her no list and that James Deen was one of them because of her prior experiences with him not respecting her boundaries. She did this because she and I are friends from way back and I knew she had worked with Deen and actually expected that she might support him. No matter what the girls histories or reputations when this many girls come out of the woodwork with similar stories that raises a red flag, when companies that he shoots for abandon him immediately that means that they are concerned about liability which says very clearly to me that they were not surprised.
I absolutely understand why none of the girls pressed charges. While I wouldnt put Deen in jail based on all of this I would certainly put him under increased scrutiny…which is exactly what is being done….Personally this is enough for me not to hire him but then I wouldnt pay his rates anyway….
I don’t think more than 1% of porn fans(which is almost every single male on the face of the planet) have abandoned porn. It’s just the effort it takes to find one decent scene is like finding hens teeth. Nobody really wants to watch the same old fat assed, tattoo/oil covered biker chicks get banged.
Schlermy is right about tattooed biker type chicks but I’m not sure what that has to do with this topic.
Karmafan I should have referenced Mike’s quote “The most common complaint I have heard about why former fans abandoned porn is the violence that seems to be the norm these days, I know its true for me.”
I just don’t think many people have abandoned porn, it’s like crack cocaine why would they stop? Like I mentioned above there’s just very little good porn being produced. I think the golden era of porn was 1992-2006 but that’s just my opinion.
@mdxxx
Your quote ” I don’t think a studio would let a girl get abused and just let it slide …..I don’t think allowing women to be abused on set is one of the things they allow to happen on a regular basis.”
You can not say you understand the porn industry and make that statement at the same time. You can chose to believe what you want; however you won’t get many people to see your points when you make statements like that.
As for listing off the girls sexual experiences as a reason to disbelieve rape allegations. Again, this just shows you don’t get it, and may never. That is ok; you can think what you want.
A girl can do a 2000 man gangbang non stop for 72 hours straight. If she says NO to man 2001, and he still grabs her hips and puts his dick up her ass, that is rape. You can deny that all you want, however those are the facts. No matter what a person allows or consents to, the moment they say no or stop, that is the moment it becomes wrong. This is not a grey area.
You trot out a lot of the narrow thinking; girl is a whore so she possibly can’t be raped, all women are lying money sucking bitches, and you enjoy seeing women suffer and be hurt. Again, you can think that all you want, that doesn’t make it correct.
And, it is your response to each girl by laying out some of their sexual history, that just again shows why porn girls don’t come forward. You have kept bringing up the concept of why didn’t they report it at the time…. well, that is a big reason why. People ignore or not believe them because they are sexually active women.
@mike
“Personally this is enough for me not to hire him but then I wouldnt pay his rates anyway….”
Somebody somewhere is prolly saying you’re a cheapskate that doesn’t value male talent 😉
James is part of the chosen ones. We Jews in the porn industry are the chosen ones and he is the King of porn Jews.
@joeshmoe.. very well said