I’m going to leave it to y’all on this one. I’m going to refrain from commentary.
Obviously an explanation is in order. Not an excuse; an explanation.
The XRCO Awards Show happens every year only with the help of sponsors.
It costs a LOT to put on the show as you can imagine! And what happens when costs exceed sponsorship donations? It comes out of my pocket, plain and simple – WHICH HAS HAPPENED ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION!
This year, with the economy and the biz being as rough as it is, I was having an incredibly difficult time rounding up enough sponsors. A few stepped up to the plate, and a few new ones came on board as well. But it wasn’t nearly enough.
A month ago I got a call from a guy saying he was from some adult registry – I honestly didn’t catch which one – and do we need another sponsor? Of course! His check arrived (from icm registry llc – which just didn’t click in my mind – honest!), and cleared, and the next step was to have him send me his logo. When the .xxx logo arrived I was surprised and honestly had no idea that it was the same group of people! But by then it was too late. Trophies were ordered etc etc and the show is only 3 weeks away. Besides this one phone call from them and a follow-up e-mail, I have never been in contact with them.
I struggled with this, spoke to people in the industry, and the general consensus was that everyone pretty much already knows about this group and had made up their mind about them – either way – by now. We decided this wasn’t a sell-out; I believe that it is the other way around as they are helping to sponsor us and we are not sponsoring them. Every time you turn around you see their name and ad anyway.
It can be argued that I screwed up by not checking out who the sponsor was? Sure! But this situation had never arisen before. But yes. my fault. I’m not passing the buck.
All I can say in my defense is that it never would have happened if enough sponsors had stepped up early enough. As it is right now I still don’t have quite enough to cover everything but there is one last sponsor committed which should get us near the break even point.
The XRCO has a reputation of being totally 100% non-political and honest. And it is! Whoever the members pick as noms and winners is exactly who is nominated and who wins. Sponsorships have absolutely NO EFFECT on the outcome! This being said, anyone who helps to sponsor the XRCO Awards Show has no effect on the outcome – especially a company who doesn’t even make adult DVDs!
I hope the industry and our other current sponsors understand that this should have no bearing on the outcome of the awards. If I upset anyone, I am sorry; it was not intentional!
db
13 Responses
How much do the XRCO trophies really cost? Can’t be much. The industry has re-sized, perhaps the size of the trophies should too.
IMHO you should have shipped their logo back to them along with their check, aggressively solicited new sponsors, and paid extra to fix a few trophies. It would have saved you from looking like a sell out. And if there isn’t enough interest from sponsors to fund the show, perhaps this is one show that shouldn’t go on. Everything comes to end eventually. There is no shame in that.
It’s one thing to protect your brand by purchasing one of their shitty over priced domains. They backed a lot of people into a corner no that one. But it’s something totally different to cash their check. “Whore” is the word I believe I’m looking for. But to each his own.
I have no problem with Bob and his explanation. In fact, he is trying to continue the XRCO Awards which is one of the great traditions in the adult movie business and needs money in order to accomplish that end. Many companies are hurting financially these days and as the great Paul Fishbein once told me, “If you don’t like me taking ads from certain companies I would be happy to replace their ad with yours.”
So with that I say lighten up a little bit and I applaud Dirty Bob for working to make the show happen again this year. We are all intelligent adults and I do not think a sponsor be they good or bad speaks for us as an industry just because their banner is up on a wall or their name is in the program. We live in a country of diminishing free speech but we can disagree on principle yet still allow the opposition a voice.
Also kudos to Mike South for voicing his shared displeasure at .XXX and thank God we still live in a country where we have a right to speak our minds and others do too.
I plan on being at the XRCO Awards at the Highlands on April 12th with a beer in one hand and a pretty girl in the other.
That make cents if Bob can not afford put on award show buy him self. It ok than for him go .XXX. than next Shelle Lubben Ahf. Hey if can not get people in porn support his award show best next thing is get people that do not support porn seen at all. Gee that dumb enough only make cents to those help porn end up in toilet that find self in that about be flush away in.
DB – Boil it all down and there’s really only one question left… Had you realized that ICM Registry was the .XXX people when you rec’d the check, or when you got that initial call, would you have done anything different?
@DirtyBob
You said, “But by then it was too late. Trophies were ordered etc etc.”
So I asked, how much does it really cost to make new ones? Of course that’s not all that is involved. The point was, if the show is under funded and there is no real interest this year, perhaps the show is over. And if the ordering of 40 trophies was really an issue, maybe you should have just bought new ones. They can’t be that expensive. Claiming not to have known .XXX was the sponsor is a weak attempt at covering your ass. For as long as you’ve done this I’d think a little more due diligence would be put into knowing exactly where the checks came from that you are cashing.
Whatever the case, this is what happens when you do deals with shit bags. We’ve all made a bad deal somewhere along the line. Take your lumps like a big boy. Luckily, the business is incestuous, incredibly desperate, and has the memory of a gold fish, so all of this will be behind you in just a few more days. It may not even take that long.
@jeffmullen
“We are all intelligent adults and I do not think a sponsor be they good or bad speaks for us as an industry just because their banner is up on a wall or their name is in the program.”
That is the exact mindset that has led this business straight into the shitter where thieves and unethical people run (and ruin) what’s left of it, all while being praised by one half of the industry in a sad attempt to get scraps, and the other half looking the other way because they are “intelligent adults” who know such people do not speak for them. The ironic part is, the more everyone ignores them and/or fights for scraps, the closer to being out of a job they become. The sad part is, most are too desperate to even realize it.
Enjoy the show. I’m sure at best there are only a few more of them anyway.
RIGHT THE FUCK ON DWB!
Well said brother.
And spot on.
Good job DWB.
About 7 years ago I proposed in a few very closed door meetings with some big players how to possibly solve the problem of free porn. I had left the music industry a few years earlier than that due to digital downloads wiping out the record business (at least as we once knew it) so I felt I had an insight that might be helpful. Nobody listened to me that a tremendous problem was on the horizon that might kill our entire industry but I thought I had a serious solution to solve the problem. I still to this day believe there would have been two clear-cut options on how to stop what then was just a growing problem. Now it is an epidemic or better yet a way of life among buyers and it has altered our business to the core and my former solutions would not be effective anymore.
I hear you loud and clear Mike and DWB and totally get where you are coming from because I lived this ‘cancer’ in two careers so please do not think I come from a place of zero knowledge or “that mindset” as you suggested. I understand the issues and have suffered economically too right there with you and many others. However, I am not going to beat up Bob on this issue.
If you or anybody can come up with some sponsors so that Bob can eliminate ICM Registry from the show then count me in for some cash too. However, it would have to happen in the next few days I would think for Bob to be able to make any changes. It might be too late already I don’t know as I have not talked with him. Feel free to email me if anybody can bring some juice to the table. Thanks. [email protected]
How hard did check out people that are fund his award show??? Who next fund award show Ahf Shelle Lubben??? Here thought Jeff if enemy of porn pay for event in porn what makes you than friend to them. Jeff this is not Bob frist porn awards show he put on many so find hard to beleave that had no idea what .XXX. was about when he went bank cashed there check for his awards show. I love pass of buck if know sponsors in porn inudsrty stupid enough hand money that award show that sponsor buy major threat inusrty please let Jeff know. Are you admiting that not smart enough find sponsors for his awards show on his owen.
Good of you to step up Jeff but from what I know the only way this sponsor would be dropped is if someone like Wicked dropped sponsorship because of it. Now from what I have heard Wicked is LIVID over this and may well refuse to sponsor it in the future, there are also a lot of XRCO members who are unhappy about I have a mailbox full of emails. But this one isn’t my fight, I’m gonna let Dirty Bob deal with it and I will just report the fallout or resolution or whatever. I would love to see people kick in and XRCO toss .XXX as a sponsor, but I ain’t holding my breath.
You are right too about porners being asleep at the wheel on this issue, they were making so much money they didn’t see the internet as a threat and they weren’t interested in spending any money to protect their intellectual property…Then it was too late.
3/25/2012 12:04 PM PST
Bill Margold to Dirty Bob: The West Coast is Going to Take Back the XRCO
–Gene Ross
Dirty Bob, the current Chairman of the XRCO, raised a few eyebrows this past week by admitting that he had accepted sponsorship of the XRCO Awards from the highly controversial .XXX Domains not realizing until it was too late who they were.
[The XRCO is funded and supported strictly by sponsors, so one half of the argument says Dirty Bob was correct in accepting .XXX Domains money. The other half that decries .XXX domains as a money-generating scam, not working in the best interests of the adult industry, would be less forgiving.]
That controversy notwithstanding, Bill Margold is now telling Dirty Bob flat out that the west coast is going to take back the XRCO. Dirty Bob lives in Ohio, and it’s been argued that he’s totally out of touch with the workings of the adult industry.
“I told Dirty Bob the XRCO is coming back to where it belongs on the west coast,” states Margold.
“While we won’t eliminate him from it, we’ll just put him in a minor role. Dirty Bob has now overextended his stay. Dirty Bob is not the XRCO. He just happens to be a man who was given the XRCO and now it’s time to take it back. But how do you not know what’s going on?”
Margold then answers his own question: “Dirty Bob’s a whore. He’ll sell out to anybody.”
According to Margold, the XRCO was never meant to be some kind of clandestine organization “with secret handshakes and members licking each other’s assholes.”
Margold says this having been told once by Dirty Bob that “I’m about the last person in this business that still likes you. ‘I said oh please hate me. I prefer those who do.’”
Talk to Margold today, and he voices regret that he and the late Jim Holliday began taking a less active involvement in the organization.
“In 2004 when Holliday was really sick and unhappy he said I don’t want it any more. I didn’t know what to do. The XRCO meant well when it began. It was about truth and honor.”
Margold is also highly critical of this year’s XRCO Hall of Fame. And at Thursday night’s John Stagliano-Belladonna induction into the Hustler Walk of Fame, he was openly questioning the selection of director Miles Long to the XRCO.
“I have no idea who Miles Long is,” repeats Margold.
“To this day, I still don’t know. I’ve looked at his picture. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that man. This is not one of the stronger classes of inductees I’ve ever seen, but if that’s what they want, that’s what they get.”
Margold honestly would rather have seen the induction of John Keeler aka Jane Waters who died this past year.
“He’s an award-winning cinematographer and director; and he’s not in.”
Then, again, Margold was less than bowled over by Belladonna’s Thursday night induction believing that such industry luminaries as Amber Lynn and Georgina Spelvin should have been accorded that honor by now and haven’t been.
“Belladonna is indicative of the modern era but she needs to wait another ten years to get the walk of fame,” Margold believes.
Margold refers to Dirty Bob’s explanation about the .XXX domains sponsorship as “an unnecessary blathering mea culpa” about XRCO economics.
“I hate to break it to Dirty Bob, but when we had the XRCO shows we didn’t pay much at all.”
Margold remembers collecting $50 annual dues from the members with no problem underwriting the show, except from one member who refused to pay dues and was kicked out of the organization.
Margold says by bringing the West Coast influence back into play, he’d like to see the return of Jared Rutter.
“He’s in the Hall of Fame, justifiably, being one of the founding members of the XRCO. I miss him and his leveled sensibilities.”
Margold remembers another time when Dirty Bob wanted to put Viper into the XRCO Hall of Fame.
“I told him she was dead. He said I guess that’s not going to happen. In fact I begged him to not put her in the program as passing away. Of course what does he do? He puts her right in the program.”
If Bill Margold thinks that Dirty Bob is out of touch with the business, he should look in the mirror as Miles Long as been one of the most prolific shooters and directors over the past decade plus. He is also a very valuable member of X-Play’s team having been a part of nearly every single parody that we have produced starting way back with Not the Bradys XXX Marcia Marcia Marcia. I was surprised to hear that Bill had no idea who Miles Long is even though Miles is in the AVN Hall of Fame. I give Dirty Bob credit for doing what he can for the XRCO Awards and if people bash him they are being rude. Oh yeah, Bill Margold once bashed me when we donated $1000 to the cancer fund for Henri Pachard a few years ago and I still can’t believe that one. I have nothing against Bill Margold and wish him nothing but the best but sometimes those that attack are not the best judges of character.