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Early on a Friday afternoon, I started my day of Extreme interviews with Gene Ross. During his 15 years at AVN, Gene saw plenty and was kind enough to share some tales, talk about
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| Extreme and try to explain the most hideous AVN cover ever.
Roger T. Pipe I know you've got a shoot to get to, so I'll just thank you for taking this time and get right to it. How long were you with AVN?
Gene Ross I worked for AVN for close to fifteen years.
Roger T. Pipe Starting when?
Gene Ross 1986.
Roger T. Pipe Is that when your career in the adult film industry began?
Gene Ross I can reduce what I did before AVN to generics, I have been a newspaper reporter, I worked for a couple of high profile public relations firms out of New York and Philadelphia. I had a pretty good background in journalism.
Roger T. Pipe When AVN hired you, what was your original position?
Gene Ross I started as a freelance writer for them. Aa that time, that's what they were looking for. They were made aware of the fact that I had a little bit more than a familiar grasp or interest in adult films, I had been watching them as far back as pre-hardcore in the early sixties. When they found out that I new a little bit about the early history, their editor John Paone interviewed me for what was then a retail publication that they put out every couple of weeks. It was like a video store owner newsletter. They interviewed me for that and that was my entry into AVN. I started writing reviews for them which is basically how almost everyone who gets in the door at AVN started out. I may have done that for about a year. Sometime in 1987, the editor wanted to go on to other things. Actually, his wife wanted him to go on to other things. She didn't feel that it was a dignified job for him to have as a married man. She talked him into another career line. By that time, I knew John pretty well and it was a right place-right time situation. They needed someone to take over the post immediately. I had that kind of experience editing newsletters and magazines so I was able to take over without missing a beat.
Roger T. Pipe So you took over that post and pretty much stayed there for the rest of your time at AVN
Gene RossYeah, I was pretty much a one man band for the first three or four years of that publication. I was the office staff and we relied on a bunch of freelance writers, whoever we could afford that month. I did most of the writing, everything from reviews to feature stories.
Roger T. Pipe Obviously, the magazine changed a great deal from those days. It went from a small publication to something huge. Along with that came the AVN Awards, how did those come about?
Gene RossThey were doing the awards before I got there. They started small and got big, like the magazine. I think the first award show I went to was in 1984 or so. They had it in some small room in the Tropicana or maybe the Aladdin. It went from a small conference room and just grew and grew.
Roger T. Pipe How legitimate do you think the awards are at this point?
Gene Ross I don't know if you question the legitimacy so much as the objectivity. In my career there, I saw how things changed. I have seen manipulation. I was specifically present in the early times when a couple of awards were changed. It was a smaller industry and it was the kind of publication that still didn't have it's own self-esteem. When you're still trying to make your bones, you don't have all the confidence in your own decisions. People would discuss during the trade shows what they thought of the nominations. Word would get back to people. The buzz was that people were not happy that a certain movie was nominated and that's the movie we just named Best Video. It was instances like that where I know things were changed to deflect negative feedback.
Roger T. Pipe Which awards were changed?
Gene Ross One year, it was the Best Video Feature Award. The Jace Rocker, Brittany Morgan thing from Coast to Coast, "The Bitter End."
Roger T. Pipe That movie had won the award originally?
Gene Ross Yeah. I wrote about it on my web site last year and of course got pilloried because how could I possibly know it was changed unless I was the one who changed it.
Roger T. Pipe Which movie won instead?
Gene Ross "Beauty & the Beast" from VCA.
Roger T. Pipe Why was it changed?
Gene Ross We were getting criticized for the nomination of that title. People were asking how would have nominated that movie. When people are questioning the nomination, without knowing we had actually made it the winner, that had to disappear. I've seen it a few times. I can't be really specific, but know that a Best Director Award was changed. If you're going to hook me to a lie detector and ask who was aced out and who won, I'm not going to recall. I do know that the two principles involved were Paul Thomas and Henri Pachard. I believe Pachard got screwed and Thomas was the won who benefited.
Roger T. Pipe Why was that one changed?
Gene Ross For the same reasons. Let's just that a gentleman named Rand Capp who was head of Caballero and Vidco made some comments to Mr. Fishbein and due to that conversation, an award was changed.
Roger T. Pipe Did you change these awards yourself?
Gene Ross I didn't change them, no. I was made aware of the fact that they were changed.
Roger T. Pipe Then who did?
Gene Ross Let's put it this way, there were only two people who could have done it. Use the process of elimination Roger. I was one of the two, and I didn't do it.
Roger T. Pipe So Paul changed them?
Gene Ross I guess we would have to say that.
Roger T. Pipe What about reviews? Are the writers given the freedom to say what they want about movies at AVN?
Gene Ross They absolutely are not. I have seen on many occasions where one of two things could happen. Either the negative review was re-written or the writer was gotten rid of. That happened in the case of Bruce Walker who seemed to have a bug up his ass about Ed Powers. That created some consternation in the office. There were comments that Bill Caits would make in reviews that were potential landmines. Those were edited. I told every writer who ever came to AVN to remember that every word used is a potential landmine and to remember that. I never told them what they should say, but I cautioned them. There were things that I knew the magazine would not allow.
Roger T. Pipe Like what?
Gene Ross Like personal attacks on the performers, to say she's ugly for example. I would tell the writers that if you want to get a point across, do it in a humorous fashion so we can call laugh, not in a way that comes out vicious and vitriolic.
Roger T. Pipe Was it, or is it common for a company to call and complain about a review?
Gene Ross Oh yeah, all the time. I remember one time when I had an hour harangue from Ed Powers over a review. He was relentless. We had a long history of that and the writers knew that it was better to just give them a higher rating and not put up with the bullshit. The same thing would happen with Jim Holliday. He was another one who was relentless. If you didn't review a movie the way Holliday saw fit, you were a pinhead and would get phone call. He would call and threaten to go to Russ Hampshire and that implied that there would be hell to pay in terms of advertising. It also extended beyond reviews to anything that was mentioned about him in Gene Does Gossip. I remember I wrote a sentence or two about a store opening Holliday had attended with Debi Diamond and Bionca. It was reported to me by someone who was there, that it was a bust, hardly anyone showed up. I reported it as such and there was hell to pay from Holliday for months on end. I could say without fear of contradiction that this one extended well over a year. You just knew that the feedback and the bullshit wasn't worth the initial sense of satisfaction you get from throwing in a good sentence. You would pay for it and it wasn't worth it.
Roger T. Pipe Did anyone ever directly threaten to pull advertising dollars based on bad reviews?
Gene Ross All the time.
Roger T. Pipe Anyone particularly guilty of that?
Gene Ross There were a lot. I remember over certain reviews Heatwave would pull ads. There would always be bells and whistles that some company was pissed and we had to do damage control. More often than not, we would do the damage control without the ads actually being pulled. Companies knew that they could get away with it, so it happened all the time.
Roger T. Pipe And it sounds like it worked.
Gene Ross Yeah. All they had to do was threaten to pull advertising and AVN would go into damage control mode. There would promises to do more features on a company and other things to assuage the situation.
Roger T. Pipe Were you ever threatened physically?
Gene Ross No, not me.
Roger T. Pipe What about offers of money?
Gene Ross Honest to God, I wish. No one ever extended me an offer of that kind. I heard rumors about other magazines where editors got drugs and girls, but never once did someone say "Hey Gene, I know you like anal and we have this hot blonde who likes it in the ass."
Roger T. Pipe You missed out on that part I guess.
Gene Ross You figure there would be one instance in fifteen years, but there wasn't.
Roger T. Pipe You missed out on all the fun bribes.
Gene Ross Yeah, I did. The funny thing is, everyone was under the impression we were getting bribes. The funniest example was Alex Katz made a big stink, saying that he was personally aware of a secret desk at AVN where people would come in and leave envelopes filled with cash. Supposedly these were left for us and later retrieved. Alex swore that he was personally aware of such a desk.
Roger T. Pipe You're saying that no such desk existed?
Gene Ross Not to my knowledge, but I love the way that sounds, the secret desk where all the nefarious deeds take place.
Roger T. Pipe Unmarked envelopes and all that.
Gene Ross Unmarked envelopes, non-sequential bills, it's a very creative story.
Roger T. Pipe Why did you leave AVN?
Gene Ross I left for a couple of reasons. First of all, after fifteen years of not getting bribed and having access to these gorgeous women but having to play the corporate image, I got tired of it. Second, AVN got too full of themselves. It got stuffy, it got too corporate, it was going in a direction where it wasn't fun any more. I was expecting to see a memo insisting that we all wear ties. When I had a small staff of people, it was great. AVN was fun up until the time it left the offices on La Cienega Blvd. We were sharing office space with Odyssey. Once we moved to the Valley to be closer to the industry, it was no longer fun. There was a jinx or a hex on the building or something. The day we moved all of our shit in, I had a terrible vibe. Right then and there, I knew something was wrong. Eventually, when we move again onto Eton Ave. in Chatsworth in 2000, I really felt the doom and gloom. I just knew I had to get out. I couldn't deal with it anymore. The interoffice politics were too much.
Roger T. Pipe Was there one instance that solidified that feeling?
Gene Ross The thing that really cemented it in my mind was the Ken Wood incident. I wrote about this extensively on my web site. Ken Wood became the managing editor over at AVN. Bryn Pryor had been in that position replacing Mark Kulkis. Mark had a better deal going when he left AVN. We had two weeks to find someone and it had to be someone who had experience running a magazine. Bryn Pryor had a falling out with Elliot Segal (SP) at Western Visuals. I brought Bryn aboard to run AVN. In his tenure, Bryn succeeded in pissing off a number of companies who were more adamant than ever about pulling their advertising. It looked like the situation was getting out of control. VCA was one of the companies making a lot of waves and it seemed like we had to make a move to take care of the problem. It was decided that Ken Wood would be the guy to move in. A couple of people who had been Bryn Pryor's cronies viewed Ken as an upstart who took over for their buddy. One Saturday afternoon, Ken and I were supposed to go to an XPW wrestling event in LA. I was to meet Ken at AVN, this was in June of 2000. He called me at my house at 2 in the afternoon. We were supposed to meet at 5. He called me and asked me to come over right away. He had something very interesting to show me. I went over and he had a lengthy email written by Rebecca Gray (SP) one of Bryn Pryor's buddies to Fishbein. She questioned Ken's ability to run the magazine and dragged me into it, saying that I wasn't a loyal member of AVN. It was a personal attack on me and I couldn't figure it out. I hired her. She couldn't get arrested in the adult business. Her claim to fame was trying to get five hundred dollars back from Ona Zee for a script she wrote a year or two years earlier. She was writing squibs for the Elliott Segal magazines. I brought her aboard and this was one of the ways I got re-paid. In fact, I ran the email on my site when I first came over here. That was part of our twelve days of Fishbein stuff we did. This email was basically a blueprint for how Rebecca was going to take over the magazine. The first step was to fire Ken at the end of that month. He had gone to the Cannes Film Festival, so they were waiting to get that out of him before dumping him. I saw this and said son of a bitch. This was on a Saturday and the following Monday he went in and handed Paul his resignation. All hell broke loose after that. Fishbein was looking into security measures that made us all wonder if we were under nuclear attack. They wanted Ken out of that office as quickly as possible. He was to finish up his writing commitments and get out. After I saw that letter, I waited to see if anything came from Paul acknowledging it. Nothing. I started looking around and reading between the lines. Sometimes it sounds like paranoia, but you can sense conspiracy. I could just smell it in the air. I decided I had to get out of there as quickly as I could.
Roger T. Pipe How did the Extreme job come about?
Gene Ross Just coincidentally I happened to be doing a write up on Extreme. We were doing a piece on how they had built themselves up and during the course of interviewing Rob and Tom I made an off hand comment asking where my office would be at Extreme. Rob didn't miss a beat, like it was understood that I would do this. Rob, Tommy and I have been friends through the years and we talked off and on about different possibilities. Rob had once said that when they could afford to pay me, they wanted me here. During that interview, I dropped it causally 'where would my office be?' Rob said 'right here' and true to his word, I got that office on November 1. We had a lot of fun with that. In fact, the anniversary is coming up of the plant incident at AVN.
Roger T. Pipe For those who missed it, tell us what that was.
Gene Ross Last October Rob was building up for my announcement, but he likes to do things in a dramatic wrestling way. He set up a scenario that was going to lay the groundwork for me leaving AVN. The scenario was this. He was taking umbrage to the way that AVN was treating him editorially and personally from suggestions from Fishbein that he was not paying his advertising bills. One afternoon, Rob comes over with a bunch of wrestling guys and is in the lobby asking to see Paul Fishbein. Luckily he was out to lunch or wherever he was at that moment. Rob says I want to see Gene Ross and I come out, half wondering where he was going. He starts yelling at me, you cocksuckers, fuck AVN, I'm tired of how I'm being treated, the way you slant your reviews. I tried to calm him down and said "Whoa Rob slow down, did you maybe have too much of the steroids today?" He took that as a cue and screamed "Steroids!" Then he picks up this plant and throws it to the ground. The office manager Elaine Tate starts freaking out, saying 'somebody call the cops. Somebody call the cops." I'm thinking, oh shit, because I knew that part of Rob's scenario was to have a cop car come and for him to get arrested. Two seconds later, a black and white comes up, two cops come in, grab him up, slap cuffs on him, drag him and throw him into the car. They go off and I'm wondering if those were the real cops or not. As it turns out, the real cops show up an hour and a half later, a real 9-1-1 moment. They are doing an investigation and looking at the surveillance tape. Fishbein is going crazy, asking what he could do. Elaine chimed in, 'they used profanity." The cop says, 'my wife uses that against me all the time, big deal, profanity.' Fishbein was intent on getting them and the cop says the best they could do is a vandalism thing if they destroyed anything. He say 'yeah, the destroyed my plant' and Paul filled out a vandalism report over a plant. The next day I put up a headline on my web site, "Rob Black Arrested for Assault & Pottery." Paul ended up declaring a twenty five dollar value on an eleven dollar plant. He was even trying to make fourteen dollars on the stupid deal. That really started the big exit. We made a big deal out of it, Gene finally decides to go over to Extreme and the rest is history.
Roger T. Pipe What exactly is your position at Extreme?
Gene Ross We don't have job titles here. It was understood that I would continue my web site high jinks because we don't run a magazine. I'm not an editor any more. I furnish content for generossextreme and using it as a strategically placed link to our pay site we funnel stories into the pay area. We start them on my site and tell the whole story on the member site. It's been very effective and we've built up a substantial membership in a short time. As of last November, Extreme didn't even have a good web presence, so we've come a long way in a short time with this.
Roger T. Pipe Shortly after you came over, Extreme pulled all ads from AVN. About that time, there was a Rob Black cover story that was also changed, is that right?
Gene Ross There were a lot of things going on then. Rob was supposed to be on the cover of the magazine. He spent an afternoon doing the cover shoot. I don't' remember exactly what it was, but it was supposed to be a statement on obscenity. They had Rob in a Judge's robe and stuff. It wasn't an Extreme cover per say, but Rob was on the cover. They dropped that one of course and subsequently, have dropped all mention of Extreme. You won't see us mentioned at all in their editorial content.
Roger T. Pipe Have they reviewed any Extreme movies since then?
Gene Ross None.
Roger T. Pipe Obviously they feel that this situation is going to hurt Extreme.
Gene Ross The fact is, it has only helped Extreme. When people saw that we flew in the face of AVN, being the only adult video company to have the guts to do it, and have done better with tape sales as a result. Now we have become the bad boys who have given the finger to the teacher so people want to know what this company is all about.
Roger T. Pipe After you left, AVN continued your web site, even still using your name.
Gene Ross I found that very funny.
Roger T. Pipe How do you feel about the way things went down with that site?
Gene Ross With all due respect to Tod Hunter, he is not the right person to do a web site. He doesn't have the personality for it. You have to go into it with the idea that you're going to stir shit up, start some controversy and come up with interesting angles on things. Tod is just a little too dry for that. I think that's why it only lasted nine months or so before they dropped it.
Roger T. Pipe They dropped the site at the same time Luke Ford sold his site. Do you think that's a coincidence?
Gene Ross That's purely coincidental.
Roger T. Pipe What did you think of Luke's site, someone coming in from outside the industry and shaking things up?
Gene Ross The first thing I said to Paul when I saw Luke Ford going up was that we should be doing something. It behooves us to set up our own web site. That suggestion went right over his head. It wasn't until three years later that Paul finally relented. The only reason that Paul even went to the web was that Luke started decisively attacking AVN and its credibility. GeneRoss started up in March of 1999 and Luke had gone on the attack with full force around December of 1998. He was hitting us daily.
Roger T. Pipe Was Luke on to anything, or was he just throwing stuff up to see what stuck?
Gene Ross He was getting pieces from various loose cannons. The interesting thing about the internet is that it can be a feeding frenzy, all you have to do is drip a little blood in the water. He hit a chord with one thing and then it became a mass psychology that benefited me by getting my site started. The only problem was that it took months to do it instead of being immediate. AVN has always been behind on everything. Even to the extent of its logo. It took me years to get Paul to switch from Adult Video News to something more current. Finally, when we moved out here in 1991, we hired this art director who was a burned out surfer dude who had a couple of great ideas. One of the positives of his brief tenure with AVN was finally getting the logo changed. We finally came into the 19th century by 1991.
Roger T. Pipe Obviously AVN was aware of Luke's site. What about the number of independent video review sites that started to spring up? They could be timelier and could afford to be more honest and negative. What was AVN's attitude towards sites like this?
Gene Ross AVN's attitude was always this. We know more than you do. So these sites have to be products of fans who are not on the in. Mark Kernes was the point man on the web, making comments to denigrate sites like that. They don't know what we know, so we could look down our nose at them.
Roger T. Pipe Mark has taken a lot of cheap shots at people on the web, even his final editorial on Luke was vicious.
Gene Ross Oh he hated Luke Ford, he hated him.
Roger T. Pipe Did you hate Luke?
Gene Ross I had an uneasy alliance with him. In the beginning it was like wrestling. I hated him because I was supposed to hate him, but I had to admire him. He was pretty good at what he did, pretty good at stirring shit. I would tell him from time to time that he was going too far with something. You have to know when it's time to err on the side of caution. Sometimes he would just go in and start opening himself up to all sort of legal action. I was surprised that relatively little was taken against him with all of the threats I used to hear. People were always calling up saying they were going to sue him, but they never did.
Roger T. Pipe Why?
Gene Ross They would always justify it in the end, saying it wasn't worth it. He didn't have two cents to rub together so they would drop it.
Roger T. Pipe You ran another story on your site about an AVN writer nominating one of her own scripts.
Gene Ross That was Rebecca Gray for Seven Deadly Sins. She wrote it under the name Eugenie Brown.
Roger T. Pipe Is that common for writers to do that?
Gene Ross We didn't know about it.
Roger T. Pipe Was she one of the people who then got to vote for her own script?
Gene Ross I can't say how she voted because at that time we weren't aware of the fact that she was the writer. The way it came out was merely by accident and all after the fact, after the awards were all carted home. I brought it out the following year on my site. I find it intriguing that to this day AVN has not disqualified that. They just let it slide and never commented on it at all. The only thing they have said is that my running the story is sour grapes. Stop and think about it, it's a serious infringement of ethics. Here you have a writer who knows she has written a script. I'm sure Rebecca Gray's little voting block, which we like to call the Arizona mafia were aware that she had written it.
Roger T. Pipe Is there a policy at AVN to keep this from happening again?
Gene Ross That I don't know. Maybe it's don't ask, don't tell, I don't know. She's probably still writing stuff.
Roger T. Pipe There was another story about an AVN writer getting his girlfriend nominated for an award.
Gene Ross That was Tod Hunter and Sonja Redd.
Roger T. Pipe How does something like that happen?
Gene Ross How does it happen? Nobody sat there and made a big deal of it. The feeling was that she had not chance to win. We needed a bunch of girls and some years you are really scraping for Best Starlet. It was just OK, throw her a bone, she can't win anyway, but she didn't know that. I think she was honestly of the opinion that she had a chance of winning. Coincidentally, his relationship with her ended the night of that awards show when she didn't win. I'm not saying that she was hanging around with him because she stood a chance only because her boyfriend was one of the voting members and maybe something would happen. On the other hand, that's sort of the way it worked out.
Roger T. Pipe All right, big question. Are you responsible for that Matt Zane cover?
Gene Ross Oh God no.
Roger T. Pipe Whose fault is that?
Gene Ross That one has to be on Fishbein. I think we all would have passed on that one. I don't remember the specifics, but that was a payback for some shit that went down before. It was the damage control kind of thing I mentioned before. Whenever you question the validity of a certain cover, you can usually go back and find something to explain it a few months earlier.
Roger T. Pipe Since AVN hasn't reviewed any Extreme movies this year, it's a pretty safe bet that they won't nominate any for awards.
Gene Ross That's a given.
Roger T. Pipe I mentioned on my site that Anabolic and Diabolic combined got two nominations last year and they are one of the best companies in porn.
Gene Ross They don't advertise.
Roger T. Pipe Obviously that's not a policy, but is it an unspoken rule.
Gene Ross To some extent, but you have to understand, they don't give a shit. They don't even send review tapes so it goes both ways.
Roger T. Pipe You've always had an interest in wrestling. Was the XPW and the chance to work in wrestling a factor in your decision to come to Extreme?
Gene Ross No, not really. I would say it's a bonus, but wrestling was not a selling point for this job.
Roger T. Pipe What is your role in XPW?
Gene Ross Nothing at this point. That's not to say that I won't have a role in the future. There is so much that goes on around here. You can start off with a game plan and get sidetracked so easily. It gets done eventually, but not all in the timeframe you planned. That's to Rob and Tom's credit. One thing people don't realize about Rob is that he is a very smart guy. He is in character all the time and because of that people tend to underestimate him. He has a memory that is incredible. You could say something to him in passing, thinking that it went in one ear and out the other, but he will remember it years later. That's the difference between he and Fishbein. With Fishbein it really does go in one ear and out the other.
Roger T. Pipe The Extreme family is a pretty eclectic bunch with RobRob and Zupko and now Vegas. Do you just kind of stay off and do your own thing?
Gene Ross You have to. These are guys who are twenty years younger than myself and this is their way of doing things. I get my way, but I do it in a much different way, but I'm just as crazy if not crazier than those guys.
Roger T. Pipe You said earlier that you were not offered money, drugs or sex, but there are rumors that others at AVN do fuck talent in exchange for awards. Is there any truth to the rumor that certain performers visit certain people at AVN to sway votes?
Gene Ross Is there truth to it? (Gene leans back in his chair and thinks very carefully about this one.) Let's put it this way. Do I have videotapes? No. But when you see a girl go into an office, the door gets locked and she comes out an hour later, I'm sure they aren't talking about current world affairs. One can draw some interesting conclusions. If you don't have it on tape, you can't say it for sure, but when you see a pattern devlope and a predictable frequency of things happening, you can guess. If it smells like a duck and walks like a duck, nine times out of ten, it is a duck.
Roger T. Pipe If I were to ask you if, in your opinion, some or most Performer of the Year winners have followed that path?
Gene Ross
I can't say anything about what has happened since I left there, but again you see patterns and you draw conclusions based on those patterns.
Roger T. Pipe I bring that up because I was on the Extreme web site today and there is a clip where Kristi Myst is servicing someone portraying Paul Fishbein in order to win an award. Is that total speculation or more?
Gene Ross Well, we put the name Paul Fishbein in quotes. That was part of a documentary that we were doing last year and the start of the war we had with AVN. We never finished the whole thing, but there was that sex scene. In no way is she sucking the cock of the real Paul Fishbein, it's more of a recreation like they would put on the E Channel.
Roger T. Pipe Any other strange awards anomalies?
Gene Ross I can tell you that some performers have become Performer of Year on mathematical error.
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