Chapter 112

Ben Benedict sat and puzzled over what was in front of him. When he first saw the script for "Dragon Lore" he doubted it could be made. Once he learned he could find the funding, he doubted he could assemble a cast. Now, three short months after he'd met a group of people he now considered friends as well as coworkers and collaborators, he realized he was going to have to sift through literally two dozen messages from people who wanted a part now that news had leaked out.

Major studios had tried to co-opt the project. When Tate turned down their participation, they sent their stars to make personal pleas for a part in the production. If the studios couldn't take over the project, at least their girls would make sure the major players were represented.

The names that called or visited Daystar studios in the weeks since word slipped out had been impressive. Almost all the top-flight players had made a plea. Some had offered to work for scale – no doubt at the behest of their contract holders. The men were worse. They had blustered and preened, insisting that a no-name couldn't carry a production with this much potential.

Tate and Ben gave all the men and women the same spiel: no casting decisions were to be revealed yet and, in any case, almost all the decisions had already been made. They would put together a list of interested talent and let them know if the interest was mutual. The large studios were trying to play catch up and failing. They had no script writers on their staffs. They had no scripts under consideration and no one who could put one together without a significant amount of cash leaving the studio coffers and landing in the hands of an independent contractor.

The studio heads had played the system. They had their hands in almost every facet of the industry, from the casting agencies to the smaller websites to the major production houses. Studios that paid a performer $1,000 would get $125 of that back from the casting houses they owned in the form of commission taken from the performers. The agencies would urge their stars to work for scale on certain websites financed by the studios – then take 12.5 percent from the performer anyway.

But independent contractors didn't work that way. A script writer would want money upfront for his or her work – and he or she would likely want a percentage of the gross sales of the product, too.

So the studios fumed as Daystar, Dazzle and some neophyte group named Subarctic got ready to put together something with real potential.

"This is total bullshit," Perry Gordon, aka Lance Thruster, told Ben. "I've done good work here. You hire me and Rick and you'll make a mint on this thing. Whoever this fuck Driller is ain't going to be able to handle it. You know that."

"I know no such thing," Ben said. "What I do know is that every scene Derrick Driller has released has sold like hotcakes. His scene with Ashley Malibu brought in $400,000 to Daystar in a month. That is one month – not a year or a decade. You take all the one-offs you've done in your career and they haven't brought in $400,000. His scene with Sahara Rain has done even more. Toss in what he did with Goldwall and he is over a million in profits to those he worked with.

"That's pure profit. He doesn't show up late or drunk. He doesn't hold up the shoot for a smoke break or because he can't get hard. He comes in; he works; he gets his scene done; and he goes home. He doesn't cost me money by acting like an idiot. As far as his carrying this production, the women we want to cast will only work with him.

"So you're not going to be considered. Not for this production or the next one either. You're going to have to work with those sites that aren't smart enough to see the new wave coming. And you're going to be fighting with a hell of a lot of other male talent for the same spots. The major studios are already changing their ways. Tattooed and arrogant is on its way out. They're hiring guys who can understand that no one buys a video to see them. If you can't accept that – and I think your appearance here today shows me you can't – then you'll need to start looking for work somewhere else."

"Fuck you," Perry said. "When Daystar is tanking and no one will work for you, don't fucking call me to help you out."

"You can be certain that I won't," Ben replied.

Shelly showed up at Ben's office just as Lance Thruster was making his exit. He saw her and this time it was Shelly who smirked. She had done a girl-girl-girl scene a couple weeks before with Cassie Charms and Betsy Hamilton and it had sold extremely well.

Betsy had done a great scene for 'Doable Dolls' but it hadn't been released yet. Jenny and Derrick reprised their roles for another scene with Goldwall. Ashley and Sahara had started their web sites beside those of Michelle Foxx and Jenny Cinnamon. It was rolling along pretty well and it would get even better in a couple of days when Cassie Charms and Rita Looker unveiled their sites. There was already a countdown to 'major additions' on the main page of 'Sweet Things'. Adam had been amazed when Rebecca had agreed to drop her own domain name and accept the one Mary had proposed. Leslie didn't care one way or the other but Adam had expected Rebecca would fight the concept.

Adam had been continually busy. He had done work for "Chubby Chasers," now called "Bountiful Assets" – courtesy of a brain-storming session from the group. The group had split on Alluring Assets and Bountiful Beauties and come to a compromise. He had told Christina Webb that Mary had purchased the domain name for all three choices and she had initially thought that Adam planned to shake her down for a new domain name. She was shocked when he told her they would release any or all of them to her with no problem. They just wanted to grab them so she could have a little time to make a decision if she liked them.

She did and she liked "Bountiful Assets" best of all. Like most of the industry, she was impressed with Adam's demeanor and his work ethic. She had been further shocked when he offered to work with each of her eight core performers in the coming months.

He had worked with Betsy Hamilton and done another shoot for Rita that was more about her getting laid than it was about taking photos. He had a shoot set up with Cassie and Ashley for "Sporty Spinners" and one set with Sahara for "Best Breasts in the West."

But for every job he took, he turned down four others. Allie and Sarah were the same way. Allie had done a girl-girl shoot with a newcomer for Daystar and Sarah had done a scene for Dazzle with another new girl – Kenzie Cole – who the group knew as Tyanna Wilkins.

Cameron did a scene for "Frisky First Timers" with a woman in her 30s. She worked only two or three scenes a year, mostly because she enjoyed the rush she got from doing adult entertainment. Sarah had written a nice scene synopsis and the woman was ecstatic to be able to break in a young man like Parker Grant. Not for the first time, Rosalyn Flowers wished she was 15 years younger.

Daystar and Dazzle had made it a priority to contact girls like Kristi Clear, Misty Nevada, Fawn Lake and Kerri Tropic to offer them work. They couldn't change what had happened but they could make sure the girls didn't have to do the same things again.

Fawn Lake and Kerri Tropic agreed almost immediately to work for either company. Misty Nevada had returned to feature dancing and wasn't interested in coming back to the adult film industry. Kristi Clear had decided it was time to try something else to earn a living. She made it through the Rabbit Hole and found the other end wasn't much better than the entry.

Sarah heard this news and contacted Kristi Clear, whose real name was Veronica Davies, and asked her if she would like to work for Five Friends Casting, which had widened in the past 6 weeks to include 10 friends. Karlie and Trinity were alternating answering the phone and taking messages but their talents were too valuable to be wasted on secretarial duties.

Sheila Corvette and Tara Twain would be coming on board in a few more weeks – Tara two weeks ahead of Sheila – to help find jobs for the raft of new talent who was going to be coming aboard in the coming weeks. Right now, Five Friends represented Derrick, Ashley, Sahara, Jenny, Michelle, Cassie, Kenzie, Lex, Parker and Shawna. Things were moving along nicely from that end. The idea of such a small commission struck the group as something to look into, particularly when Cannon called Kenzie after her scene with Ashley and offered to represent her – for 15 percent. She politely declined, even when they asserted that another agency wouldn't try very hard to find jobs for a black woman.

Betsy was still locked into a deal with Majestic but she was doing her best to book her own deals. Her rep didn't care because the company got 10 percent whether they did any work or not. She had decided she was going to go her own way when her deal ended in July. Rita still handled her own booking but she spent more time in L.A. than she did in Vegas. Until school had let out in May, she would show up Thursday night and leave Monday night. Now that she was free of classes, she was there pretty much all the time. No one minded because everyone else was there all the time, too.

The PlayCo deal came within inches of falling through. Twenty-eight days after they agreed in principle to purchase Polar Power, PlayCo submitted another offer. They were having difficulty coming up with the $750 million they had agreed upon and the CEO was not at all pleased when he found out that Mary Rose would not help him defend the patent application without significant compensation. PlayCo called Celina, whose main job was the corporate attorney for Subarctic, to suggest $500 million was a more reasonable price but only if Mary would agree to help them assure the patent was approved.

Adam had warned Celina the call might come – particularly when he read that PlayCo was divesting itself of its underperforming assets – and he gave her a strict set of instructions to use when it did.

"Subarctic is not interested in renegotiating because you're overextended," Celina recited. "If the deadline passes, please be assured we will seek our remedy in federal court for any amount of money we lose because you fabricated your net worth. You can be assured that the letter-of-intent you signed is valid and we will seek to make sure you live up to the wording of it."

It took some doing, but PlayCo came up with the money – which the federal, state and local taxation agencies loved. Rumor had it that PlayCo's CEO had to dip into his personal funds to finalize the deal.

The group closed the deal on the houses within days of each other. They got the utilities turned on and moved in as soon as school was out. The only surprise was that they didn't move in where they originally expected.

Sean, Rachelle, Mary and Walt took the bedrooms they had planned to take. But Shelly, Allie, Sarah, Trinity, Karlie and Adam moved into the second house. The full basement was turned into a large bedroom with room enough for all of them. Karlie had her own room but she didn't spend much time there. After a week, she decided she didn't really need her own room after all.

The five other bedrooms in the houses were used for guest usage and there were always guests. Since they couldn't pay rent, Rebecca, Leslie and Meredith split the food and utility bills for the houses. The three women had no other local residence. Meredith had stayed in the spare bedroom at the upper apartment for a few weeks until they moved. Then she simply moved with the rest of them. Leslie gave up her apartment when the lease ended – as Trinity had done – and Rebecca had never gotten around to looking for a place in L.A. Meredith and Leslie usually shared a room in the main house. Rebecca had a room in the second house – although she spent more nights in the basement than she did there. Erin would be welcome either place but it was the general assumption that she would wind up in the basement of the second house when she finally graduated high school and moved to L.A.

All in all, everyone was happy with the arrangement. Jason decided he wasn't going home to West Virginia for the summer. He had a lot of work lined up – following almost exactly in Adam's footsteps. He had worked at Daystar and for Dazzle. He had done a shoot for "Doable Dolls" and was cast for a shoot with 'Bountiful Assets' in a few weeks.

Cameron was following a few steps behind Jason. He and Tyanna still hung out together, but they had no illusions about working solely together. Tyanna had been approached by some ethnic sites but she was in demand to work with better groups – Daystar, Dazzle and Goldwall, but also with "Best Breasts in the West," "Doable Dolls" (where she finally got the chance to have sex with Jason Rader) and was scheduled to do a shoot for "Destiny's Darlings" with Rita Looker.

Sean was working on finalizing a budget for "Dragon Lore" with Tate Benedict and Jerry Goldsmith. Rachelle was putting together the finishing touches on her marketing campaign and working with Allie to create ads for the web sites where they planned to place them. Walt had said "fuck it" and simply laid down planks to move the machinery into his shop and was working tirelessly on the last puzzle he had to solve – how to make the motion look realistic on film. Mary was working on making "Sweet Things" the best adult site in the industry. She was well on her way.

"So, what's the verdict," Shelly joked when she walked into Ben's office. "Are you going to hire Lance Thruster to bring coffee to the set?"

"That's about all I'd hire him for," Ben said. "He'd probably dick that up, too. Have you guys figured out who is going to do what?"

"No," Shelly said. "We're considering just stepping out altogether. Let the newcomers carry the load, you know."

Ben frowned. He had worried they might come to this decision. They didn't want to hurt their friends' feelings by leaving them out.

"I would rather you didn't," he said simply. "Let me tell you what I've put together. I know you wanted to do this one as a group and I think you should. But I think we can expand the groups. The first group of heroes will have three and the princess. I think it should be you, Derrick and Ashley with Kenzie as the princess. The second group will have four, also. We use Parker, Cassie, Lex and Betsy. Sahara and Rita are the sorceresses; they are really the parts with the best dialogue and the ones that require the best acting skills. The others can get by with decent skills. Will Rita work with someone outside of Derrick?"

"No," Shelly replied. She was taking notes on the proposed changes. She thought they would work but she would leave that decision to Sarah. "What will this cost in terms of salaries?"

"Raise them," Ben said with a smile. "But if Walt comes through with what he showed me, we'll make up for it in other places. If we use Rita's house for the main scenes, we'll save a bundle. So she wouldn't work with Parker or Lex?"