Chapter 20: Selling the Video and Tina

The finished movie was just like it happened, and everyone that acted in it was proud to have captured the heritage of The Circle. Not all the newer members knew exactly how it started, and the video got everyone talking about the roots of how The Circle formed and the underlying philosophies and tenets.

The film started at Jim's favorite picnic table with Bob, Jim, and Matt talking about dating Sheila, Zoey, and Monica, as well as Bob's major points to happiness and joy, and talking about the constellation of friends. The scene moved to Alice's for advice, and then the first group sex for the men. The sex with Alice continued as the men slowly led their three targets through a slow build-up of relationships with them. About the time sex was about to start, there was the need for a place to go to be private – Alice's home; and Monica went on a vacation with her parents, actually played by Don and Michelle. The group sex started with the men, and Zoey and Sheila, and then Alice, with Monica joining in after she got back.

The sex scenes were often exaggerated compared to what actually happened, but then some of them were tamed down to as too incredible to portray in a believable way.

After the heavy editing by Matt from four weekends of filming, he showed the movie to the entire household. There were cheers and tears, and some serious sex during the film's first showing in the home's family room.

Alice was definitely showing her baby bulge in the film, but we just ignored it since it wasn't that pronounced yet and could be passed off as a little chubbiness except to those that knew her. Sheila wasn't showing at all, and looked absolutely luscious in the movie, along with her female co-stars Monica and Zoey.

Alex announced he would shop the film around to some distributors he'd found. He'd booked himself into an investment conference in Las Vegas the same weekend as the AVN (Adult Video News) awards and convention, so he thought he'd have some additional contacts by staying the weekend. Matt said he'd load the video on Alex's iPad so he could show samples of our work to prospects.

AVN awards were the equivalent of Oscars, only in the porn industry. There were over a hundred different categories of awards, many sounding similar to the Oscars – best actress, best actor, best film, best POV, best BDSM, best make-up, best foreign film, and so on. The one that interested us was 'Best Amateur.'

The awards were also an opportunity to party really hard and to have a lot of sex if you were able to score with some really hot men and women. Alex had a grin on his face from ear to ear when he finally got hotel reservations for just after New Year's in the same place the awards were going to be held.

In the intervening months leading up to Christmas and New Year's, Matt continued to hone his editing of the film, going back to some of the raw material and bringing some of those shots into the final product, even as he edited out other material.

Despite the fact that Alice would be about six months pregnant, she decided she wanted to go to the awards with Alex. Really, she wanted to get laid end-to-end by some of the male porn stars, or get into some sexy stuff with one of the porn queens The Circle liked to watch.

So that they could celebrate Christmas together, The Circle did Christmas on Christmas Eve day, and that allowed some to then scatter to join families on the actual day.

Michelle and Don, Monica's parents, hosted everyone that stayed behind at their home for a further celebration. They ended up with Nathan, Derek, Lolly, Brad, Steph, Alice, and Sandy, so there was a large meal and lots of gala for them. The whole scene felt very 'family' with the spread of ages from Lolly who was nineteen, to Don who'd just turned fifty-three. The sexual part of the day, which Michelle orchestrated, didn't pay much attention to ages, a point that made Don especially happy as he got to sample Lolly's charms for the first time. She fell in love with the older man immediately.

A few weeks later Alice and Alex caught their flight to Las Vegas.

Alice was bouncing around in her airplane seat before the plane even left the ground. "I'm so excited I might just pee my little panties."

Alex grinned, "You get one more month under your belt with your pregnancy and you will start peeing your panties whether you want to or not; at least, that's what my first wife went through about that time."

Alice smiled at him, "Aren't you excited about seeing all these porn stars in one place – for real."

Alex chortled, "I'd be more excited if I had one or two of the female stars in my bed hoping I'll give them some excitement and affection."

Alice pondered, "Do you think they really want affection or just a lot of cock?"

"They're human. They want love and affection like everyone else. The industry has been criticized time and again for objectivizing women and treating them like slabs of meat with convenient holes for better than normal masturbation."

Alice nodded. "I know you're right, but I still wonder about the porn stars. I wonder if they aren't different in some way. I know I still want love, and I've been in a porn movie." She grinned mischievously at her seatmate.

A few hours later they waded through a throng of sexily dressed women greeting each other like long lost friends, and registered at the hotel. Behind the women – porn stars – was a group of men leering lecherously at every babe. The pair dumped their luggage upstairs and went down to join the throng.

The party atmosphere of the AVN gathering permeated the hotel. Just coming out of their room door into the hallway, they found a couple making out a few doors down and it was obvious that the pretty girl wore no undies and was anxious to get whatever was in her companion's jeans out in the open even before they reached a room.

Alice laughed, and they moved on to the downstairs area. "Do you suppose they'll like my pregnant condition?"

Alex said, "It doesn't matter. I do, but I bet you get propositioned in..." He looked at his watch. "Let's say before five o'clock. That'll give you a little over an hour, and you do look quite sexy. Has anybody told you that you have fabulous looking legs?"

Alice leaned up and kissed him. "Yes, but I never get tired of hearing it. I might even let you eat dinner between them tonight. Who knows, I might just have a creampie in there you'd love for dessert."

After that they went separate ways to roam the hotel display areas and the various party rooms, although it was obviously on the early side. Alex carried the iPad with the complete videos on it

Each of the major filmmakers and distributors had a booth in part of the large ballroom. There were maybe forty or so booths, and that included some of the 'toy' manufacturers or importers too.

Alex strode up to one of the pretty women at the Brassballs booth. "Hi, I'm Alex, and I was wondering whether you buy or whatever arrangement you make with somebody – an independent – who has produced their own movie." Brassballs.com was a well-known and favorite destination site for those seeking high quality online porn.

The pretty girl digested what he'd just said, and then held a finger up to get him to wait a minute. She almost hobbled back behind a curtain at the back of the booth in eight-inch heels surrounding a three-inch vamp. The shoes were sexy but certainly not made for walking. A moment later she came back with a man in his forties who could pass as a surfer dude any day.

He put his hand out, "I'm Deke Nuthwall, the head of Brassballs. Tina said you were shopping a movie around?"

Alex shook his hand, noting the friendly nature of Deke. He said, "A group of friends made a movie about getting together in a group sex arrangement, although there is a touch of romance in it – three guys and four girls, mostly in their twenties. We'd like to sell it or lease it or whatever. I can show you and you could scroll though it if you're interested. Is this even something that people in your industry do?"

Deke said in a jaunty tone, "Oh, a lot of our material comes from smaller outfits, and we rebrand it with our own label after buying. Let me see what you're talking about."

The two men moved off towards the back of the booth as Alex queued up the movie on the iPad. Deke had them sit in some comfortable chairs, as Alex handed him the iPad. Deke spot-checked through the movie, pausing to watch some of the sex scenes more explicitly.

"Hey, this is good stuff. You do the camera work?"

"No, a friend. We have more amateur actors than amateur photographers."

The guy closed up the iPad and handed it back to Alex. "Yeah, I'm interested. How much are you looking for?"

Alex said, "I'll be frank; I have no idea what to ask. If I found anyone interested, I figured I'd ask around about the current rates. Do you buy it by the minute? The film? Do you pay all up front or a little up front and then royalties depending on how popular the video is?"

Deke said, "Let me ask you this, is this a one-off as the British say, or do you plan to do more? If you started a series or were putting out regular films with the same actors it becomes worth more."

Alex shrugged. "If we all ended up working for minimum wage it's probably one of two that we did. The other is shorter and was our test run; I can show you that too. If we get a nice chunk of change then we'll do more. We have no shortage of actors, and Matt, our photographer, is teaching a couple of others how to do the camera work, so we'd be able to mount a two or three camera capture of various scenes. We all love the idea of doing the videos and sharing them with the public."

"Is everyone over eighteen and do you have signed releases?"

"Yes. I have a PDF file of the releases I can show you or email to you. I also have photos of everyone's driver's license. We anticipated those issues."

Deke paced around the display booth, obviously thinking about the various parts of the deal he wanted to make with Alex.

As he neared Alex, Alex tossed in, "Although she didn't appear in this film, we have Marlene Mason as part of our troupe. She was..."

Deke interrupted, "She was fabulous; put on a real good show on camera. I thought she dropped out of the adult industry?"

"She did, but would appear in some of our films if we found some real interest."

Deke said, "Now, you've got me hooked. I'd love to have Marlene on tap for films, or be getting movies that she appears in." He paused, "Look, on this film, I'll pay you five-thousand for it and twenty-five percent of the net profits. You give up film rights to us, but we do continue the royalties for ten years. After that the royalties stop, but we own the rights."

"How do I know that's fair?"

Deke smiled, "You don't, except I am an honest guy, not like some of the crooks and shysters at this event. I give you a complete accounting with no funny stuff. I'll put it in writing too. Typically, you'll end up with a little over a dollar for each DVD we sell, and about ten cents for each view longer ten minutes of an hour video. My expectation, given this is a group sex film, is that your first month out you'd get a few-thousand, and then it'll drop off until at the end of two years when you're not getting anything significant except for a few views each month through our porn sites. Oh, I should mention that we run our main website and then a dozen others, so you'll get lots of exposure. Once in a while, especially if there are more films with the same actors, it drives up the demand, so you get several years royalties off the film instead of just one or two."

Alex thought, "Do you promote it?"

Deke gestured to the front of the convention booth. The cute sexy blond was talking to a couple of geeky looking men. "Tina helps with marketing. We give away a couple of hundred DVDs to entice some of the triple-X theaters to show our stuff. We advertise in some of the porn mags, plus we cross-sell on the Internet with other sites. You still get the money for those DVDs though. We promote individual videos on each web site to boost the number of views and sales. We have about a hundred thousand names on our email marketing list too."

"And you'd promote ours?"

"Equally and with the same enthusiasm as all the others we have – our own and others that we've bought. Once we have a film, our promotion approach doesn't care how we got it."

Alice had wandered up and joined Alex.

Deke, this is Alice Ames, her real name, I might add."

"Nice to meet you. You were in the film ... and you're nicely preggers. Did that happen making the film?" Deke pointed at Alice's baby bulge.

"Likewise, and no, just a consequence of our lifestyle."

"Lifestyle?"

Alice explained about the polyamorous 'over-sexed' family. Alex tossed in a comment or two to make it more relevant to the head of the Brassballs' enterprise.

Alice said, "I caught the last minute of your conversation. Is there such a thing as a video going viral in your business?"

Deke smiled, "Oh, yes. Think about some of the old classics – Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas, just to name two. Those films sold millions of copies, unlike thousands of others. It's possible."

Alice said, "Those actors didn't get a dime other than what they got paid to perform."

"And the deal I suggested to Alex gives you royalties as well as a flat up-front purchase price. That's why I think we're the best opportunity for you." He gestured to the other booths in the convention hall, "Ask around, you'll see. I don't mind if you compare my offer to others. Let me counter if you get a better offer, but I don't think you will."

Alice said, "You saw the video; what did you like and dislike about it? I played director, actor, and screenwriter."

Deke said, "It's high end amateur. Viewers will know it wasn't done by the pros, and they like that stuff because it has a different edge to it. It's also 'woman's porn, ' so the range of people interested will be broader."

"Woman's porn?"

Deke smiled, "Yes. I saw enough of your video in just the few minutes to see that. You put a lot of emphasis on courtship, commitment, durable relationships, and mating effort, before you got into the sex, even with Alice in the early scenes. Your love scenes were emotional and sweet, not coarse and rough with the women. Oh, the sex is there, but it's soft and romantic. It serves your video's plot, not the other way around."

Alice smiled, "That's because both men AND women had a role in the plot and filmography, as well as the editing."

Deke said, "That's good, because what you did appeals to both audiences, and in a broad way. For you that means more sales and more views on the Internet, along with repeat views. Guys will see it and then show their girlfriends and wives, and perish the thought that they should ever meet." He grinned.

Alice and Alex looked at each other and wondered what their next steps should be. Deke solved that for them. "Look, I know you've just put your toe in the water. There are three other studios-distributors here you should talk to, and then come back here: Twatporn.com over there next to the big pillar, Royalporn next to them, and Satisfied.com around the corner from here. Have the same discussion you just had and then come back. I'll fill you in a little more, and, well, I'd like to see that second film you did, the one you said was a test run, and take a longer look at your feature film."