Friday, December 31, 2010

2010: The Maddy G Year End Wrap Up

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It’s that time of year when we find ourselves looking both forward and backwards at the same time. Take stock in what we’ve accomplished, hopefully learn the lessons from our missteps, and move forward with thanks to the friends and fans who helped us get this far. Alas… my final blog of 2010 – The Year End Wrap up.

In 2009, the Maddy G Productions Network hosted 504,000 viewers from mostly The United States, Canada & The United Kingdom. In 2010, the Network hosted 2.66 Million viewers from 128 Countries around the world.

While we’re by no means a ‘Major Player’ in the Adult Industry, we more than quadrupled our audience in the past 12 months. I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t easy. As a company, we experienced some serious growing pains and some of them we’re still dealing with.

Too much happened for me to cover it all, but here are the Landmark Events of 2010 that caused the biggest ruckus.

01. “Inside Marie’s Play Place 3” is Released

In January 2010 the Third Series of “Inside Marie’s Play Place” was released. I have a feeling a lot of people in the industry didn’t expect ‘The Show’ to last so when we hit #3 it seemed everyone wanted to take a look.

The DVD Pre-Order Sales to the stores was almost double what the previous two Series shipped. The critics had nothing but rave reviews for this series and the fans couldn’t get enough of Jade Houston.

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I think it was a perfect storm of sorts with Jade still riding the wave of back to back hits with “Regarding Jenny” and “All Girls Taste Different” culminating with the scorching boy / girl scene she delivered for the third Series. Add to that, Marie Madison’s first Anal Scene of the show and then there was the introduction to tasty new cast member Rachel Lynn Porter.

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For all those reasons, and probably more, A LOT more people where watching Maddy G than ever before. So, in addition to our ‘Regularly Scheduled Programming’ we began releasing some of the ‘Cult Classics’ from our catalog for the fans who where suddenly now looking for films like “Smoke Junkies” and “Indiscretions”.

This proved to be one of our bigger missteps of the year. It caused a lot of confusion for long time fans who had seen these films years earlier. As well as to close to 200 retailers who where already stocking the original versions. We where in unfamiliar territory with the demand we where getting, and we succumbed to pressure from some of our distributors. In hindsight, we should have stuck to our original release plan. Lesson learned.

02. “Regarding Jenny” Blows Up in Germany

In March of 2010 the mainstream press in Germany began reporting on a “Sex Puppet Movie” that had become a big ‘hit’ in America. Many of the German reporters thought it was making fun of “Porn Valley” and were quick to point out that AVN Awards nominated a RealDoll as an actress against well known human actresses with a lot of them wagering on Jenny.

On the heels of all the press in Germany, “Regarding Jenny” was invited to screen at the International Porn Festival in Berlin and the largest DVD Distributor in Germany had bought all the copies of the movie we had left, and placed an order for a 1,000 more that we didn’t have.

This would be the 3rd Manufacturing run of the film since it’s release. Everyone loved Jenny, and the numbers showing up to watch were reflecting that. Some months www.RegardingJenny.com would get more hits than The Play Place Site.

03. Rachel Lynn Porter Signs Exclusive

By April 2010 rookie cast member Rachel Lynn Porter had turned into a fan favorite. With a co-starring roll in “Jenny & Marie’s Award Show Fiasco” and multiple turns on “Inside Marie’s Play Place” the fans whipped themselves into what we started calling “Rachel Mania”.

In June, Rachel signed on as our third Exclusive Contract Girl along with Jade Houston and Jenny Densuke. “Alone at Last” ended up getting an AVN Award Nomination for “Best Solo Release”.

04. Stella Marie Joins the Cast

This actually happened in January, when we shot the Fourth Series of “Inside Marie’s Play Place” and “Lil’ Stella’s Really Short Stories”, but no one really knew about it until the films were released in August.

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We’re probably the only company in the history of Porn to make a ‘Midget Movie’ that wasn’t really about Midgets, and we did it back to back with “Series 4” and “Short Stories”. Combined, these two films earned us three AVN Award Nominations for 2010.

Thru the Spring and Summer of 2010, our lack of understanding of the Wide Release DVD Market had finally started to show itself. We mismanaged the entire process of manufacturing product in mass and getting it into the stores.

We had more than tripled our viewership by August and learned that we were seriously under prepared and grossly under financed to manage it right. So, yeah. We fucked it ALL up.

It took pretty much every resource we had to get “Series 4” and “Short Stories” to the stores before the whole supply chain completely broke down, and it did by the end of August.

To keep the ‘Maddy G Train’ on it’s tracks, we needed to strengthen our online presence pronto. To the rescue… Gamelink.

05. Maddy G Partners with Gamelink for HD Downloads

We’ve learned from our Scene Downloads that given the choice, the fans will pay the extra $1 to download their favorite scenes in High Definition, rather than DVD Quality. It’s like 3 to 1. Gamelink had already been offering our movies in Full Length Download and a lot of the fans were already hooked on shopping there, so the deal to have them be the exclusive HD Provider was easy for us.

An added benefit, is that I had to provide Blu-Ray Masters to Gamelink for the HD Encoding, so the fans get Blu-Ray too.

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Six months later, Maddy G pretty much dominates the HD Download charts at Gamelink, taking up 6 – 8 of the “Top 20” at any given time. We’re outselling some of the biggest names in the biz.

In September 2010, our then ‘Ambassador of Strange’ Hyland noticed that Maddy G was lost in the weeds, but no one else there noticed until October that we were completely under water and the supply chain had finally crawled to a stop.

The folks at Pulse Distribution bailed us out with a new deal that would both continue our contract and allow us the ability to stay in the Wide Release DVD Market. It’s not exactly the type of thing you brag about in the press, because we more or less fucked it all up and they came in and saved our ass. But certainly...

06. Maddy G Re-Ups with Pulse Distribution

Pulse released “Thanksgiving Special” in November with the highest pre-order numbers of any previous series. Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re back.

At the same time, Hyland moved over to Vivid and we gained a new ‘Ambassador of Strange’ with Lewis Adams, who is actually responsible for breaking the record with this one.

And that’s where we finished 2010.

Not too freakin’ bad.

Happy new year everyone, we’ll see you in 2011.

- Mark

Friday, December 24, 2010

The Art of the ‘Tap Out’

According the Urban Dictionary, "Tap Out" means "When you're having sex with a girl and she can't take the dick no more".

Marie Madison has been making 'Tap Out' videos for a bunch of years now, so I've seen this in action many times.

It all started in like 2002 when she filmed the first one with Haley and David Hurley. It was Haley's first anal scene, and Hurley's first scene ever - so neither of them really understood Maddy's style of shooting. She's only interested in how people really fuck - she doesn't stage sex scenes, or direct from the side lines. She puts the cast together and films whatever happens.

Well, Hurley fucked this girl in the ass for over a half hour, until she quite literally just gave up. Stop... I can't take it anymore.

Of course Maddy just had to do some more of this.

Here's Jade when she 'Tapped Out' in Series 1 of "Inside Marie's Play Place". This is still one of my all time favorite scenes on the show.

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And as you can imagine, Maddy’s run the experiment on herself many, many times. Here’s a shot from “Alone at Last”

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And the newest addition to the ‘Tap Out’ Series is Rachel Lynn Porter. Even though she’s been here almost a year, she’s still the ‘rookie’ on the cast, and poor Rachel never saw this coming.

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Aside from the obvious eye rolling and toes curling, the best part of this scene is when Rachel’s boyfriend calls her on the phone in the middle of it. Let’s just say, she didn’t really want to talk to him, and didn’t stop the scene. And Maddy kept the camera rolling the whole time.

Good times.

You’ll be able to see this scene, along a bunch more like it on Maddy’s up coming “A Place on Your Face” that will be releasing in February.

You really can’t argue about an ass like that. It’s ridiculous, and we all know it.

Enjoy.

- Mark

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Christmas is Cancelled and "The Best Ass in Amateur Porn".

Well, the time lost from Maddy and I getting sick over Thanksgiving (a head cold / flu / sinus thing that refused to 'go away') and the ridiculous Lake Effect Storms that hit our area over the last week - it all got the best of us.

We've had to shelf "A Very Jenny Christmas", because we've just run out of time to get it to market before Christmas. It was a pretty tight schedule to begin with, but having lost 2 weeks due to the Universe just working against us... well, shit happens.


I can hear the gasps from Jenny's fans and the VOD Retailers who were looking forward to it, and we apologize. The good news, is that I'm prepped up to shooting day for a "Christmas Special". I have all the "Winter" Establishing Shots. I got them in both 'Standard' and '3D'. We have all the set's ready and the props done. Costumes - handled. I even cleared all the music. So, we're ready to go.

That means there certainly will be a "Christmas Special" next year. And for Jenny's fans, it doesn't mean there won't be a new 'Jenny Movie'. There was some story lines in "Jenny Xmas" that will be re-incorporated into 'the show' so you won't have to wait so long to see Ms. Densuke again.

Speaking of "The Show", some of you probably noticed that MaddyGTV.com has gone thru a bit of a transition. Basicaly, the viewership quickly outgrew the server's technical ability. We basicaly need new network infrastructure to rebuild the network properly so it works the way we demand it to every day.
So I've had to dial back the programming to better manage the bandwidth. In order to keep the network 'on the air', we can't afford to go over our bandwidth limits.

I've been working really closely with the guy's over at NetDNA to try and find the right solution for us, and I think we're really close. Our hope is to have a new network in place for the first of the year.

For the immediate future, we have a few new releases coming up. I showed you the cover for "Oral Servitude 3" already (see below), so here's a look at "Blackmail Society: Part One".


This will be out in January, on VOD and Digital Download. The DVD and Blu-Ray will only be available at the Play Place store for awhile, I suspect. Our DVD Distributor is 3 or 4 months behind us. We'll be finishing up "Bubbles, Balloons & Other Things that Go 'Pop' In my Mouth".


Also out in January on VOD and Digital Download. Same thing with the DVD and Blu-Ray, you probably won't see it stores until Summer. But you can get it at the Play Place store in the meantime. 

Also coming up will be Marie's tribute to Face Sitting and Real Orgasms, "A Place on Your Face". It'll have all new scenes from Maddy and Rachel Lynn Porter. One reviewer said Rachel has "The Best Ass in Amateur Porn" and I can't really disagree. 


Plus, Jenny's working on her Directorial Debut called "Dirty Doll Stories". Good stuff to keep you warm this winter.

- Mark

Sunday, December 5, 2010

"AHOF" and Other Secret Codes You Should Know About

I remember last Summer, one of the 'Mom & Pop' Video Stores called then Embassador Hyland Church all angry, saying "Stop sending me that 'Made before 1995' shit from Maddy G".

Then, a week later he called Hyland back to say he was going to need more "Amateur Hall of Fame" titles sent to his store, because he took a copy home with him and reported "This shit is really different."

That's been the struggle with the "Amateur Hall of Fame" line. Convincing people that it's not a bunch of old ladies shooting home made porn. Well, it sort of is.

See what I mean?

Here's the deal with "AHOF". The 'Before 1995' thing is important, because that's when the USC 18, 2257 Laws (or the 'must have proof of age' law) went into effect, requiring all adult film producers to keep and maintain ID's on everyone who appears in their film. Anything shot prior is 'Grandfathered' in, so those ID's don't have to be maintained. And it's a good thing too, because otherwise, these tapes would never be seen.

Anyway... this is back in the late 80's and early 90's when a group of Swingers, led by a woman named Lynn Carroll (who was a swinger herself), would throw what they would call "Fuck & Film" parties. Groups of people would gather, usually in a hotel room or someone's house, and fuck the shit out of each other. Everyone would take pictures and home videos, and then everyone would trade tapes with each other.

Like a really filthy sewing circle that involved creampies and double penetrations. And some of these chicks where hot too. Here's a picture of Drunna, who's the star of "Volume 8" that I'm putting together right now.


Damn, right?

There was no money involved, everyone would pretty much split the hotel room and the food, and they were trading the tapes, so these are hot chicks who where just getting down for the fun of it, and their husbands where filming so that they could show all their other swinger friends.

And these chicks would Get. Down.



Yeah, just dicks flying everywhere, dude's calling 'thirds' and just climbing on top. If there was an Open Oriface, chicks like Drunna are yelling to have some dude stick his dick in it. Crazy.

These days Producer's and Director's try and coach the 'Porn Girls' to act like they are enjoying themselves. This swinger chicks are all about enjoying themselves, and it shows.



Check out that camera. "High Quality VHS". All the way.

Well, a year ago, we made a deal with Lynn Carroll to offer these tapes into 'Wide Release' so that the rest of the world could witness this stuff. The deal was, we present the tapes exactly as they were shot. "No fancy shit, just run the tape." was her exact words. 

So, from the very beginning, that's what we did. Most of the tapes where VHS, or VHS-C, so all the footage was digitized and organized onto Hard Drives. We used good VCR's, so it's the best transfer you can get, but a lot of these tapes are approaching the shelf life of Tape itself, so the limitations are apparent too. But, what you get is a near real time account of real people fucking the shit out of each other in a hotel room, and not one frame is cut out of it. It's like you're in the room, and that's pretty unique in 'Amateur Porn'.

Because the tapes were never meant for sale, they all have hand written codes, like "7U7D" which stands for "7 Up, 7 Down" meaning the chick took on seven guy's in a row. This is for real folks, I couldn't make it up.

So have you ever wondered why Alexis Golden's movies are always titled like "FLP" or "CPE"?



It's because Alexis was part of that community for a time, and to some extent still is, I think.

A lot of people bitch about how 'boring' the Porn Industry has become lately, but I don't agree. I learn something new all the time.

- Mark



Saturday, December 4, 2010

A Summer of Sequels

This is my favorite time of the year around here at Maddy G Productions. There's the holiday's and the piles of goodies that pour in from folks like HotMovies (they send the best gifts) and other company's we make a fuck load of money for every year.

But that's not the best part. It's that the release schedule for the Winter Months are all lined up like Rockettes, so we go into pre-production for our Summer Productions.

A lot of people in the 'Porn World' talk about the "Summer Slump", when a big portion of our audience goes on vacation with the wife and kids and the rest of them just go outside. Viewership (and the sales that go along with it) typically takes a nose dive thru June, July and August. Then in September, a whole new crop of College Kids go back to school with high speed internet in their dorm rooms and credit cards in their own names, and well... the whole cycle starts again for us.

So, instead of sitting around all Summer, Maddy G Productions makes our "Big Summer Movies". Well, 'big' by our standards, anyway. It's been a tradition for the last 5 years starting in 2005 with "Fury". Last year, 2009 was the only exception. We developed "Regarding Jenny" and shot the first 2 "Series" of "Inside Marie's Play Place".

This Summer will be the "Summer of Sequels" it looks like, with two of Marie Madison's most beloved (or hated, as the case may be) Characters returning by almost ridiculous demand.

First up... Laney McCoy is back, well rested and with a chip on her shoulder.



If this artwork gives you chills, then you're among the "Fury Devoted". You probably know the rules to the Drinking Game by heart, and are suspect of all women in turtle neck sweaters. You're in good company.

Since the fun of "Fury" has almost nothing to do with the Story Line, I'll tell you that when Laney returns home from being released from the Mental Hospital, she finds among her mail, an invitation to her 20 Year High School Reunion. You already have an idea of how ridiculous this could get.

This news probably freaked out about half our fans. The other half will be freaked out by the news that Lizzy Monroe is coming back to the table.


Shot in the Summer of 2007, "Virgin Pockets" was a stupid little movie we made for no money so we had something to do during the weekdays because "Chasing Darkness" was only shooting on weekends. It seriously, was more or less shot for fun.

Well, it's since become the most popular Mainstream film we've ever done. It became a big hit with Pool Players, including many Pool Leagues who have used it for "Movie Night" fundraisers. It's won a few awards, and now Amazon.com bundles it with "Poolhall Junkies" and Tivo has it on demand.

Wudda fuckin' thunk it.

Well the original team of Marie Madison, Paul Gorman and Jeremy Krukowski are in pre-production on the Sequel that will be bring Lizzy back for another adventure. And I suspect a few other 'favorites' from the first film will appear too.

Last on our 'Big Idea Board' for the summer is a Monster Movie that's been kicking around here for a couple of years. Well, we finally settled on a scenario we think we can actually accomplish, and now "Blood of Ohma" is officialy in Pre-Production.


Marie Madison plays a bad ass Sasquatch hunter, and that's all I'm gonna say about it.

Except that, the same guy's who created a "Big Foot Hoax" so big CNN picked it up as news - are the same one's making 'The Monster' in this film. No kidding.



So yeah.... good times.

Of course, this is only scratching the surface. I'll keep you filled in on all these projects as they develop further.

- Mark