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Articles by Ernest Greene

Adam & Eve Founder Phil Harvey Marks Half-Century Pioneering Business of Pleasure

Through its websites, mail-order catalogs and ever-growing chain of franchise stores — which reportedly experienced a record-breaking year despite the pandemic — Adam & Eve’s unique and unrivaled multiplatform marketing approach has made it arguably the most successful retail distributor of sex-related merchandise for the past half-century.

trends

Producers Facing a Stark Choice

Never let it be said that times are so tough nobody can figure out a way to make them tougher. There is a long tradition of mismanagement in porn that, while sustainable when product demand was high and the bar to profitability fairly low, becomes one of the industry’s greatest liabilities during hard times like the present. In all fairness, the same could be said of the automobile industry, which has also tended to reward loyalty over ability, but is this a flattering comparison?

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

High-Tech Tokens

The first quarter of 2009 is over, and it won't be missed in our business or many others. As the other components of the economy that employ our customers suffer, and those customers either lose their jobs or start buttoning their wallet pockets in fear of losing them, our numbers will show the impact.

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Porn Valley's Star Factor

Of all the dumb ideas to emerge from the depths of Porn Valley, few could compete with the notion that the X-rated entertainment business, unlike other forms of commercial entertainment, really isn't personality driven.

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Hold the Champagne

As we're all finally coming to understand, it's impossible to discuss financial issues intelligently without taking politics into consideration.

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Giving Credit Where It's Due

The gloom is thick in this land today. If it keeps going like this, they’re going to have to make the front pages of newspapers longer to track the downward spiral of the Dow.

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Making Quality Softcore Viable

Fuck softcore! How many times have I heard that exclamation from X-rated video performers, videographers and still photographers? How many times have I shouted it from behind the monitor myself? I’ve long ago lost count.

Ernest Greene ·

No Cure for the Summer Blues

Every summer for the past 20 years I’ve been told that the predictable hot-season production slump was the worst ever seen. Come September, we were all happily back working our asses off as producers scramble to finish out their yearly title quotas.

Ernest Greene ·

Blue Money: Behind Every Director Is a Hard-on

Just what is it that porn directors do, anyway? It could be fairly said about some directors that you still wouldn't know what they do even if you spent a day on their sets.

opinion

Behind Every Director Is A Hard-on

Just what is it that porn directors do, anyway? It could be fairly said about some directors that you still wouldn't know what they do even if you spent a day on their sets.

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Giving Aid, Content to Our Enemies

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but people who hate all our guts are stealing our intellectual property and trying to destroy us with it. Worse yet, as an industry, we’re not doing shit about it when we so easily could. Unlike the much larger and more daunting problem of piracy, the thievery involved here is fairly petty and it would be both good business and good message making to take the few necessary steps that could put a stop to it.

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Producers, The Buck Starts Here

Come awards night, the players and directors troop up to the stage to collect their honors for scenes and titles, but when the big brass is handed out for the two awards that matter most — Best Video and Best-selling Video — it’s the producer who gets the golden handshake, and with good reason.

Ernest Greene ·
trends

Hardcore Kink Rules

I recently wrapped directing duties on Adam & Eve's "The Surrender of O," in which delectable contract star Bree Olson smokes as the 2.0 version of the most fabled icon in kink fiction.

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Engaging the Full-Court Press

On top of all our other troubles, the X-rated video industry has a worse image problem than 10-year-old VHS tape.

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Behind Every Video is One Guy's Hard-on

Just what is it that porn directors do, anyway? It could be fairly said about some directors that you still wouldn’t know what they do even if you spent a day on their sets. However, for the few good directors who create the bulk of high-quality, high-earning titles that come out of Porn Valley, the fair answer to the question of what they do is “everything.”

Ernest Greene ·

Insider's View: Behind the Camera

A couple of weeks ago, I got a double-whammy worse than this year's obstinate flu. I've been fortunate to work with pretty much the same crew on most of the videos I've directed for nearly 10 years; but now a couple of wheels have come off all of a sudden.

opinion

Behind the Camera

A couple of weeks ago, I got a double-whammy worse than this year's obstinate flu. I've been fortunate to work with pretty much the same crew on most of the videos I've directed for nearly 10 years; but now a couple of wheels have come off all of a sudden.

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Money in the Middle

Looking down on the Las Vegas Strip from my suite at The Venetian back in January, a lyric from a half-forgotten Leonard Cohen song played through my head: "The place is dead as heaven on a Saturday night."

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Mainstream Cues

Legendary screenwriter William Goldman once summed up the essential wisdom of his decades in film production with the simple declaration that, when it comes to what makes a picture successful, "nobody knows anything." The key word here is "knows."

Ernest Greene ·
opinion

Let's Stay Physical

From the get-go, I've been saying to ditch the funeral plans for the DVD format and deal with the temporary market dislocations resulting from overproduction, changing demographics and competition from other media.

Ernest Greene ·
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