Since yesterday’s announcement, Evil Angel has fielded numerous inquiries from the adult media and the industry regarding the reasons for Pumper’s exit “and we weren’t going to lie about it,” company publicist Tricia Devereaux told XBIZ.
Citing a desire to put the speculation to rest, Devereaux confirmed that Pumper played fast and loose with STD testing requirements on three separate occasions.
Initial speculation ran rampant after gossip site MikeSouth.com posted an item from a source close to Pumper who claimed that the director was faking STD tests.
On two of the three cited instances by Devereaux the female performers’ STD tests hadn’t come back before the scenes were shot; in the third instance (which subsequently led to Pumper’s dismissal), the performer had not tested prior to shooting a scene with Pumper. A post-scene test revealed that the female performer was positive for chlamydia.
In all three cases, it was Pumper who worked with the female performers in question, telling Evil Angel that he thereby didn’t put anyone else at risk, “a stance we just absolutely did not agree with,” Devereaux said.
Pumper’s lax attitude about STD testing was discovered by Evil Angel’s record keeper when certain production dates, and the performers used in those scenes, didn’t correspond with valid negative test results.
“Essentially, the creative differences statement we made yesterday is the start of why we had to release Brian,” Devereaux said. “Evil Angel has a very strict testing policy. Due to Brian shooting some newer girls, a few hadn’t had their gonorrhea or chlamydia tests back yet. Even though we require a clean test for those two plus HIV as a minimum, he didn’t agree that that was necessary and would slip up.
“We reminded him that a test that hadn’t come back yet is not a negative test. We discussed this with him and reiterated our testing policy a few times. It seemed like it was understood. But after repeated discussions and him not adhering to our testing mandates, we decided we couldn’t work together going forward.”
Pumper was brief in his comments to XBIZ about the reasons surrounding his release.
“That’s not true about the testing,” Pumper said. “And yes, it’s true that we had creative differences. Simple, that’s it. That’s all.”
