The co-founder and co-chairman of Vivid is scheduled to speak to students at the school’s Film Studies department on how the 20-year-old company developed the “Vivid Girl” contract actress concept, where top adult stars sign exclusive agreements with the studio.
Hirsch will also tell students about other steps that made the company, which had an estimated revenue of $150 million last year, the top adult film studio.
“I think we’re going to have some fun in this lecture because, after all, the topic is one that all students find pretty fascinating,” Hirsch said.
Professor Constance Penley, who teaches film studies as well as a course on the business of adult, invited Hirsch to the campus to speak to her students.
“In my class, which I’ve taught since 1993, we take an historical and comparative approach to the adult industry,” Penley said. “We ask of it all the same questions we would ask of Hollywood filmmaking, including looking at the way the industry has evolved over the decades, how changing technologies have affected both production and distribution and how the regulatory climate at any given time influences the content and style of the films.”
Hirsch, who attended UCLA for undergraduate studies, has worked in the adult entertainment industry throughout his working career, starting in the warehouse of a firm owned by his father.
Van Nuys, Calif.-based Vivid has extended past film and online adult entertainment within recent years to book publishing, virility supplements, condoms, snowboards, calendars and comic books.
It is one of the few adult film companies with a mandatory condom policy.
For information about the location of Hirsch’s lecture on May 26 at 7 p.m., contact Penley’s office at (805) 893-2347.
