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Marty Turkel On Erotica LA

4/14/05

I don't have many friends in this industry, but for some reason, I've always been friendly with Marty Turkel. I first spoke to him in the summer of 1998 when I hitched a ride over to VCA with Rob Spallone.

Marty was VCA's longtime head of sales.

For some reason I've never understood, Marty's always liked me, even though there was every reason for him to hate me.

Marty's not been a source for me. He's never given me scoops even though a lot of people thought he did (perhaps he verbally defended me when his peers were trashing me). But whenever we've met, we've each lit into a genuine smile because we liked and respected each other.

Marty, Ed Kail, Rob Spallone and I have hung out a few times. It's always good.

I've always thought of Marty as a straightshooter and an honorable man. He's been married for about 50 years.

Turkel now works for the nice folks at Juicy Multimedia where he seems to be happy.

Rob Spallone called me Thursday morning. He had something on his mind. "I'm going to the bank and I'm going to lunch [with Marty and Ed]. I just picked somebody up and I want you to call him later. I want him to do an interview with you about a story that you wrote.

"You wrote a story about Eddie Wedelstedt that's all false."

Duke: "Oh, ok."

Rob: "When you rewrite this story from the horse's mouth, you have to put on it that you have to apologize because you had the wrong story."

Duke: "OK."

Rob: "It's a very reliable source. His name is Marty Turkel."

Duke: "Ohhh. I know Marty."

Rob: "He's the one who made the deal to sell the Erotica LA. You put up a story that's completely wrong."

1:30pm. I get Marty on the phone.

Marty: "This guy who gave you the information is very wrong.

"I was part of that committee [LF: in my opinion Eddie W was the leader of this committee, de jure if not de facto, other people on the committee were owners of major XXX-industry companies] that took over the expo Erotica LA. We spoke to [Ron Miller] about it. We told him pointblank, 'We're going to be starting up a show. We don't want to be in competition with you, but unfortunately we will be in competition with you. So, what we would rather do, we'd rather buy you out.'

"He said, 'Well, it's starting to do good...' We sat down with him and the deal we worked out was that he'd get $10,000, a guarantee of a year's salary working for AVN [LF: I believe this amounted to $100,000] helping them get familiar with the show. And we would get his girlfriend Brooke [Hunter] jobs with each of the manufacturers on the committee.

"We did all of that. Everything was done right. There was no mention whatsoever about children or anything of that nature."

Duke: "I heard his kid was threatened."

Marty: "I would never ever get involved in something like that."

Duke: "I wasn't told the committee threatened his kid. I was told that Eddie's people, employees, threatened Ron Miller's kid."

Marty: "I do not know. And I'm not going to..."

Duke: "Speak on their behalf."

Marty: "Right. I know that we took it over. We sat down with Paul [Fishbein, president of AVN], and worked this out.

"The committee that we had set up was trying to raise funds for a report on secondary effects [of having a sexually-oriented business in a neighborhood].

"When I saw that [my report Wednesday], I thought, 'My God, nobody... I shouldn't say nobody. We never threatened him. He agreed to the deal that we set up. And it was not easy to get all these people involved in it.

"One thing you can take to the bank is that I would never in a million years have done something like that."

Duke: "I know you wouldn't. And it wasn't alleged that your committee did. It alleged that Eddie's employees did..."

Marty: "I can't speak for them."

Duke: "Can I quote you on all this?"

Marty: "Yes. I've got nothing to hide."

Duke: "How you been?"

Marty: "Thank G-d, very well. I happen to be working for a wonderful guy."

Duke: "How's Ed doing?"

Marty: "Excellent. I just left him. We had lunch together. With Rob [Spallone] of course."

Duke: "How's Rob behaving?"

Marty: "He's behaving. He's Rob. He's such a good kid. He wants to be misunderstood. He's really very nice."