I found out yesterday that I AM still an AVN voter. I ws wondering if I had been dropped from the ranks because of my "controversial" status now, since I run this website. Luckily I guess I am still in good graces with AVN, ( no thanks to many of my commenters, lol, thanks guys!), because I talked to Paul Fishbein & Dan Miller on e-mail and they made sure I could log in and vote. No matter what YOUR thoughts on the awards are, I am HONORED to be a voter. I do take the job seriously and work very hard throughout the year to be fair with my movie reviews, and especially at this time of the year, when I have to review movies and decide who I think should win the awards. Rumors have run rampant for years that the awards are based on advertising dollars spent. Since I am not in the room when the final decisions are made, I don’t know for sure if that is true. But based on my experience, my vote DOES count, and I have nothing To do with AVN’s advertisers. Do I think that who advertises in AVN has better chances of winning awards? Maybe. But there are above board reasons for this. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg, as they say?
I try to see the big picture here. AVN’s advertisers support AVN. AVN has more contact with those that advertise, then those that don’t. AVN has more contact with those that submit their movies to be reviewed. AVN has relationships with the people/companies that have supported them for years, as AVN has supported the companies. It’s a symbiotic relationship and the Awards are going to be influenced by that. If staff at AVN makes friends with those that advertise, that drop off movies for review, that stop by to visit, or do an interview, those are the people more apt to be nominated. It’s human nature. It’s not some secret payoff.
I can give you a personal first hand example. You all know I love parody movies. I also love Jeff Mullen (X-Play) & Hustler, who happen to make some of the BEST Parody movies. X-Play & Hustler both advertise on this site. I will be voting for X-play & Huster to win several of the awards. Am I voting for them because they advertise on my site? Or am I voting for them because they made the best movies? Or am I voting for them because I like them personally? I am voting for them because they made the best movies. But of course my feelings for them personally, and the fact that they support LIB do count into that. How could it not? ? But, which came first?
Actually my love of those people and companies and their movies came before they were advertisers. And it is perhaps BECAUSE of my love of them and their movies that they decided to become advertisers. So I can understand AVN’s position when they are caught between a rock & a hard place when giving out awards.
I think AVN does the best they can, and the voting is legitimate. Does Paul Fishbein make the final decisions? Yes. He should. They’re his damn AWARDS!
I have quite a bit more to say on this subject…. I’ll let you know as I go through my process to pick winners…
That was a great explanation on how the entire voting thought process works. I think there will always be conspiracy theories and talk of ‘slanted’ voting but I still say that when our associated company SexZ Pictures won two years in a row for Best Feature Movie- that proved to me there was no fix. Not that those movies (Corruption and Upload) weren’t the best each year but the fact that if awards were rigged, AVN could have easily given the victory that second year to any big advertiser that had created an award-worthy movie that year. SexZ Pictures was not a very big advertiser at the time and there would have been nobody suspecting foul play including Eli Cross thinking that AVN gave it to a big advertiser instead. I know that our SexZ Pictures’ table would not have been alarmed or felt ripped off at all because Eli lead the talk that there was no way SexZ Pictures is going to win twice. The voters obviously loved Upload and voted accordingly. Paul Fishbein did not step in and say “we better give it to one of the big advertisers” contrary to what many seem to think takes place. I think the key is to make the best movie you can possibly make and then be friends with everybody all year around and not just at voting time. I have known most in the industry for 8 years now and they know who is faking it come awards time. I look forward to seeing everybody in Vegas and also at our 2 porn parties that we will announce soon for Friday Jan 8th and after the awards Sat Jan 9th.
When he calls the show the Oscars of porn, then it is no longer his show but the show of the industry. No one person decides who wins an Oscar. It’s voted on by the Academy made up of thousands of people. If he was running a legitimate award show, he and his employees would have absolutely no say in who wins and the real winners would be picked by the voters.
Why is Janie Summers nominated for new starlet? Who is Janie Summers? Oh yes, the evil empire known as Digital Playground just hired her as their newest contract girl. They paid Paul to nominate this unknown and here she is being nominated in what is basically a joke.
I have nothing against the woman. She first started as Heather Starlet. She was told by DP to change her name to a name one letter away from belonging to Jamie Summers who was a very well known 80’s porn star.
Heather started in 2009. Her family staged an intervention after the AEE convention (January 2009). Heather left porn for months after finding God. Comes back in September as Janie and Digital Playground’s newest contract girl. Doesn’t have a single movie out yet as Janie. And last I checked, her picture isn’t even up on DP’s website.
Digital Playground and Paul Fishbein have ruined it all for all the people who work hard in this industry and who would love a shiny stupid statue to say hey I did it.
When I get my computer and files back hopefully by next week, I will start writing my reviews of the joke that is the nominee list.
Damn…Darrah took the quote I was going to pull to make my point!
Anyhow, unless AVN has an independent accounting firm who count the votes and delver the winners (envelopes sealed of course) the day of the awards, then it’s 110% fair to suspect Fishbein and the AVN Awards are shady and corrupt.
So far, I’ve never seen/read/heard otherwise…thus the suspicion by many over the years that the ‘fix’ is in.
The whole AVN is a scam, and not just the AVN awards. Since 2006, I stopped running ads in AVN magazine. What do anybody expects to get in return for his investment in advertisement? Is it:
A. Exposure
B. Sales Increase
C. All of the above
The correct answer is C: Exposure as well as sales increase; and I can tell you running ads in AVN magazine does not get you either anymore. In 1999 it might have some effects to a certain extent, but today it has none. In a dog eat dog market where the companies are falling down on a weekly basis like the pieces of domino and consumers get their *porn fix* at file sharing and tube sites, nothing matters any longer; and there’s nothing you can do to convince unemployed Joe Six Pack to cut on his grocery and gas expenses in order to pay for your latest AVN award winning title. He doesn’t give a shit, he doesn’t afford to give a shit. All he needs is a 5 minute clip of a hot chick sucking some mean cock and getting sodomized; and there are plenty places to offer him what he needs at zero cost. Good luck competing with *free*.
As for the AVN awards, is it fix, and do the companies that still pay for full page ads in AVN magazine win all of the the awards, all the time? In fact, a few days ago I had a conversation about this subject with a friend who writes commentaries on LIB. I’ll give you the example I gave him, and you can draw your own conclusion:
Imagine despite tens of companies, tens of genuine directors and tens of talented actors in Hollywood, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was going to nominate Walt Disney titles for the best picture, Michael Bay for the best director and Ashton Kutcher for the best actor and give them the awards year after year, after year; as if nobody else isn’t doing anything in the movie industry and nothing else ever matters. Would then people suspect something is seriously wrong, and somebody is paying and getting paid to do this? The answer is most certainly yes. So how come people even tend to think otherwise when it comes to porn is beyond me. It’s so obvious there’s no need for any debate, specially when you consider how irrelevant and worthless this joke of an award is in the first place. It’s designed for one thing, and one thing only: To stroke the pathetic egos of AVN’s advertisers. Period. The end of the story.
This is what I am really curious about. A few years ago you needed to send in over 10 copies of each title you had to be nominated. Now this isn’t necessary as I know some internet companies that were surprised they got noms at all. Why the change in protocol?
Okay, unlike Cindi, I derive no income from porn at all, in any way. I pay my own way to shows, pay my own hotel and food bills, entertainment, etc. I also vote in the AVN awards (among others). As Will pointed out, Sex Z Pictures won a bunch of awards when their advertising was minimal, companies with huge advertising expenses at AVN losing left and right. Some of the biggest advertisers year after year win minimal awards so it can’t be about advertising alone (Cindi makes a number of great points in that regard too).
Mr. Fishbein might make the final rules about the awards but he has never once tried to suggest “better choices”, nor have any of the staffers on AVN and their individual choices do not always win either. I’m sure Hustler advertises their own titles more than the X-Play titles they distribute yet who gets the nods most of the time? As Cindi points out, there are no better sitcum parody makers in the business and their movies reflect it time and again.
So as much as I look forward to bashing Darrah’s whining rants about names and nominations yet again, and as much as it is clear that some just don’t like porn in the slightest so they always concentrate on the negative, I’ll sit back and enjoy seeing who won what from the current set of voters.
Cindi,
While your piece was illuminating, can you speak to how the pool of voters are chosen by AVN? Is it a random (or not) sampling of ‘porn journalists’, performers, directors, writers, et cetera? Are those voters part of the initial nominating process or do they only vote once AVN’s staff has chosen the nominees? Also, who counts the votes? Is it an independent accounting firm, or the staff of AVN?
As these are the sorts of questions that cast doubt on the validly and honesty of the awards.
AVN is a scam run by a bunch of HOMOS and that’s what elects the male talent for awards in Vegas. What a sham!!!! I would’nt pay 2 dollars to attend the BS.
Fishbein sure makes sure Lisa Ann gets here nomination!! Hell Im burned out on that old chick! its get’s really old seeing the same old talent on there day in and day out!! Im surprised Evan Stone is nominated again this year and next year and next year and the year after!! Burned out!
Sammy, the only way you will find out how voters are selected will be to ask Mr. Fishbein.
Pornodud, sorry if you are upset your favorite males are not picked. As far as Even Stone is concerned, his work in all sorts of major productions secures him a spot. With regard to Lisa Ann, she is clearly one of the most popular women in porn these days, her Sarah Paylin impersonation even garnering mainstream accolades as well as huge sales.
They are more real than the fake-ass Golden Globes…
Houstondon, how am I whining and ranting? Everything I wrote is true. Whining and ranting?? This coming from YOU of all people.
So tell us about Janie’s body of work. You’re such a fan, right??
I have NOTHING against the girl. Just the practices of AVN.
Darrah, you are one of the loudest whining ranters online about a topic you apparently hate tremendously. My example this time is your rant about Heather Starlet/Janie Summers (and once again, the name derives from a character on a TV show that was taken by another so it strikes that it is another goofus rant on your part; neither able to claim moral high ground).
It is common for women in porn to change their names, even your buddy Jenna Jameson having had three aliases. When award time comes, it is also customary to use their current name but as far as why she merited a nomination, she had about 30 performances, earned a contract with one of the biggest companies in the business, and has a look that a lot of people seem to like. I don’t claim to be her biggest fan but I liked her just fine in Sport Fucking 5 and others that have seen her seem more impressed.
Once again you claim that someone was paid off yet I don’t see any proof. Perhaps if you had something credible to offer but attacking the man who founded the awards in the first place (after all, if he hadn’t, how could he “ruined it all for all the people who work hard in this industry and who would love a shiny stupid statue to say hey I did it”). So yeah, if you’re going to talk about payoffs or buying nominations (never mind awards), a modicum of proof might help you break the “Darrah is a fucking joke” talk so many engage in these days. Perhaps you should go back to championing Janine as the best person to raise a daughter given how few others seem to believe it now.
“Actually my love of those people and companies and their movies came before they were advertisers. And “it is perhaps BECAUSE of my love of them and their movies that they decided to become advertisers. So I can understand AVN’s position when they are caught between a rock & a hard place when giving out awards.”
You are doing the right thing Cindi, The same thing happens with DP in my site, They are good with me and I do with them as much I can.
Does Fishbein pay you Houstondon to carry his fucking water?
Again, let me spell it out for you — awards that are viewed to be LEGIT have a transparent process. Nominees know how they were chosen, the final winners know how they were picked.
Without that, you just sow the seeds of doubt and distrust.
I don’t really give a shit if Fishbein is throwing darts at board of a hundred names after he sits shiva to arrive at his fifteen deep nominees list. I don’t care if Fishbein measures his erection with a piece of lox to arrive at the ‘winners’. Yet the secrecy at which the AVN Awards is cloaked in and fools like you (who can’t even make a few dollars being a ‘porn critic’) defend, is astonishing.
Sammy, let me spell it out for you, your stabs at the truth are transparent but foolish. I write about porn because I “want” to, and have turned down offers of payment several times in the past. Taking a counterpoint to a few haters is purely done for fun, though you seem to get your panties in a wad over it, but for the record, Paul has always been supportive of me so it doesn’t bother me in the slightest to stand up to a handful of haters on his behalf.
No matter how the awards were determined, you’d find fault with the process and the nominees, this is clear to pretty much everyone that has mentioned you here.
Actually, I doubt that even someone like Darrah would find much to fault with the AVN Awards if they would 1) not act like fanboy idiots and put 15 performers up for the same award 2) establish actual legitimacy with a transparent nominating and voting process that involved an independent auditing of the votes 3) see one and two.
Now is that so hard to do…apparently so.
Sammy, why do you even care about AVN legitimacy when you’ve already said that the worst piece of shit mainstream production is miles above anything anyone does if it has explicit sex in it?
And fyi, I’m going to go back to using the internet for something besides porn now…
Btw, Sammy… do you have any grey poupon?
You know it’s real easy to say all the awards go to people who shell out money on full page ads but that can’t be true totally because look at companies like Vivid, Wicked, Adam and Eve and Digital Playground. Each month, each of these companies run big full page, fancy big budget ads in AVN but come wards season only one of them can win studio of the year or movie of the year. So who is it? If each of them run the same 1 or 2 page ads then they’ve all spent an equal amount of money in ads so who wins? So maybe just maybe Cindi is right and voting really does matter?
Kelli, this point always seems to get lost in the shuffle but you are right. If it were merely a contest of who spent the most in advertising dollars, the big companies could just write a check or have a bidding war. As it stands, they do not engage in such tactics.
As to why so many nominees (and as a voter myself, more noms=much more work), there are a number of performers/movies that caught the fancy of those that nominate. Rather than weed out many candidates for a single flaw or due to the tastes of the smaller number of people on the nominations committee, they include more to allow the voters a bigger say. The jaded see this as a bad thing while those in the know see it as opening up the process (and those that call for independent verification of votes would probably still be debating the 2000 election in the USA).