YNOT — Playgirl reportedly was sent scrambling Wednesday to find a new location for Friday’s planned exposé of Levi Johnston after the Hotel on Rivington rejected the money the magazine offered as rental for the hotel’s ritzy penthouse. “[Playgirl’s] offer was well below the current rental rate,” a hotel spokesman told The New York Post. “They were politely declined.”
Ever helpful, the New York Press tracked down local adult industry insiders for advice about presenting a high-rent atmosphere on what New York magazine suggested is Playgirl’s low-rent budget.
Performer, director and alt-sex maven Joanna Angel suggested moving the shoot to Brooklyn for off-beat ambiance.
“They should do the shoot in Brooklyn because things in Brooklyn are a little cheaper than things in Manhattan, and there’s a lot of cool looking places,” she told the Press. “There’s this place that me and my friend went to the other day. It’s a restaurant and bar called Northeast Kingdom. It’s kind of classy looking but not too classy. It’s kind of lodge-ish; I think it would be perfect. And they have really good food and really good wine, so after the shoot he could sit down and eat a nice meal. Everyone wants to eat a nice meal after doing a shoot when they’re naked.”
Adam Baran, editor of the gay skin-mag BUTT, opined the best — and most economical — location in which to shoot Johnston, father of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s grandson, might be his home state.
“Why is this being done in New York and not Alaska?” Baran asked. “What we would do is we would go to Alaska, get him out in the cold, in the snow, and have him hunting the moose naked. That’s kind of what you want to see.”
East Village Boys co-founder Richard Welch agreed.
“It would makes more sense if they shot him with a gun between his legs on a snowmobile,” he told the Press.
According to Angel, Playgirl should have checked with porn people early in the planning stages. After all, the adult industry is expert at creating fantasies out of next to nothing.
“We don’t have huge budgets, but we want our shit to look good,” she told the Press. “I actually think people in the porn industry are very smart about making things look great on camera for way cheaper than people in the mainstream. I’ve been on mainstream sets before, and I think that people in porn could really teach the mainstream world a few things about that stuff.”
