By Esteban Harsch
Special to YNOT
LOS ANGELES – If there’s one thing that really pisses me off, it’s when other porn studios blatantly steal the promotional concepts I used to draw attention to my company, GARISH Entertainment — especially when I only have one idea for generating publicity in the first place.
Copycats always bug me, whether it’s some half-assed interracial site offering a job to some lying white chick who claimed to be a black chick, some third-rate GARISH wannabee pitching a butt-ugly Scottish singer on the idea, or the latest to pilfer my porn job offer publicity stunt, a gay porn studio trying to recruit former Congressman Aaron Schock into the ranks of their little Bay Area stud farm.
Granted, this Schock fella does seem like a pretty choice target for my tried and true offer-everybody-a-job approach to porn promotion. Not only is he a fairly good-looking guy with well-defined abs, but his last name rhymes with “cock,” which opens an enormous universe of movie name possibilities, like “Schocking Cocks” and “Suck My Schock” and “His First Big Schock.”
No matter how you slice it, though, Titan’s offer is a clear knock-off of what I do basically every Monday morning: scan the headlines for someone who is getting media attention for just about anything embarrassing and/or criminal, whip out my trusty job offer form letter and fill in the blanks with the appropriate details.
Titan is even nicking my standard offer amount of a million bucks — a nice, round figure, but it doesn’t come close to covering the $3 million the guy reportedly spent on legal bills since the government started investigating him. Allegedly, he still owes about $750,000 to Jones Day, which I guess is some kind of law firm, despite sounding like a cross between an ultra-liberal political news source and a women’s magazine.
Anyway, I’m sick of all these GARISH imitators trying to steal my promotional thunder, so I’m looking into trademarking, or maybe even patenting, the whole idea of offering famous people jobs in porn. Then, the next time some sorry excuse for a porn studio floats the idea of paid performance to a former reality TV star, accused murderer and/or Congressman, I can sue their balls off — and put out a press release about doing so, natch.
You might think this plan harsh (no pun intended) on my part, but consider my side of things: I don’t have any other ideas, so how can I sit idly by while other companies steal the one approach to publicity I do have?
Expecting me to let other companies steal my brilliant job offer concept is like expecting that Colonel Sanders guy to willingly cough up the secret formula for Coca Cola, or whatever it is that stupid-looking old cracker puts on his famous deep-fried Louisiana hushpuppies.
Look, certain promotional devices, even if they seem obvious and unoriginal in hindsight, would never have existed if it weren’t for the individuals who invented them. This is why my porn-job-offer concept should be eligible for all the protection intellectual property law offers other great inventions, like Ben Franklin’s electric car or any of the great stuff invented by the 80s band Tesla.
Really, it’s a shame I didn’t trademark my job-offer-promo concept already, because I would honestly love to take Titan to court right now. I mean, just look at the press release! Keith Webb, the studio’s vice-president and managing partner, even tried to cop my high-class style in his quote:
TitanMen has a history of signing iconically handsome men with both brains and brawn, and Aaron Schock fits that profile to a “T.” Despite Schock’s scandal over allegedly misappropriating campaign funds, he has so much more to offer our fans. What we’re offering is a win-win situation, giving him the opportunity to break free and come out in a whole new world!
If that’s not straight out of my offer to the one chick who might have killed another chick, I don’t know what is.
I suppose a lot of you think I should give Titan a pass because they’re a gay studio and I would never have offered this Congressman a job anyway. To me, this is just irrelevant — not to mention racist or “Xena-phobic” or whatever they call it when gay people discriminate against wealthy straight guys like me.
Anyway, I grudgingly accept the fact I can’t sue this time around, but mark my words: As soon as my virtually patented porn-job-offer concept is an actually patented porn-job-offer concept, the gloves will come off in a big way.
Unless, you know, that law the AIDS Healthcare Foundation cooked up means I’m not allowed to take my gloves off anymore, in which case I’ll just bring a baseball bat to court.
Esteban Harsch is the president, chief executive officer, founder and owner of adult studio GARISH Entertainment and an iconic visionary legend.
