LOS ANGELES – In Chris Bosh’s defense, maybe he thought X-Art was making a scat porn film and would appreciate having a bit of rat shit included in the price of rental.
If that’s the case, however, Bosh clearly miscalculated, as he and his wife are now facing a lawsuit filed by the aggrieved adult entertainment studio.
Perhaps an even bigger problem than the rogue rodent droppings was the presence of allegedly toxic mold, which the lawsuit claims required those present for the shoot “to seek medical assistance for sickness and rashes that they suffered from the time when the mold could be seen and smelled.”
According to X-Art’s Colette and Brigham Field, they rented the 10,755-square-foot Pacific Palisades mansion in December 2016, putting down a total of $138,000 to cover a month’s rent of $46,000 plus a security deposit of $92,000.
(Granted, I’m no expert when it comes to the value of celebrity-owned rat shit, but offhand a $92,000 security deposit seems awfully steep, even for a 10,000-square-foot Pacific Palisades property. Does Sotheby’s offer dung-based art pieces for auction?)
Bosh has been renting out the mansion for some time now (or trying to, at least), although it’s not clear what percentage of the past several years the home has been occupied, as opposed to sitting there as a luxurious but empty monolith. In February 2015, Bosh listed the home for sale, but reverted to offering for lease several months later.
While the legal issues here are potentially interesting (particularly if there was anything in the lease agreement limiting the tenant’s options for acceptable uses of the property), what interests me more are the public relations and publicity implications.
While Bosh’s reputation may suffer somewhat over the accusation his west coast mansion has become a glorified rat cage, he can easily deflect the stain to his reputation by blaming the condition of the home on local property managers — or perhaps local researchers, if his mansion allegedly is rat-infested because the previous tenants are associated with the National Institute of Mental Health in some fashion.
As for X-Art, I can’t see how the publicity surrounding the case could go too far south for them, unless it becomes a story about a porn performer with a disease that is one letter off from the name of a Ted Nugent song.
Still, I think there was an opportunity missed here for co-branding and crossover marketing, the likes of which neither the porn industry nor the NBA has ever witnessed.
Instead of suing Bosh, if I were the owners of X-Art, I would have made the most of a bad situation by embracing the rat shit and other problems with the home as happy accidents of their chosen location. After all, one of the complaints the Fields had with the joint was “plumbing issues,” and what are plumbing issues if not one of the bedrock thematic devices of porn?
To me, the list of problems with Bosh’s home reads like a beat sheet for a series of porn vignettes. After the plumber showed up to deal with the leaks, the next scene could pair the woman of the house with someone from L.A.’s own Mold Masters Inc.
Whether the third scene in the movie involved rat removal or addressing the home’s allegedly spotty internet connectivity, you see my point: This movie would have written itself, right down to the part when the cast and crew visited a “Doctor Feelgood” type to have their sores and infections attended to with a course of antibiotics and strategically-applied physician’s semen.
Since the mansion clearly needed all these services anyway, the smart play would have been for X-Art to offer Bosh a deal: You pay for the work, we film the sex and TMZ doesn’t wind up publishing information about a lawsuit that makes you sound like the second biggest slumlord in NBA history.
I don’t know if it will make the folks from X-Art feel any better, but on the bright side, clearly they aren’t the ones who have lost the most money signing what turned out to be a bad contract with Chris Bosh. That honor obviously goes to the Miami Heat.
