The biggest problem with the astroturfing style of marketing is that it makes everyone very skeptical of everything; it makes it very difficult to believe in anything. If a star willingly gets naked on camera, there will be some puritanical types who will think ill of them for it. Yet most people who enjoy being in the spotlight and being immortalized have a hankering to be in the spotlight and be immortalized even when they are, ya know, doing it. I have frequently run into famous people who want me and Forrest Black to shoot artistic nudes of them, but who do not want anyone to see the finished work. As an artist, it is important to me that people actually see what I create, so we have, to date, declined private commissions of this sort. A combination of following the various sex tape scandals, and my own personal conversations with people who wanted to get naked on camera without the social repercussions, has lead me to assume that most sex tapes are released with the knowledge and consent of the parties involved. That way, they can get the erotic attention and the victim sympathy.

The problem with this is that some people actually want their private lives to be, ya know, private. I have come to believe that actor Verne Troyer genuinely feels his privacy is being invaded with the current sex tape clip making the rounds and, at the request of his manager, I am having the honestly barely PG-rated clip removed from BlueBlood.net.

Late this evening, I received an email from someone named Ray Hughes who said that Verne Troyer was his client and who attached a PDF of what appear to be court documents pertaining to a temporary restraining order or TRO. A TRO is something issued by a judge to stop something potentially damaging from continuing while the court determines whether that thing is actually damaging. I couldn’t find any web references connecting anyone named Ray Hughes to Verne Troyer and I actually couldn’t find anyone named Ray Hughes listed as an attorney in Los Angeles. I could easily have blown it off until Monday and spent the evening watching a canceled science fiction series on DVD with pals, as planned. Instead, I read the court documents, which seem to be from a suit against Kevin Blatt, Sugar DVD, and TMZ and sent the following email back:

Hello Ray,

Although I may have shaken Kevin Blatt’s hand at a party, it could have been his brother’s hand, as I sometimes get the Blatt siblings confused. That’s as close as I’ve gotten to Kevin Blatt, TMZ, or SugarDVD, so I don’t think I could easily be characterized as falling under the category of agents, servants, employees, officers, directors, representatives, attorneys, successors, or assigns of Kevin Blatt, TMZ, or SugarDVD, or those acting in concert with them. The video I have displayed is embed code from YouTube which runs off of the YouTube site. Beats me whether the TRO would apply to my situation or not and 10 o’ clock on a Friday night is not the ideal time to get legal advice.

Nonetheless, acknowledging that I have not had benefit of legal counsel and admitting no wrongdoing and waiving no rights I may have, I will express my initial gut response to your request. I believe that my article on BlueBlood.net was respectful to Verne Troyer. It was certainly intended to be respectful of him and his accomplishments. If Verne Troyer genuinely feels his privacy was invaded, I will cause the references you request to be removed and issue an apology. It is difficult, in today’s virally-oriented marketing environment, to ascertain who truly wishes to keep their sex life private and who deliberately released their naked ass to the public and just pretends concern so no one dings them for being naughty.

I guess it might be possible to figure out contact information to verify via the court on Monday, but, if you could please forward me your response from an email for a recognized law firm before then, my opinion, pre-counsel, is that I can probably accept that as sufficient proof that Verne Troyer is truly concerned about invasion of his privacy. When you email me from an official email address, which I’m assuming you will, can you please advise me whether it is the YouTube video clip embed or the link to TMZ or both which you wish to have removed.

Best, Amelia G
http://www.blueblood.net

Ray Hughes emailed me back a hour later, explained that he was Verne Troyer’s manager (not attorney as I’d assumed) and that he always did business from his Gmail account, but he did CC an email which appeared to be for a Tracy B. Rane at McPherson & Associates, although he indicated that he’d just as soon not involve the attorney. I guess Verne Troyer’s lawyers don’t work on the weekend either. However, the court documents attachment references McPherson & Associates as where to send whiny-ass reasons why it is vital to the public interest to be able to keep naughty Verne Troyer video live on the interwebs. Verne Troyer is listed on the McPherson & Associates web site as a client. I popped over to TMZ to see if they had any mention that they were, ya know, being sued and found the following:

Verne Troyer has filed a $20 million lawsuit, claiming TMZ violated his rights by publishing and airing portions of his sex tape.

In the suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in downtown L.A., Troyer claims TMZ violated his privacy rights and infringed on his copyright and trademark by running portions of the tape on TMZ TV and TMZ.com. He also alleges TMZ violated his right of publicity and misappropriated his name and likeness.

Troyer says the tape was stolen and ended up in the hands of Kevin Blatt, the guy who distributed “One Night in Paris.” Blatt is also named as a defendant.

In addition to damages, Troyer wants an injunction prohibiting further dissemination of the video.

Calls to TMZ were not returned.

I know that a lot of people are inclined to flip any papparazzi from TMZ the bird and nobody wants to pick up the phone to give TMZ a comment. Apparently, TMZ won’t even answer a press query from TMZ.

So anyway, the sex tape video clip has been removed and my sincere apologies to Verne Troyer for any distress my post may have contributed to. I want to be clear that I may not be legally required to remove the clip embed and I am definitely not legally required by any law or settlement to apologize for posting the video. I want to apologize because I feel very strongly that someone who wants their privacy should be allowed to have it, unless there is news which is important to the public interest. It is rarely vital to the public interest that we all be able to watch other people have sex. Not that watching other people have sex can’t be perfectly entertaining, when all parties consent.

Today, Blue Blood’s design czar Forrest Black and I rolled over to band manager Jason Fiber’s lovely Hollywood Hills home to do some press on the always-charming and fun Andy LaPlegua. Andy is touring in supporting of the forthcoming Frost EP from Combichrist. So, uhm, naturally, we drank beer and Jason brought up that there was a new sex tape potentially coming out starring Verne Troyer.

I confessed that I already knew this as I’d started my day reading the adult industry trades mags, who were all abuzz with the info that SugarDVD had started the bidding on the Mini-Me sex tape. SugarDVD CEO Jax stated publicly that he would only be into distributing the celebrity sex tape, if it were possible to get proper performer releases from both the actor Verne Troyer and his naked co-star.

I gave my opinion that a Verne Troyer sex tape would be very marketable, but the one I really want to see is where the drug dealer club kid (or whatever he was) allegedly tied up Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild fame and made him confess his love of receiving anal on video, and then left him in the trunk of a car. Upon reflection, I don’t really want to see a naked Joe Francis being abused, but the karmic justice of it appeals to me.

In the unlikely event that you do not know who Verne Troyer is, he is best known for his role as Mini-Me, the bad guy’s smaller doppelganger protege from Mike Myers’ Austin Powers. He has also appeared in everything from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to rap videos and Apple commercials. Really Apple commercials tend to be sorta like viral sex vids for marketing anyway.

What would make a Verne Troyer celebrity sex tape so marketable is that he is famous, good-looking, and thirty-two inches tall. Which is a pretty rare combo. Fun facts to know and share: Verne Troyer was prom king in high school and is also an accomplished stunt man, the latter partly because nobody else would be the right build to body double for his stunts.

Warner Bros. subsidiary TMZ released a teaser from the video, pictured above, and it does indeed appear to actually feature Verne Troyer. The mere fact that Warner Bros. owns the gossip and scandal site TMZ really says something about the nature of fame and celebrity today. Apart from anything else, it points out that Warner is more on top of their approach to the online world than most media megacorps. Manager Jason Fiber was president of Cordless Recordings, the digital record label or “e-label” subsidiary of Warner Music Group. Today, Jason, whose background clearly shows he knows something about internet marketing, was joking that he was going to have to add consulting on celeb sex tape strategies to the list of what he did for clients.

I report that Jason was joking, but Verne Troyer’s STARmeter on IMDB is up 90% since last week. So, uhm, yeah, joking. Whether or not anyone ever sees Verne Troyer naked on video, he will definitely appear in this summer’s blockbuster from Mike Myers called The Love Guru.

The incredibly mild fame conferred by being on a reality show opens a person up for so much unpleasantness and, as near as I can ascertain, being on the show itself is a bummer. I know I used to be pretty responsive when television shows wanted to cover Blue Blood. I turned down Jenny Jones and all the talk show scum who asked me to tell everyone I was, like, totally a vampire and gawth is like, oh my goth, my life. But, even when I didn’t have cable or a TV with reception, Forrest Black and I both appeared on MTV, HBO, and FOX multiple times. I don’t know if it helps sales, but, as a journalist myself, I am reluctant to refuse someone access. At least I used to be. Now I regularly turn down television show producers who tell me how much they want to give Blue Blood exposure or how they plan to present a “positive spin” on my community. I used to believe some of the promises television people made, especially when I wrote them into our appearance contracts. I used to feel like being asked to appear on a show as an expert was a compliment. In a time when people have fleeting brushes with fame for defecating on Flavor Flav’s floor . . . well, who wants to be famous?

In my article Flavor Flav Has Hot Tub Love on VH1 but Ladies Best Be Nice Girls (who like threesomes) last year, I covered Flava Flav’s apparently hypocritical casting aside of Toastee, one of his supposed suitor chicks. For those just tuning in now, another supposed contestant on the show ratted Toastee out for appearing in Barely Legal and on “VHS”. At the time, my thought was that no one needed to worry about accidentally running across VHS video these days. Also probably no prob if the naughty pictures are engraved on the walls of a cave.

Apparently, some of y’all on the interwebs still watch movies on VHS because people kept finding my article on Toastee and her rumored VHS exploits. Either that or you were just optimistically figuring that this wonderful internet invention would provide the necessary conduit to seeing Toastee naked somehow. Now there have been a few artsy bloggers posting Halloween pictures of Toastee and the like, since the show. But leave it to the mainstream video tycoons at Vivid to put out a celeb sex tape released on both DVD and a web site.

The Vivid press release, among other things, stated the following:

The 23-year-old “Toastee” was born and raised in suburban Philadelphia and was a psychology major at Northeastern University. She appeared on the VH1 show “Charm School,” vying for the affections of rap artist Flavor Flav. She was bounced from the program after it was discovered that she had done nude modeling and appeared in a porn movie under the stage name “Natalia the Scissor Vixen” known for clamping men’s heads between her thighs. She has also been a guest on The Tyra Banks Show. “Toastee Exposed” was obtained from celebrity image broker David Hans Schmitt, who says “she may not have made the grade on VH1s ‘Charm School,’ but she gets straight as on this tape.”

Although I watched Flavor of Love up until Flav kicked Toastee off, I’ve never seen Charm School. VH1 describes the show saying:

Ever wonder what became of the girls that were so nasty, vicious and rough-around-the-edges that even Flavor Flav didn’t want them? What are those girls going to do? Where are those girls going to go? Luckily for them, VH1 had just the place to send them, a little place called – CHARM SCHOOL. Thirteen of your favorite breakout stars from “Flavor of Love” seasons one and two are back for some heated competition. Living as a group, learning as a group and out for themselves, these former Flavorettes will be rigorously trained in proper etiquette and manners before competing in challenges to determine their poise and grace under pressure.

So, uhm, it was FOL2, and not Charm School, that Toastee vied for Flav’s attention on, but I guess Vivid doesn’t have to watch reality television to have good distro for a celeb sex tape. After the Toastee debacle on FOL2, I did a little internet sleuthing and it seemed to me that the mistreated contestant was probably mostly a lesbian. Her MySpace lists her orientation as bi. I didn’t mention it because I felt like whether or not Toastee set off my gaydar was not relevant. I forgot that we are living in the age of paparazzi intrusion at most levels of life. My bad. Whatever the reason for her lack of interest, Toastee aka Jennifer Toof told Ronaldo Horacio Mexico at Hip Hop site SOHH that she wanted to meet Flav and wanted to be on television but had no actual romantic interest in the rapper. Furthermore, she didn’t think anyone else on the show, except possibly New York, had a lick of real attraction to Flav as their motivation for being there.

On her MySpace blog, after being on Charm School, Toof/Toastee posted:

Well, as you guys will find out in tonight’s episode, some people are so fake, and extremely selfish. VH1 tries to create drama between people, and it’s disgusting. Why do you think I didn’t say anything about fol2? Because I have a contract, I`m not allowed to say anything. This show is just some bullshit, and when you’re in a situation thats serious, you should never trust anybody.

Now, ignoring the part where calling the show bullshit and saying VH1 instigates the drama is probably already a violation of her contract, why would she agree to be on Charm School after being booted from FOL2? She might have been contractually obligated to do so. But the more important question is perhaps, why would an attractive (and flexible!) college graduate, with a medical school acceptance letter in her pocket, put herself through all this? Twice?

If the idea is that reality show participants are supposed to be presenting something vaguely real, only they are all just tormented souls who believe they don’t exist unless they are on the small screen, how real is that? More importantly, how real is anyone’s fifteen minutes then? Am I not noticing some goal these people have? What is the point of appearing on a supposedly real show where you, not only aren’t supposed to promote your projects, but are not supposed to be yourself? At least Charm School gives the winner $50,000, instead of a shot at a mean boyfriend like FOL. I used to fantasize about crossing through my TV screen into a fabulous music video. When the TV screen has a bunch of women feigning interest in some lame hypocrite womanizer, my real life is a lot more like a cool music video these days than anything presented in broadcast media.

I used to believe that fame was something which glittered alluringly like fairy dust and not something I’d need to wipe off my shoe.