Mayhem Writes: Both Luke at Lukeisback and Gene Ross at AdultFYI picked up on a thread from XXXPorntalk which came across a dead thread on DVDTalk which was read by my uncle who knows a friend of a cab driver who came across this electrician at a store who said he heard from a guy who’s best friends brother knows this girl who dated a UPS driver who saw a sign that ‘Defiance Going Out Of Business Sale’ at a local thrift store in Kittery, Maine.
It all started with a DVDTalk posting that said ‘Defiance Belly Up, Ran Out Of Cash’, and then someone started trashing Taylor Rain just because, and then Norman Bentleys ex-wife chimed in.
Here’s my take, I’m extremely biased but I’ll try to do my best with just facts.
Lukeford is owned by Taylor Rain, and I write for Lukeford which means I work for Taylor Rain. I work from home as an independent writer for various websites and I also write reviews that are published in magazines and on websites. I do not know Taylor that well, my first time meeting her was at this years AVN show. I do know Fayner, as I was a huge fan of his writings at Hustler and Lukeford. When I got the opportunity to write here on Lukeford I jumped at the chance.
I’ve been to the Defiance offices in Calabasas about 6 times, to pick up movies for reviews. Keith and Anthony Simone helped me for the first 3 weeks learn how to use the update system, posting entries, uploading photos, creating archives. Now I do it all on my own without any assistance. Outside of Taylor Rain being a Defiance contract star/director and dating Keith, Defiance has no connection to Lukeford. Taylor Rain writes for this site almost every day, as does Fayner. And the fact that they push Taylor’s website and the company she works for is fine with me. I remember when Wanker had the site, it was all Anabolic all the time.
If Defiance is in ‘trouble’ or going ‘bankrupt’ then that’s news to them, me and to anyone who’s ever seen their operation or knows the company background, it’s actually a joke. Come on now, you’re not talking about a few guys who each put in $20,000 to start a company. The company is extremely healthy. They have a library of 40 titles, 15 titles released and on the shelves and 25 titles in the can. They ship hundreds of pieces every day, and on ‘New Release’ day they ship enough to cause the UPS driver to come back twice.
In February I asked O’Connor, who runs production, if there were any shoots coming up that he wanted me to cover and he replied, "I have over 20 titles either in post or ready for post so before I start shooting again I need to get caught up.’ Why did they have so many titles in post, "Since we started we’ve been releasing 2 titles per month, we don’t want to force product down distributors throats. We give our titles shelf life by spreading them out. The strategy has paid off because our re-orders are phenomenal and our pre-orders on upcoming titles is very strong. It’s these pre-orders that have caused us to look at releasing 4 to 6 titles a month now, thus for me to be able to step into that type of release schedule I needed to look ahead and have those titles available."
When I called the Defiance offices this morning to speak to either Norman Bentley, O’Connor or Simone, none of them really cared about the ‘out of business’ gossip, they laughed it off. The reply I got from Bentley was, ‘….why give credibility to an anonymous posting, the fact it’s anonymous speaks volumes. We ship titles every day of the week, when the UPS and FedEx pickups stop then we have something to worry about. Defiance is fully funded, we don’t sell stock to get cash, we have no loans, we don’t borrow, we don’t factor receivables, we’re good to go. We just have a lot of titles in the can so we don’t need to be shooting anything right now. We’re here today, we’ll be here tomorrow, next month and next year, releasing titles!‘
I asked if they wanted to go on the attack and reply!!! The answer from all 3 was this, "On the attack? Why? Who are we going to attack, an anonymous poster? Who cares? Our only response is to keep releasing product and selling titles, that’s enough of a reply. If w’e’re out of business or bankrupt then we’re done and won’t be here anymore, if the posting was BS then we’ll be shipping Dirty Dykes next week and then Multi Racial Mayhem and then House of Anal and then Teen Handjobs 2 and then Latin Obsession 2 and then Kiss My Ass and then Teenage Dreamin 2 and then Runway."