ENTERTAINMENT
September 15, 2008 | Harriet Ryan, Times Staff Writer
The callers are usually nervous, cagey about their identities and vague when it comes to facts, but to the porn companies on the other end of the telephone, their message is easy to decipher: I know of a celebrity sex tape and I want money. "Not a week goes by that we don't get at least five calls," said Steven Hirsch, the co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment Group, the country's leading adult film producer. Actor Verne Troyer's summer-long legal battle over a sex tape put a spotlight on the market.
BUSINESS
July 1, 2000 | ANDREW BLANKSTEIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Vivid Entertainment Group, which has built itself into the dominant player in the adult video business, has its eyes set on a new conquest: Wall Street. The Van Nuys-based company plans to go public by the end of the year in a bid to raise cash to buy companies and content. The IPO will also fund investments in Internet broadband technology, a new production division and marketing, President Bill Asher said Friday. Asher said Vivid is in the process of talking to underwriters.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 12, 2013 | By Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times
One of the nation's most prominent pornography producers is suing Los Angeles County in federal court to overturn a new law requiring actors to wear condoms during filming. The suit by Vivid Entertainment, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, says the 1st Amendment's protection of free expression was violated after 57% of L.A. County voters approved the condom-porn measure during the Nov. 6 election. "The exercise of 1st Amendment freedoms cannot be limited by referendum," the suit said.
MAGAZINE
January 6, 2002 | RALPH FRAMMOLINO and P.J. HUFFSTUTTER, Times staff writers Ralph Frammolino and P.J. Huffstutter are business reporters who cover entertainment and technology. Frammolino last wrote for the magazine about union activist David Koff. Huffstutter's most recent piece was about Microsoft's new X-Box video game console
You can say this much at least, the setting was magnificent--a seafood restaurant at Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway. San Fernando Valley businessman Steven A. Hirsch thought it was the ideal spot for his pitch to the blond, hazel-eyed Midwest tomboy. She loved crab legs? He promised her all she could eat. Ginger Lynn Allen arrived at Gladstone's restaurant in a lace dress and heels and joined Hirsch and his girlfriend at their table. It was late 1984.
MAGAZINE
January 12, 2003 | P.J. Huffstutter, Times staff writer P.J. Huffstutter last wrote for the magazine about the rise of Vivid Video Inc., the nation's leading porn producer.
During production of the 1997 movie "Mimic," American Humane Assn. representatives wandered through the Los Angeles set, ensuring that a herd of cockroaches was well taken care of. Licensed animal handlers were to follow state and federal anti-cruelty laws designed to protect the insects, which had been trained to swirl around actress Mira Sorvino's feet. The roaches had to be fed at a certain time. They could only work a few hours each day. They could not be harmed. At the same time, in studios in the San Fernando Valley, scores of other actors and actresses were working on movies.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 28, 1991 | JACK CHEEVERS, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Three San Fernando Valley firms that sell pornographic films and five of their executives have been indicted on federal obscenity charges, the U.S. Justice Department said Friday. A federal grand jury in Oxford, Miss., returned the indictment this week against Vivid Video Inc. and VVD Corp. of Van Nuys and the firms' principals, Steven Hirsch and David James, federal officials announced in Washington.