Little advice on a model being "found out"

[619Vid]

Hey all-
I got a message today from one of my models asking to hold back one of the scenes he was in because he was recognized by one of his <ahem> co-workers. This is a new situation for me and wanted to run it by y'all to see if there was any advice on how to handle this. Of course, I could be a total hard ass and stick to my guns since he signed a model release and all that. The nice-guy side of me doesn't want this guy's career to potentially go south over one scene. It was a gay-4-pay scene that he's worried about... and his particular job has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, if you catch my drift.
Thanks...
Jason

[Alex_Manifest_M]

That is a tough one. He was foolish to do it. Unfortunately you are now in the position of holding his future in your hands.

If he were willing to return the money as well as all production costs associated with the shoot, then I would let him have it back. If he doesn't have the money, then he needs to sell his car or do whatever he has to do to pull the cash together. Worse case, he has to give you all the model payment cash back now, and sign a note for the rest of the costs with payments due and payable every pay period.

The price for this should be steep. He needs to learn a lesson about acting without thinking things through. it should cost him a lot financially and you should be 'made whole' by the repayment.

However he should not have his future wrecked 'for the sake of porn'. But there must be a real penalty for the trouble he is causing. If he doesn't chose to cough up the cash by pawning most everything he owns, then it just isn't that important to him and it is time to use the content as you originally intended.

[Matt 26z]

I don't understand why models don't just deny that it is them.

Especially when a boss brings it up. Something as simple as denying it and saying that they don't feel comfortable talking about things of sexual nature at work should end the allegations pretty quick since there is a subtle sexual harassment lawsuit threat in there.

[PornMadeMeRich]

That is a tough one. He was foolish to do it. Unfortunately you are now in the position of holding his future in your hands.

If he were willing to return the money as well as all production costs associated with the shoot, then I would let him have it back. If he doesn't have the money, then he needs to sell his car or do whatever he has to do to pull the cash together. Worse case, he has to give you all the model payment cash back now, and sign a note for the rest of the costs with payments due and payable every pay period.

The price for this should be steep. He needs to learn a lesson about acting without thinking things through. it should cost him a lot financially and you should be 'made whole' by the repayment.

However he should not have his future wrecked 'for the sake of porn'. But there must be a real penalty for the trouble he is causing. If he doesn't chose to cough up the cash by pawning most everything he owns, then it just isn't that important to him and it is time to use the content as you originally intended.

Logical and sound advice!

[maxx68]

Had his fun, got paid for it and now he's worried. I call bullshit, sounds like blowers remorse.

Make him pay!

[DEVELISH]

make him pay for all production costs and your time and a little extra as a reminder not to do it again

[MiamiB]

Our site has been online for 10 years now and we shoot young guys (18 - 21)...over the years I have received requests (many of them) from former models requesting that there shoots be removed from the site.

Some have gotten married and the girlfriend/wife requests that his shoot be taken off. Others have gotten jobs and fear that they will lose them (one model became an elementary school teacher).

I always listen to the story and normally I will comply with that request (they pay the production cost back).

In this case, the model knew that he was doing something that might come back to bit him in the ass...why would he do a gay for pay shoot knowing that?

Any way, I would have him pay the production cost back and then forget about him.

[Squirt]

That is a tough one. He was foolish to do it. Unfortunately you are now in the position of holding his future in your hands.

If he were willing to return the money as well as all production costs associated with the shoot, then I would let him have it back. If he doesn't have the money, then he needs to sell his car or do whatever he has to do to pull the cash together. Worse case, he has to give you all the model payment cash back now, and sign a note for the rest of the costs with payments due and payable every pay period.

The price for this should be steep. He needs to learn a lesson about acting without thinking things through. it should cost him a lot financially and you should be 'made whole' by the repayment.

However he should not have his future wrecked 'for the sake of porn'. But there must be a real penalty for the trouble he is causing. If he doesn't chose to cough up the cash by pawning most everything he owns, then it just isn't that important to him and it is time to use the content as you originally intended.

I agree, well said.

In addition shooting active duty military can cause you many problems in the future. Dirk Flamingo is a good example of this. Since you're in San Diego by the base you might want to add a clause to your model release form where the model signs that they are NOT active military.

[citiboyz]

Any way, I would have him pay the production cost back and then forget about him.

This is bound to happen once in awhile. Like Lee suggests, have him repay you his fee and production costs and put it behind you.

[Jasun]

Sorry, but he got paid, knew what we was getting in to and now he wants it taken back.

We tell everyone that you can't keep porn private. It's not possible. Your mother WILL see it. No way around that.

If they still want to do it, once it's done, it's done.

I can see you agreeing to hold it back for 2 years or something if you were really nice. But if you'd followed what I said in sentence two, it's his problem.

People really need to understand that this is a business, it's not free money.

[Seth]

Sorry, but he got paid, knew what we was getting in to and now he wants it taken back.

We tell everyone that you can't keep porn private. It's not possible. Your mother WILL see it. No way around that.

If they still want to do it, once it's done, it's done.

I can see you agreeing to hold it back for 2 years or something if you were really nice. But if you'd followed what I said in sentence two, it's his problem.

People really need to understand that this is a business, it's not free money.

I couldn't agree more Jasun.

Several years ago a professional skier did a jack off video for us. He later asked us not to use it as he was afraid he'd get recognized. I'd never heard of him so I googled him, and sure enough, he was all over the place on sking websites and magazines. I actually didn't use it mainly because it was a shit video and it had not been released yet. So I really didn't care either way.

I'm certainly not in the business to ruin someone's career. Normally, I guess I'm a bit of a hard ass when it comes to this. These guys make a decision as an adult to do this this type of work. They need to act like an adult and deal with it. If they were not mature enough to realize future ramifications when signing on the dotted line, then I say it's a lesson learned.

We've been asked several other times for content to be taken down. They've only ever offered us the amount of the payment they received for the work. I never hear from them again after I explain that due to production costs, lost of recurring revenue, DVD & VOD income, etc., the amount could possibly be 50 times or more what was originally paid to them.

[619Vid]

Thanks for all the feedback on this. I need to talk with the guy to see how serious the situation is-- I mean, if the recognizer is threatening to turn him in, that's one thing, but if he's just afraid of facing a few homophobic comments then that's a whole different story. I'm pretty sure it's the latter case because he wasn't concerned about the other (solo, b/g) scenes he's done.
If I do opt to "re-call" the scene, I'm gonna tell him he'd have to reimburse dvd replication costs, distribution, post-production, etc in addition to his fee which would end up in the thousands. That would probably take care of the issue and learn him a lesson.
I do feel a little bad for the guy, but I agree that he went into this knowing the potential outcome. And in reality, he came to *me* desperate for work! The only other time this has happened, the guy is a semi-pro MMA/cage fighter and just wanted his picture taken off the site, and didn't care about the video (for some reason...) In that case, I just went along and took it down. No biggie.

[Lee]

I guess ultimately it depends on how you want to deal with it, you could play hard ball and tell the guy that he signed a release and was paid and therefore has to live with the consequences of his actions, or you could tell him that he could pay you back his fee and all production costs associated with the shoot.

Of course this is a business and you dont want to end up out of pocket for the shoot but, at the same time, do you really want to be the one responsible for fucking this guys career up for the rest of his life for the sake of a 20 minute porn shoot?

If you havent published the content yet, you arent really losing anything except a few hundred bucks and you gained some experience to help you make sure future military models are fully aware of what they are doing before getting their rocks off.

Personally, depending on the guy, if he was pleasant to work with, didnt have an attitude, might know some other guys who were interested in working with you etc, id be inclinded just to delete the shoot and put it down to one of those 'lesson learned' experiences and move on.

Would you rather have a guy going all over town telling potential future models that you 'fucked him over' or have him going around town telling his buddies how he did porn but you were professional enough to follow his wishes when he realized he made a mistake.

Sometimes a little good will can go a long way and word of mouth from this guy could do you a lot more harm financially than what you could make from the shoot itself.

Regards,

Lee

[Jasun]

or have him going around town telling his buddies how he did porn but you were professional enough to follow his wishes when he realized he made a mistake.

Except then you'll get a whole bunch of military guys coming in to do gay porn shoots, taking the money and then calling up to give you some sob story about why you can't post it now that they've cashed the check.

Honestly.. not a great idea.

At Fratmen we did all we could to protect our two outed models who were national wrestling champions (at great loss to us, actually) and that was after we'd told them that there was no way to stop people from knowing they did porn.

Sometimes with stupid people you just have to let nature take its course.

[Lee]

Which is why i said it was a learning curve, hopefully the NEXT time this ever happened there would a clause in the model release saying that they couldnt retract the content once it had been shot and that if they wanted to retract it, they had to pay up.... A model release is a contract, therefore pretty much anything can be written in to that contract to protect both the model AND the producers interests.

This is the first time this happened for the guy, learn from it and put the experience to good use for the future.

I know id rather have someone going around town saying that i looked after their interests, than someone going around making it much harder for me to attract future models.

Regards,

Lee