James Deen Allegedly Sabotaged a Documentary about the Rape Accusations Against Him with the help of Michael Fattorosi BUT signs onto John Stagliano’s project “CONSENT”
February 25, 2019PNT commentary: Michael Fattorosi likes to present himself as a lawyer – but from the Porn News Today Collective’s perspective he seems much more like a talent agent or manager specifically for abusive men in the industry… Only time will tell if Fattorosi is able to hook his other little buddy the founder of Pornwikileaks with John Stagliano of Evil Angel as well…
On Monday, Variety reported that filmmaker Maria Demopoulos filed a lawsuit alleging porn star James Deen undermined her latest documentary’s distribution deal with Showtime by taking signed releases from her producer’s office. Demopoulos’s film addresses multiple rape and assault allegations that were made against Deen in late 2015. Demopoulos claims she is owed $150,000 and accused Deen of fraud, conversion, and breach of fiduciary duty.
The suit alleges that Deen’s company, Seven Sins, hired Demopoulos to direct a documentary (the film’s subject matter is not clear, presumably it had something to do with Deen), which was set to air in mid-2016. Demopoulos had already shot lots of footage, conducted several interviews, and handed in a director’s cut, when sexual assault allegations began piling up against Deen in late 2015. At this point, the lawsuit alleges, Demopoulos decided to incorporate the allegations into her documentary, and interviewed several of Deen’s accusers, all of whom, she claims, signed releases.
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Maria Demopoulos Vs James Deen
LAS VEGAS — Lily LaBeau is perched on the edge of an armchair in a spacious Hard Rock Hotel suite. In the smoke-filled casino below, a red carpet is being rolled out for the AVN Awards, the so-called Oscars for the porn industry. This evening, LaBeau will walk that red carpet, past eager fans and hulking TV cameras, but it’s this conversation right here that seems to really make her nervous.
There’s a camera on a tripod sitting in front of her. John Stagliano, a legendary pornographer and owner of the film studio Evil Angel, stands nearby with a second handheld camera. He’s been asking about her experiences performing in BDSM porn. Then Stagliano says, “So, have you ever had, like, a really bad experience?”
“Yes,” she says and sighs heavily. “OK, deep breath for that one. So, that’s why I’m here.”
Why she’s here is to talk about James Deen, who she and several other women in 2015 accused of abuse. More specifically, she’s here because Evil Angel barred its directors from working with Deen following those accusations—but now, three years on, Stagliano has decided to lift the ban. He and Evil Angel are not lifting it quietly, either. The company is doing it with an explicit porn-slash-documentary film titled Consent. Later, Stagliano will tell me, “I don’t like to run away from controversial subjects. I like to run toward them.”
In 2015, Deen’s ex-girlfriend posted a tweet accusing him of rape. “James Deen held me down and fucked me while I said no, stop, used my safeword,” she wrote. “I just can’t nod and smile when people bring him up anymore.” Deen called the claims “false and defamatory.” Eventually, about a dozen women, including LaBeau, came forward with allegations against him, ranging from “belittling” behavior to claims of physical abuse and sexual assault, and several of which allegedly involved adult shoots. In an interview with the Daily Beast, he denied the allegations and offered a noncommittal apology: “If at any point I pushed boundaries past the point of comfort, I am sorry.” (Deen declined to speak with Jezebel for this story, and did not return a follow-up request.)
In the immediate wake of the allegations, Evil Angel decided to stop creating or selling any new scenes featuring Deen. At the time, Stagliano told me in a statement, “While our company presents what is consensual and exploratory about aggressive and rough sex, these accusations are of a nature so contrary to our company values that we feel it necessary to suspend the sales until more information is available.”
Stagliano’s recent change of mind came about during discussions about the aforementioned film titled Consent, which will be part of a new Evil Angel series that depicts explicit sex scenes alongside documentary-style footage. (An example of this is the award-winning I Am Angela, which pairs sex scenes with the behind-the-scenes surrounding those shoots.) Stagliano says the idea for Consent arose because, as he put it, “I’d been reading that some feminists say that a woman can’t actually consent to be in a pornographic movie because ‘she doesn’t really know what she’s getting into.’” He continued, “Showing people saying, ‘No, you shouldn’t stop me from doing what I wanna do’ is basically what [this film is] all about.’”
As part of Consent, Evil Angel wanted to feature a segment about rough sex with Casey Calvert, an experienced BDSM performer. According to Stagliano, she only wanted to do the scene with Deen. “I believe in consent,” said Stagliano. “I believe that a girl should be able to choose who she works with.” Later, he added, “Casey Calvert wants to work with James Deen. She trusts him to do a somewhat stronger scene,” he said. “I’m going to respect that.”
Of course, Calvert could shoot with Deen for any of the many other companies that have been working with him over the last three years. In fact, Calvert has worked with Deen many times since the allegations surfaced. But, says Stagliano, it was Calvert’s request that prompted him to reconsider the company’s ban more broadly. “This whole thing of ‘brand somebody for life, he’s always a bad person,’ that’s just wrong,” said Stagliano. “That is flat out wrong.”
“I figured three years was enough time,” Stagliano continued. “He’s proven that he’s able to be very polite and very fair and very asking of permission from all girls all the time. That’s what he said to me, that’s what people who work with him have said to me.” He went on: “I didn’t know how long the sentence should be, seriously, number one. Number two, I didn’t have all the information. Number three, all my competitors are shooting him anyway. Number four, he’s admitted that he did some bad stuff.”
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