WBD175 Audio Transcription

Holly Randall on Porn, Censorship and Bitcoin

Interview date: Monday 25th November 2019

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with pornographer Holly Randall. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, I talk to pornographer Holly Randall about censorship. We discuss how the industry has changed, financial censorship, whether Bitcoin can be a solution and the misconceptions and misrepresentations of adult performers.

“These are real people and this is a real job. We’re not sex-crazed lunatics, we’re not dangerous, we’re not criminals.”

— Holly Randall

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: That's the worst thing about doing a podcast is that when you hear it back... I don't listen to mine anymore now. I've finally got past it, but I used to listen to them back and I was just like, "Fuck, I sound like an idiot!"

Holly Randall: I feel the same at all the likes and the "ums" and the "you knows".

Peter McCormack: My engineer edits those out for me.

Holly Randall: You fucker!

Peter McCormack: Have you got an engineer?

Holly Randall: I do, but he doesn't go that far.

Peter McCormack: Well, you should, that changes everything.

Holly Randall: Well the thing is, is that I also record them on video and I put them up on YouTube. So it's not going to work, as it would be so drastically different.

Peter McCormack: I'm bringing video in next year.

Holly Randall: Especially for what I do, I interview a lot of very good looking women and people like to see them. Actually, it was a fortuitous decision, because I now have a channel on Adult Time that I'm actually making revenue off of.

Peter McCormack: That's fantastic, because your industry has been under attack for making money?

Holly Randall: It has, and one of the things I cannot do with my podcast is monetize it on YouTube, because they won't let me. Because even though I'm obviously not shooting porn, because you can't put that on YouTube, even talking about it.

Peter McCormack: Really?

Holly Randall: Oh, yeah!

Peter McCormack: That's fucking bullshit! Well listen, we're going to get into that. We're going to talk about Bitcoin and share some knowledge across and we're going to very quickly talk about something you wanted to ask me.

Holly Randall: Yes, so I know nothing about Bitcoin and a friend of mine told me that I should invest in XRP, because that is going to be the mode of currency that they're going to use to do bank transfers that don't go through some kind of middleman like it does now. So he said that it's really low right now, but he predicts it will skyrocket. It's been approved in certain countries, and that it is a life changing investment is what he told me.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's what scammers tend to say. So it's a scam, don't buy it, just ignore it.

Holly Randall: Well he's a friend, so he's not trying to scam me out of anything. The worst is he's giving me bad advice.

Peter McCormack: He's spreading the scam without knowing it involuntarily. So it's very simple, it's all about Bitcoin with cryptocurrencies, it's the only one that matters, it's the only one that's important.

Holly Randall: I have some Litecoin that a friend bought for me as a gift?

Peter McCormack: Well I would say focus on Bitcoin. The simple way of explaining it is the only need for a blockchain is to be decentralized. So it can't be switched off, so it can't be turned off by the government and the only one that really achieves a high level of decentralization is Bitcoin and most other things are centralized.

So they can be switched off by the bank or they can be compromised or they've got central decision-makers. Bitcoin is pretty much the only one that isn't, so we stay focused on Bitcoin.

Holly Randall: And it's untraceable in a way, right? Because you know those people that are always trying to blackmail you online always want to be paid in Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's not entirely, it's pseudo-anonymous. So as soon as you convert it into dollars or pounds on an exchange and you have to have your details, they'll know it's you. Now, if I was to sell you some Bitcoin say for cash and you would have a separate wallet to send it to, and then you sell that for cash to somebody, then that's untraceable.

Holly Randall: Right, okay.

Peter McCormack: So there are ways. It's definitely interesting. But let's find out about your industry first. So Holly, Allie said we had to talk and she sent me your tweet the other day, but for people who won't know you...

Holly Randall: How could you not know who I am? I'm just so famous! I can't believe you got through the paparazzi throng in front of my house.

Peter McCormack: I got through your assistant. But you should tell people who you are and what you do.

Holly Randall: Okay, so I'm Holly Randall. I'm a second generation female pornographer. I also host a podcast about the adult industry. I produce, I direct and I also photograph movies, adult content and I've been doing it for over 21 years.

Peter McCormack: But you're not a performer.

Holly Randall: I'm not a performer, no.

Peter McCormack: Maybe a little bit on Snapchat?

Holly Randall: Yes, that's actually kind of a new thing. So yeah, I've started posting some nude stuff here and there. It's kind of a long story, it goes back to some nudes that were accidentally released online, which nobody, of course, believed that it was accidental. Once that got out there, as everybody knows, when something goes on the internet, you can't take it back.

Peter McCormack: Nope!

Holly Randall: So I was like, okay, well I'm just going to own this and I'm actually going to promote this and I'm going to make money off of it. And I did. Of course too, there's the consideration of my boyfriend, who didn't care because I talked to him and he didn't care. My parents obviously don't care, because another thing about me is, as I said, I'm a second generation...

Peter McCormack: Your mother?

Holly Randall: My mother is Suze Randall, a fellow Brit, who was one of the first women working behind the scenes in the adult industry, and her and my father built a business together and I started working for them when I was 20. So that's how I started in this industry. My mother posed nude, she shot herself for Playboy, she shot herself for Hustler, so I come from a family that certainly wouldn't frown upon it.

Peter McCormack: How old were you when you were aware of all of this?

Holly Randall: I get this question all the time and my answer is, I don't really remember this moment, this epiphany that I had. My parents are very honest people, and they don't believe in the shame that a lot of people have around sex. They're very open, they're very liberal. So from a young age, I knew that, from what I can remember, I knew that what mommy and daddy did was they basically made pictures and movies for grownups, and it wasn't for me.

At that age, I didn't care, I was busy running the unicorn club. It was when of course I hit puberty, that I became a little bit more interested and started stealing the Penthouse magazines out of the office when my parents weren't looking. But it was never like a central part of my childhood. My parents were parents first, and I guess pornographers second.

Peter McCormack: So you've witnessed the transition of the industry from pre-internet through internet, because there are even in Bitcoin, I meet people who don't know a time of no internet.

Holly Randall: It's crazy!

Peter McCormack: I remember it. I always say that I remember pre-mobile phones, I remember pre-internet and it's a very, very different world.

Holly Randall: Absolutely.

Peter McCormack: It's changed your industry a lot?

Holly Randall: Yeah completely. I came in, I started working for my parents about when the time the internet hit. That's actually why they needed me, because they launched Suze's Net, which was my mom's website. They launched I think a month before Google launched, that's how long ago it was, like in 1998.

Peter McCormack: Wow!

Holly Randall: I know right? A month before, a month after. So I came in at the very beginning of the internet, and they put their website online and it just exploded. They didn't know what they were doing, they had a website designer who would take two weeks to design a banner and they thought that was normal, because they had no idea.

But the money was just rolling in and so they were extremely overwhelmed. They asked me to come just help out in the office and initially, that was what I was going to do. I was going to do that while I was transitioning from one school to the next because I was going to be an English teacher. Then I just stayed.

Peter McCormack: And when you say pornographer, is that like a broad term for working in the industry?

Holly Randall: It is. That's such a dirty word to so many people, right? So a lot of people will say they're an erotic artist or they're an erotic movie director or a feminist adult director or something like that. They try to use these words that kind of softens the job I guess. But I'm just so jaded that I'm just like, "yeah, I'm a pornographer!" It's ultimately what I am, I create porn.

Peter McCormack: So you're a photographer?

Holly Randall: I'm a photographer, yes.

Peter McCormack: Are you a filmmaker?

Holly Randall: Yes. Well, now you have to do everything. I started off as just a photographer.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you said you have to do everything.

Holly Randall: Oh, one has to do everything these days! You can't just be a photographer, you won't be able to make a living.

Peter McCormack: So one of the interesting areas I didn't cover with either Allie or her story is the change from pre-internet to post-internet and it seems to me that it was a great industry pre-internet. The internet came along and then like financially, it was great to begin with and then everything's been eroded and made it very difficult to make money from films. Is that like a fair, broad...

Holly Randall: Yeah, but it also depends on who you're talking about, because a rollercoaster has been different for everybody. So before the internet came along, the adult industry was a very small, insular community. It wasn't that easy to get into the industry. Obviously, if you were going to either star in or direct an adult movie, you had to have a distributor and that distributor would have to hire you to make the movie. It wasn't like now when the internet created this platform that anybody could create content and put it out with ease. You had to have somebody who would sell your movies.

So you had to have somebody that would hire you. The adult industry was, like I said, a small community, so it wasn't that easy for outsiders to come in and there was a lot more stigma around it. So there were a lot less people in it, but it was profitable. DVDs were selling, porn has always been profitable in the sense that people always will consume it. Porn has always been something that people consume a lot of, but back then obviously you couldn't really steal it as easily.

Peter McCormack: Plus, going from scene to scene, DVD by DVD, it's a bit of a pain in the ass.

Holly Randall: Yes, exactly. It's an expensive habit to have to watch... I would imagine, obviously back in the DVD era, I wasn't really watching a ton of porn because I was younger. But I would imagine that most people had a few favorite movies that they would watch over and over again, as opposed to now, you just go on one of the tube sites and you just have thousands and thousands and thousands of movies and clips and scenes to choose from. So you don't ever have to watch the same thing twice.

Peter McCormack: Endless unlimited porn.

Holly Randall: Endless unlimited porn!

Peter McCormack: So I've heard mixed feelings about the tube sites from some people, who have said they're absolutely terrible and that they've made it very, very hard to make any money in films. Then I've heard other people say, the opposite, that it's been very good and that it enables anyone to get distribution and to build a profile, and if they do a good enough job, they can send them to their own website and build up a direct relationship.

So it's very good advertising. I've also noticed recently, I've seen a more recent push for more higher quality. Pornography seems to be separating itself from a guy with a video camera in a car or something.

Holly Randall: Right? Yeah, that's been an interesting change as well, how the internet has changed how we produce porn and what people are interested in. But I can get back to that later. So to your question about the tube sites, it's so hard to say. Yes, look, piracy was around before the tube sites came along and it was a problem. Before the tube sites came along, people were going on file sharing websites and stealing porn that way. But obviously, you had to have a little bit more technical know how to be able to do it.

The average person generally didn't know. So when the tube sites started, it was very easy for anybody to just watch free porn. So yes, it hurt the industry in a lot of ways, but one needs to adapt to changing technology and there's just no way to stop it. Actually in a strange way, it's I think come around and been more beneficial for the models because now people are so oversaturated with porn, because obviously they can see whatever they want for free, I think now that, and this speaks overall, I think to society as a whole, people are craving a more personal connection.

So that's why models are doing really well with things like Snapchat, this is why camming has become such a big thing. This is why models creating their own profile say on Pornhub and selling videos directly to people has become more popular, because people crave a feeling of connecting with their favorite performer. One thing you cannot steal is that personal connection. So if a model is streaming live to you, camming, you can't steal that personal interaction when she says your name, she talks to you directly.

So that's kind of brought up this whole new wave of porn, which has been really interesting. So I would say yeah, the tube sites have definitely hurt the industry in some ways, but it's strange, because now it feels like the industry's actually doing better. We went through a period where a lot of companies were shrinking budgets, were going out of business and that's still happening to a degree.

But there's a lot of companies that are now spending a lot more money on producing these really high end cinematic films and people are clearly paying for it, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to make them. I think people who really care about the product that they're looking at and people who really have a particular kind of porn that they want to see, high quality porn, those are the people that are willing to pay for it.

Because yes, you can go on any tube site and you can watch a bunch of free videos, but they're all pretty crap. The tube sites have now finally come up with a way to easily take down stolen videos. Like if I go on Pornhub and I see something of mine that's stolen, I have a direct contact over there and he takes it down immediately or he moves it to my channel, where I get money for people to watch it.

Peter McCormack: Okay, which is better!

Holly Randall: Which is so much better. So I'm actually making money off of the tube sites now.

Peter McCormack: The other thing was when I was a kid, and we used to steal a porno from one of our mate's dads or whatever, the films were productions, but they were movies, rather than scenes. They were movies with scripts. Obviously not Hollywood production, but they were movies. That seemed to be lost for a while and again, in the rabbit hole I've gone down researching, which is probably going to make people laugh and joke and make accusations and hopefully my son won't be listening to this one, but I've noticed this increase in the quality of production.

It's like a re-emergence, but the difference this time actually it's even better. Rather than like a cheesy film with a cheesy script they're actually quite sexy productions with, I would say with very good lighting, very good costuming. Is any of this been a reflection and a response to say what happened with the Christian Grey books? Has that changed anything?

Holly Randall: I don't think so in the adult industry. S&M, bondage, fetish has always been a big niche for us. Really the only new studio that is doing those kinds of scenes that is noticeable is Deeper, that Kayden Kross is directing all those movies and she's really fantastic. But S&M and fetish has been a big niche for a long time. But it's gotten with these higher production values, it's sexier, it's glossier now than it used to be.

Peter McCormack: I think the point I was trying to make, was has that made sex more mainstream?

Holly Randall: Maybe yeah, that's possible. I think that society is definitely opening up about sex and we're talking about sex more and we're talking about women enjoying porn more and enjoying sex more, and trying to shed the shame and the stigma of pornography and trying to really change people's minds about what porn is, because there's so many different kinds of porn.

So for example, when you were saying how now we're having this kind of porn renaissance right now, where this new cinematic type of feature is really coming into play, as you said before, the pre-internet era, all the porn movies were movies and they had a script and they were features and cheesy, but whatever.

Though if you think about it, all movies back in the '70s for the most part were a little bit cheesy. I think that just like we've become more sophisticated as an audience overall. So when the internet came along, it really changed things because suddenly it allowed people to be able to access any kind of content that they wanted to. So beforehand, you had to go out and buy a DVD or you had to order a DVD.

So you take this tangible product with you into your home, that you might have to hide from your wife, you might have to hide from your girlfriend, your boyfriend, whatever and you would have to put it in a DVD player on a TV and hope nobody was home. It wasn't that easy to access. I think people would be a lot more careful about what they would watch. Also, there wasn't as much available.

In America, we have obscenity laws that vary from state to state. So for example, Max Hardcore who went to jail for obscenity, he went to jail because he had a DVD that had a sex act in it, which was illegal in certain states. I'm probably wrong about this, but say like Alabama, it was a scene that had anal in it and somehow that DVD, which is edited differently for different states, because of like I said different laws, was somehow distributed in Alabama.

So because it was distributed in Alabama, again I'm making up the state, I'm sure I'm wrong about this, he got busted for obscenity. So that's what sent him to jail, because like anal is illegal in Alabama.

Peter McCormack: Illegal in porn or just illegal?

Holly Randall: I think in general, and especially in porn. Again, I'm just saying Alabama.

Peter McCormack: Of course, I could research this.

Holly Randall: Yeah, look it up. I'm probably completely wrong, but you'll see what I mean. So it was very much not anonymous, watching porn. So when the internet came along, and you could suddenly anonymously access basically any kind of content that you wanted, producers saw the demand that people had, and the need for all this crazy porn.

I think because you could make it, because again before you had to be careful about the kinds of stuff you were shooting, people started shooting more and more hardcore stuff. I think people watched it and consumed it, just because they'd never seen it before. This was the kind of porn that wasn't available before, triple anal and shoving a baseball bat up your butt. All kind of like, it's like a circus act and so that became very popular for a while.

I remember actually we really struggled with that when I was working for my parents at Suze's Net because we've always produced high end glamor erotica, and suddenly all these other companies that were shooting this really hardcore stuff like Evil Angel, were doing really well and we felt like, do we need to start shooting triple anal scenes in order to compete? And that just wasn't our style.

Peter McCormack: When did double anal become not enough?

Holly Randall: When triple anal was possible, I guess. I don't know.

Peter McCormack: What's the world record?

Holly Randall: I think you can only do three and I've actually had this in depth discussion with porn stars about this, only because you can't fit that many guys around a butthole.

Peter McCormack: I'm wondering, that must hurt.

Holly Randall: You'd be surprised, some girls have a much easier time with anal than they do with vaginal, because I believe your anus can actually... because it's a muscle, it can stretch more than your vagina can.

Peter McCormack: I really do hope my son's not listening to this.

Holly Randall: If you really put your mind to it, it's all mental. It's like the force.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so I didn't think we'd get into triple anal this early, but we're here now. But I guess what you're saying, like the internet allowed for niches and sub niches and sub, sub categories and it kind of opened up a whole plethora of different things, but it seems like therefore the industry moved a lot to be scene based?

Holly Randall: Yes, because all people wanted to consume was the sex and let's face it, most people fast forward through the dialogue when they watch a movie.

Peter McCormack: But I would say there's a slight separate issue there. It's more consideration for the setup of the whole scene, it doesn't matter if they're skipping through it. You can have a high production, well thought through scene and you can have a, in the back of a car, let's go for it kind of scene, I think generally everything just moved to the latter for a while and for myself, it's kind of boring.

Holly Randall: The setup in the back of the car kind of thing?

Peter McCormack: Anything just like... I don't know, I think porn got boring.

Holly Randall: Yeah, it became very much the same and circus acts kind of thing, I think you're right. I think a lot of people started to feel that way. So then the trend started to move back towards more cinematic movies. Not even necessarily with a storyline, but just more beautifully shot.

I think what made a huge difference actually was when the DSLR cameras came out and were able to shoot video, because they enabled you to shoot something that looked so much more cinematic than just shooting on like a Hi8 camera, which is what we were all doing, without having to buy an incredibly expensive actual cinema camera or rent one for an obscene amount of money.

Peter McCormack: Now you've got these, you've got the iPhone.

Holly Randall: So the evolution of technology as well, I think really helped facilitate a change in the way that porn looked. Actually I remember, I believe it was X-Art who really started to create that more cinematic look, and they were one of the first people that I knew who shot with those DSLR cameras. I remember thinking to myself, that's crazy! You got to use automatic focus. You can't hold it, you got to put it on a tripod, that's nuts.

Peter McCormack: What the fuck are you doing?

Holly Randall: And then of course it looked fucking amazing, and then we started doing it and I remember actually the first time I shot with a DSLR camera for video. I was like, I look like I'm shooting a real movie, it was a big difference. Then lately, the scripts have improved, productions have improved and you have some really talented female directors who are producing these incredible movies with really interesting storylines, really well shot.

Peter McCormack: Jacky St. James?

Holly Randall: Jacky St. James, Bree Mills, Kayden Kross, Erica Lust.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I'm going to make a gender assumption here. But I still accept like men or women are different. I'm going to assume men tend to focus on making what men want. I guess a growth in female directors has led to them producing more of the kind of entertainment that women may want, which therefore is less of the just bang, bang, bang, it's a bit more considered. Is that a fair, slightly gender based assumption?

Holly Randall: I think so. I think that a lot of times women want more of a motivation behind the sex. We want to know why they're having sex, we want to know what are the emotions behind it? What is the story behind it? The idea of just seeing a penis go inside of vagina multiple times, it's just not interesting. For me, if I watch a film, what's interesting is the story, and will the characters bring the story into the sex?

Because a lot of times, the characters, they play whatever roles they are, and then once the sex starts, it's like you just throw the characters out the window and they're just having sex. So when they keep the characters in the scene, and they refer back to whatever the scene is about during the sex, that's hot to me.

Peter McCormack: You talk a lot about the stigma of the industry. We're talking about it like it's no big deal. Inside I'm melting, because I don't work in the porn industry. But no, but we're talking about this like it's no big deal. How have stigmas changed and what kind of issues are you still coming up against?

Holly Randall: Well, it's definitely changed for the better. I think that people are becoming a lot more accepting of porn. I think that the younger generation who obviously grew up watching internet porn, they're more open about it. So there's definitely a trend towards people talking about it more, just the idea that we're actually like creating porn for women and we're opening up about how women can actually enjoy porn.

Because before porn was this dirty little secret that your boyfriend or your husband hid from you and if you found him watching it, that meant that you weren't good enough and he didn't love you, because every time he masturbates, he should be fantasizing about you which is insane. So that's been a big change. Yeah so overall, it's been good, but there's definitely still a stigma and we come up across it in so many different ways. Financial, girls get their banks shut down, it's hard to get insurance, it's hard to get approved for a credit line, credit cards, as the financial industry considers us a high risk industry.

Peter McCormack: So is corporate stigma really less than social these days?

Holly Randall: I would say it's both. But the corporate one is the one that hits your pocketbook. So that's the one that hurts the most, because the social stigma, like you can find your community of people that are okay with what you're doing, but you need banks to operate.

Peter McCormack: I would say the social stigma feels like it's improved, we're in a better place than we are.

Holly Randall: Yes, I think also social media has helped.

Peter McCormack: Yes, I would say the corporate stigma feels like it's got worse, but that might be just because I'm working in the Bitcoin world. I'm hearing more and more about it, when something happens, somebody sends something to me. I saw what happened the other week with Pornhub and PayPal. Maybe I'm more aware, but it just feels like your industry has to deal with a hell of a lot of fuckery for something that is a legal industry. Let's be very clear, this is a legal industry and every time you deal with some form of censorship, my assumption is that ultimately it makes life more dangerous.

Holly Randall: Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating. Just one ironic example is, I was looking for a new podcast studio and shockingly, there's a huge vacuum of good full service podcast studios in Los Angeles, which is insane. I found one that was beautiful. It was in downtown LA, it was the top of like this skyscraper, you had this view behind you and it was absolutely gorgeous.

I contacted them and I said I'd love to come look at your studio, it looks really great. The pricing was good for me. They guy said, "absolutely. I would love that." I sent him my YouTube channel and said "here's my show, just so you have an idea of what I do and I'll come in and we'll talk about it." He gets back to me and he goes "I see you have a lot of porn stars on your show, I don't think that's going to be okay."

I was like, "excuse me?" He was like, "yeah, we don't want your podcast in our studio because it doesn't go with our brand." And I'm like, "okay, wait a minute!" I understand, because another hard thing that we deal with is trying to find locations that we can shoot porn and a lot of people, like this is LA, so there's a lot of production houses, a lot of places that people rent out for all kinds of movies.

Peter McCormack: But there's a difference there, I can understand...

Holly Randall: Totally, that what I was about to say, absolutely. I get that you don't want people having sex and cumming all over your couch. I get that. I don't even want people fucking in my house and I shoot that for a living. But I can't even come into your podcast studio and talk about it?

Also the fact that he brought this up before he even knew what my podcast was about, the fact that he saw porn stars, like they're some dirty kind of creature that are going to come in and leave like their slime all over the studio or they're going to like randomly squirt all over the microphones. Nobody gets naked on my show, we don't do anything sexual, we just talk about the industry and we talk about the stigma ironically.

Peter McCormack: From my little time learning about the industry, they're probably the cleanest people.

Holly Randall: Yes, absolutely!

Peter McCormack: Because they have to be tested.

Holly Randall: Yes, have to be tested and also just have like really great hygiene.

Peter McCormack: I'm aware of that. Okay, so that's kind of annoying because with that one, they've just made a moral judgment there that's like, "fuck you, you're porn!"

Holly Randall: Yes and what made it so frustrating for me and I actually said this to them, I said, "my podcast is actually about trying to dispel the stigma around the adult industry. I'm all about giving performers a voice and giving people a place to show the world who they really are, these are real people

This is a real job and we're not like sex crazed lunatics, we're not dangerous, we're not criminals." So the fact that this studio, which is where I was trying to deliver my message won't have me, because of the stigma that my podcast is... So I don't know, for some reason that bothered me more than the fact that my workers' comp insurance just cancelled me.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so that was where I was first pointing in your direction. I saw your tweet the other week and if you want to talk through that?

Holly Randall: Sure, so I signed up for workers' comp and it was like a new program like pay as you go. So my employees are on payroll and I signed up with the Hartford Insurance Company and they asked me what I did. I said I photography which is true and they sent me a notice that my workers' comp was cancelled effective immediately, because they looked me up and they saw that I work in the adult industry and they referenced like a bunch of links to websites, like my social media, hollyrandall.com etc and they said that they do not cover that kind of industry, so they cancelled me immediately.

Peter McCormack: It's because you're a dirty fucking porn producer. But why, but what's their reason?

Holly Randall: What they said is they do not cover my kind of industry. That's the only reason they gave me.

Peter McCormack: And we've had, as we said, Pornhub have been prevented from accepting payments from PayPal.

Holly Randall: PayPal has always been anti-porn. I know a lot of performers' accounts who were shut down because they sold something sexual through their website or whatever and PayPal found out and shut them down. We use PayPal and we are so careful about what we put in the invoices. We use acronyms because I don't want to get shut down.

Peter McCormack: But the financial censorship, it's kind of consistent through the industry, how much of this is a problem with the banks having to deal with just chargebacks because they're just fucking pissed off with it? And how much of it is to do with, again, just moral judgments?

Holly Randall: I think a lot of it has to do with moral judgments. Chargebacks are, it depends on the business that you run, but chargebacks are generally pretty low and Visa will only process cards for you for your website. If you're chargebacks are below a certain percentage, you do have to pay like an annual fee to both Visa and MasterCard, as well as obviously the monthly percentages. I don't think chargebacks are a huge problem.

I always keep them pretty low and I can't speak directly for it, because this is not what I do, but I know that they're careful about accepting payments from certain countries that have high risk of fraud and that kind of thing. One example is, so when I first started my company, I actually started my corporation, I named it Holly Randall Productions and I was trying to get a business credit card. I kept getting denied and I couldn't figure it out, because I had great credit.

So finally, I got denied again, and I think I was on the phone with the guy and I called him and I said, "look, you got to tell me like, what is going on? Why am I being denied?" He said to me, "well, what do you do?" I said, "well, I do photography" and he goes, "well, what specifically do you shoot?" I said, "I shoot people." He goes, "see, we looked you up and we see that you shoot adult content, and we don't support those kinds of high risk industries."

Peter McCormack: Again, hold on, why is it high risk?

Holly Randall: I don't know, I have no idea.

Peter McCormack: See, I find it super interesting that you can have a legal industry, but companies can legally discriminate against you. I remember that incident that turned out to be a whole load of bullshit, with the cake company who wouldn't make a cake, because they were Christians and they wouldn't make a cake for the gay couple.

It turns out it was a sting and they were going around to try and find someone. But the point being is that that was seen as terrible, "you've turned us down for making a cake, you shouldn't be doing it, you should not be discriminated against, you should make them a cake." I think they were prosecuted for it or they lost the case. So why at the same time can companies turn you away?

Holly Randall: Because there's no legislation against discriminating against porn And what politician is going to go and fight for the rights of sex workers? What politician is going to run on a campaign where they say, "you know what, it's wrong to discriminate against people in porn, it's wrong to discriminate against sex workers!"

Peter McCormack: It's not going to be a Republican.

Holly Randall: No, definitely not! I think ultimately, if you wanted to have the counter argument, one could say that people are not choosing to be gay. You're born gay, and people should not be prejudiced against because of who they are. But we chose to work in the adult industry, we chose sex work, we could have become an English teacher, we could have picked something else, but we decided to do this dirty little job. So therefore, we deserve to be discriminated against, because we're all bad people, it's a bad industry, it's bad for America, it's ruining marriages, it's destroying children and it's destroying the world.

Peter McCormack: You are the devil! You don't seem like a bad person?!

Holly Randall: I'm not, I'm a great person.

Peter McCormack: So how do you get around it? Is it just a case of you have to be sneaky?

Holly Randall: Yeah, absolutely. So I had to change the name of my corporation to a name I'm not going to mention, because I don't want people... but I had to make it something really bland that sounded nothing like anything in adult. When I apply for something, I don't say that I shoot porn, I say I'm a photographer. I've even created a fake website for my corporation, that makes it just look like I do headshots, so that people, when they look me up, they're like, "oh, boring headshots, move on."

Peter McCormack: But you always run the risk of being found out.

Holly Randall: And clearly I was.

Peter McCormack: It's a real shame because the people who are making these decisions, I'm going to run an assumption that they're also jerking off to porn.

Holly Randall: Absolutely, it's everybody's dirty little secret.

Peter McCormack: What is it? 98% of men. 2% are liars.

Holly Randall: That's a good one! Yeah absolutely, people want to consume it, but they don't want to have any association with it.

Peter McCormack: So you can figure this all out though. But as an individual working on their own, like an adult performer, is it the same problems for them? Or do you think they're going to find it harder to get around this?

Holly Randall: I don't know. I do know that for example one thing that, and we all talk, one thing you do not bank with Chase. Chase loves to shut down porn accounts.

Peter McCormack: Fuck you, Chase!

Holly Randall: I've never banked with Chase, but Chase shuts down porn accounts all the time. So like avoid that bank. I've heard all kinds of crazy stories. I've never had that happen to me, thank God, but I keep my personal bank account separate from my business bank account, completely different banks, because I'm afraid if my business account gets shut down I don't want them to connect it to my personal account.

Peter McCormack: There's an opportunity here for some kind of innovative leader, open minded bank operator right who potentially may think I don't want to support this because if it gets in the press we might lose our retail customers, but could create a separate division, completely disconnected. How big is the industry, how many billions?

Holly Randall: I don't know. People throw those numbers around.

Peter McCormack: But it's not a small industry.

Holly Randall: It's not a small industry, it's a huge industry!

Peter McCormack: I might start a bank. How much do you see your circles talk? Because what us Bitcoiners, whenever we hear of an opportunity we're just fucking on it. But we're always looking for like where can Bitcoin be a solution? Because it's censorship resistant money, so sex, drugs, criminals. Is there much of talk in these circles about using Bitcoin or I'll allow you to say cryptocurrency and then if you say them I'll say they're shit, but is there any talk about this?

Holly Randall: I think I've heard some here and there, but I think the idea of cryptocurrency or Bitcoin is so beyond any of our grasps. I am not like a financial person by any means. So if you come to me and you're like, "you should run your company through Bitcoin", I'd be like, "I don't know what that means."

Peter McCormack: We haven't made it easy enough, because what it means is, I think it's more for the acceptance of money. If you wanted to, I don't know, say you had a favorite porn performer, but you're married and you don't want in on the credit card bill, and you wanted to I don't know, buy a movie or one of her old pairs of socks, you could pay in Bitcoin and it can just go straight to her and that's not going to be traceable.

I think that would potentially be useful, but I think somebody perhaps from our side, needs to spend a bit more time with people from your side and create tools that are easy to use and that are helpful.

Holly Randall: There you go, you just made yourself $1 million! Because people want to buy porn and they want to spend money on it. But yeah you're right, a lot of them they don't want it on their credit card bill and that's why we're very careful. On every adult website you go to, you see discreet billing, and we're going to make sure that we come up, we're going to put some name on your credit card bill that's not going to sound like a porn company.

Peter McCormack: I'm not going to do this. I say I would, but I'm just going to hand the idea out to somebody else. But one of the other things I've tried to explore and I haven't really found a great or solid answer for yet, is that we have a bunch of people watching porn and we assume people watch more porn per minute, more minutes of porn a month than they watch Hollywood movies.

But I wonder whether they offer the same amount of respect or thought for the people making the films as say a Hollywood film. So the one I always think about, are things like, I just watched this documentary about Harvey Weinstein who is obviously a piece of shit, go fuck yourself, you're an asshole, he got immediately ostracized from the industry.

I've read about things in porn, and it feels like it's different. It feels like I've read about certain people who I'm not going to names or I can do, it doesn't matter, but there have been accusations that feel very similar to a Harvey Weinstein accusation, but not the same similar treatment.

Like Harvey Weinstein is done for the rest of his life, whereas some actors who maybe have taken things too far, are still in the industry. So is that a problem with the industry? Is that a problem with consent? Is that a problem with production houses? Where does that all lie, the big messy...

Holly Randall: That's such a complicated question because I know exactly what you're talking about and this has fallen on male producers, it's fallen on male actors. This call out culture is great in some ways, and social media has been really useful in the ways that it has finally brought to light some terrible practices that have happened on set that you've heard about, but nothing ever happened with them.

But there's also been the court of social media and then there's the court, and there's been some producers that have had accusations made against them that turned out to possibly not be true, but it's unsure. There are some male performers that have had accusations made against them that again, there's certain male performers, I'm probably thinking about the same person, but I'm not going to say his name, that some girls have had issues working with, right?

They've said they were too rough, they did not stop when they asked them to stop, or they felt uncomfortable asking them to stop. Then there are some girls who absolutely love that male performer and they want to work with him all the time. So I think the issue really, I think it kind of always falls on the producer. You need to make sure that you're providing a set that is safe, that is openly communicative, and that the model feels that she has a voice. I've always advocated that.

I'm a woman, I was taught by a woman who also shot porn and our main criteria has always been that the model feels safe, that she feels sexy, and that she has a good time. So I have yet to come across a girl who has said that she's ever been on my set and not felt that she could say something, and has not felt that she could call "cut" or that she was in a situation that was, I don't want to say dangerous, but that crossed her boundaries.

Peter McCormack: Well with essentially the controlling the scene, does the man tend to have control in the scene because they are the man? I'm not sure how to articulate this, but-

Holly Randall: Are you talking about the male performer? It depends on the scene.

Peter McCormack: But can you have a scene where it's the same for a male, that it can be going too far for him?

Holly Randall: Where the woman pushes him too far? I suppose so.

Peter McCormack: It doesn't feel like it.

Holly Randall: Well, if you're talking about maybe like a femme, dom scene, I think that ultimately, a lot of times it comes down to penetration.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Am I in pain? Stop fucking hurting me, I need a break or this is too much.

Holly Randall: Right, exactly. So I do think that all of these things that have come to light lately have been really helpful in basically making the industry wake up and make us all realize that we really need to talk about consent more on set. Like I said, I've always tried to provide a safe set for people. I've never had a problem where a girl... I don't shoot really hardcore stuff anyways, my stuff tends to be more romantic, in tends to be more sensual anyhow.

I'm not trying to shoot really hardcore scenes where the guy like slaps her in the face, chokes her and stuff like that. But I am so much more aware of how there needs to be discussion about boundaries on set before we shoot. I used to never do that, but I would watch the scene and obviously if it felt like the girl was uncomfortable, I would stop and be like, "are you okay?" I think also too, because I'm a woman, and because of the kind of environment that you create...

Peter McCormack: You're in tune.

Holly Randall: I think I'm in tune and I think the girl feels like she has the power to call "cut" or to speak up. Almost every time that a girl has said that she felt like she couldn't say anything, that she had to continue the scene, because she felt pressured to even though she didn't want to, almost every single time there hasn't been another female on set and they've been surrounded by men.

Peter McCormack: Yeah and I've also heard that some girls felt pressured to do scenes, because if they don't do it, they might not get paid or they get fucked around by the producer.

Holly Randall: Or their agent will yell at them. There's also a lot of cases of bad agents pushing girls into doing scenes that they're not ready for or scenes that they don't want to do and that they don't get the right information before the scene. I know girls who've shown to set, they knew they're just there to do a boy girl scene and it's like a gang bang. You need to tell them how many dicks are going to be there, it's important. The dick quota needs to be...

Peter McCormack: I would want to know that!

Holly Randall: One needs to know that, one needs to be prepared for that and I think a lot of people are like this now. We're very conscious about making sure that the performers discuss boundaries and consent, because sometimes boundaries aren't even necessarily about if it's going to hurt you, or if it's going to be uncomfortable, sometimes it's about like what might be triggering for a performer.

I know performers who can't do anal, because they had a bad experience with anal when they were younger and it triggers back those memories and that's somewhere they don't want to go. So sometimes it's that, it's whatever it is, it's important to me, and it's become more important to my clients as well, that all of this is very more respectfully done.

Peter McCormack: How much of this comes down to the financial pressures of the industry or are these just fucking shitty people?

Holly Randall: I think now it's more shitty people. I think back when everybody was trying to shoot really hardcore scenes, because that was the thing, like back at the beginning of the internet like we were talking about, and girls were feeling pressured to have to shoot really hardcore scenes in order to make money, in order to get hired, sometimes if girls and this is really sad, but sometimes if a girl's not that good looking...

Peter McCormack: She's got to go further?

Holly Randall: She might have to go further and do more hardcore stuff that she wouldn't necessarily want to do. Where like a beautiful girl with like a perfect body can probably just stick to like the more soft core scenes.

Peter McCormack: Facts of life.

Holly Randall: But now, also too, because models have so much more power with the advent of these new platforms of personal content monetization, where models can sell their own content, where they can cam, where they can sell their Snapchat directly to their fans, all that kind of stuff. Now models are making money independently, so they have a lot more control over their careers, because they're not so financially dependent on booking these jobs. So that I think has also made a huge difference.

Peter McCormack: I would have thought though, shitty studios and shitty producers and shitty agents wouldn't last because everyone knows each other and if somebody's having a bad time, dump that fucking agent, go to this guy, he's brilliant. He looks after all this... Not just him, but her.

Holly Randall: The thing is with agents too, is agents often get these young, naive girls to sign these contracts that they don't read. They don't realize, "five years? Have me sign a contract for five years, you think I'm going to last that long? That's so great!" They don't think about it. Then when they're unhappy with their agent, and they want to get out, these agents threaten them with lawsuits and that kind of thing and these women are not educated in law in any way. They don't have a lawyer who they can talk to and they get scared, they get scared to fight them.

Peter McCormack: So it sounds like there's still unsolved problems though, because you're saying, like it's a discussion, but it's unsolved.

Holly Randall: I think it's gotten a lot better. There used to be a lot more shitty agents than there are now. There are some really wonderful agents now, but these things definitely come up and the adult industry is actively trying to provide support and resources, where girls can go and get the information that they need, like the FSC, the Free Speech Coalition, the Inspire Program.

I had Lotus Lain on my podcast and she talked about the programs that they're trying to provide to help performers, such as legal advice. I think that's one thing that a lot of performers need and legal advice is expensive. So finding somebody who can give you advice for free or maybe at some kind of discounted rate, I think is really, really helpful because knowledge is power.

Peter McCormack: Is there like a centralized body for the industry?

Holly Randall: Free Speech Coalition would be it, the closest thing and they're trying to really build out their program, but they also need more money. They're terribly underfunded and there's so much that we need to do to make the adult industry better. It's a work in progress, for sure.

Peter McCormack: Sounds like you just need more women leadership positions.

Holly Randall: Which is happening. If you look at the AVN awards, the nominees, the majority of the top director nominees are women.

Peter McCormack: That's in Vegas in January, I'm going to try and go.

Holly Randall: You should go.

Peter McCormack: I want to go.

Holly Randall: It'll be fun. I'll be actually doing my podcast live from there, from the Adult Time booth.

Peter McCormack: There's an Adult Time booth?

Holly Randall: Adult Time is the new Netflix of porn.

Peter McCormack: What?

Holly Randall: You haven't heard of Adult Time?

Peter McCormack: No, I don't really watch this dirty shit.

Holly Randall: Adult Time, the company is Gamma. And there's always been a talk about needing one like centralized platform for porn, because a lot of people don't want to join a bunch of different websites to get what they want, which is why the tube sites have become so popular.

Peter McCormack: Like Spotify and Netflix, they've killed it.

Holly Randall: Right, absolutely. So Adult Time is basically the Netflix of porn and they've been signing up a lot of studios. My podcast is one of them. I have my own channel on there and they pay you basically per view, and you join Adult Time and you get access to all this content from all these different studios. So far, it looks like it's working. It was just a big gamble a lot of people were not willing to take for a long time because if you failed, it would be a spectacular failure, because it's a lot of money invested in them.

Peter McCormack: It's a beautiful looking website.

Holly Randall: Absolutely, Gamma is like one of the big... so there's like the big companies now are, obviously MindGeek, who owns Pornhub, Brazzers, Digital Playground and Twistys, who I shoot for and then there's Gamma and Gamma ironically, they're both based in Montreal.

Peter McCormack: I was going to say, I don't think they could operate without banking for that kind of size of operation.

Holly Randall: Yeah, well MindGeek was able to, I don't know if you've listened to "The Butterfly Effect" by Jon Ronson?

Peter McCormack: I think I might have.

Holly Randall: That was specifically about tube sites and about how it changed the industry and the butterfly effect that free porn has had on society. If you haven't listen to it, you need to, it's so good.

Peter McCormack: I'm trying to think, so Gustavo from XBIZ, I think he pointed me in that direction. It sounds familiar, but I think I might not have listened to it yet.

Holly Randall: Yeah, it's really good.

Peter McCormack: I'll check that one out. Well, that's positive for the industry and that makes the industry seem more professional. That's obviously a positive for everyone, especially if they're paying you per view. You just need a fuck load of people to sign up.

Holly Randall: Right!

Peter McCormack: All right, so cool, we've done very well here. I haven't gone too red I don't think. What else in the industry is important for you? What have I not covered and not asked that you think... Because this is going to go to an audience of people who probably consume porn, but don't talk about it and this is an opportunity to talk to them about things that you want them to be aware of about the industry or things they should care about.

Holly Randall: Well again, not to keep plugging my podcast, but...

Peter McCormack: I'm definitely checking out your podcast.

Holly Randall: The reason that I did it was because I wanted to give the industry a voice that wasn't skewed by the biased perspective that mainstream media has. So often when the adult industry is covered in some documentary or some news channel, there's always that skewed bias coming from like a porn is bad angle.

I wanted to come from an insider's perspective and talk to people in the industry about what their life in the industry is really like, the good and the bad. I think as you know with how honest I've been about the issues that we face, it's not perfect by any means.

Peter McCormack: There are no perfect industries.

Holly Randall: No, of course not. I think that at least we're very openly aware of our shortcomings, and I feel like we're really trying to fix them. So I really want people to know that these are real people and it's so interesting because whenever I...Like for example, my crew almost every single one of my assistants, my DP, my cameramen, they don't work in porn, they work in mainstream and they work in porn only for me.

Their idea of what porn was like before they came to work for me and now what they know it to be, is drastically different, because the people in it are generally really great. Porn performers are awesome people, they're funny, they're intelligent, they're irreverent. Jon Ronson actually, he came on my show, and he was talking about his initial biases. He's an award winning journalist before he did "The Butterfly Effect" and met so many people in it.

It kind of reminds me of this motley of characters from like an off Broadway show, which I thought was like a great way to describe us, but we're all different kinds of people and we're all... Our jobs are strange and we're all unique in our own way, but there's some really great characters. I also think there's a lot of like deep camaraderie between performers in the industry because we are the black sheep of the entertainment industry and because we face so much outside stigma, there's a real love and caring between all of us. It's like a little fucked up family and it's really quite charming.

Peter McCormack: It's a really beautiful way to end things.

Holly Randall: Thank you!

Peter McCormack: I've really enjoyed getting to know some people in the industry and learning about it. A pleasure to meet you as well.

Holly Randall: Thank you!

Peter McCormack: And thank you for giving me your time because I know how busy you guys are, but you should let people know exactly how and where to find you.

Holly Randall: Well, you can find me on Instagram and on Twitter just @HollyRandall. Also, my podcast is Holly Randall Unfiltered, so you can just find that on any podcast platform or you can go to my website, hollyrandallunfiltered.com. I have a YouTube channel and I have a Facebook group. Also too, just randomly I was in a documentary directed by Rashida Jones that's streaming on Netflix called Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On.

It's part of a six part anthology series. My episode is episode one, Women On Top and it covers myself and the other female director that I mentioned, Erica Lust, who's like a feminist porn director out of Barcelona who is doing some really great stuff. They also interview my mom, so it's a great way to see like where I come from and the place that I came from.

Peter McCormack: I saw that on Netflix last night. I didn't watch it, it just popped up when I was flicking for something to see. All right, that will be what I'll be watching tonight. Well, listen, look, thank you so much.

Holly Randall: You're so welcome.

Peter McCormack: I really enjoyed this!

Holly Randall: Thank you!

Peter McCormack: I can't wait to get this out to the Bitcoiners. And look, I wish you the best and I hope we'll do this again sometime.

Holly Randall: Yeah, me too.

Peter McCormack: Take care!

Holly Randall: You too!