A star is porn: father doing well

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Don't look at that," says Steve Crow. "That's hard porn."

Then he shrugs and says: "Well, we are a porn company."

What we are not looking at is a video being dubbed from a master tape in the editing suite at Crow's Ellerslie offices, the home of his Vixen Direct company.

When I'd phoned him about an interview, and asked - because we like to know these things for photographic purposes - what his offices were like, he was at pains to explain that they were nice and modern and upmarket.

Later, in telling a story about being invited to a retirement do at the Auckland Club, he was keen to tell me that his accountancy firm is "a major accountancy firm, one of the top seven".

He does not particularly relish being called a pornographer. At parties he tells people he "runs an import/export business. Which I do."

The porn industry does not, apparently, encourage a sense of irony. In an industry not known for its use of euphemism, Crow likes to say that he is in the "adult entertainment business".

It is not that he is embarrassed about being a pornographer. "That is something I am not." It is just that when he goes to a bit of a do, and people find out what he does for a living, "suddenly I've got half a dozen people around me and all they want to do is talk about porn all night. And that's the last thing I want to talk about."

Talking about porn is about all he has been doing lately. Crow is the man who is making a film featuring the pregnant wanna-be porn star "Nikki", and who - to a chorus of public disgust, and the profit of lawyers - wants to film a scene showing Nikki in labour.

It has gone all the way to the High Court where Crow won the right to film the labour. Now Health Minister Annette King (Crow calls her "her lordship") has said: "Not in a public hospital, you won't."

Crow is now trying to find a private facility prepared to admit Nikki.

He may well be the most despised man in the country. Putting that to him brings another shrug.

"Oh, I probably am. I have absolutely zero regard for what people think of me. I sleep well at night. I have a clear conscience. I'm not breaking any laws."

Surprise. Crow joined the Libertarianz two weeks ago.

"I like what they stand for. Basically it is the right of the individual versus the right of the state to tell us what to do."

His arguments for the right of Vixen to make the film and the right of Nikki to star in the film are well rehearsed - and have been well publicised.

This is "no different than a woman who has a couple of relatives in there" filming a birth.

He is, he admits, combative. He does not like being told what he can and cannot do. He reserves for "bureaucracy" the sort of contempt that the wider population reserves for, well, pornographers.

What does a pornographer look like? This one looks like a bloke who comes to work in "denim shirts and no tie". His former life as a merchant banker cured him of suits for life.

He's got a little hoop earring in his left ear and two gold and diamond rings on his right hand. They are the sort of rings worn by blokes on the telly playing characters in shows about the import/export business.

He looks affluent, in a casual sort of way. He's beefy, in the way that men who have been very fit for much of their life are beefy. Now, at 45, his left knee's pretty well stuffed - he's had the bends twice. That's the legacy of having been, pre-merchant banking, a deep-sea diver.

Porn didn't pay for the jewellery. Oil rigs did. Crow has a MSc in marine biology and an MBA. He worked for oil companies until the late 80s.

"Instead of being a marine biologist who was looking at the effect of oil rigs on the marine life, I looked at it the other way around."

Which is typically contrary. You don't have to spend much time with Crow to get the impression that he's a guy who gets a kick out of doing the unexpected.H E got into the adult entertainment business when he took a share in a brothel in lieu of an unpaid debt.

In his, yes, nice and modern office, his degrees hang just along from signed ("Just for you, Steve") photos of women with large breasts and small clothes.

He hardly notices them. Stand in the editing suite for a few minutes, watch those videos and you begin to understand why. The amateur act we're watching is grindingly inept.

"It's just business," says Crow.

Amateur porn is big business. He doesn't pretend to understand why people want to watch what they want to watch.

Crow has "never watched porn".

"That's the funny thing about porn, isn't it?" I say. "Nobody watches it, but there's all this money in it."

Well, he hasn't and doesn't now. He and his staff fast-forward the sex scenes and hit "play" only to check the dialogue. They alternate photo shoot weekends because "we don't want to go to them".

Vixen is a "multi-million dollar" business. The bulk of the money comes from the distribution of overseas porn, so why bother making it here at all?

"There is a demand for exotic locations," Crow says.

Earlier, he showed us his warehouse, a large space with concrete floors and a roller door. The shelves roll back to create space for sets and photo shoots.

I find this vastly amusing: "Exotic locations as in your garage?"

"No, no, no," Crow explains a bit huffily, the exotic locations are spliced in later. "You can't have a sex scene in the middle of the harbour bridge."

Unless your idea of exotic is a labour suite, the Nikki film doesn't have exotic locations. So why is a woman in labour sexy?

"It's not. It's a non-sex scene in a porn video."

Why don't they just simulate it. Nobody could do a worse job of pretending to be in labour than Maxine did recently on Coro St.

"Because I don't have to. It's a bloody sight easier than simulating it."

Ahem, not for the woman involved, it's not. "It is," he says, sighing, "the real thing. It's more realistic."

I don't pretend to understand. He's the porn man; he understands the market. That market in New Zealand is worth between $20 million and $30 million a year. He won't tell me how much Vixen turns over: "It's a private business."

Here is the argument that doesn't stack up. Let's not forget he made the first approach to a documentary team. The publicity has been "a double-edged sword - we've lost clients".

But if Crow argues that his - and Nikki's - desire to make this film is private business, there is only one answer: Not any more it isn't.