KEVIN Blatt has seen more naked celebrities than you could ever dream of — and they’ve made him very, very rich.
The university dropout and former salesman has built an empire on a cottage industry that exists in the grey space between everyday contract law, and extortion.
His official title, as it appears on his Twitter profile, is “The world’s only celebrity sex tape broker, and Scandal Specialist”.
Hulk Hogan Testifies in $100 Million Suit Against Gawker2:03
Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan took the stand in a $100 million lawsuit against Gawker Media alleging his privacy was violated when the digital media company published an excerpt of secretly recorded sex tape. Photo: AP
Hulk Hogan Testifies in $100 Million Suit Against Gawker
Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan took the stand in a $100 million lawsuit against Gawker Media alleging his privacy was violated when the digital media company published an excerpt of secretly recorded sex tape. Photo: APParis Hilton and former boyfriend Rick Salomon in a scene from their 45-minute sex tape.
Before she got her big break in The Mask, Cameron Diaz did some raunchy photo shoots.
Kim Kardashian “wanted to be bigger than Paris Hilton”. Picture: Tracey Nearmy
Pamela Anderson Admits She?s Never Seen Infamous Sex Tape With Tommy Lee1:05
You know when a Celeb stops by Watch what happens live with Any Cohen, all bets are off, and boy did Pamela Anderson get candid last night!
Pamela Anderson Admits She?s Never Seen Infamous Sex Tape With Tommy Lee
You know when a Celeb stops by Watch what happens live with Any Cohen, all bets are off, and boy did Pamela Anderson get candid last night!Pam and Tommy got in first, but Paris and Kim made sex tapes mainstream. Picture: Kevork Djansezian
So renowned is Blatt that, last week, he was called as an expert witness in Hulk Hogan’s $US100 million lawsuit against news site Gawker, for publishing a tape of Hogan having sex with Heather Cole — then the wife of his best friend, radio shock jock Bubba “the Love Sponge” Clem.
For the record, Blatt’s view is that “nobody, nobody wants to see a male sex tape, no matter who it is”, with the possible exception of Brad Pitt or George Clooney.
But how does the market for celebrity sex tapes work, and how on earth did Blatt end up in it?
It all started in 2003, when a little-known heiress named Paris Hilton filmed herself getting cosy with then-boyfriend Rick Salomon.
Blatt happened upon the tape when he met a roommate of Salomon’s called Donald Thrasher.
Before he knew it, he was embroiled in a $US10 million lawsuit after the footage appeared on a website called sexbrat.com.
After quite a bit of legal wrangling, Blatt said, “We finally got the clearance to put it out with Red Light District video, and we marketed a tape called One Night in Paris — which later became the biggest selling adult tape of all time.”
About a year later, Blatt was contacted about salacious pictures showing Cameron Diaz nude from the waist up, in a bondage-themed shoot she’d done as a 19-year-old.
In what would prove to be the ultimate lesson in what not to do, the photographer spruiking the images was convicted of trying to blackmail Diaz for $US3 million ($A3.94 million).
Blatt provided evidence that helped investigators track down 43-year-old John Rutter, who was sent to jail for four years.
‘SHE WANTS TO BE BIGGER THAN PARIS HILTON’
Meanwhile, the biggest reality television star the world has ever seen was about to earn her place in the spotlight.
Kim Kardashian, then Paris Hilton’s humble sidekick, made a sex tape with her then-boyfriend, rapper Ray J, who Blatt said was the one to approach him.
“Nobody had ever heard of her, and I said, ‘Look is she behind this, because if she’s not I can’t put out a tape,’” he said.
“And he said, ‘Yes, she’s behind it, she wants to market herself, she wants to be bigger than Paris Hilton.’ And I said, ‘Well as long as she’s down with it, let’s do it.’ Ray J then left my meeting and went straight to Vivid and did a deal with Steven (Hirsch) behind my back, and the rest is history.”
Porn baron Hirsch, who famously offered Pippa Middleton £3 million to take part in an adult movie in 2011, told a different story.
“Kim really didn’t want the tape to be released and made public,” Hirsch told Business Insider.
“But as the tape began leaking onto the internet in small pieces, she decided to come around.”
He said Kardashian had received “several million dollars” in the deal, adding that it “makes sense that she would want to share in the revenue from the tape”.
Blatt reckons it was more like $20 million, while he’s been told Hilton received more than $US15 million — and, he said, “they still get cheques.”
He said tales of stolen tapes and missing laptops were part and parcel of promoting a sex tape, ensuring it would get plenty of media attention leading up to its release.
So how much does an “accidental pornographer” slash sex tape broker take home?
While Blatt declined to say how much he’d earned over the years, his 15 per cent finder’s fee applies on deals that can be worth from $US500,000 to $US1 million.
“It’s all in a day’s work,” he said.
A lot of time was spent waiting around while lawyers negotiated back and forth, as the vast majority of tapes that crossed his desk would never see the light of day.
In an era of free online pornography, the real money is not in having the videos published, but keeping them under wraps.
Blatt has made dozens of sex tapes disappear, through a negotiation process that treads carefully around Californian law, which requires both parties depicted in a sex tape to consent to its publication.
“You wouldn’t believe the stuff that I see, of supposedly straight actors that are engaged in gay sex acts, or there’s guys that you see on the big screen everyday, these big burly masculine guys, and they’re into feet, or they’re into dressing up like women, or they’re into transsexuals,” Blatt said.
“It’s incredibly lucrative for me, and for the people that bring me these types of tapes.”
HOW IT WORKS
Blatt will be approached by someone who has a 50 per cent copyright claim over a sex tape — that is, they filmed it and/or co-starred in it — and approach the celebrity featured in the tape.
Communicating through lawyers, the message will be: “Hey, we have 50 per cent copyright ownership of this tape and we know that we can’t put this out legally. However, we can sell it to a private owner and what they do with it from that point forward is up to them. But I am your front line of defence here and I could make sure I get this to go away.”
“And of course there’s legal verbiage, you know, there’s the right way of going around it,” Blatt said.
“And that’s why I use lawyers, because primarily, I’m not a lawyer and if I ask for money from any lawyer to make a sex tape go away, that’s called extortion.”
While he admits to operating in a “grey area” of the law, Blatt is comfortable with the role he plays and says he sticks to his personal code of ethics.
“For me, it’s simply: does the celebrity in question have a lot of money, would their career be really hurt by the existence of a tape coming out? That’s something you’ve got to look into.”
As for those who dream of following in Hilton and Kardashian’s footsteps, Blatt warned that the days of multi-million dollar publication deals were over.
“It’s kind of like the perfect storm,” he said.
“You can’t really recreate a catastrophic hurricane or tornado. Back when Paris Hilton’s tape came out, that was just the right storm conditions. People were buying DVDs, people were buying memberships online. People were still enthralled with the idea of a celebrity making a sex tape.
“I think what happened after Kim Kardashian was so many people started flocking to the sex tape that it became almost a more homogenised, cock-and-bull story with these people that owned these adult companies — they’ve got to come up with different stories to sell the sizzle with the steak.”
And with every young reality starlet holding a smartphone in their hands, there’s just nothing all that shocking about a sex tape anymore.
Originally published as Life as a celebrity sex tape broker
