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Al Borda – porn king of La Costa

A dropout from Torrey Pines High

The mob that built La Costa scattered long ago. Moe Dalitz, the fixer out of Cleveland via Las Vegas who tapped Jimmy Hoffa's Teamsters Central States Pension Fund for $57 million to build the place, died peacefully in 1989. John Duffy, the San Diego County Sheriff who looked the other way when the mob reputedly ran hookers and high-stakes poker out of the posh La Costa Clubhouse, died semi-mysteriously while on a business trip to Central America in 1993. Hoffa dropped from sight in 1975 after going off in a limo to meet some "friends." Years before, Allard Roen, one of Dalitz's partners in La Costa, was interviewed by a reporter from the San Diego Evening Tribune. "Jimmy doesn't drink, smoke, or chase around after women," Roen said. "People think Teamsters money is bad because it is associated by some with gangsters. That is not true. They have access to huge sums of money. It's only logical for them to invest." Roen's statement, of course, came years before Hoffa's disappearance, the hit on Teamsters lawyer Allen Dorfman, and the testimony of La Jolla financier Allen Glick and mafia hit man Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno forever linked the resort to organized crime.

But that was then. The resort knocked away the mud of its mobbed-up beginnings when original partners sold out in 1987 to a Japanese outfit from Osaka called Sports Shinko. Today, the golf course where Jimmy Hoffa, Frank Fitzsimmons, Jackie Presser, and Richard Nixon, among many others, once discussed politics, kickbacks, prostitutes, casino skims, and mob hits is now just another golden suburb, an upscale neighborhood in the city of Carlsbad. Oversized houses with eight-car garages march along the ridgelines overlooking the obscenely green golf course, where the most notorious player recently sighted was said to be O.J. Simpson. Private pools built right up to the fairway are full of frolicking children watched over by Mexican nannies and soccer moms who drive family-style four-wheel drive trucks made by Mercedes-Benz. Blonde teenagers zip around in new Miatas and shiny Corvettes. How much more wholesome can you get?

Still, lurking in its velvet-lined nooks and crannies, La Costa holds some secrets. Take Al Borda. A dropout from Torrey Pines High, Borda says he's one of the most successful producers of pornographic movies in the country, maybe even the world. In the business of porn for more than four years, Borda runs his enterprise out of a regulation-size office with a video editing suite in a small industrial park in Vista, just across the driveway from an outfit that rents baseball batting cages by the hour. The stockroom in back is lined with glossy video boxes with graphic photos of nude women featuring titles like Sluthunt, Butthunt, and Gothic Whore. When Borda was appearing in his own videos, he made one called Because I Can.

Originally from Philadelphia, where he says his father is a jeweler, Borda says he was dealing in luxury cars by the age of 16. Besides videos, he dabbles in the motocross racing circuit and is starting up Skin Industries, which sells decals of a female head sticking out a very long tongue, which may be applied to bikes. Borda is proud of his business and his accomplishments. Recently he agreed to be interviewed.

Matt Potter: How old are you.

Al Borda: I'm 26.

MP: So when did you get out here?

AB: I've kind of been back and forth since I was young. I went to school out here, I went to Torrey Pines High.

MP: Did you come from New York?

AB: I guess I'm from Philadelphia, and I kind of stumbled upon the adult- video business. Actually, somebody wanted to borrow money, a small amount of money, and that's how I got started in the whole deal.

MP: Somebody wanted to borrow money to make a porno film?

AB: Yeah. I invested, you know, $5000 or so.

MP: Like in a film business?

AB: Yeah, in a video. They wanted investors for a video.

MP: Okay, so you're looking around for your money, you loaned some money for the video, and you're trying to get it back? So then what?

AB: I met different distributors. They told me the money was coming soon and when was my next movie coming out. At that point I really didn't do anything except loan somebody some money. I had no film experience or manufacturing.

MP: You'd never done any video or anything like that?

AB: No, never took any classes in school or nothing.

MP: So at that point, what? A light bulb went off and you said, "Hey, I'm going to make my own adult films"?

AB: Yeah, basically. I figured if this jerk could do it, I could do it.

MP: What was your first venture then?

AB: I basically made a movie and sold it to a company called... Well, I just made the movie and sold it. I did that five or six times.

MP: What kind of movies were they?

AB: They were just adult... I think my first five or six movies were all-lesbian, all-girl movies.

MP: Any reason why you made that choice?

AB: I as the viewer never really wanted to see any guys; I was pretty content just seeing girls.

MP: So you just sort of went with your own tastes.

AB: Yeah, I went with my own tastes. My first five or six movies had all blondes with blue eyes. And then people kept telling me I had to make movies for other people; I can't just make movies for myself.

MP: So how did you cast the next movie?

AB: I called an agent they have up in L.A. who everyone uses. I just went with that. I met one girl and she knew everybody who could be in it; just did it that way.

MP: What were the budgets?

AB: Well, I was just an investor. I think the budgets were $10,000 or $12,000.

MP: How did you bankroll that? From your own pocket?

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AB: Yeah, or borrow money from people.

MP: How do you sell them?

AB: What I did at that point was just get a magazine and sold the entire video as one piece to different distributors. After about six months I decided to start my own distribution. I basically met a salesperson and got his list of all the stores and all the other distributors. Out of my garage, found a duplicator and a printer and printed the boxes, duplicated the tape, and sold the pieces to each distributor out of a "warehouse." I'd pack them at night, and in the morning the UPS guy would come at 10:00. I'd let him in my garage and give him all the boxes. During the afternoon I would try to get together the funds to make another movie or sell more pieces. I went from that to about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, I was probably at the high point of my career. We had about 25 employees and manufacturing facilities and so on.

MP: What happened since then?

AB: About two years ago I got charged in a lawsuit, a copyright-infringement lawsuit. I stopped working for maybe eight or nine months. I was in limbo and moved to L.A.; I had just moved to L.A. when the lawsuit happened. I sold my company at that point -- all the assets, all the videos, all the boxes and everything -- and just continued producing and directing movies for whatever company would want a product from me.

MP: So all the stuff that you'd done, at that point you decided you'd better sell and liquidate?

AB: Right.

MP: What kind of infringement was it?

AB: They're saying it's a copyright infringement, a trademark infringement, dilution, stuff like that.

MP: Were you using somebody's name?

AB: It was Oreo -- O-R-E-O. I made a movie called Whoreo. They're saying between the name and the pattern of how we designed the box cover, I guess they're saying it's similar to the cookie packaging.

MP: So they sued you?

AB: Yep.

MP: What happened?

AB: It's actually ongoing. It's been almost three years now. The judge keeps postponing the case. He's postponed it two years now. We were supposed to have [a hearing] in May 1997, May 1998; now they've pushed it back to September 1998.

MP: Who makes Oreos?

AB: Nabisco.

MP: Nabisco. So they're suing you?

AB: Yeah. RJR, the tobacco company.

MP: You don't smoke, I guess?

AB: No, I'm a diabetic. Don't even eat the cookies.

MP: So, in response to the lawsuit, you sold the company?

AB: Yeah, I was going to need the money. Legal expenses are outrageous. Combined I think we're over $100,000. On two videos, we made $3000 or $4000 or something.

MP: Can you tell me what you were grossing back then, before you sold out?

AB: That part I don't know. I know I have a pretty comfortable lifestyle, but you know there are accountants and so forth, and I don't handle any of that stuff. Especially nowadays I don't. We have in-house counsel, attorneys, and cpas. Nowadays, my duties have been less, and I'm basically producer and director.

MP: In other words, this is the same company you had and then you sold it. Now you're working for it?

AB: Yes, I sold the company to some investors out of Ireland, and they agreed to employ me.

MP: Irish investors?

AB: Yeah, their company's based in Ireland.

MP: What's it called?

AB: The Irish corporation? It's called "10471."

MP: That's the name of the corporation? Before you sold it, what were you grossing? Do you know that?

AB: No, but more than most people. Especially more than most people my age.

MP: Is the company now growing back to what it had been before the lawsuit?

AB: Yeah, I mean the problem is so many companies have started coming out now that the market's flooded. When I came into the business there were about 2200 movies put out that year. I think last year there were almost 9000 movies put out, about 185 movies a week put out.

MP: No kidding? Since it's so cheap to do?

AB: It's cheap and everyone thinks they can do it. The people who are getting the last laughs, though, are the video stores and the distributors who are buying the tapes from these manufacturers. The manufacturers go out of business, they don't have to pay anybody. You know, if you're not big enough in this industry, you just can't collect your money that you need to collect from different distributors.

MP: Are you nine-to-five now, or do you put in long hours?

AB: I probably work four days a month, and they're usually up in L.A., and they're long hours, probably 18 to 20 hours. That's the actual production shooting. All I do now is produce and direct. I mean, if somebody has a question or something, I can help them out, but I don't pay the bills or any of that stuff anymore.

MP: What kind of movies do you make now?

AB: Now we do two lesbian, one boy/girl, and a gang bang.

MP: In one picture?

AB: No, there's four different shows.

MP: And so, like a typical day, you would go up there and you'd do all three in a day?

AB: No, I do four in four days. It takes me one day to shoot each one.

MP: Do you do it on a set or in a house?

AB: Usually on location. They call them one-day wonders.

MP: Is that the average for the business now?

AB: Some movies may take three or four days, if they shoot them on film or whatever, if they have a lot of dialogue. My movies have no dialogue; mine are action.

MP: Do you arrange for all the casting and stuff, or do you just show up and direct?

AB: Sometimes I'll put my input in, but we have production managers that do all that, pick the girls, and the girls know who they want to work with, who the guys want to work with, and what the rate is. I pretty much give a budget to my production manager. He knows my style; he knows what kind of girls I want, what kind of guys I want, so he'll handle all that.

MP: Does he arrange for all of the equipment, the cameraman, all that stuff?

AB: Yeah. I just basically show up on the set and tell them how to fuck.

MP: Okay. Now does he work out of here?

AB: He works out of L.A.

MP: You don't want to go back to all that other business stuff; you just want to be the creative guy?

AB: No, I'm pretty much semi-retired at this point. I think four days a month is pretty much retired.

MP: Isn't that kind of young to retire? Do you have other plans?

AB: How can I put this? I do other things to make money. I guess I'm pretty creative.

MP: You have other business ventures?

AB: Yeah. It keeps us busy.

MP: Like what?

AB: I'm actually interested in the whole motocross business, dirt-bike racing. I follow that and go to the races, have some ideas. That might pop up again somewhere. I've worked so hard over the last five years. I used to start seven or eight o'clock in the morning and work until one or two o'clock in the morning every day. I worked Christmas, New Year's...so I'm just kind of taking a break for a while. At one point I did everything from production to design to acting to the box covers, graphic arts, promotion. Now I'm just kind of relaxing.

MP: Do you live in a big mansion?

AB: No, I have a modest home. I mean, my car is my home. I do okay, better than most. I read a report in Forbes that said only one percent of Americans make over $1 million a year. I definitely make more than most people.

MP: Do you make over $1 million?

AB: I make more than most people. Taxes kill us, you know? If you think about it, if you make a million dollars, by the time you're done living, between rent, food, and taxes, it costs you $700,000 probably. The more money you make... I can put it this way: I remember when I first got into the business I was probably making $50, $60, or $70,000 a year. I was probably spending $100,000 a year. I had a new Mercedes, new Rolexes, renting a big house. That was fun and exciting. I wanted to be a big entrepreneur, big businessman, big actor, or whatever I thought I was.

Then when you start making a lot of money, you start cutting down on your expenses. You start getting rid of your cars, you start eating at home more. The more money you make, the cheaper you get. The point is, you don't need to impress anybody anymore. You've made the money; the money's sitting in the bank or you're investing it here and there. I guess I'm at the point to where I'm a lot more frugal now than I was before.

MP: Do you travel a lot?

AB: I do. I travel a lot, mostly for business. I hate traveling. I like staying at my house. I have a pool, a track by my house where I can ride my motorcycles. I prefer staying at home, eating at home, and sleeping in my own bed. I travel probably 15 days out of the month out of state, and a lot of times I'll fly out of here to another state, to the East Coast, fly back only to go home for six hours, then fly out again. It's hectic, but you've got to do it to make the money.

MP: You go to conventions?

AB: I go to conventions, I go to motocross events. Fifteen days out of the month I'm gone. Four days I'm shooting. So actually I'm still busy, but just busy doing other things.

MP: Are you married or single?

AB: I'm not married, but I have a girlfriend.

MP: Is she in the business too?

AB: No, I did that once, and it didn't work out. It worked out for three years. My girlfriend now wouldn't think about doing porn. People go, "What is she, better than that?" I'll say, "Actually, yes, she is better than that."

MP: What does she do?

AB: She just makes me happy.

MP: You used to be in videos, right?

AB: Yeah, I used to be in videos. Probably 25 or 30 videos.

MP: You don't do that anymore? Too old for that?

AB: Between myself and my girlfriend, I just decided not to do it. There are health factors you have to look at, and it's harder on a relationship. I don't need the money. I basically did it because the guys who are doing it just don't know how to do it. It sounds funny -- how can someone not know how to fuck? But fucking and fucking on video are two different things.

The people who rent my videos are perverts who just want to masturbate. They want to be able to see the girls getting fucked and have it shown to where they can see everything they want to see. A lot of these guys fall in love with the girls on the set; they think they're Don Juan. You just can't get the product you need. Therefore, I was doing the scenes, and I was a little rougher, more hard core, I guess you could say, than some of these actors, and I'd do well for us. I made a name for myself and the company. I have fans; I mean it sounds funny, but there are people who want your autograph, want to meet you, the wife wants to meet you.

It's kind of weird, but I decided not to do it anymore. I didn't make a last movie and say, "This is my retirement, and I'm not doing it anymore." I just stopped and if I wanted to I could start it again. If someone gives me a challenge; but I've won numerous awards -- for everything from packaging to best sex scene, most outrageous sex scene, best performance -- throughout the whole world. I think over the last four years I've put more of a mark on the industry than anybody. All the awards and articles and different publications that I've been in will prove that.

MP: You mentioned the health issue. There are reports from Los Angeles that hiv and aids are epidemic in the porn industry there. Both men and women are testing positive. What's your take on that?

AB: I didn't even know what really even happened. I started making movies again last month, for the first time in about a year. Some people have hiv; prior to this no one had died of hiv who's been actually in the porn business, except for John Holmes, who wasn't even in the porn business when he died. He also was a known heroin addict and homosexual, who actually got the hiv virus while he was in jail. We don't consider him a "porn risk." Now there are certain names; we have a friend, [a famous porno starlet], who's hiv positive, unfortunately, and another one, John Stagliano, who's known as the Butt Man; he's the Butt Man Does Rio, all those series.

MP: Are they friends of yours?

AB: Yeah, both people are friends of mine. I mean John Stagliano, we don't break bread together, I don't go to his house and hang out with him, but I do know him and have spoken to him on the phone. One time he complimented me on one of my sex scenes that we shot in Brazil and said it was the best anal sex scene he had ever seen. A week later he went out and shot his own anal scene with a girl and actually he won the award that year. My comment to him was, "Well, don't you think you should give me the award, because you were saying the best one you ever saw was me. If you are the one who won it then no one better to give the award to me than you!" Then he said I inspired him to go out and shoot this scene, so I guess the scene that he shot, in his eyes, was better than anything that I've shot.

But [the starlet] I do know and am friends with, but most of these people I don't communicate with, I don't go to dinner with. They all live in L.A. Then there's [a well-known male porn star] who's hiv positive, who's another person I've hired many times and I'm friends with. I guess there are about six or seven people now, actually.

MP: A lot of reports say [the well-known male star] was the one who spread the virus.

AB: That's what I've heard, that he's the carrier that spread it, but on the other hand, it's very hard for...a lot of people don't know a lot about aids. It's very hard for a man to give a woman aids, or hiv, I should say. It's virtually almost impossible for a woman to give it to another woman. It's got to go from bloodstream to bloodstream, and oxygen kills the virus. I'm not qualified, by any means, to preach on it, but...

MP: But somehow a lot of people in your business have hiv now.

AB: There's probably a couple of hundred people in the adult-video business. I'm guessing that number is eight. I don't know if that's a lot [of hiv infections] over the past 20 years; I don't think that's a lot. But at this point this person was out of control and not getting tested. Basically people have to go through *testing and dna testing. I don't know if for a fact he wasn't getting tested or he had faked tests. I don't know; I've heard both, but it's unfortunate that he didn't care enough about himself or about other people. A lot of people use condoms.

MP: That's the big thing now. Supposedly the business is going to use condoms now, but maybe some people aren't, correct?

AB: I prefer not to use condoms in my videos; I know other people who prefer not to use condoms. I'm not going to tell some girl you can't use a condom, you have to go unprotected. I might not hire that person; I might only hire people who don't want to use condoms. But I'm not going to get someone on the set and pressure them when they're banking on the payroll from me. I guess it's their decision; it's their life that's at risk, not mine.

MP: You've said you don't perform anymore because of health reasons?

AB: Yeah, I don't do it.

MP: So there's some risk there.

AB: Yeah, they only get tested for hiv, but they don't get tested for crabs or herpes or syphilis or anything else. So it's like, okay, fine, you got dna tested, but now you're giving me everything else. But, you know, my girlfriend is so good to me and so good looking that I don't need to get involved with anyone else.

MP: Do you live together?

AB: Yeah, we live together. She takes care of me, takes care of the house, makes sure I'm healthy.

MP: Sort of the popular perception of the porn business is that it's kind of mobbed up, a lot of Mafia people roaming around. Do you see that?

AB: There was at one time, I'm sure. You can't be soft and be strong in any business. If you want to use the word "mob" or "Mafia," there's not too many people in this business who are Italian. I'm probably one of the few Italian business owners left in our business, but most of the people are Jewish or Indian.

MP: There's no Mafia money behind the porn business?

AB: Not so much that way anymore. Maybe more the bookstores and the dance clubs. You just have to be strong in any business in order not to get shit on, in the words of the old Mafia and the old Italians. There are probably new gangs and new alliances these days than what there used to be 20 years ago. The people I run with and the people other people run with, we're not so much into gambling, drugs, and prostitution. But we're strong and we're not going to let anybody shit on us, that's for sure. But we're not any type of organized crime.

MP: So you don't feel like anybody comes to you and asks for some protection money...

AB: No, I won't take that kind of abuse from anybody. There might be other people out there, but between my people and my bodyguards.... When I first got into this business, I had a run-in with a company, and we went over there and set them straight the first week I was in business. There was a scuffle and some blows thrown, some 2´´x4´´s broken over certain things. I made it very clear when I first got into this business that if you fuck with me, I'm going to fuck with you right back. So with me, you know, people don't really try to abuse me. It might be so with other people. You just have to be strong. If someone picks on you, and you let them pick on you over and over, then everyone knows they can do it. So you get your ass kicked once or twice. If you fight, then people aren't going to mess with you. Other companies might have that problem, but I don't.

MP: So everybody kind of respects you in that sense?

AB: Yeah, you know, I've been honest with everybody and I do what I say and so forth, and so we have pretty much a good understanding. Being in San Diego compared to L.A. is a little different. It's a little more hectic in L.A. I hear all the time that people go into people's businesses and wanting money and threatening them with knives and stuff. It happens to me all the time. Distributors go out of business; they open up under a different name in the same building. I go in and want my money; if they don't have my money I'll just take their computer systems or take watches off their arm. I don't care. To me it's like bad management is not my fault. I sold them my tape. They sold the tape and collect the money. They bought watches or cars or this or that and didn't pay me. That's not my fault. So I have no problem with taking a watch off someone's wrist. If they owe me money, they owe me money and I'm going to get my money. The electric company is not going to listen to me because someone owes me money, so I couldn't pay them. You have to do what you have to do.

MP: Did that come naturally to you, being tough with these guys, or did you have to learn?

AB: Dropping out of high school and living on my own since I was 16, it's just a dog-eat-dog world out there; that's just how it is. That's how it was for me, and so I just learned from what other people taught me.

MP: You say in the clubs there's more mob activity?

AB: I don't know that for sure. I'm not in that business. If I had to pick between videos and clubs, I'd probably say more clubs. I don't know. I have friends who own 15 or 16 stores who I know are not mob-related. There are not a whole lot of Italians left in this business, unfortunately. It's mostly Jewish people, a lot of Jewish people, who are smart business people. They're not going to let you pull one over on them either. The old saying was, back in the old days, that the Italians and the Jews got along so well because the Italians made all the money and the Jews kept it all. The Jews know how to organize financing, and the Italians went out and hustled for the money; that's why we get along so well.

MP: How did the Irish guys get involved?

AB: They were in L.A. We sold rights to our videos to different countries. When I was distributing, I would only distribute in the U.S. We would sell the master to Mexico or Japan or whatever; they would actually make the cassettes. This was someone we sold a lot of masters to, they carried the whole product line in Ireland. When I had the legal trouble, they said they'd buy the Irish rights for the next two years or whatever, and then they decided with a little more money they could just buy everything. They'd own the rights for Japan; they would sell to Japan themselves, or Switzerland or Holland and Germany all themselves, because they were right there. We would distribute the product in the U.S. for them, and they would pay us a salary to do so. All the money was always wired back to them. So for them, they just put up a little more money, and they got bragging rights. It was a smart deal for them.

MP: So essentially when you were really working -- not that you're not working now, but I mean when you were doing all this other stuff, you had to talk to all of these people who owned stores and pitch them on your stuff?

AB: Yeah, we did. At one time I did all the calls because I didn't have any employees, so you've got to work for your dinner. So I would do the calls.

MP: But you don't miss that?

AB: No. If I wasn't making good money I'd go back to it, but no, I don't miss it at all.

MP: You don't have dreams of a huge empire? Some people are not content unless they have zillions of dollars.

AB: I'm that way; I'm always thinking about how I can make more money. A lot more money. To me, a million, $5 million, or $10 million is not a lot, especially when people I know are making $100 million, $200 million, $500 million. I'd probably be happy if I had $100 million, but until then...

MP: Some people want it so bad that they'd work 20-hour days for life.

AB: I used to think that. I had a very wealthy friend of mine who owned a big chain of clothing stores, and his piece of advice was, I remember...he used to own Charlotte Russe, clothing stores for women, and I remember when I went to him with my business plan one time -- this was when I was in the car business and he used to invest in cars -- and I used to say, "Hey, I'm going to get in this video business." He said, "Well, I don't know if you should do that or not, but I'll look at your business plan." I'd go, "It's not that I want your money, I just want your advice." I had it all set to make a million dollars; to me a million dollars was a good even number, and it didn't take a whole lot to make a million dollars. I had all these plans and schedules and graphs. He said, "Well, I know you work a lot because I call you every so often and you're not around." I go, "Yeah, I'm working 18 to 20 hours a day, every day." He says, "Okay, that's good, you want to make a million dollars, right?" I go "Yeah, that's the goal; I'm going to make a million dollars, and I don't care what it takes, I'm going to do it." And he goes, "All right, good. If you want to make $2 million, are you going to work 40 hours a day? You can only work so many hours a day." I'm like, "Yeah, I haven't thought about how I'm going to make $2 million yet." He goes, "It's not the hours that you're working, you work hard. It's the people you're dealing with. Not that people are good people or bad people. If you're dealing with a store that only buys one cassette, and you want to double your money, then you need to deal with a store that buys two cassettes." So, what he meant was, you need to go after the bigger fish.

Now I've learned I don't need to work more hours, I just need to work more efficiently and deal with people that actually have money. Why do something where I can make $1000 profit where I can work a little differently and make a $10,000 profit and be ten times more ahead? I still want to work hard, and I still want to make $100 million, but I don't need to sit on the phone 20 hours a day doing sales calls. I need to sit on the phone for five hours and find ten people that can sit on the phone 20 hours a day. Money's easy to make; keeping it, that's the hard part.

MP: The other thing you were saying was that the business is getting a lot more competitive in the sense that everybody's jumping into it.

AB: It's not that it's more competitive, it's just that it's flooded. Competitive, in my eyes, would be that someone is making a movie that's competing with me, and I don't really see that. I see it more that people are just putting shit out there.

MP: In other words, what distinguishes you is that you have a lot of experience in identifying...

AB: I think the quality of my movies and the girls that are in it and the content that's in there -- I mean I make movies for guys who want to masturbate, plain and simple, and I've said that from day one. A lot of guys out there think they're Spielberg or someone special, and they're making these great movies that just happen to have sex in them. I tell these guys all the time, they have 20-page scripts and $100,000 budgets, they think [they're] such of a fucking geniuses, then go make a real movie. You can go make a B movie for $100,000, or $50,000. The movie Clerks from Miramax, by Kevin Smith, was done for $29,000. It grossed $45 million, won awards, the Cannes Film Festival, Sundance, and everywhere else. You can make straight movies for a $100,000, or you can make adult movies for a $100,000. If you're so smart, then go make a real movie. Unfortunately, you can't.

These guys, they have fake names and director names and shadow names. My name's Al Borda, it's the name I was born with, or Alfonso Borda, I've used my real name and people go, "What happens if you want to make a real movie one day?" Well, I don't think I'm making fake movies now. I'm just making different types of movies. It's real editing, audio, scripts -- it's the same. They are real movies. They go, "Well, what if you want to make a real movie one day and you need investors? They're going to know that you did porn." It's like, well, yeah, I'm not going to lie to them. I have enough, I don't know what the right word would be, but I have enough confidence in myself that I have my own money. I don't need to go borrow money to job A or job B. If I can't do it myself then I just don't do it. You need to deal with people who know what you do and don't mind what you do.

MP: You don't have any aspirations to do art movies, in other words?

AB: No. Well, actually, you know what? I do action videos right now. Motocross videos. We only do one a year. More of action of people racing and jumping over certain things and just kind of being young. We do those. I've been working on that; that's why I'm gone most of the time. That, I guess, I enjoy doing. To do something like Terminator or something, I don't have the inspiration to do them, unless I'm given like $20 million to do it or $10 million to do it, then I'd probably do it. But I don't need to do it to say that I did it.

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The mob that built La Costa scattered long ago. Moe Dalitz, the fixer out of Cleveland via Las Vegas who tapped Jimmy Hoffa's Teamsters Central States Pension Fund for $57 million to build the place, died peacefully in 1989. John Duffy, the San Diego County Sheriff who looked the other way when the mob reputedly ran hookers and high-stakes poker out of the posh La Costa Clubhouse, died semi-mysteriously while on a business trip to Central America in 1993. Hoffa dropped from sight in 1975 after going off in a limo to meet some "friends." Years before, Allard Roen, one of Dalitz's partners in La Costa, was interviewed by a reporter from the San Diego Evening Tribune. "Jimmy doesn't drink, smoke, or chase around after women," Roen said. "People think Teamsters money is bad because it is associated by some with gangsters. That is not true. They have access to huge sums of money. It's only logical for them to invest." Roen's statement, of course, came years before Hoffa's disappearance, the hit on Teamsters lawyer Allen Dorfman, and the testimony of La Jolla financier Allen Glick and mafia hit man Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno forever linked the resort to organized crime.

But that was then. The resort knocked away the mud of its mobbed-up beginnings when original partners sold out in 1987 to a Japanese outfit from Osaka called Sports Shinko. Today, the golf course where Jimmy Hoffa, Frank Fitzsimmons, Jackie Presser, and Richard Nixon, among many others, once discussed politics, kickbacks, prostitutes, casino skims, and mob hits is now just another golden suburb, an upscale neighborhood in the city of Carlsbad. Oversized houses with eight-car garages march along the ridgelines overlooking the obscenely green golf course, where the most notorious player recently sighted was said to be O.J. Simpson. Private pools built right up to the fairway are full of frolicking children watched over by Mexican nannies and soccer moms who drive family-style four-wheel drive trucks made by Mercedes-Benz. Blonde teenagers zip around in new Miatas and shiny Corvettes. How much more wholesome can you get?

Still, lurking in its velvet-lined nooks and crannies, La Costa holds some secrets. Take Al Borda. A dropout from Torrey Pines High, Borda says he's one of the most successful producers of pornographic movies in the country, maybe even the world. In the business of porn for more than four years, Borda runs his enterprise out of a regulation-size office with a video editing suite in a small industrial park in Vista, just across the driveway from an outfit that rents baseball batting cages by the hour. The stockroom in back is lined with glossy video boxes with graphic photos of nude women featuring titles like Sluthunt, Butthunt, and Gothic Whore. When Borda was appearing in his own videos, he made one called Because I Can.

Originally from Philadelphia, where he says his father is a jeweler, Borda says he was dealing in luxury cars by the age of 16. Besides videos, he dabbles in the motocross racing circuit and is starting up Skin Industries, which sells decals of a female head sticking out a very long tongue, which may be applied to bikes. Borda is proud of his business and his accomplishments. Recently he agreed to be interviewed.

Matt Potter: How old are you.

Al Borda: I'm 26.

MP: So when did you get out here?

AB: I've kind of been back and forth since I was young. I went to school out here, I went to Torrey Pines High.

MP: Did you come from New York?

AB: I guess I'm from Philadelphia, and I kind of stumbled upon the adult- video business. Actually, somebody wanted to borrow money, a small amount of money, and that's how I got started in the whole deal.

MP: Somebody wanted to borrow money to make a porno film?

AB: Yeah. I invested, you know, $5000 or so.

MP: Like in a film business?

AB: Yeah, in a video. They wanted investors for a video.

MP: Okay, so you're looking around for your money, you loaned some money for the video, and you're trying to get it back? So then what?

AB: I met different distributors. They told me the money was coming soon and when was my next movie coming out. At that point I really didn't do anything except loan somebody some money. I had no film experience or manufacturing.

MP: You'd never done any video or anything like that?

AB: No, never took any classes in school or nothing.

MP: So at that point, what? A light bulb went off and you said, "Hey, I'm going to make my own adult films"?

AB: Yeah, basically. I figured if this jerk could do it, I could do it.

MP: What was your first venture then?

AB: I basically made a movie and sold it to a company called... Well, I just made the movie and sold it. I did that five or six times.

MP: What kind of movies were they?

AB: They were just adult... I think my first five or six movies were all-lesbian, all-girl movies.

MP: Any reason why you made that choice?

AB: I as the viewer never really wanted to see any guys; I was pretty content just seeing girls.

MP: So you just sort of went with your own tastes.

AB: Yeah, I went with my own tastes. My first five or six movies had all blondes with blue eyes. And then people kept telling me I had to make movies for other people; I can't just make movies for myself.

MP: So how did you cast the next movie?

AB: I called an agent they have up in L.A. who everyone uses. I just went with that. I met one girl and she knew everybody who could be in it; just did it that way.

MP: What were the budgets?

AB: Well, I was just an investor. I think the budgets were $10,000 or $12,000.

MP: How did you bankroll that? From your own pocket?

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AB: Yeah, or borrow money from people.

MP: How do you sell them?

AB: What I did at that point was just get a magazine and sold the entire video as one piece to different distributors. After about six months I decided to start my own distribution. I basically met a salesperson and got his list of all the stores and all the other distributors. Out of my garage, found a duplicator and a printer and printed the boxes, duplicated the tape, and sold the pieces to each distributor out of a "warehouse." I'd pack them at night, and in the morning the UPS guy would come at 10:00. I'd let him in my garage and give him all the boxes. During the afternoon I would try to get together the funds to make another movie or sell more pieces. I went from that to about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, I was probably at the high point of my career. We had about 25 employees and manufacturing facilities and so on.

MP: What happened since then?

AB: About two years ago I got charged in a lawsuit, a copyright-infringement lawsuit. I stopped working for maybe eight or nine months. I was in limbo and moved to L.A.; I had just moved to L.A. when the lawsuit happened. I sold my company at that point -- all the assets, all the videos, all the boxes and everything -- and just continued producing and directing movies for whatever company would want a product from me.

MP: So all the stuff that you'd done, at that point you decided you'd better sell and liquidate?

AB: Right.

MP: What kind of infringement was it?

AB: They're saying it's a copyright infringement, a trademark infringement, dilution, stuff like that.

MP: Were you using somebody's name?

AB: It was Oreo -- O-R-E-O. I made a movie called Whoreo. They're saying between the name and the pattern of how we designed the box cover, I guess they're saying it's similar to the cookie packaging.

MP: So they sued you?

AB: Yep.

MP: What happened?

AB: It's actually ongoing. It's been almost three years now. The judge keeps postponing the case. He's postponed it two years now. We were supposed to have [a hearing] in May 1997, May 1998; now they've pushed it back to September 1998.

MP: Who makes Oreos?

AB: Nabisco.

MP: Nabisco. So they're suing you?

AB: Yeah. RJR, the tobacco company.

MP: You don't smoke, I guess?

AB: No, I'm a diabetic. Don't even eat the cookies.

MP: So, in response to the lawsuit, you sold the company?

AB: Yeah, I was going to need the money. Legal expenses are outrageous. Combined I think we're over $100,000. On two videos, we made $3000 or $4000 or something.

MP: Can you tell me what you were grossing back then, before you sold out?

AB: That part I don't know. I know I have a pretty comfortable lifestyle, but you know there are accountants and so forth, and I don't handle any of that stuff. Especially nowadays I don't. We have in-house counsel, attorneys, and cpas. Nowadays, my duties have been less, and I'm basically producer and director.

MP: In other words, this is the same company you had and then you sold it. Now you're working for it?

AB: Yes, I sold the company to some investors out of Ireland, and they agreed to employ me.

MP: Irish investors?

AB: Yeah, their company's based in Ireland.

MP: What's it called?

AB: The Irish corporation? It's called "10471."

MP: That's the name of the corporation? Before you sold it, what were you grossing? Do you know that?

AB: No, but more than most people. Especially more than most people my age.

MP: Is the company now growing back to what it had been before the lawsuit?

AB: Yeah, I mean the problem is so many companies have started coming out now that the market's flooded. When I came into the business there were about 2200 movies put out that year. I think last year there were almost 9000 movies put out, about 185 movies a week put out.

MP: No kidding? Since it's so cheap to do?

AB: It's cheap and everyone thinks they can do it. The people who are getting the last laughs, though, are the video stores and the distributors who are buying the tapes from these manufacturers. The manufacturers go out of business, they don't have to pay anybody. You know, if you're not big enough in this industry, you just can't collect your money that you need to collect from different distributors.

MP: Are you nine-to-five now, or do you put in long hours?

AB: I probably work four days a month, and they're usually up in L.A., and they're long hours, probably 18 to 20 hours. That's the actual production shooting. All I do now is produce and direct. I mean, if somebody has a question or something, I can help them out, but I don't pay the bills or any of that stuff anymore.

MP: What kind of movies do you make now?

AB: Now we do two lesbian, one boy/girl, and a gang bang.

MP: In one picture?

AB: No, there's four different shows.

MP: And so, like a typical day, you would go up there and you'd do all three in a day?

AB: No, I do four in four days. It takes me one day to shoot each one.

MP: Do you do it on a set or in a house?

AB: Usually on location. They call them one-day wonders.

MP: Is that the average for the business now?

AB: Some movies may take three or four days, if they shoot them on film or whatever, if they have a lot of dialogue. My movies have no dialogue; mine are action.

MP: Do you arrange for all the casting and stuff, or do you just show up and direct?

AB: Sometimes I'll put my input in, but we have production managers that do all that, pick the girls, and the girls know who they want to work with, who the guys want to work with, and what the rate is. I pretty much give a budget to my production manager. He knows my style; he knows what kind of girls I want, what kind of guys I want, so he'll handle all that.

MP: Does he arrange for all of the equipment, the cameraman, all that stuff?

AB: Yeah. I just basically show up on the set and tell them how to fuck.

MP: Okay. Now does he work out of here?

AB: He works out of L.A.

MP: You don't want to go back to all that other business stuff; you just want to be the creative guy?

AB: No, I'm pretty much semi-retired at this point. I think four days a month is pretty much retired.

MP: Isn't that kind of young to retire? Do you have other plans?

AB: How can I put this? I do other things to make money. I guess I'm pretty creative.

MP: You have other business ventures?

AB: Yeah. It keeps us busy.

MP: Like what?

AB: I'm actually interested in the whole motocross business, dirt-bike racing. I follow that and go to the races, have some ideas. That might pop up again somewhere. I've worked so hard over the last five years. I used to start seven or eight o'clock in the morning and work until one or two o'clock in the morning every day. I worked Christmas, New Year's...so I'm just kind of taking a break for a while. At one point I did everything from production to design to acting to the box covers, graphic arts, promotion. Now I'm just kind of relaxing.

MP: Do you live in a big mansion?

AB: No, I have a modest home. I mean, my car is my home. I do okay, better than most. I read a report in Forbes that said only one percent of Americans make over $1 million a year. I definitely make more than most people.

MP: Do you make over $1 million?

AB: I make more than most people. Taxes kill us, you know? If you think about it, if you make a million dollars, by the time you're done living, between rent, food, and taxes, it costs you $700,000 probably. The more money you make... I can put it this way: I remember when I first got into the business I was probably making $50, $60, or $70,000 a year. I was probably spending $100,000 a year. I had a new Mercedes, new Rolexes, renting a big house. That was fun and exciting. I wanted to be a big entrepreneur, big businessman, big actor, or whatever I thought I was.

Then when you start making a lot of money, you start cutting down on your expenses. You start getting rid of your cars, you start eating at home more. The more money you make, the cheaper you get. The point is, you don't need to impress anybody anymore. You've made the money; the money's sitting in the bank or you're investing it here and there. I guess I'm at the point to where I'm a lot more frugal now than I was before.

MP: Do you travel a lot?

AB: I do. I travel a lot, mostly for business. I hate traveling. I like staying at my house. I have a pool, a track by my house where I can ride my motorcycles. I prefer staying at home, eating at home, and sleeping in my own bed. I travel probably 15 days out of the month out of state, and a lot of times I'll fly out of here to another state, to the East Coast, fly back only to go home for six hours, then fly out again. It's hectic, but you've got to do it to make the money.

MP: You go to conventions?

AB: I go to conventions, I go to motocross events. Fifteen days out of the month I'm gone. Four days I'm shooting. So actually I'm still busy, but just busy doing other things.

MP: Are you married or single?

AB: I'm not married, but I have a girlfriend.

MP: Is she in the business too?

AB: No, I did that once, and it didn't work out. It worked out for three years. My girlfriend now wouldn't think about doing porn. People go, "What is she, better than that?" I'll say, "Actually, yes, she is better than that."

MP: What does she do?

AB: She just makes me happy.

MP: You used to be in videos, right?

AB: Yeah, I used to be in videos. Probably 25 or 30 videos.

MP: You don't do that anymore? Too old for that?

AB: Between myself and my girlfriend, I just decided not to do it. There are health factors you have to look at, and it's harder on a relationship. I don't need the money. I basically did it because the guys who are doing it just don't know how to do it. It sounds funny -- how can someone not know how to fuck? But fucking and fucking on video are two different things.

The people who rent my videos are perverts who just want to masturbate. They want to be able to see the girls getting fucked and have it shown to where they can see everything they want to see. A lot of these guys fall in love with the girls on the set; they think they're Don Juan. You just can't get the product you need. Therefore, I was doing the scenes, and I was a little rougher, more hard core, I guess you could say, than some of these actors, and I'd do well for us. I made a name for myself and the company. I have fans; I mean it sounds funny, but there are people who want your autograph, want to meet you, the wife wants to meet you.

It's kind of weird, but I decided not to do it anymore. I didn't make a last movie and say, "This is my retirement, and I'm not doing it anymore." I just stopped and if I wanted to I could start it again. If someone gives me a challenge; but I've won numerous awards -- for everything from packaging to best sex scene, most outrageous sex scene, best performance -- throughout the whole world. I think over the last four years I've put more of a mark on the industry than anybody. All the awards and articles and different publications that I've been in will prove that.

MP: You mentioned the health issue. There are reports from Los Angeles that hiv and aids are epidemic in the porn industry there. Both men and women are testing positive. What's your take on that?

AB: I didn't even know what really even happened. I started making movies again last month, for the first time in about a year. Some people have hiv; prior to this no one had died of hiv who's been actually in the porn business, except for John Holmes, who wasn't even in the porn business when he died. He also was a known heroin addict and homosexual, who actually got the hiv virus while he was in jail. We don't consider him a "porn risk." Now there are certain names; we have a friend, [a famous porno starlet], who's hiv positive, unfortunately, and another one, John Stagliano, who's known as the Butt Man; he's the Butt Man Does Rio, all those series.

MP: Are they friends of yours?

AB: Yeah, both people are friends of mine. I mean John Stagliano, we don't break bread together, I don't go to his house and hang out with him, but I do know him and have spoken to him on the phone. One time he complimented me on one of my sex scenes that we shot in Brazil and said it was the best anal sex scene he had ever seen. A week later he went out and shot his own anal scene with a girl and actually he won the award that year. My comment to him was, "Well, don't you think you should give me the award, because you were saying the best one you ever saw was me. If you are the one who won it then no one better to give the award to me than you!" Then he said I inspired him to go out and shoot this scene, so I guess the scene that he shot, in his eyes, was better than anything that I've shot.

But [the starlet] I do know and am friends with, but most of these people I don't communicate with, I don't go to dinner with. They all live in L.A. Then there's [a well-known male porn star] who's hiv positive, who's another person I've hired many times and I'm friends with. I guess there are about six or seven people now, actually.

MP: A lot of reports say [the well-known male star] was the one who spread the virus.

AB: That's what I've heard, that he's the carrier that spread it, but on the other hand, it's very hard for...a lot of people don't know a lot about aids. It's very hard for a man to give a woman aids, or hiv, I should say. It's virtually almost impossible for a woman to give it to another woman. It's got to go from bloodstream to bloodstream, and oxygen kills the virus. I'm not qualified, by any means, to preach on it, but...

MP: But somehow a lot of people in your business have hiv now.

AB: There's probably a couple of hundred people in the adult-video business. I'm guessing that number is eight. I don't know if that's a lot [of hiv infections] over the past 20 years; I don't think that's a lot. But at this point this person was out of control and not getting tested. Basically people have to go through *testing and dna testing. I don't know if for a fact he wasn't getting tested or he had faked tests. I don't know; I've heard both, but it's unfortunate that he didn't care enough about himself or about other people. A lot of people use condoms.

MP: That's the big thing now. Supposedly the business is going to use condoms now, but maybe some people aren't, correct?

AB: I prefer not to use condoms in my videos; I know other people who prefer not to use condoms. I'm not going to tell some girl you can't use a condom, you have to go unprotected. I might not hire that person; I might only hire people who don't want to use condoms. But I'm not going to get someone on the set and pressure them when they're banking on the payroll from me. I guess it's their decision; it's their life that's at risk, not mine.

MP: You've said you don't perform anymore because of health reasons?

AB: Yeah, I don't do it.

MP: So there's some risk there.

AB: Yeah, they only get tested for hiv, but they don't get tested for crabs or herpes or syphilis or anything else. So it's like, okay, fine, you got dna tested, but now you're giving me everything else. But, you know, my girlfriend is so good to me and so good looking that I don't need to get involved with anyone else.

MP: Do you live together?

AB: Yeah, we live together. She takes care of me, takes care of the house, makes sure I'm healthy.

MP: Sort of the popular perception of the porn business is that it's kind of mobbed up, a lot of Mafia people roaming around. Do you see that?

AB: There was at one time, I'm sure. You can't be soft and be strong in any business. If you want to use the word "mob" or "Mafia," there's not too many people in this business who are Italian. I'm probably one of the few Italian business owners left in our business, but most of the people are Jewish or Indian.

MP: There's no Mafia money behind the porn business?

AB: Not so much that way anymore. Maybe more the bookstores and the dance clubs. You just have to be strong in any business in order not to get shit on, in the words of the old Mafia and the old Italians. There are probably new gangs and new alliances these days than what there used to be 20 years ago. The people I run with and the people other people run with, we're not so much into gambling, drugs, and prostitution. But we're strong and we're not going to let anybody shit on us, that's for sure. But we're not any type of organized crime.

MP: So you don't feel like anybody comes to you and asks for some protection money...

AB: No, I won't take that kind of abuse from anybody. There might be other people out there, but between my people and my bodyguards.... When I first got into this business, I had a run-in with a company, and we went over there and set them straight the first week I was in business. There was a scuffle and some blows thrown, some 2´´x4´´s broken over certain things. I made it very clear when I first got into this business that if you fuck with me, I'm going to fuck with you right back. So with me, you know, people don't really try to abuse me. It might be so with other people. You just have to be strong. If someone picks on you, and you let them pick on you over and over, then everyone knows they can do it. So you get your ass kicked once or twice. If you fight, then people aren't going to mess with you. Other companies might have that problem, but I don't.

MP: So everybody kind of respects you in that sense?

AB: Yeah, you know, I've been honest with everybody and I do what I say and so forth, and so we have pretty much a good understanding. Being in San Diego compared to L.A. is a little different. It's a little more hectic in L.A. I hear all the time that people go into people's businesses and wanting money and threatening them with knives and stuff. It happens to me all the time. Distributors go out of business; they open up under a different name in the same building. I go in and want my money; if they don't have my money I'll just take their computer systems or take watches off their arm. I don't care. To me it's like bad management is not my fault. I sold them my tape. They sold the tape and collect the money. They bought watches or cars or this or that and didn't pay me. That's not my fault. So I have no problem with taking a watch off someone's wrist. If they owe me money, they owe me money and I'm going to get my money. The electric company is not going to listen to me because someone owes me money, so I couldn't pay them. You have to do what you have to do.

MP: Did that come naturally to you, being tough with these guys, or did you have to learn?

AB: Dropping out of high school and living on my own since I was 16, it's just a dog-eat-dog world out there; that's just how it is. That's how it was for me, and so I just learned from what other people taught me.

MP: You say in the clubs there's more mob activity?

AB: I don't know that for sure. I'm not in that business. If I had to pick between videos and clubs, I'd probably say more clubs. I don't know. I have friends who own 15 or 16 stores who I know are not mob-related. There are not a whole lot of Italians left in this business, unfortunately. It's mostly Jewish people, a lot of Jewish people, who are smart business people. They're not going to let you pull one over on them either. The old saying was, back in the old days, that the Italians and the Jews got along so well because the Italians made all the money and the Jews kept it all. The Jews know how to organize financing, and the Italians went out and hustled for the money; that's why we get along so well.

MP: How did the Irish guys get involved?

AB: They were in L.A. We sold rights to our videos to different countries. When I was distributing, I would only distribute in the U.S. We would sell the master to Mexico or Japan or whatever; they would actually make the cassettes. This was someone we sold a lot of masters to, they carried the whole product line in Ireland. When I had the legal trouble, they said they'd buy the Irish rights for the next two years or whatever, and then they decided with a little more money they could just buy everything. They'd own the rights for Japan; they would sell to Japan themselves, or Switzerland or Holland and Germany all themselves, because they were right there. We would distribute the product in the U.S. for them, and they would pay us a salary to do so. All the money was always wired back to them. So for them, they just put up a little more money, and they got bragging rights. It was a smart deal for them.

MP: So essentially when you were really working -- not that you're not working now, but I mean when you were doing all this other stuff, you had to talk to all of these people who owned stores and pitch them on your stuff?

AB: Yeah, we did. At one time I did all the calls because I didn't have any employees, so you've got to work for your dinner. So I would do the calls.

MP: But you don't miss that?

AB: No. If I wasn't making good money I'd go back to it, but no, I don't miss it at all.

MP: You don't have dreams of a huge empire? Some people are not content unless they have zillions of dollars.

AB: I'm that way; I'm always thinking about how I can make more money. A lot more money. To me, a million, $5 million, or $10 million is not a lot, especially when people I know are making $100 million, $200 million, $500 million. I'd probably be happy if I had $100 million, but until then...

MP: Some people want it so bad that they'd work 20-hour days for life.

AB: I used to think that. I had a very wealthy friend of mine who owned a big chain of clothing stores, and his piece of advice was, I remember...he used to own Charlotte Russe, clothing stores for women, and I remember when I went to him with my business plan one time -- this was when I was in the car business and he used to invest in cars -- and I used to say, "Hey, I'm going to get in this video business." He said, "Well, I don't know if you should do that or not, but I'll look at your business plan." I'd go, "It's not that I want your money, I just want your advice." I had it all set to make a million dollars; to me a million dollars was a good even number, and it didn't take a whole lot to make a million dollars. I had all these plans and schedules and graphs. He said, "Well, I know you work a lot because I call you every so often and you're not around." I go, "Yeah, I'm working 18 to 20 hours a day, every day." He says, "Okay, that's good, you want to make a million dollars, right?" I go "Yeah, that's the goal; I'm going to make a million dollars, and I don't care what it takes, I'm going to do it." And he goes, "All right, good. If you want to make $2 million, are you going to work 40 hours a day? You can only work so many hours a day." I'm like, "Yeah, I haven't thought about how I'm going to make $2 million yet." He goes, "It's not the hours that you're working, you work hard. It's the people you're dealing with. Not that people are good people or bad people. If you're dealing with a store that only buys one cassette, and you want to double your money, then you need to deal with a store that buys two cassettes." So, what he meant was, you need to go after the bigger fish.

Now I've learned I don't need to work more hours, I just need to work more efficiently and deal with people that actually have money. Why do something where I can make $1000 profit where I can work a little differently and make a $10,000 profit and be ten times more ahead? I still want to work hard, and I still want to make $100 million, but I don't need to sit on the phone 20 hours a day doing sales calls. I need to sit on the phone for five hours and find ten people that can sit on the phone 20 hours a day. Money's easy to make; keeping it, that's the hard part.

MP: The other thing you were saying was that the business is getting a lot more competitive in the sense that everybody's jumping into it.

AB: It's not that it's more competitive, it's just that it's flooded. Competitive, in my eyes, would be that someone is making a movie that's competing with me, and I don't really see that. I see it more that people are just putting shit out there.

MP: In other words, what distinguishes you is that you have a lot of experience in identifying...

AB: I think the quality of my movies and the girls that are in it and the content that's in there -- I mean I make movies for guys who want to masturbate, plain and simple, and I've said that from day one. A lot of guys out there think they're Spielberg or someone special, and they're making these great movies that just happen to have sex in them. I tell these guys all the time, they have 20-page scripts and $100,000 budgets, they think [they're] such of a fucking geniuses, then go make a real movie. You can go make a B movie for $100,000, or $50,000. The movie Clerks from Miramax, by Kevin Smith, was done for $29,000. It grossed $45 million, won awards, the Cannes Film Festival, Sundance, and everywhere else. You can make straight movies for a $100,000, or you can make adult movies for a $100,000. If you're so smart, then go make a real movie. Unfortunately, you can't.

These guys, they have fake names and director names and shadow names. My name's Al Borda, it's the name I was born with, or Alfonso Borda, I've used my real name and people go, "What happens if you want to make a real movie one day?" Well, I don't think I'm making fake movies now. I'm just making different types of movies. It's real editing, audio, scripts -- it's the same. They are real movies. They go, "Well, what if you want to make a real movie one day and you need investors? They're going to know that you did porn." It's like, well, yeah, I'm not going to lie to them. I have enough, I don't know what the right word would be, but I have enough confidence in myself that I have my own money. I don't need to go borrow money to job A or job B. If I can't do it myself then I just don't do it. You need to deal with people who know what you do and don't mind what you do.

MP: You don't have any aspirations to do art movies, in other words?

AB: No. Well, actually, you know what? I do action videos right now. Motocross videos. We only do one a year. More of action of people racing and jumping over certain things and just kind of being young. We do those. I've been working on that; that's why I'm gone most of the time. That, I guess, I enjoy doing. To do something like Terminator or something, I don't have the inspiration to do them, unless I'm given like $20 million to do it or $10 million to do it, then I'd probably do it. But I don't need to do it to say that I did it.

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