O — In the beginning, was it odd to you? To think that pornography was now your profession?
MS — Have you ever been to a porn set?
O — I haven’t.
MS — It’s not what you think. Back then it was more porno-y anyway, but now it’s more business. And I don’t watch porn at all. I don’t have a single DVD in this place. Most of the girls we have, I haven’t even seen them do anything. I don’t care, I know they’re good. I don’t have to see it. I have Penthouse magazines, cause all our girls are in them, so I have a copy of those in a drawer, but even those I haven’t looked at. Once you really go into it, you know it’s kind of fake, and you know the people, so you have no interest in seeing it. Back then it was sort of Boogie Nights, because it was totally illegal in the ‘80s. They’d meet in a secret place, there’d be a lighting truck, you’d park down the street, and every time you shot a tape you’d run down the street and hide it in the car, because if the cops came they’d confiscate it.
O — What about the perception that this industry is messy and unregulated, are there a lot of cowboys or gangsters involved?
MS — There’s no mafia in it since the ‘80s. It’s corporations that run this stuff. Back then it was mob guys who had theaters. You know, like Deep Throat. That movie made six- hundred million dollars. The Devil in Miss Jones, in like 1972, it was one of the top box office movies, period. Not just porn, period. So back then there was a lot of money in it, and they owned the theaters. But they don’t own the means of distribution anymore.
O — So what sets you apart, why are you so successful?
MS — Well I have the luxury that I don’t need the money, we don’t have to send the girls on just anything. Plus, I believe a good looking chick is great—but a smart good looking chick, you can’t beat it.
O — Because they make more reliable clients, or do you think that actually comes across on-screen?
MS — I think that definitely comes across. And also, the companies always like the smart girls better. They always prefer Spiegler girls. You know what the AVN Awards is? We only represent three or four percent of all the girls in the business, but Performer of the Year at the AVN Awards, our girls have won the past five years in a row. Best New Star they’ve won four out of the five. They win so many of the major awards, last year agents started complaining that we’re fixing the awards, they even complained to the company to have them change the person that’s running the awards. Anyway, our girls tend to work more, tend to work for the bigger companies, and they tend to get paid more.
O — Do you ever feel like expanding your roster beyond twenty-five or thirty?
MS — No, because then I’d have to get somebody else to do it. I give most of the money away. So remember, I first started in the business shooting movies. Then a guy came to me with a girl from France who was a supermodel and said “Hey, you know everybody, can you help her get work?” So I did, and I didn’t charge her anything. That girl made like fifty-six grand in two months. She went back to France and sent her friends. And then they sent their friends. In the beginning I was doing this for free for a couple years, but when it became a lot of work I made a business out of it. When I was first doing it most of the girls were foreign, a lot of them didn’t speak English, and they needed somebody to drive them, pick them up, take them to get tested, so I was doing that and I had one other guy doing that, George. But now the girls are all basically American, the few foreign ones have visas, have their own cars, they take care of themselves. So now George is my personal banker. The only thing he does, mainly, is he’ll pick up a check once in a while, he goes to a PO box every Friday and gets all the Spiegler Girls’ money, deposits it in the bank, comes over here, writes himself a check, and keeps the money. He just bought his fourth house. So he’s really lucky. But there’s no reason to expand, because it’s not for the money. I have that luxury. That’s just luck. But also I work hard—I have no life basically besides this right now. I go to the movies once in a while, but I have to go to like a twelve o’clock showing, because I have to answer my phone. This is mainly it, all the time.
O — So do you consider yourself a bachelor for life?
MS — Yeah. First of all, you go out with a girl, these girls get all pissed off. They don’t like anybody else getting the attention. I made the mistake once of going out once with a girl in the business, that was bad.