Astronaut, pro skateboarder, wolf veterinarian, and porn agent are just some of the jobs that 12-year-old boys sweatily dream about. Most kids sort of give up the good fight and start caring about mutual funds or making love to their stupid wives. Mark Spiegler was headed down that chancy path, but then porn found him and offered him a different, sexier path of redemption. Now he's devoted to helping girls get their feet (and faces) wet in the wild world of adult theater.What were you doing before you started Spiegler Girls?I was in college taking economics and trading stocks. I actually made enough money that I didn't have to work anymore. So I was kind of retired and then a friend of my cousin, who was in the porn business, came to me to borrow money to shoot movies. I lent him the money and then started shooting movies myself--then a guy with a company in Vegas brought over a girl from France and asked if I could help her find work. I got her in Perfect 10, Penthouse, all this stuff, and when she went back to France she sent her friends to me, and I helped all of them.Since you've been porn-agenting, have you noticed the girls you represent getting more and more extreme in the same way the porn has over the past decade?That's not necessarily the talent, that's more the companies. The one thing that hit me maybe five years ago is that the way it used to be, people would just fall into porn. Like they wanted to be actors or whatever, or they needed money, so they got into porn. Now a lot of girls aspire to be in porn, you know? That was kind of a change, when girls would come up to me saying, "It's what I've wanted to do since I was 16." Like Sasha Grey emailed me right after she turned 18. In her first email to me she said, "I do anal, dp, throat gagging, cream pies, bdsm." And I'm like, "You just turned 18."I read that you don't sleep with the talent because it's bad for business.Yep.So how are new girls who come to you looking for representation evaluated if they haven't worked before?Well, usually when someone contacts me, I sit down and talk with them. Like Sasha Grey was in Sacramento but I talked with her for a couple hours over the phone.That's boring. Well, I want to see if they're relatively bright and if they’re going to be somewhat responsible. When you talk to them you can get a feel for that. I want girls that are doing this not just to make money, but who like what they are doing.I also read an interview where you said that you haven't actually sat down and watched a porno in years.The thrill is gone, you know? If I know the people I don't want to see them. My DVD player doesn't even work. I'll look at clips on the Internet, because you want to know who the new girls are.What advice would you give to someone who wants to do the type of work you do?Be prepared to work 365 days a year. I mean, you can do it mechanically, just for the money, but if you're doing it properly it's an all-the-time thing. There's going to be tons of drama from the girls. Most of mine are actually pretty good, and there's no drugs or anything. I've been doing this almost 10 years and I have not once had a girl flake on a shoot.Someone in porn once said that there's only $10,000 in the whole industry and it just changes hands all the time.That's being somewhat facetious. There's a lot of money, but most of it is constantly changing hands between a few people. There's a lot of directors and stuff in the business and a lot of them don't make any money. The talent, if they're any good, they make a lot of money. A girl working conservatively can make $100,000. They can make way more than that. I've had a girl make over a million in three years.What's your commission on things like that, 20 percent?It's 10 percent, but between you and I, I don't always collect it. And I give away the booking fee to the guy that works for me. I don't need the money, but I want the girls to pay something. I don't want to work for free. But usually at the end of the month they'll tell me what they owe me and I'll take part of it.So if money isn't the main motivation for doing what you do, what is?I have no idea. People have asked me before. I mean, I don't have to do it. It's interesting, it's something to do, I'm pretty good at it… but I honestly have no idea why. I mean, I fell into it and it's something to do.PAUL JOHNSTON
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