A breaststroke through the porn talent pool with Mark Spiegler

Image
Mark Spiegler and actress Dana DeArmond at AEE 2009.
Photo: Sarah Feldberg

To hear Mark Spiegler tell it, anybody can be a porn star.

Of course, you need the looks, the libido and the willingness to try just about anything in the sexual playbook, but beyond those simple prerequisites, getting the attention of the well known adult talent agent, who has represented such stars as Sasha Grey and Belladonna, is relatively easy.

Call him back when he tells you to and you’re in.

“Punctuality is the politeness of kings,” Spiegler proclaims from the bed in a suite at the Venetian on Wednesday night. “That’s Louis XVI or Louis XIV.”

Adult talent agent Mark Spiegler of Spiegler Girls.

On another hotel bed across from him, six of his clients, known as “Spiegler Girls,” are having a conversation that ranges from boyfriends to love to fashion to anal sex. Dressed in jeans and T-shirts that could be straight off the rack at American Eagle, they don’t look like porn stars. If they didn’t occasionally mention things like double penetration, sleeping with “crusty old guys who know how to bone” and going a full 24 hours without taking in another person’s bodily fluids, the conversation could pass for sorority house gossip or a chat among particularly intimate girlfriends.

"I'm strictly dickly," says Stevie Hart, a new face on the team, of her porn preferences.

"I can pretend to be a boy," counters Bobbi Starr with a smile.

So You Want to be a Porn Star?

OK, maybe not.

The young women range from their early 20s to just past 30, and all have passed Spiegler’s timing test one way or another. The agent brags that in 10 years he’s never had a girl miss a shoot – except that once, of course, but that involved international air travel and a sudden illness.

His quote on punctuality is actually attributed to Louis XVIII, but the message is the same. In the adult entertainment industry, which is known for flaky performers and sketchy shoots, Spiegler is an organizational oasis.

And he expects the same organization and the same reliability on the part of his clients.

“You have three jobs,” he says, explaining what it takes to be a Spiegler Girl. “There’s the suckin’ and the f-in’ – that’s the easy part. Then don’t make me look bad and don’t give me stuff to worry about.”

Spiegler Girls Adrianna Nicole and Aiden Starr at AEE 2009

The girls on the opposite bed chuckle or check their text messages. They’ve heard this line before.

Standing just a few inches over five feet, the economist-turned-legal-pimp is in constant communication with somebody.

“I’m available 24 hours a day,” Spiegler told me when I first contacted him about the possibility of an interview during the annual AVN Adult Entertainment Expo. Watching Spiegler, phone in his palm, as he navigates between emails, Web sites and a barrage of phone calls, I believe this is true.

And this, in part, is what attracts Spiegler’s clients to him. They also trust him, and in an industry where actual physical harm is a daily possibility, trust is a highly-prized commodity.

“I won’t send a girl to a shoot until I’ve met them first,” Spiegler says. No guys in motel rooms with camcorders, no under the table dealings – most Spiegler Girls work three to five days a week shooting scenes that Spiegler has booked for them with production companies and directors he knows personally.

When the popular Bang Brothers Web site based in Miami wanted to shoot one Spiegler’s actresses, the agent refused until company representatives flew to LA to meet face to face.

Spiegler Girl Kristina Rose

And after a decade of filling a whole catalog of roles in the adult industry, Spiegler has high standards, too.

“I had a girl make a million dollars in 33 months,” Spiegler adds. “A vagina is a wonderful thing.”

“He won’t send you on any stupid little blow-job scenes,” says Hart, who started shooting porn just two months earlier. From her tone of voice, I gather it’s a complement.

Hart says she was attracted to Spiegler because of his reputation. As is the case with most of his current talent, she sent over an email with some nude photos and managed to return his phone call during the designated hour. Though the pretty young blonde, whose style is vaguely Avril Lavigne, had some requests of her own – "I don't do girls," she says, except maybe Belladonna – Spiegler saw something in her that worked, and the rest is history.

“We’ve never recruited a girl,” Spiegler says, pulling up a pages-long list of emails from wannabes with the subject line “PT” for “potential talent.” “We turn down about two a day.”

Sasha Grey on her First Time

Today, Spiegler has 23 girls listed on his Web site, and newbie Dylan Ryan in town for her first AVN will be added shortly. Twenty of his charges are in Las Vegas for the adult convention, and a few were even nominated for AVN awards.

The long-haired former music teacher Bobbi Starr was nominated for Best Anal Sex Scene for Diggin’ in the Gapes, Best Group Sex Scene (starring Bobbi and 14 men) and Female Performer of the Year. Dana DeArmond, who Spiegler actually tried to talk out of pursuing a career in porn, was noted in the categories of Best Oral Sex Scene and Best Double Penetration Sex Scene.

While the atmosphere in the suite on the night before the convention opens is quietly excited, this visit to the adult entertainment industry’s most important annual summit is definitely a business trip for the Spiegler Girls and their handler.

Spiegler’s days in Vegas are spent waving, beckoning, making introductions, doing head counts and always answering his phone. He walks the convention floor with a parade of women behind him, pausing constantly to make sure no one has wandered off to talk to someone, use the bathroom or smoke a cigarette.

“There’s Jake Malone,” he says pointing out the slender middle-aged director known for his hardcore films and hardcore attitude. He directs a couple of his lesser known ladies over to him, making the connection that may earn them one shoot or many. A pony-tailed actor stops to greet Spiegler, a porn star and her tag-along and then it’s off to the booths of other industry folks whose names and titles slip away in the chaos of the convention.

Hustling his group along with a gentle impatience, Spiegler reminds me of a camp counselor I once had.

There is something maternal about the squat man with the gruff voice who shuffles through the convention in blue jeans and T-shirts bearing snarky one-liners. He scolds the girls when they scamper off for cigarette breaks and rolls his eyes at their talk of boyfriends.

“It’s like having a mom who’s a short Jewish man,” says one of the actresses.

And similar to their moms, Spiegler is mostly uninterested in what happens when their clothes come off. Their attitudes -- not their sex acts -- are what concern him.

“Ten minutes on set, and you’re bored,” he says.

Then Spiegler is reaching for his phone again, cursing a missed call that went unnoticed amid the din of pumping music and groans from porn blasting on nearby TVs.

“You want to see something?” he asks me.

A big smile spreads across the agent’s face as he pulls up the video library on his cell phone. For I second I wonder what porn rite of passage I’m about to endure – a DP? Some fetish scene? A bondage act?

“Look,” he says with genuine pride, as a streak of grey and white runs across the tiny screen. “My cat can fetch.”

Share
Photo of Sarah Feldberg

Sarah Feldberg

Get more Sarah Feldberg

Previous Discussion:

  • Lynn Comella's favorite quotes from the sexed-up week that was.

  • How do you document an X-rated world for a family newspaper?

  • Vibrating outfits, 3D porn and more.

  • Get More Porno Blog Stories
Top of Story