The Blowfish Blog

[The Pro Circuit] The Verne Troyer Sex Tape (Sort Of)

The world of porn has an occasional obsession with little people. Despite my Celtic pedigree and my tilt toward insanity, I do not in fact mean leprechauns, whom the porn world (along with everyone else) pretends don’t actually exist. I mean little people, persons with dwarfism, aka “marked human smallness.” Some politically incorrect types still insist on calling “midgets,” at least partially because the term “midget porn” is so easy to say. This M-word, however, is considered an offensive term and most unusually small adults, the Little People of America informs me, would rather be referred to by their name than a label.

That said, it’s damn hard not to trip over the term “little person porn” or “porn featuring persons of small stature.” Hence the title of this column: POSSporn, allowing me to conveniently objectify little peoples’ noteworthy physical attributes the same way I would anyone else’s in porn, welcome to the club folks, without a sensitive new age guy like me using a term I’ve been trained by multiple corporate sensitivity seminars not to use.

Why do I mention it? As you probably know unless you’ve been living under a bushel, it’s because Verne Troyer, who played “Mini-Me” in the Austin Powers movies, is at the center of the latest celebrity sex tape malestrom. Celebrity gossip site TMZ.com has been hit with a $20 million lawsuit by Troyer, who claims that the site “violated his privacy rights and infringed on his copyright and trademark by running portions of the tape on TMZ TV and TMZ.com. [Troyer] also alleges TMZ violated his right of publicity and misappropriated his name and likeness.”

Also at the center of this controversy? Prince among men Kevin Blatt, described by AVN.com as a “celebrity sex-tape broker,” apparently on the strength of his sale of the One Night in Paris footage to porn label Red Light District by Hilton’s former boyfriend Rick Salomon. SugarDVD promised $100,000 for the tape, and was named in the lawsuit alongside Blatt and TMZ.com.

A US District Judge blocked release of the tape, and forbade TMZ from publishing any more excerpts while the case is pending. Troyer asserts the tape was stolen, and Blatt claims he doesn’t have it, saying he backed off when he discovered that Troyer and his partner had not consented to the tape’s sale.

TMZ’s footage was pulled down, but at press time you could still find it on YouTube, though who knows how long that’ll last? Don’t sob too hysterically if they’ve yanked it by the time you read this; it ain’t much to look at. Should you find the footage, you’ll thrill 25 seconds of a naked Verne making out on a bed with his former live-in girlfriend. No, not fingering, fucking, or doing anything else X-rated, just kissing, kind of sweetly, which is apparently plenty to disgust some commentators. Personally, I found it vaguely moving, but still felt kinda guilty for peeping something Troyer claims he didn’t want to see the light of day. All in the name of journalism, yo.

I say Troyer “claims” he didn’t want this footage released because it’s hard to know for sure. Filing a lawsuit is a time-honored marketing strategy engaged in by the publishers of celebrity sex tapes and biographies alike. For a narrow slice of attorney’s fees, you can get a whole damn lot of press. I’ve heard many a voice speculating that Paris Hilton’s famous lawsuit against Rick Salomon was viral marketing conveniently settled out-of-court after they’d gotten headlines. Who knows? I’ll give Troyer the benefit of the doubt, for now.

Incidentally, also at press time, a simple YouTube search for “Verne Troyer Sex Tape” nets not only the footage itself, but an endless parade of bottom-feeders hawking their own dumb opinions on the tape as an excuse to include “verne troyer sex tape” as a keyword and float to the top of the YouTube septic tank.

The Verne Troyer incident speaks to the culture of celebrity obsession that makes celeb sex tapes so endlessly fascinating to the mainstream. But it also reflects an interest that the porn industry has with persons of small stature. This grows first from the generally amoral, freak-show attitude of the porn industry, but also from the obnoxious attitude of many porn marketers and producers, in which shock value is more important than context.

But, Troyer’s right to privacy aside, does the porn interest in little people also reflect a positivity, in which little people can make a living as porn performers, which rocks? Does BBW porn reflect that positivity on some level, or racially-oriented porn, or bear porn or whatever? Maybe yes, maybe no. Since erectile tissue has no conscience, I wouldn’t expect you or me or anyone to subscribe to political correctness in the bedroom.

But if I were you . . . I wouldn’t call them midgets.

Thomas Roche blogs about history, horror, Harryhausen and Caucasian Georgia at thomasroche.com.

Share This

This entry was posted on Tuesday, 1 July 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.