gonzo
10-17-2006, 10:43 PM
...who does this remind yall of???
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/issues/2005-01-05/large/img_8752_cover.jpg Tony Chiu's Plan to Become a Big Shot
... includes acting Italian, befriending Al Goldstein and Howard Stern, and becoming the king of amateur adult films. Who says 21-year-olds don't have ambition these days? http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/shim.gif
Tony Chiu says he's slept with 97 women. Some of them complained about his size.
"About 10 of them," he says. "They'd say, 'Oh, Tony, why are you so big?'"
The length isn't the issue. "It isn't that long," says Chiu. "I'm thinking it's the girth."
So how big is it?
"I haven't actually measured it," says Chiu. "I'm not that insecure."
While the precise dimensions of Tony Chiu's member will remain hidden to most of us, his identity is a highly visible work in progress. Chiu, 21, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, has adopted what he calls "Italian symbolism." He lives at Second and Wilder in South Philadelphia, an area he chose because he wants to live among Italians.
His ceilings are high. His floors are marble. His front door is guarded by a security camera he can monitor from his bedroom, which also includes a massive walk-in closet that holds his 18 custom-tailored suits. Chiu dresses formally almost every day, slicking his hair into a thick back-swept wave that catches the light and screams of mobster movies.
He's still aging into his suits, some of which seem to wear him. When he dons his pinstriped number--the piping fat with gangster attitude--he looks like a kid auditioning for a high school play. Slightly built at 5-foot-9, maybe 160 pounds, Chiu has a habit of speaking with his hands, which can give him the incongruous look of a young, lean Asian Marlon Brando.
Just inside his front door hangs a framed mug shot of Al Capone. Portraits of John Gotti and Frank Sinatra stare out over his dining room table. And upstairs, above his bathroom Jacuzzi, there's a picture of Al Pacino as Scarface luxuriating in the bubbles of his own Jacuzzi.
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/issues/2005-01-05/large/img_8752_coverleadb_1.jpg One recent day Chiu's dining room table held three snapshots of Joey Merlino. One was a picture of the former Philly mob boss standing by himself in shorts and a T-shirt; the others showed Merlino and another man in matching prison garb.
Chiu says he writes letters to lots of prisoners. He and Merlino struck up a correspondence. Merlino sent some pictures. No big deal. Chiu declines to discuss the matter further--and there isn't much need.
"I want to be rich," says Chiu. "I always have."
Chiu plans to get rich through pornography, and he has an adult film company, Philly Amateurs, which he's eager to promote.
"I've got to get some steady income," he says. "Sometimes all I eat, to save money, is noodles."
He's a young man living off the fat of his dubious dream. "I want to be one of the biggest names in the adult film industry," he says. "I know that's saying a lot, but I think I can do it."
The Sounds of Sex
Tony Chiu isn't inspired by the photographs of Brianna Cummings, but he isn't dissuaded either. She has sandy blond hair and carries a few extra pounds. "She's not bloated or anything," he announces, which means she might be good enough.
He sends Cummings one of his form letters, which explains that he runs an adult film company and might be interested in her services.
It's around noon, and the only other thing Tony Chiu has accomplished is having dressed himself in a cool gray suit. He also listened, as he does every day, to Howard Stern's radio show. The rest of the afternoon will be spent slogging through the pool of adult film applicants on websites like sexyjobs.com.
This is Chiu's second run at making amateur adult films. He launched his business at 18, when he was supposed to be completing his senior year at Lenape High School in New Jersey. But he rarely showed up and didn't graduate.
"I was a rebel," says Chiu. "School didn't interest me."
He first experienced an adult film when he was 13 and discovered a scrambled pay-per-view channel. He couldn't see the video, but the sounds told the story. "They were having sex," he says. "I started turning to those channels all the time."
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/issues/2005-01-05/large/img_8752_coverwebsi_2.jpg He was 15 when he first started thinking about making adult films professionally. The first two people he filmed were Dara and Kate, a pair of Temple University students whose performance is still available on Chiu's new website, www.phillyamateurs.com (http://www.phillyamateurs.com/).
He found them through an ad he placed, and paid them $100 each--money they needed for rent. He met them in a hotel parking lot in Cherry Hill and paid for a room. He was the cameraman.
Chiu says he racked up maybe 75 videos between 2001 and 2003, which he sold on eBay for $20 each. Most of the videos came from people who made their own tapes, but sometimes he did the filming himself. Within six months he estimates he made $30,000. But he found dealing with eBay's guidelines too big a drag, so he sold out to other film distributors.
"I had a lot of money," he says, "but other than buying this house, I was pretty stupid with it."
Chiu became known around town for his extravagant suits and for dropping big cash at haunts like Cheerleaders, Chickie's & Pete's and the Palm. "I was going to be a bartender," he says, "maybe buy my own club some day."
Chiu does have a mixology certificate taped above his walk-in closet. "But I decided the straight life," he says, "just wasn't for me."
A year after selling off his business and down to his last $7,000, Chiu has decided to relaunch, this time with professionals as well as amateurs. He intends to sell his product through his own website, which went live early last month.
"I made a lot of money at this the first time," says Chiu. "This time I hope to make a lot more--and keep it going."
Dreaming of Al Goldstein
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/issues/2005-01-05/large/img_8752_covergetty_3.jpg "I am very attractive," the letter reads. "I mean very attractive, and I LOVE sex. I am straight but will have sex with a guy for the money."
The email is from an 18-year-old black man in Allentown who's looking for work. At first Chiu dismisses the man.
"Every single guy out there who writes me," he says, "I always wonder: Is he serious? Or does he just want to fuck for free? Usually that's all he wants. That's bullshit--and a waste of my time."
But local talent is always easier to work with, so Chiu writes him back. "I can use some local people," he writes. "Do you know of any women who'll be willing to star with you in a film?"
Though Chiu started filming again over the summer, he hasn't sold a single movie in more than a year. He seems to derive an inordinate amount of satisfaction from just telling people about his amateur film business. And because the hard work of starting his company over again is so much less attractive than the goal--riches and fame--he often thinks three or four steps ahead of his current circumstances.
For instance, he speaks with great passion about the sad plight of Al Goldstein, the founder of Screw magazine. Goldstein once had millions of dollars, but he lost it all and wound up sleeping in a homeless shelter and working in a New York City bagel shop.
When Goldstein recently appeared on Howard Stern's show to publicize his situation, Chiu was moved. "I'd like to help him," he says. "The way I look at it, that could be me. I have this house, and I would like to be big in the same industry as Al Goldstein, but I could lose it all. If that happened, I'd like to think someone would help me."
Chiu is a dreamer in the truest sense, envisioning his own life in terms of a VH1 Behind the Music story, complete with struggle, success, failure and redemption. Because he lives within his own exalted vision of himself, he imagines losing everything before he's attained much of anything. Those who know him say he's inherently kind and respectful, which may be part of the reason he wants to help Goldstein, an older man he perceives as a fellow rebel. Of course he also imagines how helping Al Goldstein could further his own career.
Chiu wrestled with Goldstein's dilemma for a couple of weeks before nailing down a plan to help the fallen porn mogul. What he came up with involves Howard Stern, a hero of sorts to Chiu.
Videotapes of Stern's E! show, stacked 3 feet high, adorn Chiu's VCR. A copy of Private Parts, the radio host's best-selling memoir, sits on his bedside table. Chiu reads a little of it every night after watching Stern's E! show and before falling asleep. He even wakes up to an alarm at 6 a.m. so he doesn't miss a minute of Stern's radio show. "I love him," says Chiu. "I love everything about him. I love the way he says exactly what he thinks--always so honest. Never mind what people might think of him."
Chiu also loves Stern because he beat long odds to live a dream--something Chiu hopes to do in the porn industry, which Stern also happens to love.
His business plan calls for an appearance on the Stern show. "I want to get some publicity for my company and approach Howard," says Chiu. "I think he'll like what I'm doing."
Homemade Porn! Twenty Bucks a Shot!
The way Stacy Sinn remembers it, as she performed her one-woman show in Chiu's bedroom, he behaved in a completely professional manner the entire time. She was naked. He wore a suit.
"There wasn't a single move made toward having sex with me," she says. "In this business, that's saying something."
Sinn arrived at Chiu's house one afternoon last summer after a brief series of email and phone conversations. "I don't think he was entirely sure of what he wanted," she says. "But we worked it out. And I'd work with him again."
The final product, dubbed Stacy Sinn Solo, is roughly 45 minutes of uninterrupted self-pleasuring. Sinn represents the kind of performer Chiu is looking to work with--an "amateur" with experience. Sinn is average looking, particularly when compared to the silicone-enhanced Barbie dolls that populate most adult movies. But the 31-year-old Sinn was paid for her effort and hopes to make a career for herself in the porn industry. (She recently coupled with porn legend Ron Jeremy for a movie called Ron Jeremy on the Loose: Atlantic City.)
Chiu's site currently offers nine videos at $20 each, available by check or money order because he has yet to set up credit card merchant accounts. He sells only VHS tapes right now but hopes to have DVDs available soon. The videos themselves vary in quality, with camerawork that at times appears no more advanced than a surveillance video. But that homemade look is exactly what might drive people to his site.
In the beginning of the amateur adult film movement, "amateur" meant exactly that. "Bob and Suzy from Akron bought a video camera, filmed themselves having sex and sold it," says Tim Connelly, editor and publisher of Adult Video News, the adult film industry bible, founded by Temple grad Paul Fishbein. "But as the popularity of amateur films grew throughout the mid-'90s, so did the variations."
The amateur label now encompasses filmmakers like Chiu. "I'd call him pro-am," Connelly says, looking over the Philly Amateurs website during a phone interview. "He's casting obtainable-looking women, girls that could live next door, and filming them with a home video camera. Point and shoot."
In 2001 The New York Times Magazine ran a story that estimated the porn industry's annual take at between $10 and $14 billion. Connelly says amateur films make up a "significant portion" of that hefty pie, a percentage that figures to grow. "As technology becomes less expensive and more available," he says, "it's gonna become more and more accepted."
Tony Chiu may be young, but he chose to focus on a booming segment of a strong industry. Perhaps even more important, his eccentricities fit right into the porn wonderland.
"A Taiwanese kid trying to pass himself off as Italian?" says Connelly. "No one would look at him twice in this industry. No one would question it. It's the Wild West out here. We're all miscreants and foxhole buddies. As long as he's doing things legally and not hurting the girls, he could find a family. Adult film could be very good for him. If he's committed and professional, he's found a home."
(Not So) High School
Tony Chiu asks visitors to take off their shoes so they don't scuff up his marble floors. He has the suits, the expensive colognes he keeps on his dresser, and a penchant for leaving big tips. But his life isn't all fine wine and precious bodily fluids, and even what he calls his "luxury home" offers its own problems and questions.
For the last two months Chiu and his attorney have haggled with a contractor over a series of water stains marring the walls of his second and third floors. And as it turns out, the home he's so proud of isn't actually in his name. It belongs to his mother.
Tony Chiu says the house is in his mother's name only because he was too young to have established credit when he bought it. Chiu's mother, who lives in Sicklerville, N.J., declined to be interviewed for this story.
Her son confronts his current financial woes head-on, saying he might have to pick up a part-time job until he gets his porn enterprise rolling again. But he also admits his life includes a certain amount of mythmaking--a concerted effort at reinvention.
"I took a really serious look at myself when I turned 18," he says. "I didn't like what I saw, and I started making changes."
Adolescence didn't go well for Tony Chiu. Classmates from Lenape High remember him as quiet and socially awkward--if they remember him at all. In grade school the only thing he talked about was karate. In high school he withdrew even further, keeping to himself. And at some point in his freshman year he disappeared.
"I had to check my yearbook to see who he was," one female classmate wrote to PW by email. "But I remembered the name, and I asked one of my best friends, who I thought may have known him, and he said he does remember some story about him buying pot at school that turned out to not really be pot anyway, but he still got [expelled]. From what I can remember, he was really quiet and, not to sound harsh, but a lot of people who weren't friends with him may not have noticed him not being in school."
You've Gotta Talk the Walk
The "pot" Chiu purchased turned out to be oregano. The failed drug deal could have been another lowlight on the resume of a lifelong loser. But Tony Chiu set out to alter his trajectory.
In the wake of his expulsion, Chiu attended a Cherry Hill reform school before returning to Lenape for his senior year. "The only full day I attended was the first day," says Chiu. "After that I skipped all of my classes."
Instead, Chiu launched the porn company of his dreams. He filmed Dara and Kate, the lesbian couple from Temple, and he started making those changes, initially in the way he dressed.
"I got a really expensive suit," says Chiu. "At Boyd's. I loved the way people complimented me when I wore it and treated me like I was important."
The quiet kid was taking on a different shape. And it was around this time that he started corresponding with jailed underworld figures, Merlino among them.
He also attends mob trials, but Chiu's no mobster. His whole game these days is about manipulating images--about taking on an exotic appearance.
"I changed the way I walked," says Chiu. "I changed everything. Down to the tiniest detail. I even changed the way I ate spaghetti. I used to eat spaghetti with just a fork. Now I eat it with a fork and a spoon."
Twirling his spaghetti noodles--fork wedged against spoon--is another example of the Italian influence in Chiu's life. It's a dynamic that started with his father, Tong Chiu, who immigrated to the United States from Taiwan in the '70s.
A group of Italians in South Jersey, says Chiu, taught his father how to get along in America. But Chiu's relationship with his father seems complicated, and resolution is no longer possible. Tong Chiu died in 2002.
His son remembers his father's death dramatically, complete with a film-ready ending. "My father had cancer," he says. "And he had gotten really sick and lost consciousness. We brought him home."
Near the end, his father opened his eyes and looked right at his son. "He looked at me and started crying," says Chiu. "I think he was thinking about everything he was going to miss in my life."
Chiu's stories about his father run down a few different tracks. When his father was sick, he stayed home and talked to Tony more than he ever had. "He ran a restaurant," says Chiu. "He was always so busy, but after he got cancer he had to stay home. I got to know him a lot better."
He also taught his son a lot about cooking. "He could make a fantastic spaghetti sauce," says Tony. "The Italians he met when he first moved here taught him."
But he admits his father was disappointed in him. "He said if I dropped out of school, it would be the biggest mistake of my life," says Chiu. "But I've always been a rebel. I wanted to prove him wrong."
Tony says his mother has taken a hands-off approach to Philly Amateurs. But he remains in competition with his deceased father, who never approved of his adult film business.
"My father was 38 when he started his own business," says Chiu. "I was 18. He was 30 before he owned a house. I was 19 when I moved in here, and this house is much, much nicer than his first house."
Chiu's rebellion extends to his taste in women. "My parents wanted to see me meet a nice Asian girl," says Chiu. "But an Asian girl has to be smoking for me even to look at her. I prefer Caucasian women."
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/issues/2005-01-05/large/img_8752_covercamer_4.jpg The transformation of a shy wallflower-type kid in high school to a porn entrepreneur sounds like a fractured fairy tale. And Chiu is aware that some people will take one look at him and wonder what the hell his story is.
"I could have worked some average job," he says. "I could have worked in a restaurant or something, doing back-breaking work. That's what my father did, and he died young. I decided that before I die, I'm going to have a good time.
"I decided to start dressing and acting like the person I want to be. Somebody important. I didn't want to tell people, 'I work in some office' or something. What would they say to that? They would say 'Oh,' and that would be the end of that conversation. When I tell people what I do for a living, they want to know more. When I tell people I work in the adult film industry, it triggers hours and hours of talk."
Tony Hits the Town
"Hey you fuckers," calls Jacky Bam Bam, a radio personality on WYSP. Bam Bam is stalking the pavement outside Cheerleaders Gentleman's Club in red Christmas tights. "You fuckers ready?"
In just a few minutes the doors will open, and the South Philly hot spot's annual Christmas party will start. Before Chiu walks inside, he asks a reporter for his invitation. "I forgot mine," he says. On his way inside he presents the invitation and motions over his shoulder. "He's with me," he tells everyone who greets him.
Pretty much everyone here seems to know Chiu, who boasts a number of nicknames on the Philadelphia bar scene: "Tough Tony," "The Player," "Playboy" and "Tony Red Suit."
One of Cheerleaders' bouncers gave Tony that last nickname, and this afternoon Chiu wears the signature red suit that earned him the moniker. The bouncer, well-dressed and massive, greets him with a casual "Tony Red Suit!"
Chiu grins in return and takes his usual seat, at the table furthest from the main stage and nearest the spot where the girls emerge from their dressing room. Then he sits.
"This is pretty much what he does when he comes here," says a woman named Timmy, one of the "champagne hostesses" at Cheerleaders. Chiu doesn't engage in idle conversation, and when he does speak, it's in slow, formal cadences--his sentences fully thought through.
"He used to come in here all the time a couple of years ago," says a waiter at the Palm. "Alone. Always alone. Quiet. Nice. If he wasn't drinking, he drank ginger ale. If he was drinking, he drank Dom. And he usually took a bottle to go."
That's $275 a bottle--a lot of money to pass right through his hands. But Chiu had an image to create.
The people from Chiu's usual haunts--Cheerleaders, Chickie's & Pete's and the Palm--think of him mostly as quiet, well-dressed, a good customer. They don't know much beyond that.
At the South Philly Chickie's & Pete's, Chiu was so quiet that the bartenders initially dubbed him "the lurker." But after a while he started talking--usually to order drinks. "He'd buy drinks for everyone at the bar," says John, a bartender. "Especially for the ladies. And he'd order crazy stuff."
Chiu would ask for multiple shots of Red Death, a mixture of a Kamikaze and an Alabama Slammer, six or eight at a time. "He'd say, 'Line them up,'" says John, "and every time I'd tell him, 'Man, I can't do that.'"
John says the staff at Chickie's & Pete's has been aware of Chiu's business for a long time. "I wasn't sure if he was for real," says John. "Hey, this is a bar. A lot of people come in and tell stories, and he gets a lot of people talking to him with that. It's not a business I'd want to be involved in, but I wish him luck. He's a nice guy, and an entrepreneur."
These days Chiu may not have the ready cash for the Palm, but he remains one of Chickie's & Pete's best customers--even as he tries to give up drinking. Chiu calls himself an alcoholic and says he started attending AA meetings in October. For now, though, he seems content to imbibe. "I'm gonna really start trying to quit after the holidays," he says.
At the Cheerleaders VIP party he consumes three helpings of the free food and a half-dozen drinks--martinis with Grey Goose vodka, Captain and Cokes, a Grand Marnier and a Sambuca.
Though he reached legal drinking age just last summer, Chiu has been a fixture on the local bar scene for a few years now. Evidently, faking it until he makes it has some advantages. Even Cheerleaders' co-owner John Meehan comes over to say hello to a valued customer. "I call him 'the man of a million different jackets,'" he says, admiring Chiu's red suit. "Look at him! Always dressed to the nines!"
"Oh, you know me," says Chiu, grinning. "I've got to look good."
Desperately Seeking Stern
For Chiu, the next few months will likely revolve around promoting his company through advertising, press and, with any luck, Howard Stern.
His website advertises a contest that offers the winner the chance to "star in a movie with seven lesbians," and Chiu is looking for other ways to improve his business. About a year ago he enlisted a film editor, Jason Comparetto, who's encouraging him to upgrade some of his filming standards.
"I'd like to see him start mounting one camera on a tripod and walking around with a handheld camera," says Comparetto. "That way I have something more to work with."
Though just 21 himself, Comparetto has already performed in, shot and edited adult films. He considers Chiu a fellow adventurer. "I think he's a great guy," says Comparetto. "He doesn't have the 100 percent grasp yet, but he's getting there real fast. I'm about 95 percent convinced he'll succeed because he's serious and professional."
In adult film, professionalism seems to revolve around honoring agreements and treating the female talent with respect, and Chiu evidently has those traits down. Comparetto thinks so much of Chiu he continues to work with him during his current lean times, accepting clothes in lieu of cash. "He owed me some money, and he had to give me a suit for it," he says. But Comparetto also admits he doesn't know Chiu all that well.
"He's kind of a difficult guy to get to know," he says. "If he isn't talking shop or talking about clothes, there doesn't seem to be much else that interests him."
For now, Chiu's identity is simultaneously larger than it was in high school and smaller than it might be if he weren't so focused on his persona as a budding pornographer. While the weight he places on a guest shot on Howard Stern's show might seem unrealistic in light of all the other work he needs to do, his interest in promoting his company through his hero's media empire makes sense professionally and psychologically.
Stern, the self-identified high school misfit who made it big, offers Chiu a role model. And Chiu sees a way he can enact the "Get on Stern" part of his business plan while also serving as Al Goldstein's savior.
Reading from notes he's written on a yellow legal pad, Chiu says, "I would like to offer, publicly, to help Al Goldstein. He can live in my house. I will feed him, clothe him and take care of him."
Considering that Chiu currently subsists mostly on pasta, his offer is at once generous and of questionable value. Imagine for a moment the 21-year-old Chiu and the 69-year-old Goldstein padding around Chiu's home in their socks to avoid messing up the marble floors. But Chiu does have a guest room, and he's refreshingly honest about what's on his mind.
"In return for my help," he continues, "perhaps Mr. Goldstein will provide me with some of his connections to help me with my business. That would be up to him."
Of course Chiu imagines making this pitch to Goldstein on Howard Stern's show--three rebels sitting in front of radio microphones, a quiet young man announcing his presence to millions.
"I felt bad for him when I heard him on Howard's show," says Chiu. "And I would like to help him. I'm just thinking--maybe we can help each other. And I think Howard would like this plan. This is something he might put on the air."
The vision is inspired--but by the time Chiu hatched his plan, Goldstein had found other saviors. "I'm almost off the streets," says Goldstein, reached by phone in New York. "But I can still use some help."
Goldstein is close to securing an apartment on Staten Island. Magician Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller is floating him a few months rent. Chiu doesn't take the news well. "Oh," he says. "Really? This is quite a shock."
But after a few moments he's back in there pitching. Some dreams don't die--and he's certain of one thing: He's offering Goldstein a better deal. "I'll go to the bagel place where he's working," he says, "and propose that he live in my house--for free. Any money he comes by he can keep. Any food he eats I'll cook for him. If he lives with me, it'll be like a kid living with his parents."
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=8752
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/issues/2005-01-05/large/img_8752_cover.jpg Tony Chiu's Plan to Become a Big Shot
... includes acting Italian, befriending Al Goldstein and Howard Stern, and becoming the king of amateur adult films. Who says 21-year-olds don't have ambition these days? http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/shim.gif
Tony Chiu says he's slept with 97 women. Some of them complained about his size.
"About 10 of them," he says. "They'd say, 'Oh, Tony, why are you so big?'"
The length isn't the issue. "It isn't that long," says Chiu. "I'm thinking it's the girth."
So how big is it?
"I haven't actually measured it," says Chiu. "I'm not that insecure."
While the precise dimensions of Tony Chiu's member will remain hidden to most of us, his identity is a highly visible work in progress. Chiu, 21, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, has adopted what he calls "Italian symbolism." He lives at Second and Wilder in South Philadelphia, an area he chose because he wants to live among Italians.
His ceilings are high. His floors are marble. His front door is guarded by a security camera he can monitor from his bedroom, which also includes a massive walk-in closet that holds his 18 custom-tailored suits. Chiu dresses formally almost every day, slicking his hair into a thick back-swept wave that catches the light and screams of mobster movies.
He's still aging into his suits, some of which seem to wear him. When he dons his pinstriped number--the piping fat with gangster attitude--he looks like a kid auditioning for a high school play. Slightly built at 5-foot-9, maybe 160 pounds, Chiu has a habit of speaking with his hands, which can give him the incongruous look of a young, lean Asian Marlon Brando.
Just inside his front door hangs a framed mug shot of Al Capone. Portraits of John Gotti and Frank Sinatra stare out over his dining room table. And upstairs, above his bathroom Jacuzzi, there's a picture of Al Pacino as Scarface luxuriating in the bubbles of his own Jacuzzi.
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/issues/2005-01-05/large/img_8752_coverleadb_1.jpg One recent day Chiu's dining room table held three snapshots of Joey Merlino. One was a picture of the former Philly mob boss standing by himself in shorts and a T-shirt; the others showed Merlino and another man in matching prison garb.
Chiu says he writes letters to lots of prisoners. He and Merlino struck up a correspondence. Merlino sent some pictures. No big deal. Chiu declines to discuss the matter further--and there isn't much need.
"I want to be rich," says Chiu. "I always have."
Chiu plans to get rich through pornography, and he has an adult film company, Philly Amateurs, which he's eager to promote.
"I've got to get some steady income," he says. "Sometimes all I eat, to save money, is noodles."
He's a young man living off the fat of his dubious dream. "I want to be one of the biggest names in the adult film industry," he says. "I know that's saying a lot, but I think I can do it."
The Sounds of Sex
Tony Chiu isn't inspired by the photographs of Brianna Cummings, but he isn't dissuaded either. She has sandy blond hair and carries a few extra pounds. "She's not bloated or anything," he announces, which means she might be good enough.
He sends Cummings one of his form letters, which explains that he runs an adult film company and might be interested in her services.
It's around noon, and the only other thing Tony Chiu has accomplished is having dressed himself in a cool gray suit. He also listened, as he does every day, to Howard Stern's radio show. The rest of the afternoon will be spent slogging through the pool of adult film applicants on websites like sexyjobs.com.
This is Chiu's second run at making amateur adult films. He launched his business at 18, when he was supposed to be completing his senior year at Lenape High School in New Jersey. But he rarely showed up and didn't graduate.
"I was a rebel," says Chiu. "School didn't interest me."
He first experienced an adult film when he was 13 and discovered a scrambled pay-per-view channel. He couldn't see the video, but the sounds told the story. "They were having sex," he says. "I started turning to those channels all the time."
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/issues/2005-01-05/large/img_8752_coverwebsi_2.jpg He was 15 when he first started thinking about making adult films professionally. The first two people he filmed were Dara and Kate, a pair of Temple University students whose performance is still available on Chiu's new website, www.phillyamateurs.com (http://www.phillyamateurs.com/).
He found them through an ad he placed, and paid them $100 each--money they needed for rent. He met them in a hotel parking lot in Cherry Hill and paid for a room. He was the cameraman.
Chiu says he racked up maybe 75 videos between 2001 and 2003, which he sold on eBay for $20 each. Most of the videos came from people who made their own tapes, but sometimes he did the filming himself. Within six months he estimates he made $30,000. But he found dealing with eBay's guidelines too big a drag, so he sold out to other film distributors.
"I had a lot of money," he says, "but other than buying this house, I was pretty stupid with it."
Chiu became known around town for his extravagant suits and for dropping big cash at haunts like Cheerleaders, Chickie's & Pete's and the Palm. "I was going to be a bartender," he says, "maybe buy my own club some day."
Chiu does have a mixology certificate taped above his walk-in closet. "But I decided the straight life," he says, "just wasn't for me."
A year after selling off his business and down to his last $7,000, Chiu has decided to relaunch, this time with professionals as well as amateurs. He intends to sell his product through his own website, which went live early last month.
"I made a lot of money at this the first time," says Chiu. "This time I hope to make a lot more--and keep it going."
Dreaming of Al Goldstein
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/issues/2005-01-05/large/img_8752_covergetty_3.jpg "I am very attractive," the letter reads. "I mean very attractive, and I LOVE sex. I am straight but will have sex with a guy for the money."
The email is from an 18-year-old black man in Allentown who's looking for work. At first Chiu dismisses the man.
"Every single guy out there who writes me," he says, "I always wonder: Is he serious? Or does he just want to fuck for free? Usually that's all he wants. That's bullshit--and a waste of my time."
But local talent is always easier to work with, so Chiu writes him back. "I can use some local people," he writes. "Do you know of any women who'll be willing to star with you in a film?"
Though Chiu started filming again over the summer, he hasn't sold a single movie in more than a year. He seems to derive an inordinate amount of satisfaction from just telling people about his amateur film business. And because the hard work of starting his company over again is so much less attractive than the goal--riches and fame--he often thinks three or four steps ahead of his current circumstances.
For instance, he speaks with great passion about the sad plight of Al Goldstein, the founder of Screw magazine. Goldstein once had millions of dollars, but he lost it all and wound up sleeping in a homeless shelter and working in a New York City bagel shop.
When Goldstein recently appeared on Howard Stern's show to publicize his situation, Chiu was moved. "I'd like to help him," he says. "The way I look at it, that could be me. I have this house, and I would like to be big in the same industry as Al Goldstein, but I could lose it all. If that happened, I'd like to think someone would help me."
Chiu is a dreamer in the truest sense, envisioning his own life in terms of a VH1 Behind the Music story, complete with struggle, success, failure and redemption. Because he lives within his own exalted vision of himself, he imagines losing everything before he's attained much of anything. Those who know him say he's inherently kind and respectful, which may be part of the reason he wants to help Goldstein, an older man he perceives as a fellow rebel. Of course he also imagines how helping Al Goldstein could further his own career.
Chiu wrestled with Goldstein's dilemma for a couple of weeks before nailing down a plan to help the fallen porn mogul. What he came up with involves Howard Stern, a hero of sorts to Chiu.
Videotapes of Stern's E! show, stacked 3 feet high, adorn Chiu's VCR. A copy of Private Parts, the radio host's best-selling memoir, sits on his bedside table. Chiu reads a little of it every night after watching Stern's E! show and before falling asleep. He even wakes up to an alarm at 6 a.m. so he doesn't miss a minute of Stern's radio show. "I love him," says Chiu. "I love everything about him. I love the way he says exactly what he thinks--always so honest. Never mind what people might think of him."
Chiu also loves Stern because he beat long odds to live a dream--something Chiu hopes to do in the porn industry, which Stern also happens to love.
His business plan calls for an appearance on the Stern show. "I want to get some publicity for my company and approach Howard," says Chiu. "I think he'll like what I'm doing."
Homemade Porn! Twenty Bucks a Shot!
The way Stacy Sinn remembers it, as she performed her one-woman show in Chiu's bedroom, he behaved in a completely professional manner the entire time. She was naked. He wore a suit.
"There wasn't a single move made toward having sex with me," she says. "In this business, that's saying something."
Sinn arrived at Chiu's house one afternoon last summer after a brief series of email and phone conversations. "I don't think he was entirely sure of what he wanted," she says. "But we worked it out. And I'd work with him again."
The final product, dubbed Stacy Sinn Solo, is roughly 45 minutes of uninterrupted self-pleasuring. Sinn represents the kind of performer Chiu is looking to work with--an "amateur" with experience. Sinn is average looking, particularly when compared to the silicone-enhanced Barbie dolls that populate most adult movies. But the 31-year-old Sinn was paid for her effort and hopes to make a career for herself in the porn industry. (She recently coupled with porn legend Ron Jeremy for a movie called Ron Jeremy on the Loose: Atlantic City.)
Chiu's site currently offers nine videos at $20 each, available by check or money order because he has yet to set up credit card merchant accounts. He sells only VHS tapes right now but hopes to have DVDs available soon. The videos themselves vary in quality, with camerawork that at times appears no more advanced than a surveillance video. But that homemade look is exactly what might drive people to his site.
In the beginning of the amateur adult film movement, "amateur" meant exactly that. "Bob and Suzy from Akron bought a video camera, filmed themselves having sex and sold it," says Tim Connelly, editor and publisher of Adult Video News, the adult film industry bible, founded by Temple grad Paul Fishbein. "But as the popularity of amateur films grew throughout the mid-'90s, so did the variations."
The amateur label now encompasses filmmakers like Chiu. "I'd call him pro-am," Connelly says, looking over the Philly Amateurs website during a phone interview. "He's casting obtainable-looking women, girls that could live next door, and filming them with a home video camera. Point and shoot."
In 2001 The New York Times Magazine ran a story that estimated the porn industry's annual take at between $10 and $14 billion. Connelly says amateur films make up a "significant portion" of that hefty pie, a percentage that figures to grow. "As technology becomes less expensive and more available," he says, "it's gonna become more and more accepted."
Tony Chiu may be young, but he chose to focus on a booming segment of a strong industry. Perhaps even more important, his eccentricities fit right into the porn wonderland.
"A Taiwanese kid trying to pass himself off as Italian?" says Connelly. "No one would look at him twice in this industry. No one would question it. It's the Wild West out here. We're all miscreants and foxhole buddies. As long as he's doing things legally and not hurting the girls, he could find a family. Adult film could be very good for him. If he's committed and professional, he's found a home."
(Not So) High School
Tony Chiu asks visitors to take off their shoes so they don't scuff up his marble floors. He has the suits, the expensive colognes he keeps on his dresser, and a penchant for leaving big tips. But his life isn't all fine wine and precious bodily fluids, and even what he calls his "luxury home" offers its own problems and questions.
For the last two months Chiu and his attorney have haggled with a contractor over a series of water stains marring the walls of his second and third floors. And as it turns out, the home he's so proud of isn't actually in his name. It belongs to his mother.
Tony Chiu says the house is in his mother's name only because he was too young to have established credit when he bought it. Chiu's mother, who lives in Sicklerville, N.J., declined to be interviewed for this story.
Her son confronts his current financial woes head-on, saying he might have to pick up a part-time job until he gets his porn enterprise rolling again. But he also admits his life includes a certain amount of mythmaking--a concerted effort at reinvention.
"I took a really serious look at myself when I turned 18," he says. "I didn't like what I saw, and I started making changes."
Adolescence didn't go well for Tony Chiu. Classmates from Lenape High remember him as quiet and socially awkward--if they remember him at all. In grade school the only thing he talked about was karate. In high school he withdrew even further, keeping to himself. And at some point in his freshman year he disappeared.
"I had to check my yearbook to see who he was," one female classmate wrote to PW by email. "But I remembered the name, and I asked one of my best friends, who I thought may have known him, and he said he does remember some story about him buying pot at school that turned out to not really be pot anyway, but he still got [expelled]. From what I can remember, he was really quiet and, not to sound harsh, but a lot of people who weren't friends with him may not have noticed him not being in school."
You've Gotta Talk the Walk
The "pot" Chiu purchased turned out to be oregano. The failed drug deal could have been another lowlight on the resume of a lifelong loser. But Tony Chiu set out to alter his trajectory.
In the wake of his expulsion, Chiu attended a Cherry Hill reform school before returning to Lenape for his senior year. "The only full day I attended was the first day," says Chiu. "After that I skipped all of my classes."
Instead, Chiu launched the porn company of his dreams. He filmed Dara and Kate, the lesbian couple from Temple, and he started making those changes, initially in the way he dressed.
"I got a really expensive suit," says Chiu. "At Boyd's. I loved the way people complimented me when I wore it and treated me like I was important."
The quiet kid was taking on a different shape. And it was around this time that he started corresponding with jailed underworld figures, Merlino among them.
He also attends mob trials, but Chiu's no mobster. His whole game these days is about manipulating images--about taking on an exotic appearance.
"I changed the way I walked," says Chiu. "I changed everything. Down to the tiniest detail. I even changed the way I ate spaghetti. I used to eat spaghetti with just a fork. Now I eat it with a fork and a spoon."
Twirling his spaghetti noodles--fork wedged against spoon--is another example of the Italian influence in Chiu's life. It's a dynamic that started with his father, Tong Chiu, who immigrated to the United States from Taiwan in the '70s.
A group of Italians in South Jersey, says Chiu, taught his father how to get along in America. But Chiu's relationship with his father seems complicated, and resolution is no longer possible. Tong Chiu died in 2002.
His son remembers his father's death dramatically, complete with a film-ready ending. "My father had cancer," he says. "And he had gotten really sick and lost consciousness. We brought him home."
Near the end, his father opened his eyes and looked right at his son. "He looked at me and started crying," says Chiu. "I think he was thinking about everything he was going to miss in my life."
Chiu's stories about his father run down a few different tracks. When his father was sick, he stayed home and talked to Tony more than he ever had. "He ran a restaurant," says Chiu. "He was always so busy, but after he got cancer he had to stay home. I got to know him a lot better."
He also taught his son a lot about cooking. "He could make a fantastic spaghetti sauce," says Tony. "The Italians he met when he first moved here taught him."
But he admits his father was disappointed in him. "He said if I dropped out of school, it would be the biggest mistake of my life," says Chiu. "But I've always been a rebel. I wanted to prove him wrong."
Tony says his mother has taken a hands-off approach to Philly Amateurs. But he remains in competition with his deceased father, who never approved of his adult film business.
"My father was 38 when he started his own business," says Chiu. "I was 18. He was 30 before he owned a house. I was 19 when I moved in here, and this house is much, much nicer than his first house."
Chiu's rebellion extends to his taste in women. "My parents wanted to see me meet a nice Asian girl," says Chiu. "But an Asian girl has to be smoking for me even to look at her. I prefer Caucasian women."
http://philadelphiaweekly.com/images/issues/2005-01-05/large/img_8752_covercamer_4.jpg The transformation of a shy wallflower-type kid in high school to a porn entrepreneur sounds like a fractured fairy tale. And Chiu is aware that some people will take one look at him and wonder what the hell his story is.
"I could have worked some average job," he says. "I could have worked in a restaurant or something, doing back-breaking work. That's what my father did, and he died young. I decided that before I die, I'm going to have a good time.
"I decided to start dressing and acting like the person I want to be. Somebody important. I didn't want to tell people, 'I work in some office' or something. What would they say to that? They would say 'Oh,' and that would be the end of that conversation. When I tell people what I do for a living, they want to know more. When I tell people I work in the adult film industry, it triggers hours and hours of talk."
Tony Hits the Town
"Hey you fuckers," calls Jacky Bam Bam, a radio personality on WYSP. Bam Bam is stalking the pavement outside Cheerleaders Gentleman's Club in red Christmas tights. "You fuckers ready?"
In just a few minutes the doors will open, and the South Philly hot spot's annual Christmas party will start. Before Chiu walks inside, he asks a reporter for his invitation. "I forgot mine," he says. On his way inside he presents the invitation and motions over his shoulder. "He's with me," he tells everyone who greets him.
Pretty much everyone here seems to know Chiu, who boasts a number of nicknames on the Philadelphia bar scene: "Tough Tony," "The Player," "Playboy" and "Tony Red Suit."
One of Cheerleaders' bouncers gave Tony that last nickname, and this afternoon Chiu wears the signature red suit that earned him the moniker. The bouncer, well-dressed and massive, greets him with a casual "Tony Red Suit!"
Chiu grins in return and takes his usual seat, at the table furthest from the main stage and nearest the spot where the girls emerge from their dressing room. Then he sits.
"This is pretty much what he does when he comes here," says a woman named Timmy, one of the "champagne hostesses" at Cheerleaders. Chiu doesn't engage in idle conversation, and when he does speak, it's in slow, formal cadences--his sentences fully thought through.
"He used to come in here all the time a couple of years ago," says a waiter at the Palm. "Alone. Always alone. Quiet. Nice. If he wasn't drinking, he drank ginger ale. If he was drinking, he drank Dom. And he usually took a bottle to go."
That's $275 a bottle--a lot of money to pass right through his hands. But Chiu had an image to create.
The people from Chiu's usual haunts--Cheerleaders, Chickie's & Pete's and the Palm--think of him mostly as quiet, well-dressed, a good customer. They don't know much beyond that.
At the South Philly Chickie's & Pete's, Chiu was so quiet that the bartenders initially dubbed him "the lurker." But after a while he started talking--usually to order drinks. "He'd buy drinks for everyone at the bar," says John, a bartender. "Especially for the ladies. And he'd order crazy stuff."
Chiu would ask for multiple shots of Red Death, a mixture of a Kamikaze and an Alabama Slammer, six or eight at a time. "He'd say, 'Line them up,'" says John, "and every time I'd tell him, 'Man, I can't do that.'"
John says the staff at Chickie's & Pete's has been aware of Chiu's business for a long time. "I wasn't sure if he was for real," says John. "Hey, this is a bar. A lot of people come in and tell stories, and he gets a lot of people talking to him with that. It's not a business I'd want to be involved in, but I wish him luck. He's a nice guy, and an entrepreneur."
These days Chiu may not have the ready cash for the Palm, but he remains one of Chickie's & Pete's best customers--even as he tries to give up drinking. Chiu calls himself an alcoholic and says he started attending AA meetings in October. For now, though, he seems content to imbibe. "I'm gonna really start trying to quit after the holidays," he says.
At the Cheerleaders VIP party he consumes three helpings of the free food and a half-dozen drinks--martinis with Grey Goose vodka, Captain and Cokes, a Grand Marnier and a Sambuca.
Though he reached legal drinking age just last summer, Chiu has been a fixture on the local bar scene for a few years now. Evidently, faking it until he makes it has some advantages. Even Cheerleaders' co-owner John Meehan comes over to say hello to a valued customer. "I call him 'the man of a million different jackets,'" he says, admiring Chiu's red suit. "Look at him! Always dressed to the nines!"
"Oh, you know me," says Chiu, grinning. "I've got to look good."
Desperately Seeking Stern
For Chiu, the next few months will likely revolve around promoting his company through advertising, press and, with any luck, Howard Stern.
His website advertises a contest that offers the winner the chance to "star in a movie with seven lesbians," and Chiu is looking for other ways to improve his business. About a year ago he enlisted a film editor, Jason Comparetto, who's encouraging him to upgrade some of his filming standards.
"I'd like to see him start mounting one camera on a tripod and walking around with a handheld camera," says Comparetto. "That way I have something more to work with."
Though just 21 himself, Comparetto has already performed in, shot and edited adult films. He considers Chiu a fellow adventurer. "I think he's a great guy," says Comparetto. "He doesn't have the 100 percent grasp yet, but he's getting there real fast. I'm about 95 percent convinced he'll succeed because he's serious and professional."
In adult film, professionalism seems to revolve around honoring agreements and treating the female talent with respect, and Chiu evidently has those traits down. Comparetto thinks so much of Chiu he continues to work with him during his current lean times, accepting clothes in lieu of cash. "He owed me some money, and he had to give me a suit for it," he says. But Comparetto also admits he doesn't know Chiu all that well.
"He's kind of a difficult guy to get to know," he says. "If he isn't talking shop or talking about clothes, there doesn't seem to be much else that interests him."
For now, Chiu's identity is simultaneously larger than it was in high school and smaller than it might be if he weren't so focused on his persona as a budding pornographer. While the weight he places on a guest shot on Howard Stern's show might seem unrealistic in light of all the other work he needs to do, his interest in promoting his company through his hero's media empire makes sense professionally and psychologically.
Stern, the self-identified high school misfit who made it big, offers Chiu a role model. And Chiu sees a way he can enact the "Get on Stern" part of his business plan while also serving as Al Goldstein's savior.
Reading from notes he's written on a yellow legal pad, Chiu says, "I would like to offer, publicly, to help Al Goldstein. He can live in my house. I will feed him, clothe him and take care of him."
Considering that Chiu currently subsists mostly on pasta, his offer is at once generous and of questionable value. Imagine for a moment the 21-year-old Chiu and the 69-year-old Goldstein padding around Chiu's home in their socks to avoid messing up the marble floors. But Chiu does have a guest room, and he's refreshingly honest about what's on his mind.
"In return for my help," he continues, "perhaps Mr. Goldstein will provide me with some of his connections to help me with my business. That would be up to him."
Of course Chiu imagines making this pitch to Goldstein on Howard Stern's show--three rebels sitting in front of radio microphones, a quiet young man announcing his presence to millions.
"I felt bad for him when I heard him on Howard's show," says Chiu. "And I would like to help him. I'm just thinking--maybe we can help each other. And I think Howard would like this plan. This is something he might put on the air."
The vision is inspired--but by the time Chiu hatched his plan, Goldstein had found other saviors. "I'm almost off the streets," says Goldstein, reached by phone in New York. "But I can still use some help."
Goldstein is close to securing an apartment on Staten Island. Magician Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller is floating him a few months rent. Chiu doesn't take the news well. "Oh," he says. "Really? This is quite a shock."
But after a few moments he's back in there pitching. Some dreams don't die--and he's certain of one thing: He's offering Goldstein a better deal. "I'll go to the bagel place where he's working," he says, "and propose that he live in my house--for free. Any money he comes by he can keep. Any food he eats I'll cook for him. If he lives with me, it'll be like a kid living with his parents."
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