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Purveyor, Fine Asian Porn
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Join Date: Jul 2004
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Playboy Interview with Chris Mallick
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"There?s nothing to masturbate to on the Internet." That sort of offhand observation?back in the mid-Nineties infancy of the World Wide Web?helped spawn the billion-dollar Internet porn business of today. As a co-founder of PayCom, a billing service for adult sites, Texas businessman Chris Mallick got in the ground floor of that business and made millions.
The new film, Middle Men, inspired by Mallick's wild ride, is a high-energy tale of sex, money, crime and temptation. Luke Wilson stars as Mallick?s cinematic alter ego Jack Ramsey, while Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht play his comedically bumbling business partners Wayne and Buck. We caught up with Mallick, who produced the film, to ask him about dating porn stars, how he used porn billing as a weapon against Al Qaeda and if he really ever committed murder.
PLAYBOY.COM: After watching this movie based on your life, do you sit back and think, How the hell did I make it out alive?
MALLICK: Yeah. In the very beginning of the movie, Luke Wilson?s character is driving on a dark and stormy night and his line is, ?How the hell did I let things go this far?? That is what I thought, and that is still what I feel about my experience.
PLAYBOY.COM: There?s the moment in the movie where Luke?s character is faced with a decision that he can make lots of money, but the catch is, you have to get into the porn business. You were faced with the same decision. How did you handle that moment?
MALLICK: Jack Harris, Luke's character, is presented this opportunity much like I was. It was rationalized. I was given the same explanation that James Caan gives Luke Wilson. ?Is Barron Hilton a pornographer? Is Steve Wynn a pornographer?? Because all they really are doing is saying, ?Here it is, if you want to buy it, buy it.?
We didn?t produce it, we?re just delivering this content to the TV at your hotel room, for example. If you?re a shareholder in a satellite or cable company, does that make you a pornographer, because the content they deliver is above R-rated. There?s all sorts of ways to rationalize.
PLAYBOY.COM: What is your general attitude about porn?
MALLICK: Ultimately, I did not then and I don?t know think there?s anything wrong with adult content, as long as it fits a certain criteria. My criteria was that anything that was acceptable to me was all that we?d bill for. We will be the middle men for consensual adult sex, end of story. We never billed for extreme sites. We didn?t want anything that would objectify anything that was not clearly adult and clearly consensual.
PLAYBOY.COM: How much of this ?inspired by real events? story is real?
MALLICK: About 80 percent of what you see in the movie is pretty dead-on. Luke Wilson?s charater is the most dead-on. The other characters are composites of people are known or made up whole cloth by [director] George Gallo.
PLAYBOY.COM: Let me just hope that the parts about murder and shooting people in the foot have been somewhat embellished.
MALLICK: I get asked that all the time. I?m kind of a smart-ass, so my knee-jerk reaction is to say that the film wasn?t long enough to include all the bodies I rolled off the back of a boat in a carpet, or all the guys I shot in the foot, or all the gun battles I was in. So we just synthesized it to one. But no, that didn?t happen, I?ve never done anything like that.
PLAYBOY.COM: Did you ever end up dating a porn star?
MALLICK: Dating is a strong term. No. I did not ?date? her. There was a girl from a single girl solo site that I had a little too much of an involvement with. What is it like dating a porn star? It sounds nice, until she says, ?I?m off to work, honey.? First of all, she did solo girl, so it was just her, and every once in a while another girl. They were mostly stills back then, not videos. She was a ?porn star? only because she did a totally nude site, so they classify it as a totally nude site.
PLAYBOY.COM: So it wasn?t like dating someone who starred in porn movies?
MALLICK: Yeah, it?s not that. To me, to say how was your day, honey, at the end of the day, would be kind of a tough thing to ask someone in that business.
PLAYBOY.COM: One of the craziest plotlines relates to helping the government track down a terrorist. What's the true story behind that?
MALLICK: In the film, we thought it was more interesting for the FBI to approach Audrey Dawns (Laura Ramsey). The true story is that just after 9/11, CNN had on the screen the names of the bombers that had gone down on the screen. I wrote down the names and had my partner run those names through our database.
These are Muslim fundamentalists who want to kill Americans because of our way of life, because we watch porn and drink Coca-Cola or whatever it is we?re not supposed to be doing in their minds. Sure enough, one of the bombers had bought a site using an electronic check. We had the FBI Cyber Crimes guys working with us on a big effort to fight child pornography, so we called them over and gave them the account number. They traced the account to an apartment in San Diego, got there, kicked the door in.
The place was vacant, filled with empty pizza boxes. They found a phone bill with a cellphone number that was still in use. They went to Chicago to the Hyatt downtown and found a guy who was trying to get on a plane in Chicago.
PLAYBOY.COM: When was this?
MALLICK: Just after 9/11, in October 2001. I thought it was interesting. These guys are gonna kill the infidel Americans, but before we do that, let?s order Pizza Hut and buy some porn.
PLAYBOY.COM: Is there anything you would change if you could go back and do it over?
MALLICK: I definitely believe in the butterfly effect, every small action is going to effect everything going forward. Based on that thinking, I wouldn?t change anything, because I?m incredibly happy where I am professionally and personally. But if I could go back and pull out one thing, and it wouldn?t change where I am today?I probably would make different choices.
As Luke Wilson?s character in the movie really shows, I got caught up. A lot of industry fame, tons of money, an amazing lifestyle, but at the same time, it was a very empty experience. I didn?t wake up every day and go, I?m doing great for the world.
We did a lot of good things. We worked against the exploitation of children very diligently; the company still does that with law enforcement worldwide. But all of that was the tip of the iceberg, and the rest of it was a fairly empty experience, to be honest.
PLAYBOY.COM: You?re putting together a cable show based on the film. What will that focus on that isn?t in the movie?
MALLICK: The film shows a bit of the rise of these guys, and all of a sudden, you switch to four years later, and they?re wildly wealthy. The series will be more comedy than drama, and it?s about what happens to these guys as they got rich. I think the characters of Buck and Wayne were very comedic in the film.
Gabriel changes his look. He goes from scruffy hair to more well-manicured. As he becomes more wealthy, he gets more over the top in his clothing and his hairstyles.
Giovanni brought the notion that his character was a kind of Ted Nugent guy. He?s always wearing shooting glasses, you see him with a crossbow and talking about buying Glocks. I think the cable show will be centered on those two guys and Luke Wilson. Who did they date? What did they buy? What was their lifestyle like? Where did they live?
[Laughs] Some people just shouldn?t have money.
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Like the people that trusted Mallick with their money... 
That interview was conducted prior to the release of Mallick's box office bomb, "Middle Men".
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Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $733,447
Widest Release: 252 theaters
Close Date: August 26, 2010
In Release: 21 days / 3 weeks
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Q: How do you know when Chris Mallick is lying?
A: His lips are moving!
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