Pornographic Stimulus Plan
By Michael Kaminer
Published September 16, 2009, issue of September 25, 2009.
In any other office, this wouldn’t seem remarkable. But this is the midtown Manhattan headquarters of Lucas Entertainment, one of the largest gay adult film companies in the world.
The yarmulke - worn in memory of a recently departed grandmother, it turns out - seems weirdly apt once you meet Michael Lucas, the 37-year-old founder and CEO of the 11-year-old porn conglomerate, which in August released what it claims is the first gay adult film made in Israel with an all-Israeli cast.
“Men of Israel” is characterized as a labor of love for the Moscow-born Jew, whose complex public persona fuses outspoken ardor for Israel, fervent antipathy for Islam (“ugly”) and right-wing Orthodox Jews (“parasites”), and canny promotion of raunchy sexuality. Lucas has become as infamous for acid pronouncements - likening the Quran to “Mein Kampf” in a notorious 2008 Stanford University talk, for instance - as for movies like “New York Hunks” and “Feet Extreme!” two of the more printable titles from his company’s extensive catalog.
Click to view larger.Likewise, Lucas claims that his motivation behind “Men of Israel” was not just titillation, but also a counterbalance to lopsided portrayals of Israel in mainstream media. “It’s free PR for Israel, and it’s much better than the PR they’re getting on the news,” he said during a tour of the company’s expansive second-floor offices, with views of the New York Times building across the street. “The reality is that Israel has only one face to people on the street, and that’s the West Bank and Gaza. All people see in the media is a country of disaster. They get images of a blown-up bus.”