Michael Lucas (director) - Misplaced Pages

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Michael Lucas is a gay Jewish pornographic actor and the founder and owner of Lucas Entertainment, born Andrei Treivas Bregman in Moscow, Russia, on March 10 1972. In 1995, Lucas moved to Germany and lived in France for two years before moving to the United States.

Biography and career

Lucas attended college in Moscow, graduating with a degree in law. He was the owner of a travel agency in Moscow for a short time after graduating university. Lucas worked as a nude model and male prostitute, and began his adult film career by appearing in a German heterosexual pornographic film. While in France, he worked under the influential French director Jean-Daniel Cadinot, appearing as "Ramzes Kairoff" in two gay pornographic films, both released in 1996. Using the name "Michel Lucas," he worked as a Falcon Exclusive, performing as a top in five films released in 1997 and 1998.

In 1998 Lucas founded his own production company, Lucas Entertainment, with money he earned from working in prostitution. He based the company in New York City (rather than Los Angeles, where many of the other pornography studios are located) to enable him to take advantage of the lack of competition there. Lucas likens his success in the field of prostitution to his subsequent success in filmmaking, saying, "if you’re going to sell sex, do it well. That’s the secret to a successful career as an escort (and the same reason my movies do so well.)"

He filmed his first project as a director, Back in the Saddle, in 1998 as well, and also performed in the film.

Lucas directs, produces and stars in his own films under the Lucas Entertainment banner. In an industry whose output is generally mediocre, this studio has garnered a multitude of GayVN Awards and Adult Erotic Gay Video Awards ("Grabbys") nominations and wins, and directed the careers of a number of hustlers, escorts and others into porn. Lucas Entertainment has four different production lines: the Auditions collection, the Fire Island Cruising collection, the International collection, and the Manhattan collection. In 2004, Lucas Distribution, Inc., his adult video distribution company, began operations; in 2005, LucasBlog.com was created, providing Lucas with an online media presence.

In the summer of 2005 Lucas released Michael Lucas' Dangerous Liaisons; the film featured celebrity cameos from RuPaul, Boy George, Graham Norton, Bruce Vilanch, Lady Bunny, Amanda Lepore, and Michael Musto.

Lucas has a reputation of being outspoken and controversial. A vocal opponent of drug use and advocate for safe sex, both in the porn industry and the gay community at large, he has taken out full-page public service announcements in several national publications. He was interviewed about his anti-drug campaign by Harvey Fierstein in the August 17, 2004, issue of The Advocate.

In 2004 Lucas appeared in Timothy Greenfield-Sanders' book XXX: 30 Porn Star Photographs and the accompanying HBO documentary Thinking XXX. Greenfield-Sanders asked Lucas for a list of his 10 favorite films; the 10 films he listed are all films from his own production company.

Lucas was invited to speak at a Master's Tea at Yale University's Calhoun College in April 2005. At the Tea, organized with assistance from gaYalies, he spoke to a group of about 50 students about his life history and his views on the porn industry in general. In February 2006 he participated in a symposium on "Sex for Sale" sponsored by the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. His remarks, "On Gay Porn," were published in the Journal.

An article published at www.somethingjewish.co.uk reporting on Lucas's August 2006 planned trip to Israel, "Entertaining gay Israeli troops," was also published at www.ynetnews.com, where it received negative comments in the article's "Talkbacks" section. His plans to visit Israel and the publicity surrounding it were also attacked, but in a follow-up article, "Lucas responds," Lucas said that the trip would not be cancelled; he went on to characterize some of the responses to the announcement of his trip to Israel as "homophobic." He also responded to the criticism by creating an entry at his blog, "Dear friends and fellow Jews," in which he wrote, "I can't believe that some of us can be so intolerant, especially to gay people!" Lucas himself, however, has demonstrated a lack of tolerance for others, for Christianity in general, and for Catholicism in particular. In another entry on his blog about a trip he made to Peru, Lucas published a photo of a young boy standing next to a priest. He captioned the photo, "A reminder for parents not to forget to send their little boys to church. This can be found everywhere in Peru. You can see how this little boy is moaning for the father's holy cock." Another photo, of a painting of the crucified Jesus, is captioned, "All of these museums I visited had all of these pictures of these crucafixes. The worldwide obsession with this skinny Jewish masochist enjoying himself on the cross 'for all our sins' bores the shit out of me."

Lucas continues to appear in his own films and is in his latest release, Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita Parts 1 & 2, a gay pornographic remake of the 1960 Fellini classic La Dolce Vita, released in 2006. The film won a record fourteen awards at the 2007 GayVN Awards, winning in every category in which it was nominated. In February 2007, International Media Films, Inc., which owns the rights to Fellini's La Dolce Vita, filed suit against Lucas (as Andrei Treivas Bregman), Lucas Entertainment, Inc., and Lucas Distribution, Inc. for trademark and copyright infringement. The lawsuit seeks to collect unspecified damages and to stop sales of Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita Parts 1 & 2. In May of 2007, a Manhattan federal judge rejected the request to enjoin the sales of Lucas' film, primarily on the grounds of "inexcusable delay" on the plaintiff's part. The judge also noted that there were serious issues raised regarding trademark infringement or tarnishment. At the preliminary injunction hearing, the attorney for the plaintiff said: "What we have here...is a serious art film, a work of art being debased by what appears to be a hard-core pornographic film. It is as simple as that...It has damaged La Dolce Vita now, it will damage it more as time goes on..."

On April 20, 2007, The New York Blade published the first of Lucas' weekly opinion columns.

In May 2007, Kensington Books published a biography of Lucas titled Naked: The Life and Times of Michael Lucas. Lucas asserts the book was published without his involvement or approval.

Personal

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Lucas lives on West 23rd Street in the Chelsea area of Manhattan with his boyfriend, international investor and prominent Democratic party contributor Richard Winger; Bianca, his Great Pyrénées dog; and a Peruvian guinea pig he smuggled back from vacation in his carry-on.
Lucas has an aversion to sunlight and relies on self-tanners to achieve his allover tanned appearance, save for an orange patch on his forearm. He keeps all the blinds closed in his office, saying, "I don’t want the light to come in here. The poisonous light."
Lucas thinks he has a "slight" case of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). He finds it difficult to focus when he does not take the medication suggested by his doctor and hard to concentrate on too many people at the same time. Lucas will not use Viagra because he experiences facial flushing as a side effect of taking the drug. He uses sleeping pills when needed.
Although Lucas was born in Russia and speaks Russian with his family, he self-identifies as Jewish and has no nostalgia for the land of his birth, owing to the widespread homophobia and anti-Jewish sentiment there. Speaking of his youth in Russia, Lucas said: "I did not have friends...the teachers couldn’t stand me."
On November 12, 2004, Lucas was sworn in as an American citizen. In a 2007 interview Lucas said that he "did nothing" to celebrate his acquired American citizenship.

Quotes

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"It is great for me that there is no competition in NYC. It gives me the opportunity to completely dominate New York." - when asked about the porn industry in New York City as compared to Los Angeles.
"The fact is, lots of people love and need porn. I do not harm anyone, I make them happy." - in an opinion column posted by Lucas at ynetnews.com.
"Thank you for those who voted for me and fuck you to those who didn’t." - in an acceptance speech before the audience at the GayVN Awards in March 2006.
"I've never watched porn in my life. I saw one Jeff Stryker movie, that's all I watched. I'm not interested in porn." - in an interview with Gert Jonkers of BUTT Magazine, posted at LucasBlog.com.
"You mean sleep with someone to get ahead in the business? You’re kidding right? That’s what we do for a living…that is my business." - when asked if he had ever been on a gay 'casting couch.'

Miscellanea

This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections or articles.

In his July 6 2007 opinion column in the New York Blade titled, "Trouble With Ultra-Orthodox," Lucas referred to the Hasidim in Jerusalem as "religious goons," parasites, vermin, and "anal warts on the body of Israeli society... main activities are praying and breeding." Lucas concluded the column by calling the Hasidim "religiously deluded jerks," and suggesting that they do not "merit the political influence they alas enjoy."
Lucas sometimes uses the bedroom he shares with his boyfriend, Richard Winger, to film sex scenes for his films. Winger is not bothered by it, saying, "Sometimes I think it’s kind of cool."
At the GayVN Awards in March 2006 Lucas was hissed and had ice thrown at him as he made his acceptance speech before an industry-only crowd for the shared award for "Best Picture." (The film shared the 2006 GayVN Award for Best Picture with Rascal Video's Wrong Side of the Tracks Part One and Part Two, directed by Chi Chi LaRue.)
Lucas was sued in 2006 by porn star Owen Hawk and Matthias von Fistenburg, of Dark Alley Media, for $750,000 for slander, libel, interference with trade, and other legal complaints. The suit was settled out of court with both parties agreeing not to discuss the settlement.
Richard Winger is rumored to be the source of funding for Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita though Lucas denies this. Said Winger: "I did invest some money in the company which I think was a very good investment..." Owen Hawk observed: "Any smart hooker knows it’s better to have one good client than to fuck everybody."

Awards

2000 Adult Erotic Gay Video Awards ("Grabbys") Best Newcomer—Director
2001 GayVN Awards Best Solo Performance, Fire Island Cruising
2007 GayVN Awards Best Actor, Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita
2007 GayVN Awards Best Threesome, Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita
2007 GayVN Awards Best Director, Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita (Tony DiMarco, co-director)

Credits

The following represents the bulk of Lucas' work and may be incomplete.

Film

Cast (as Ramzes Kairoff)

(All films by French Art Vidéo, Jean-Daniel Cadinot, director)

Désirs Volés, 1996
Pressbook, 1996

Cast (as Michel Lucas)

(All films by Falcon Studios, John Rutherford, director)

Basic Plumbing 2 (Falcon Pac 118), 1998
The Chosen (Falcon Pac 111), 1997
High Tide (Falcon Pac 112), 1997

Maximum Cruise (Jocks Pac 079), 1997
Red Alert (Falcon Pac 115), 1998

Cast (as Michael Lucas)

(Director as well, except where noted; all films by Lucas Entertainment, except where noted)

Apartments, 2003
Back in the Saddle, 1999
Barcelona Nights, 2006
Cruising Budapest 1: Michael Lucas, 2007
Cruising Budapest 2: Ben Andrews, 2007
Director's Uncut, 2001
Encounters: The Point of No Return, 2006, Tony DiMarco, Vincent Lambert, additional directors
Fire Island Cruising 1, 2000
Fire Island Cruising 2 (Boys on Fire), 2001
Fire Island Cruising 3–8, 2002–2006
Hunt & Plunge, 2000–2003, Alex Poole, additional director
Inside Paris, 2002
Lifestyles, 2001
Lost (Wilfried Knight), 2004
Love for Sale, 1999
Lucas Entertainment Portfolio, 1999–2003
Lucas On Top, 2002
Manhattan Heat, 2004
Michael Lucas' Auditions Vol. 1–Vol. 6, 2004–2005

Michael Lucas' Auditions Vol. 7: Barcelona, 2006
Michael Lucas' Auditions Vol. 8: Scandalous, 2006
Michael Lucas' Auditions Vol. 10, 2006
Michael Lucas' Auditions Vol. 12, 2006
Michael Lucas' Auditions Vol. 18: Florida Part 1, 2007
Michael Lucas' Auditions Vol. 19, 2007
Michael Lucas' Dangerous Liaisons, 2005
Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita Parts I and II, 2006
Michael Lucas' Top to Bottom, 2000
Michael Lucas' Uncovered, 2002
Michael Lucas' Vengeance, 2001
Michael Lucas' Vengeance 2, 2003
More Dangerous: The Making of Michael Lucas' Dangerous Liaisons, 2005–2006
Pick of the Pack, 2002
Shooting Stars, 1999
Starrbooty, 2007, Mike Ruiz, director; RuCo Pictures
Straight to Prague, 2005
Strangers of the Night, 2003
To Moscow with Love Part 2, 2002
To Moscow with Love, 2001
Welcome to Paradise, 2007

Director (additional films)

(All films by Lucas Entertainment)

Encounters 3: Flash Point, 2006
Filming Bruce Beckham, 2005–2006
Getting Around, 2000
Michael Lucas' Auditions Vol. 11, 2006

Michael Lucas' The Bigger The Better, 2007
Michael Lucas' Restless, 2000
Sexual Infidelity, 1999

Screenwriter

(Cast and director as well; all films by Lucas Entertainment)

Hunt & Plunge, 2000–2003
Michael Lucas' Vengeance, 2001

Producer