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Actor's HIV infection strikes porn industry
By Gina Keating
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California's multi-billion-dollar adult porn industry has ground to a virtual halt after a popular actor tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS (news - web sites).
Industry advocates immediately called for a 60-day moratorium on filming so that others could be tested.
Actor Darren James tested positive for HIV (news - web sites) on Wednesday in screening conducted routinely on the industry's 1,200 regular actors by the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare (AIM) Foundation, the foundation's Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell said on Thursday.
They must show negative tests to keep working in the industry, Mitchell said, adding that only about 17 percent of performers use condoms.
James, the first porn actor to test positive for the virus since 1999, had a "stellar record" of tests -- negative every three weeks for the past seven years, she said.
Mitchell said James may have contracted the virus about four weeks ago while filming in Brazil on a "non-condom" set.
The Los Angeles-based industry, which normally films three to four films a day, must now wait 60 days to learn whether the deadly virus spread to 14 actresses who had onscreen sex with James, or to the 35 sex partners the women subsequently had.
The at-risk actors have been quarantined until June 8, and Mitchell has advocated a moratorium on shooting until the extent of the infection is known.
Former porn actress Jill Kelly, founder of Jill Kelly Productions Holding, Inc., said she and most other film producers have halted production for the next two months.
The postponement of eight films "won't do much damage" and can be quickly remedied by doubling the six-day-per-month shooting schedule, Kelly said.
But actors who live "check to check" may have trouble making ends meet during the moratorium, she said.
"Most of the people I have talked to are cooperating," she said. "There are a few people that won't. But if I find out there is talent working I won't ever hire them again."
Kelly said she was quarantined in 1999 after working with actor Tony Montana who subsequently tested positive for HIV and infected several co-stars.
"I was clean (but) it's scary," she said.
Director Corey Jordan, who used James in his "Baby Got Back" series, called the actor's diagnosis "a shock," but predicted the industry would rebound.
"In the porn community itself, HIV is pretty much taken care of in the sense that we make sure everyone is tested," he said. "Right now it's not about money, it's about people's well being."
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