Cover Story: Atlanta’s King of Porn

It’s packed inside P.F. Chang’s at the Mall of Georgia. People cluster next to the dim, wooden bar waiting for a table. A couple of feet away, Mike South sits in a leather booth and throws his arm around Taylor, a lean brunette with a long nose, tight ringlets and dark eyes. He takes off his black baseball hat stitched with the word “asshole” — he rarely leaves home without it — and scratches his salt and pepper scruff. He forks a slice of fish and offers Taylor a bite.

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“What is that?” she asks.</
“It’s seared ahi tuna. You’ll like it.”</
She narrows her eyes.</
“Don’t crinkle your little eyes at me,” he says.</
She shrugs and nibbles at the raw fish.</
Mike, a pert guy with beady eyes, a soft belly and a distinct twang, has invited Taylor to dinner to talk about shooting her next big scene. Mike’s a prolific filmmaker, and his repertoire is impressive.</
Taylor places a plastic bag on the table as Mike pushes away his leftover lettuce wraps. Inside the bag are several of the more than 45 videos that have made Mike South one of the luckiest bastards in the state: Southern Belles 8, Georgia Peaches 2, and Southern Magnolias: The Fire Down Below.</
“I can make a perfectly good living selling something I don’t even own,” Mike says. “I sell pussy, and I’ve never owned one.</
“She owns one,” he says, motioning to Taylor, “and I’m the middle man.”</
A 48-year-old ex-scientist who grew up in Atlanta’s suburbs, Mike’s quick to speak his mind — even at a restaurant crowded with fine, upstanding, God-fearing Gwinnettians. He worries about little (except his growing paunch) and touts a bunch of seemingly tall tales: how he once caught a 1,200-pound tiger shark, how he and his friends used to snort a ridiculous amount of cocaine, how porn legend Ron Jeremy has hailed his sexual prowess, and how he’s slept with somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 women.</
All of it could be true. After all, Mike South is an award-winning pornographer who’s been able to succeed in a business whose epicenter is nearly 2,000 miles away. He’s the only Atlanta-based filmmaker who directs and produces films for two mediums — DVD/VHS releases and Internet downloads — and stars in his work. Surprisingly, he also has a widely documented respect for women, as well as a conscience.</
“I feel this need to be chivalrous,” Mike says. “Women deserve that kind of treatment.”</
That’s why Taylor, a newly minted porn star, is happy to be having dinner with him.</
At a neighboring table, a middle-aged woman in a black cardigan and red scarf looks over at Mike and Taylor, pausing on the VHS boxes spread before them that show naked women fellating well-endowed men. She glares through wire-rimmed glasses and purses her lips. Her husband’s jaw drops. A balding man with a grandfatherly manor, he smiles at Mike and chuckles.</
“Thirteen years in this business, and I’ve had maybe four girls that could deep-throat me,” Mike says, none too quietly. “Taylor’s the only one who really isn’t a pro in the biz who’s able to do it.”</
The man laughs. His wife looks at him disapprovingly, and he immediately shuts his mouth.</
Sixteen years ago, Mike was sitting alone in a Las Vegas cafeteria, eating an overpriced sandwich. He had traveled across the country for the International Consumer Electronics Show, where more than 2,000 exhibitors were showcasing the latest in audio, home theater and gaming technology. A portion of the exhibitors also were promoting advancements in adult industry technology.</
At the time, however, Mike had nothing to do with that part of the biz; as a scientist for NASA, he attended several technology expos every year.</
A man sat down next to Mike and introduced himself as Rick Savage. Mike had heard of Rick, a longtime porn-star-turned-fetish-film director. Though Mike had never owned a notable collection of porn, he knew the big-time adult players; due to his work with computers, he was acutely familiar with the budding World Wide Web, and the porn industry was positioning itself to have a significant online presence.</
Despite being a self-described computer geek, Mike indulged in some deviancies. He and his then-wife partied hard in the sex-and-drugs scene, often buying an ounce of blow per week and sometimes hanging out in swingers’ clubs.</
Rick commented on Mike’s thick accent and asked where he was from. When Mike told him, Rick answered, “You should shoot porn in Atlanta. You have the most beautiful women, and a strip club on every corner.”</
It was an interesting but far-fetched idea. Sure, Mike enjoyed smut, but he wasn’t going to turn his back on a successful career to pursue something he knew virtually nothing about.</
Regardless, Mike and Rick hung out for the rest of the weekend. By the end of the expo, Mike had collected several business cards of California porn insiders.</
Mike South was born Michael Strother, the son of a remodeler and a stay-at-home mom. As a child, he trolled the waters of Lake Lanier and Lake Jackson, entering bass fishing tournaments with his brother and father. When he was 17, his parents divorced, and Mike, who described himself as neither a “freak nor a redneck,” fell into a counter-culture crowd. He played left defenseman for the Southwest DeKalb High School hockey team, smoked Marlboro reds behind the school, and toked a lot of weed. He drove fast in his Chevrolet Impala, souped up with high-compression pistons and a four-ball carburetor that ran only on super-premium gas.</
When he was still in high school, he wandered into a Radio Shack at South DeKalb Mall and spotted a TRS-80 Model 1, one of the first personal computers. It displayed a prompt in bold letters: “Type in your name.” In less than a second, the computer responded: “Hello, Mike, How are you?” He was fascinated. Soon, he began reading books about microprocessor theory and Z80 assembly language.</
After graduation, Mike got a job as a computer technician, studied political science in college, dropped out, and eventually landed at job at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There, he monitored the shuttle connector analysis network, a program that tracks the various systems operating inside a space shuttle.</
In 1990, he moved back to Atlanta to work as a computer-database consultant. In the evenings, he taught UNIX, an operating system used by computer programmers, at DeKalb Community College.</
But Mike deplored the 9-to-5 lifestyle. He only wanted to answer to himself.</
Though he’d never fantasized about making porn, Mike liked the idea of working your own hours, not answering to corporate higher-ups, and taking four-hour lunch breaks. He dug up the business cards he acquired at the Consumer Electronics Show. Why not give porn a try?</
In 1993, Mike turned his back on a lucrative career to enter the risky realm of adult entertainment.</
“There was a time when, if someone said I would be a pornographer,” Mike recalls, “I would’ve looked them straight in the eye and said, ‘You’re out of your mind.’”</
Four years after his chance meeting with Rick Savage, Mike found himself shooting his first sex scene. He recalls that after two hours, the actress, a thin blonde whom he found at the Pink Pony, was growing irritated. She’d been giving her boyfriend a blow job for almost two hours, and he couldn’t keep it up. The 10,000 watts of light shining on them made her boyfriend nervous. He was fed up, and turned to Mike.</
“Give me the camera,” he said, “and you fuck her.”</
Mike didn’t know if that was a good idea. He wanted to direct porn, not be a porn star. But he’d already purchased the $450 Hitachi camera from a pawnshop and rented $60 worth of professional lighting for the shoot. “Shit,” he thought. “This is not going to come out good.” He didn’t have time to worry about being naked in front of two strangers or getting camera shy.</
He undressed and slowly ran his fingers down the stripper’s body. He entered her, then switched positions four times before ejaculating across the woman’s face.</
Mike sent the raw footage to Homegrown Video, a California-based amateur porn distributor. He says Homegrown loved his “down-home hillbilly act” — an average guy with a deep Southern accent acting out a porn fantasy. But mostly, he says Homegrown liked the idea that Mike could shoot a bunch of girls that no one in Porn Valley, located in the San Fernando Valley, had access to. The company made the unusual decision to build an entire series around him.</
Homegrown, described as the “largest library of XXX amateurs,” will take a look at almost any amateur video. Their submission guidelines posted online give novices simple tips on how to shoot decent porn: “Leave some clothing on during [the] scene, especially to hide stretch marks, tattoos, blemishes. Lift skirts and dresses, leave bra on, but pull straps down to hide saggy tits. Pull on clothing for aggressive fuck — yank panties to the side, etc.” Usually, Homegrown pays a novice between $200 and $1,000 per scene, allowing a fair number of first-timers to try their hand at porn.</
Getting a series deal, however, isn’t so easy. And with the advent of the Internet, pornographers have had to work overtime to figure out how to turn a profit in the ever-more-competitive industry.

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Adult Video News, a pornography trade group, reports that the adult industry raked in around $12 billion in 2005. About a third of the industry’s profit came from video sales and rentals. But Internet-generated revenue is quickly catching up; twenty percent of last year’s industry-wide profits was generated by online sales. Yet another medium — pornographic downloads to cell phones and hand-held wireless devices — has broken into the market as well, and is expected to triple in revenue within the next three years.</
Adult films typically get released in one of two ways. Higher-end companies aim their product at the pay-per-view, cable television market, dominated by Television X and the Spice Channel. Film distribution companies including Digital Playground and Wicked Pictures allow big-name directors such as Brad Armstrong and Chi Chi LaRue to spend up to $100,000 on feature-length films mixing hardcore sex with smoothly scripted plots. Later, the film is released on DVD.</
Competing with the premium films are videos that go straight to DVD. Red Light District — the distribution company that released the Paris Hilton sex tape, One Night in Paris — dominates that market, along with manufacturer Evil Angel, which releases about 12 titles per month.</
For porn producers, entering either the professional or amateur market comes down to a choice of production cost, quality and talent. Mike belongs to the later camp.</
With the majority of adult films being made in California, the fact that Mike shoots in Georgia is both a blessing and a curse. He has access to untapped resources of women, but is forced to build his own circle of cameramen, photographers and grips. And if a girl doesn’t show up, he doesn’t have the option of calling a Porn Valley modeling agency and asking for a replacement.</
“I can’t just pick up the phone and say, ‘Send me the flavor of the week,’” Mike says. “But I do get to train everybody myself, so that they do [porn] the way I want them to.”</
After Mike got the deal with Homegrown, he called one of his buddies, a big porn fan in Birmingham, to help him find a “professional” name. The friend suggested that he name the series Southern Belles and that he call himself “Mike South.” After all, there already was a Peter North, Nick East and Randy West in the industry. The South seemed merely to be waiting for the right guy to come along.</
In the Southern Belles series, Mike perfected his style as an amateur, reality-based pornographer. He developed a philosophy of having fun on camera — and of filming in settings that are utterly generic. Instead of a scripted, cheesy plot, Mike directs and performs in scenes that usually star one woman at a time. Typically, he shoots in a hotel room with iridescent lights and no background music. On camera, he introduces the girl, does a five-minute off-the-cuff interview (where she’s from, what she likes to do in bed, what she wants him to do to her), and then begins to kiss her — a rare intimacy that’s not often seen in adult films.</
Then it usually goes like this: He goes down on her, she performs a bit of fellatio, and they screw. Some of his favorite positions are cowgirl (girl on top facing him), reverse cowgirl, and doggy style. The final shot always involves Mike ejaculating on the woman’s face.</
At the start of his career, Mike found most of his actresses at strip clubs around metro Atlanta. Today, he says he has at least 20 women available for shoots. When he’s searching for new talent — or when new talent seeks him out — he interviews a prospect to make sure she wants to perform for fun. He doesn’t want performers who are being coerced by a boyfriend or who need cash to pay a few overdue bills.</
“I want to make sure a girl isn’t going to hate herself for it at some point in time,” Mike says. “If I think she will, I won’t shoot her no matter how gorgeous she is. I have my set of standards.”</
Standards, according to Mike, are an important and often-ignored part of the business. In 2003, Mike publicly defended porn star Vicky Vette, who in the middle of a double penetration scene allegedly asked the actors to stop because they were hurting her. The men allegedly continued, and as a result, Vicky had to receive medical attention.</
While many insiders trashed Vicky for ratting on the company she shot for, Mike retorted that she was a victim of rape. He wrote on his website: “It is high time we exposed some of these scumbags and I don’t mind being the one to do it.”</
Most of the women Mike shoots perform a handful of times then drop off the map. Mike believes the underlying reason women want to be in porn is to affirm their beauty. He claims — and several porn stars tell CL they agree — that porn is the ultimate validation of a woman’s sex appeal. That validation can become dangerous, however, says Felicia Fox, an award-winning porn star and friend of Mike, if the girl has low self-esteem.</
“If you’re not strong and completely comfortable in your skin,” she says, “this business will eat you alive.”</
Like Fox, many Southern-bred porn stars did their first scenes with Mike before entering the higher-profile Porn Valley scene. Felicia says Mike offered her $1,200 for her first shoot, a hardcore scene involving her, Mike, and her boyfriend, Tim Case. Titled South Pole Invasion, it was a porno with all the bloopers left in.</
Felicia, who works as a top-billed exotic dancer around the country, says Mike worked hard to make her feel comfortable about her first onscreen threesome. Felicia now appears regularly in feature-length films released by Wicked Pictures and Vivid Video, among others.</
“If I hadn’t shot with Mike that first time,” she says, “I’m not sure I’d still be in the business.”</
There’s one place Mike refuses to film or discuss adult material: his home. Inside his two-bedroom townhouse off Pleasantdale Road in Tucker, Mike devotes one room to the technological side of work. The space contains six computers and rows of bookshelves holding computer theory books, DVDs, videos and some of his raw footage.</
Outside of that room, Mike’s home is ordinary. There’s an upholstered couch, a flat-screen TV and a fireplace. He even turns off his cell phone and uses an entirely different laptop for non-business endeavors.</
“You have to get away from [porn],” Mike says. “If you don’t, it’ll consume you. That’s why I make my house a safe haven.”</
He lives alone. He’s only had a couple of serious relationships following the breakup of his marriage in 1984. He said he and his wife divorced after she said she wanted kids; he felt their lifestyle wasn’t conducive to that.</
These days, he’s sort of dating a 19-year-old who lives in Ohio. But they’ve only been together a couple of weeks. Most of his social life revolves around the various adult trade shows he attends, such as the recent Adult Video News Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.

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Outside of that, Mike seeks refuge in the open waters of Florida, off Mexico Beach. He enjoys catching big fish: grouper, mackerel, mahi-mahi and bluefin tuna. He earned a captain’s license and often trolls the waters with a couple of buddies for six hours at a time, basking in the sun and reeling in catches. He even claims to have once caught a 1,200-pound tiger shark. (It’s possible; the world record is a 1,785-pounder, according to the International Game Fish Association.)</
“If I could be doing anything in the world at any given time, [fishing is] what I’d be doing,” Mike says, amazingly.</
Mike’s content may bore viewers who prefer scripted fantasies, soft lighting that hides flaws such as cellulite, and spiffy DVD menus that play toward a fetish. But Mike’s simple approach appears to attract a following. He self-reportedly brings in six figures a year in profits.</
Mark Kearns, senior editor at Adult Video News, wrote in his review of Mike’s Southern Belles 2, “There’s nothing like playing from strength ... in this highly-watchable amateur production. This tape is a sure seller, so stock up.”</
Kearns also describes Mike as an accomplished pornographer. “His stuff has a fresher look than the thousands of other videos that come out of L.A.,” he tells CL.</
Perhaps it’s not just his approach to porn but his understanding of cutting-edge technology that helps give him an edge, too.</
In 2002, Mike spent three months figuring out how to break into cyber-porn. He was looking for an under-exploited online niche, one he could easily market. He searched news groups, read books on fetishes and watched international adult channels.</
He finally narrowed his idea to two options: girl on girl sex with the girls peeing on each other, and Bukkake, a quirky Japanese fetish. He chose the latter, because the one-word term would be easy to advertise on search engines. At the time, Bukkake was an underutilized keyword; it’s only recently entered the pop-culture lexicon, thanks largely to Howard Stern’s syndicated talk show.</
Originating in Japan, Bukkake means “to splash in a rude manner” or “a heavy squirt.” Traditionally, it involves 60 to 100 men taking turns ejaculating onto a woman’s face in an act of erotic humiliation. Mike’s version follows the same methodology, though he has a woman perform fellatio on approximately 20 men before they ejaculate on her face, giving her, he argues, some sexual control.</
“It’s a power trip to be in control of that many penises at one time,” Mike says. “That tends to be the common thought out of the girls that I hire.”</
For example, Taylor says that back when she was married, she rarely gave her husband oral sex. She didn’t like it because it never turned her on. Now, however, Bukkake is one of her favorite fetishes to perform.</
“It might sound a little degrading,” Taylor says. “But it’s quick and easy money, and the guys don’t disrespect you.”</
Mike says SouthernBukkake.com, one of his four porn websites, is now his biggest moneymaker.</
Along with creating a niche online, Mike recently launched ezmadedvd.com, an online store that allows people to purchase certain DVD-quality scenes a la carte, for around $6 per download. By doing that, a person can download several different scenes — Bukkake, anal, boy/girl, girl/girl — and create his or her own porn compilation, like creating a music playlist on an iPod.</
While Mike’s knack for technology has allowed him to stay ahead of the game, though, his loud mouth sometimes gets him in trouble.</
“He doesn’t know when to shut up,” says Felicia Fox. “Then again, at least he’s being totally honest. People love him for that.”</
But not everyone.</
On MikeSouth.com, a porn gossip blog, Mike regularly takes on bigwigs within the industry. Adult Video News’ Kearns points out that some of Mike’s loudly voiced opinions might be toned down if he lived in Porn Valley.</
“There are certain issues that come up in the industry that he can’t relate to,” Kearns says. “I’m sure he has some knowledge of them from websites, but he’s not around [the biz] all the time.”</
One of Mike’s top enemies is Rob Black, president of Extreme Associates film distribution.Black was in the spotlight after being indicted on 10 federal counts stemming from distribution of obscenity — charges that were ruled unconstitutional in early 2005.</
While the ruling was hailed as a First Amendment triumph for the adult industry, Mike and others, including Larry Flynt, denounced Black’s work, which has included a simulated rape of a person in a wheelchair and women being forced to drink vomit.</
“I’m a First Amendment believer for sure,” Mike says. “But when you commit a [perceived] crime against someone else, that’s probably the best definition of obscenity there is.”</
Extreme Associates has responded to Mike’s criticism, calling him the biggest joke in porn. Extreme’s webmaster wrote: “Here is a guy who hides in the backwoods of Georgia, timid like an abused Chihuahua, begging for any sort of attention he could grasp ... a washed-up hag who ... was never accepted by Porn Valley.”</
Even if Porn Valley didn’t accept him (and there’s no indication it hasn’t), Mike’s received some pretty heady validation from others in the biz.</
In the spring of 1999, Mike went down to Tampa to attend Nightmoves, a massive adult-themed party and awards ceremony. Mike’s friend Isaac, a club owner, let Mike and a couple of friends bring a camera to a rave being held at his club. Mike told Isaac he just wanted to film some “B-roll,” or background footage for a future project.</
He turned on the camera. Sana Fey, a busty porn star with a dark tan and acrylic nails, snorted some coke. She took off her shirt, then her bra. Then she started making out with a couple of girls. A small crowd formed, and Isaac told Mike he could shoot that, but nothing else. Mike said OK and turned around. Shit. Sana Fey was going down on a guy. Isaac came back and watched for a bit, his eyes darting back and forth as the crowd grew.</
“Fuck it,” Isaac told Mike. “You can do whatever you want, but if you get busted I have no part in this.”</
Mike smiled and found a small plush couch. He dropped his pants and pulled Sana Fey close to him in the cowgirl position. He says it was hard to get erect with disco lights flashing, the bass beat pumping, and hundreds of viewers watching. But somehow he got it up.</
Girls climbed on guys’ shoulders to get a view. A couple of people turned on flashlights to spotlight the performers’ genitals. The camera zoomed in. Mike finished within 15 minutes. He slipped the raw footage to a friend who immediately left the club. Then Mike and his crew bolted.</
The group reconvened at the hotel around 8 a.m. Mike recalls that Ron Jeremy, the famously well-endowed porn star who recently starred on a season of “The Surreal Life,” stopped by Mike’s hotel room to watch the raw footage.</
After the viewing, Ron turned to Mike.</
“I have the utmost respect for you,” Mike recalls him saying.</
“Why is that?” Mike asked.</
“Because I couldn’t have done what you did,” Ron answered. “There’s no way I could’ve done that with that many people watching.”