Original subtitles

[thunder rumbling]

[airplane droning]

[instrumental music]

[Mark Cromer] The premise was 16 years ago.

Could a virus, a sexually-transmitted virus

finally accomplish what 35-40 years

of vigorous prosecution

by the United States Justice Department couldn't?

And that is, end as we knew it,

the multi-billion dollar commercial pornography

industry in the United States.

It was a real moment, sort of,

the Cuban Missile Crisis, if you will,

for the-for the porn industry.

It was sort of, "Wow, what's gonna happen?"

"This is scary."

♪ The holy water the holy holy water ♪

♪ Wash down over me ♪

♪ The holy water the holy holy water ♪

♪ Wash down over me ♪

♪ I've been wicked yup I've been wicked ♪

♪ Just the same as anyone ♪

♪ And I can't see the sun ♪

By the '90s, the industry had risen

to total acceptance in society's eyes.

♪ I'm afraid ♪

♪ Of the Karma Thunderbolt ♪

♪ The Karma Thunderbolt ♪

♪ The Karma Thunderbolt ♪♪

[Bill Margold] We were no longer outlaws,

we were a common acceptable commodity.

We were being marketed everywhere,

we were being sold everywhere.

There was this whole mainstreaming

of porn that happened in the late '90s.

[upbeat music]

In preparation, you followed around a porn star?

His name is Ron Jeremy.

That is the first naked lady in the history of radio.

Ginger Lynn would show up for a signing.

And you have 500 guys at the door waiting to get a signature,

and maybe 30 girls.

This was a profound cultural shift

in an amazingly short amount of time

since Hugh Hefner had launched "Playboy" in his kitchen.

[Tom Byron] When I got in the business,

I actually thought that

the two industry would eventually merge

because that seemed to be where it was heading.

The budgets were getting bigger,

the acting was getting better.

And I thought, I could end up

doing a fuckin' three-way with Robert De Niro.

[instrumental music]

I actually thought that.

In 1991, there were 1200, uh, adult videos

produced per year.

By the time of 1998, we were easily up to

six or seven thousand per year.

It went from being family and friends,

and it became a business.

[Mark Cromer] Porn really, as a-a massive

national industry, took off.

[vocalizing]

[Jim South] When video was introduced,

the industry exploded.

Those were the days where the, the money really flowed.

It wasn't bad at all.

Continuous adult entertainment 24 hours a day.

Welcome to the "Erogenous Zone" on Spice.

[man on TV] Hard bodies on Playboy TV.

[vocalizing]

Great money.

The '90s were awesome, right?

I-I think I was, I was making up to like almost 70,000 a year,

just performing.

I'm Jenna Jameson, and I'm an adult film star.

-This girl could be a model. -Thank you.

I mean, she doesn't have to be in porno.

I'm taken care of--

Oh, you mean, you're makin' a lot of money?

Well, I'm under contract with Wicked Pictures.

Yeah, but, well, how much money could they p...

I heard some girls only get, like, a $150 a picture.

Oh. Oh, no, no.

-You get tons of money? -I get... Oh.

Why would I be doin' this if I wasn't?

[Stern] I don't know.

I think that I was a very

different kind of porn girl.

I looked at it in a different way.

It wasn't about the money. I was in college,

and I had a full-ride scholarship to college.

[man] Your major. Go ahead, Tricia.

I'm majoring in pre-medicine.

I want to go to medical school and be a doctor.

[Tricia Devereaux] So, it wasn't about paying

for college or anything like that.

It was about, I had been that perfect little Stepford child

when I was young, you know, perfect grade As

became a med-school student, was a national level musician

that traveled across the country, um,

and to Europe, um, so, it was kind of empowering.

I mean, I was kind of definitely that college nerd

that nobody would have ever expected it of,

and everybody always used to say that I was like the girl

that shouldn't be doing this that was awesome at it.

I had never been with anyone

until I got engaged to my husband.

It was, it was definitely exciting.

[upbeat music]

[Ginger Lynn] I just had the best time.

I'm thinking, "Oh, my God, I'm being paid to do this

and I'm having the best time of my life?"

Yes and yes.

[screaming]

[Tricia Devereaux] There was a core group.

-Hi, Mom! -We knew each other.

We trusted each other.

[Bill Margold] I referred to all

of them as kids. I referred to them all

as "Over-aged juvenile delinquents"

in the playpen of the damned.

To me, every person in this business stopped growing

at 12 years old.

Come on, Gary, we started.

I just love these long, hard round things.

The family of X is really a dysfunctional family.

We have the bond of knowing that we were the rebels,

and we did this thing.

I'm not a boy scout.

-I'm a do-gooder. -Sixty-nine.

You are a do-gooder. Could you do me good?

To me, it's almost like being a member of "AA,"

but you never stop drinking.

And the winner is...

Tom Byron!

[crowd cheering]

I'd like to thank every beautiful woman

I've ever put my cock inside.

It's a business that allows you to remain a fuckin' child.

[chuckles] I never met a girl

who got to the point quite so fast.

[Tom Byron] I used to want to get high

and fuck girls, and do these cool little movies,

and, you know, have this fucking easy, great life.

[moaning] It's good. It's good.

[Mark Cromer] There was almost a Peter Pan

like quality to we're off in

never-never land.

[Bill Margold] They don't have any responsibility,

that's part of the nature

of a great adult performer.

They can't spell the word "Tomorrow."

They have no idea about the future.

They live for the moment, and they live for the glory.

I have something to show you.

July "GQ."

-Yeah. -There she is.

Six hundred and twenty men in one day.

We knew what life was like for the rest of the world.

[Jim South] They were making ten times, twenty times the money

they would normally make for a regular job.

So they partied more, they got more days off

'cause they don't need to work seven days a week.

[Mark Cromer] Work, I mean it was a bit

of a party, it was a bit of a bacchanal.

It was a bit of a scene.

[scatting]

[vocalizing]

♪ No man's in the nighttime ♪

♪ The logic of my town ♪

♪ Yeah cruise like in the nighttime ♪

♪ The logic of my town ♪

♪ Yeah fools like in the nighttime ♪

♪ The logic of my time fools like in the nighttime ♪

[woman] Kaitlyn Ashley.

[crowd cheering]

The best day of my life.

♪ Let's go ♪♪

There was certainly

a carefree atmosphere to it,

and there didn't seem to be any sense of impending disaster.

Nobody seemed to see that we weren't in a tunnel

and whatever light we were lookin' at

wasn't really a train barreling down

the tracks at them.

I've done more mainstream films now than-than adult films.

And I was cast in a series called "Wing Commander."

Mark Hamill's the leading man in-in the series.

So we're getting ready to do the scene

and the producer comes over and says,

"Your agent's on the phone and we need to talk."

You're teasing me. Stop it.

[Ginger Lynn] Mark Hamill had refused

to kiss me because he was afraid he was gonna get AIDS.

Um, I'd like to thank all my fans out there.

You guys are great...

Everybody in that business at that time was whistling

past the graveyard.

You think it could never happen to you.

We have a disease here. And we have no cure.

[man on TV] Indeed for the foreseeable

future throughout the world,

the number of people dying from AIDS

will continue to increase dramatically.

An epidemic that is still raging out of control.

You are doing nothing! We need action!

It's time to put up or shut up, Bill!

[woman] Sit down!

A Manhattan project on AIDS!

Research, we need it now!

[people clamoring]

The-the backbone of pornography

was denial about HIV in the '90s.

There's no fucking doubt about that.

There's no doubt about it.

[Bill Margold] HIV has never really

frightened me because I believe

it was a chemically-bred form of eugenics

perpetrated on society by governments desirous

of ridding the world of three factions

that nobody would give a shit about.

Homosexuals, intravenous drug users, and minorities.

We were all very much in denial

and fuckin' tortured by it.

[Ginger Lynn] We never really worried

about it in the industry,

and I think the general consensus

was that HIV was a gay disease.

The gay people are giving their blood

knowing that it is contaminating people...

Nobody wanted to hear it, nobody wanted to talk about it.

It was, like, "Let's just not, let's just ignore it."

It didn't concern me so much where I didn't want to perform.

I wanted to perform.

[Ron Jeremy] I was scared of getting HIV.

And then I realized, and-and I-I explained to girls I work with,

if I haven't had a problem now, being probably

the longest running guy in the business.

I still do scenes even today.

I mean, obviously I have the lifestyle

that doesn't lead to HIV,

'cause I woulda had it by now.

I was afraid of HIV the first time I ever heard of it.

Federal health officials consider it an epidemic.

Scientists say they are dealing with some new deadly

sexually-transmitted disease.

[Tom Byron] I thought that was God's

or whoever's ultimate fuckin' joke that,

"Here I am, fulfillin' my life's dream,"

and a fuckin' deadly disease drops out of the fuckin' blue

that kills you in two weeks.

It scared the fuckin' shit out of me.

I kinda figured, "Oh, if you're getting tested

for something and it turns out fine, then you're fine."

-Huge dick. -Be very afraid.

[Tricia Devereaux] So, it completely

minimalized my concerns.

I'm ashamed to admit it, that's what I, that's what I thought

"Eh, you're not gonna get it unless you're a junkie."

And even if you're a junkie, if you're sharin' needles

that's when you get it, or if you're doin' that gay stuff,

you might get it too, but nobody's doin' that,

so, yeah, everything's cool.

How wrong we were.

[instrumental music]

[Mark Kernes] There were a couple of cases

of people I know who died of HIV.

We're not sure where those people contracted their HIV,

but it generally was not on the set.

I don't tell him how to edit.

[Mark Cromer] It-it was John Holmes.

And he doesn't tell me how to fuck.

[Mark Cromer] And his contracting HIV

and developing AIDS...

-You do have it? -I've got it.

That brought it, however briefly,

into maybe the national consciousness,

and then it went away.

[Michael] He was doin' gay movies

or doin' gay stuff off-screen, and he was a junkie.

-Do you take drugs? -No, I don't take drugs.

I don't even like aspirin.

[Mark Cromer] I think the industry looked

at it as kind of an outlier, a one-off.

Or we dodged a bullet.

No one really was looking at, "Okay, John Holmes,

the poster boy for commercial pornography

in the United States is dead

and he's dead because of AIDS."

Um, what does this mean?

It's like there's a giant hourglass somewhere

rapidly pouring out the sands.

[instrumental music]

[Bill Margold] Holmes dies and the industry

breathes a sigh of relief.

We then sort of forget about HIV.

[instrumental music]

Hi.

[Sharon Mitchell] People wanna turn

a blind eye 'cause there's money to be made.

They all have to pay.

So, who the fuck wants to talk about HIV?

[Tom Byron] If you talk about it,

you're not put on the fuckin' list.

Troublemaker! You're a troublemaker.

We don't talk about that.

Fuckin' do that line and shut up.

Just fuck, get it on camera...

Get a little girl-girl, maybe a little blowjob with you.

-I need to go and do my... -Okay.

[Mark Cromer] There's a discardability

of the performer base in the industry.

[man] Were you a sick fuckin' animal

before you got in this business?

[Mark Cromer] Having said that, I'm ambivalent

at best about whether or not condoms can and should be

mandatory in porn.

Condoms, man! It's repression, man!

Just another tool of the establishment

just to bring us down!

Condoms are a violation of the vicarious thrill

that we provide the audience.

Use one or get none.

[narrator] "Sheik. Get some."

It's like getting some oration about morality

in-in a porn scene, it's a total downer.

Condoms destroy porn.

[Bill Margold] The orgasm, the money shot

into the face of society

is exactly what this business is all about.

No one wants to see a condom

because a condom connotes reality.

And we're not reality. We are a fantasy.

This industry is a carnal version of Disneyland.

[imitating seals barking]

[Sharon Mitchell] The sex was selling

because there were no condoms.

And it was a tremendous amount of money

because it was the precipice of the internet.

People just knew, it was a whole new era.

New technology permits us to do very exciting things

in interactive, erotic software.

I still jerk off manually.

Wave of the future, dude, wave of the future...

Technology drove us into the '90s...with computer sex.

[Mark Kernes] The internet was really just

beginning to get its sexual chops on.

The internet, digital video disks, and who knows what...

And remember who is on the backs of all technology?

The pornographers!

♪ The internet is for porn ♪

♪ The internet is for porn ♪

[woman] What are you doing?

♪ Why do you think the net was born? ♪

♪ Porn porn porn ♪♪

You have to remember, the internet is not

a regulated environment.

[upbeat music]

[Mark Cromer] It's like a flywheel,

it creates its own momentum.

Now we want more. We want whatever fetish.

We want whatever desire catered to.

[man on TV] Wow. They're, like, really soft.

[Ron Jeremy] More and more public revealing.

More and more porn films. They wanted to see more kink.

It's 24 hours live hardcore.

-Live? On the internet? -Yes. Yes.

The ensuing glut of commercially made and sold pornography

gave way to a tsunami of cheap shot-on video,

sold on video productions.

For event-styled shows like this, if you're high-end film...

About three of those a month... About four of those a month...

[Mark Cromer] The excitement of pretty girls

getting screwed by handsome guys wore off.

In the popular culture, there was this trend...

♪ Do the extreme! ♪

[Michael] For, like, extremes.

I can do this.

[Michael] All of a sudden, it's not

a regular soft drink, it's an extreme soft drink!

[man] If you're gonna do it,

dew it extreme!

[Michael] The X-games, professional

wrestling is getting more extreme.

All this kinda, like, swap-meet level entertainment.

You know, porn, like anything else, picks up on this.

[instrumental music]

[David Foster] The truth is that in your face

vileness is part of the schizoid direction

porn's been moving in all decade.

For just as adult entertainment has become more mainstream,

it has become also more extreme.

[woman laughing]

[indistinct chatter]

We're gonna have a little gang-bang goin' on.

In the mid '90s, in the late '90s, it was changing.

It was getting riskier, and so many more people

because of the video boom and the internet now,

it was just getting riskier and riskier.

[Mark Cromer] The glut of it

led the industry...

[man] Can somebody get a dick?

To decide we have to start

showing our consuming public

in the United States things they haven't seen before.

I'd like you people to be original and different.

We have to show them new and exciting

and, quite frankly, evermore debauched scenarios.

[upbeat music]

[man] We're doing a good thing,

and we are gonna take it to more limits.

I can't believe we get paid for this.

[crowd cheering]

Directors had to keep pushing the envelope.

Anal became a phenomenon at that period of time in the '90s.

Best anal theme feature, best anal sex scene in a video.

Best anal sex scene in a film.

"Butt-Slammers."

"Gluteus To The Maximus."

-"Sodomania 21." -"Sodomania 22."

"The Anal Diary Of Misty Rain."

-"Butt Row, Unplugged." -"The Anal Food Express."

"Butt-Man."

"Ben Dover's Little Smartasses."

-"Bottom Dweller Five." -"Corporate Assets."

"Ben Dover Babes."

I'm here for "Anal Graveyard."

Anal's the hot thing, everyone's talking anal tonight.

Movie doesn't have anal sex?

It's not... You can't even call it porn.

They were so fascinated with

a-all this unprotected anal stuff,

and ejaculations in the eye, and this and that, and bukkakes...

cum, cum, cum, cum, cum.

[man] It was absolutely the industry

saying, "It's no longer enough to make 'Debbie Does Dallas.'"

"It's no longer enough to make 'Wanda Whips Wall Street.'"

"It's no longer enough to make 'The Devil In Miss Jones.'"

We need to show them something

that is absolutely Roman.

In its size, in its scale, in its scope,

in just the outrageous, outlandish nature of it."

It's about, "We are in the Colosseum,

and the gladiators are down below."

Most guys I ever did was 466.

[man] Wow.

This is my chance to be at the top of my profession.

Call me crazy, but 2000 guys, you're not gonna be on top.

[all cheering]

This is about spectacle.

This is spectacle porn.

We're having the world's biggest gang-bang.

Will history be made, or will the men go limp under pressure?

♪ I never have a chance to shake ♪

♪ A money-maker ♪

♪ It's all go meek to me ♪♪

[Mark Cromer] This led to the rise

of such surreal events as "Gang-Bangs."

Uh, 100, 200, 300...

[man] The last gangbang was cut

a little bit short because Annabel Chong said

that the guy's fingernails were bothering her.

The point here is to break the record.

We're gonna assassinate the record.

Yessiree, we're gonna beat the gang-bang records.

What we're going to achieve today is 300 men...

[crowd cheering]

♪ I got a pleasure appointment ♪

♪ I'm cashin' in the chips ♪

♪ And I'm goin' to ♪

♪ A pleasure appointment with you ♪♪

[instrumental music]

[crowd cheering]

Oh, my... The-the type of behavior that was going on

in the late '90s was a recipe

for HIV transmission...

And that's the truth.

[Ron Jeremy] It was actually the late

great Bobby Astyr, who was a porn star and a comic one,

and he said that, "Why is this business

getting more into anal sex, when, at the same time

HIV outbreak is all over the world."

[man] They have had no luck.

Short of driving a train up someone's ass.

It was very, you know, it was-it was very frightening.

[Mark Kernes] Part of the problem in those

early days is that producers

generally did not look at performers' HIV tests.

Some of them did, but very few of them.

[Sharon Mitchell] The testing protocols

of that time were people going

to the county health clinics

or the methadone clinics, or getting tested for free

and exchanging tests.

I'm working with John West today,

so I'm going to show him my test results.

So, it was on an individual level,

people that presented their test and expected from other people.

John will now show me his test dated August 4th, and I...

[Sharon Mitchell] But the tests were from

different clinics, they weren't under the same roof.

It was catch-as-catch-can.

[Michael] When I'd go onto sets,

most of the time, nobody was showing any kind of paperwork,

it was just, "I'm here, let's get it on."

[Mr. Marcus] We'd all show up all with a test

and there'd be a stack of piece of papers,

and then there-there'd be a production manager

who would, you know, "If anybody wants

to see the test, they're over here."

Most of the guys would go focus on the girl.

That is not a system.

That is not a protocol.

So a system had to be put in place.

And we're here at AIM Healthcare.

[Bill Margold] We then create "AIM."

The Adult Industry Medical Healthcare foundation

to make sure there'd be more coordinated testing.

Get early-detection HIV tests.

[Mark Kernes] Sharon Mitchell, who at that

point was still an actress

and eventually went on to get a doctorate in Public Health,

was hired by Bill Margold

who ran Protecting Adult Welfare.

I had went back to school, for a while,

and I gravitated toward HIV research,

and I'm asked to start a clinic.

[Mark Kernes] And so AIM was formed,

and became the testing facility for the industry,

and just everybody went there.

We tested all the guys.

[Dr. Tom Horowitz] She became our go-to person.

We're here to make sure that your tests are current,

and everybody has a safe, great time.

She had credibility in the industry.

She could to the actors and look eye-to-eye

and say, "I've been there."

I know just how dirty people can get.

[Bill Margold] We'd been taking something

called the "ELISA Test."

It might have been every six months

to every three months.

This would tell us we were okay,

and we could go bang our brains out.

[Sharon Mitchell] The ELISA HIV test isn't really

the most suitable for the adult entertainment industry

simply because it could take up to six to nine months

in some people to show up.

They were really basically useless,

and something was about to happen.

When you have an exponentially large group of folks

fucking for a living without condoms,

something is about to happen.

It is precisely at that moment that that outbreak occurred.

[rock music]

[Luke Ford] It was thought inevitable

that the industry would get infected with AIDS.

It was just kinda taken for granted.

Society's always been ready

to put us under a tombstone of HIV.

[Luke Ford] In 1995, Barbara Doll,

a beautiful blond French porn star tested HIV positive.

Then, in February of 1997,

Nena Cherry tested HIV positive.

And then you had Jordan McKnight in, uh, summer of 1997.

And there was a lot of uproar and concern.

And then everything was quiet for another six months.

Then, uh, came the big one.

So, '98 comes along, and I'm getting,

I'm getting sort of these strange rumblings about HIV.

-Tell me your name? -Hi, I'm Tricia Devereaux.

-And where are you from? -I'm from Ohio.

And I moved over out here a couple years ago

and now I live here in Los Angeles.

[Tricia Devereaux] In 1997, I had actually left

the business for a couple of months

and I had a very normal job,

and then they found out that I had done porn,

and, um, asked me to leave.

And I was, like, "Okay, I'll,

you know, get, go get another job,

and, you know, maybe I, maybe I'll do a few scenes, you know,

this or that," just get, you know,

kind of a head start back in life.

So, an editor for a magazine

asked me to consider working

for a director that I hadn't worked for before,

and I ended up saying, "Sure."

Um, it was actually the director that did

the "100 Men Gangbang" movies.

So, I went to site, it was, like, October,

maybe November of 1997.

The guy that I was supposed to work with, um, got sick

or didn't have a clear test or something.

And so they said, "Oh, well, your-your agent

has this other guy available."

Partway through the scene, they asked if it would, could be

an internal cum shot.

I had looked at his test, I saw the word "Undetectable"

and I was like, "Cool."

[man] Do you like an audience?

[Tricia Devereaux] I don't like when I'm by myself.

I don't like being alone.

[mellow music]

When I found out that I had HIV,

I thought, "What, like...

Whe... What did I do wrong?"

I mean, my first reactions were

obviously shock, um...

And I knew that my life was never gonna be the same.

[moaning]

[man] It is not hard to see where

porn is eventually going to have to go

in order to retain its edge of disrepute.

It's clear that the real horizon, late '90s porn,

is heading toward, is the snuff film.

This created shockwaves throughout the industry

because we-we hadn't had a working actress

who was suffering from an infection, really ever.

This one appeared to be on the set.

She got back in the business, she had HIV.

People really freaked over Tricia

'cause they really liked Tricia.

The winner is...

Jeanna Fine and Tricia Devereaux!

[crowd cheering]

Nice girl.

I really wanna thank, um, Elegant Angel

for hiring Jeanna to work with me.

It was incredible. I just...

She worked a lot, performed in,

you know, some of the harder scenes.

She was on that cusp of being extreme.

I'm gonna play teacher today.

We kind of very quickly went

into panic slash control mode.

You know, this is not gonna happen again!

But if it does, we're going to find out the very next day.

[Mark Kernes] So, it was announced that there

was going to be an industry-wide meeting

because they couldn't figure out

where Tricia'd gotten it from.

We went to VCA who had the largest warehouse

and 300 people came.

Place was packed, it was full of industry people.

There was, like, the, it was really hot, people screamin'.

[Michael Louis Alba] It scared 'em.

There was definitely a sense of fear in that room.

There was a certain amount of panic.

They were comin' out with new drugs, but it was still

kind of a death sentence.

[upbeat music]

There were a lot of rumors about how you could get HIV.

But one thing the performers knew was

it was a deadly disease,

and the other thing they knew was

they didn't want to have it.

I was told to bring these

life-saving drugs to Dr. Whoppers.

I'm Dr. Whoppers.

[comical music]

Recess is over in the playpen of the damned.

We now had to realize that maybe we could get sick.

[Mark Kernes] At that point, everyone

had to come in for testing.

In particular, a-a kind of a new form of HIV test

called the PCR DNA.

The ELISA test just looks for HIV antibodies,

with the PCR DNA, it looks for the virus itself.

And you'll find it, if it's there, within 14 days.

We decided to implement this test on everyone.

[Mark Kernes] At that point, Sharon Mitchell

and Bill Margold begin creating what they call genealogies.

That's basically a list of people Tricia had worked with

and then once Sharon had those names,

she did genealogies for those people.

[Bill Margold] You start with the first person,

you go to second generation, third generation,

fourth generation and then it's over.

A... It's sort of a tree diagram.

You know, so and so work with so and so

who work with so and so, and they all had to be tested.

[Sharon Mitchell] We had to go back six months

with Trish, and thank God for Trish

because she was very copious

in her note-taking in her partners.

So, I had her partner list to go on

and I found another, a month later.

Yes!

[moaning]

Oh, yes! Oh, yeah! Oh, oh, yeah!

[instrumental music]

[moaning] Ooh, yes.

Yes!

Pretty extreme. It's like there's regular sex

and there's anal sex

and she's doin' an anal gangbang.

Now she shattered.

In early 1998, the cases just started falling one a month.

[Sharon Mitchell] We had Trish and then we had

Brooke Ashley a month later.

Caroline a month after that.

Then Kimberly Jade after that.

Pretty eyes, wild girl, wild girl.

From Europe, wanted to work very hardcore, really loved sex.

A lot more open to tryin' new things, very aggressive.

[instrumental music]

-It was... -It was...

-Crazy. -Crazy.

Girls were coming up positive, right and left.

And nobody could figure out what the fuck was going on.

We all came up with these justifications, these denials

like, the porno business does.

We said "Tricia Devereaux is..."

"She got drunk and fucked a bunch of guys

at a Matt Zane party and that's how she got it."

And, uh, Brooke Ashley, she did drugs

and she was a hooker and she musta got it that way.

And Caroline, she was probably a hooker, everyone's a hooker

and that's how they got it.

You know, it wasn't in the business, you know...

It's no longer a one case phenomenon.

Now there are whole bunch of cases...

They were blindsided.

You know, nobody foresaw what was going to happen.

[Bill Margold] Shit hit the fan because

people were tryin' to remember who they had

had sex with, and not everybody remembers

everybody they've had sex with.

If you're dealing with risky sex, anal shit,

you know, you're dealin' it with an HIV positive person,

you're fucked, man.

Remember, this was back when a guy would be

perfectly healthy one week...

Doctor, do you think he'll make it?

You see him two weeks later, he's knockin' on death's door.

[man] He doesn't look too good.

It was knockin' down motherfuckers left and right.

You look like you're doing pretty good.

It was just, like, "What the fuck, man?"

I mean, one of those women literally tried

to jump out the window when I gave her results.

And the fuckin' press was disgusting.

[male reporter] We're attempting to determine

the extent of HIV infections...

[male reporter] This week another adult

performer tested positive

for the AIDS virus.

The industry must protect

those that are employed in it.

[stammers] Vans lined up, people outside,

trying to film people and...

I mean, I literally caught someone

trying to shove a camera

into the window of the bathroom

where we were taking urine samples.

It was just horrible.

Fear was running rampant.

It was fucking mayhem.

Panic in the street.

People just forgot themselves.

Every month there was another girl until there was five of us.

It appeared that we had a full-scale outbreak developing.

It was complete and utter panic.

-Panic. -Panic.

-Panic. -Panic.

It was an onslaught.

There were a lot of frightened children.

[instrumental music]

All of a sudden you realized, "Wow! This is real.

This is real life."

If ya think about it, one person working with one woman

or two women who is popular, that can spread so quickly.

[Mark Kernes] In 1998,

within a five-mile radius of this building

probably 75% of all the adult videos

in the country were produced.

I mean, we're talking exponential growth here.

[Michael Louis Alba] There were several people

that were testing positive.

And it doesn't take a genius to figure out

this could be a big problem.

One needn't have the gift of a prophet

to see the evermore outrageous numbers

and the situations that were being depicted

to assume that if somebody came

into that very tightly

controlled and cloistered group of performers,

if you had a patient zero, the resulting explosion

had the potential to be massive.

[instrumental music]

The free-wheeling days of the X-rated industry exploding

into a billion dollar thing,

something had to come crashing down, man.

Everybody has to pay the fuckin' piper

and-and-and AIDS and HIV was that.

[Tom Byron] That was the first time

that HIV had touched us.

Remember that, I mean, that's the biggest fear

of-of the business...

was that disease, that fucking thing.

It-it just spun people's minds, like, what, you know,

"What the hell is going on here?"

[Tom Byron] We created this illusion

that we all had sex with each other

and nobody had sex with anyone outside the circle

and therefore we were all safe.

[Mark Kernes] At that point, we-we didn't

know what the source of the HIV was,

we didn't know how many people were infected,

we didn't know how they were being infected even.

Nobody could have seen this happening

and not know where it came from.

I was racking my brain

and tryin' to figure out when and where.

[Bill Margold] We can't seem to put our

finger on it that people

are coming down with HIV

one after another after another.

[Ron Jeremy] We can't locate

who is giving out HIV

like a-a raffle ticket.

The very incestuous, tightly-knit

nature of the industry posed

I think a-a different set of challenges

for dealing with this outbreak of HIV.

[Sharon Mitchell] I was piecing together

a very giant puzzle.

There were a lotta common partners.

I had to go back six months.

I had to go back to 425 people

and test them and multiply that by six different types

of testing and efficacies.

[Michael Louis Alba] The one person that hasn't

been tested is Mitchell's

ex-heroin shooting buddy, Marc Wallice.

[Mark Kernes] The one person who showed up

on all of those lists

and he was the only one, was Marc Wallice, who at that point

had not come in for an HIV test with PCR DNA

even though he had been requested to do so.

[instrumental music]

[Mark Kernes] Marc Wallice was a very

popular performer and he performed

in a lot of X-rated movies.

[instrumental music]

He was very popular.

Marc was a mainstay in the industry.

Marc was liked by everybody.

Who doesn't love Marc?

[instrumental music]

Certainly, in LA one of the top performers.

[instrumental music]

[Marc Wallice] I love bein' a porn star.

Man, it was great. Don't think you could ever

get any better than that.

The winner is...

Misty Rain and Marc Wallice.

[Michael Louis Alba] A lotta the women

that worked in LFP

that maybe weren't even associated

with the adult end of the stuff we did

loved Marc Wallice.

There would always be this timid knock at my door,

"You wouldn't happen to have any movies

with Marc Wallice in 'em, would ya?"

[instrumental music]

He was with me for so long,

he was almost like an adopted son.

He was one of those old school guys

that had been around forever...

I really, really liked Marc Wallice.

He was one of my favorite guys. You know, girls loved him.

He had a little banana boat shaped penis,

which was so easy to work with.

Good-lookin', and girls I knew,

they always spoke highly of him as well.

[Bill Margold] Marc Wallice seemed to be

the most carefree, irresponsible,

out for the pure joy of it

and I think the most vulnerable.

He was sort of a rattling cage.

I remember that when Viper worked with him

she said that he had a strange death wish about him.

Well, there is a arrest warrant for you in Shelby County.

[Tom Byron] I met Marc Wallice...

Can't we work something out?

Probably a few months after we got into the business.

No, ma'am, afraid we can't. The law is the law.

Are you tryin' to bribe a peace officer?

[Tom Byron] We were kinda like the hot

young kids on the block.

We had an apartment right off Sepulveda.

He's definitely my best friend. 100 percent.

[instrumental music]

I get into business as a serious life choice.

We're ever in your debt.

I don't know if he meant to find himself in this business.

I think it was an opportunity for him that he took.

He wasn't like me. He didn't, he didn't seek it out.

I didn't mean any harm.

It was there, so he found it

and I don't think he had

a high opinion of himself

for making that choice.

I think he wanted to be...

I'm not sure what he wanted to be, to tell you the truth.

[instrumental music]

♪♪♪

There were rumors goin' around that it, that it might be him.

And I was, like, "Uh, nah, it's fuckin', you know, Marc."

[Ron Jeremy] Tom Byron and Marc

lived together, and Tom,

and this is very poignant, I think,

Tom had warned one of the girls

not to work with his roommate, Marc.

The only thing I knew about Marc is that he would disappear

for days at a time and come back.

Sketchy that I knew that he-he liked

to go off and binge drugs.

He loved to smoke cocaine. Loved it.

[instrumental music]

In April of 1998, my sources got coming to me and saying

"Hey, it's Marc Wallice, he's the one behind it.

Now, there are girls who won't work with him."

"He's dangerous and he needs to be stopped."

I posted that on my website, April 23rd, 1998,

and everybody went crazy.

[phone beeping]

Marc Wallice called me said, "You did me wrong

and this is not true."

But it wasn't incandescent rage that I was dealing with.

It wasn't what you would expect from an innocent man

who'd been totally wronged.

It was way too reasonable.

He hadn't been tested, he hadn't been tested.

It got to a point where everybody in the world

had been tested that was involved in all those lists

and still Wallice hadn't been tested.

[Luke Ford] Marc Wallice did not want

to come in for a PCR DNA test.

He did not, he was avoiding it.

So, Sharon Mitchell let Marc slide on getting tested

for a long time.

[instrumental music]

He told me that he had a...

He had a test from his doctor

and I took that at face value.

She told me that she had asked him several times to come in

uh, but they were friends and, you know, he assured her

that he had been tested and he was not HIV positive

and for a while she accepted it.

I love Marc and it's no secret that we had been lovers

but it doesn't mean I'd let him get off the hook.

Would you relax?

This chick sniffs clues

and then weeds them out like a bug.

As the weeks dragged on, she started to worry, I think,

and she became more insistent that he come in for testing

with PCR DNA.

[instrumental music]

[Marc Wallice] I was bein' asked to come in

and take a test, and I was busy.

I was doin' this. I was doin' my show. I was editing.

I just couldn't make it down. I said, "Okay, I'll get there,

I'll get there," and he called me couple days later.

"I'll get there." I just didn't think it was important.

I didn't think it mattered because I knew

I wasn't positive.

Is this some kind of a joke?

I didn't even give it a second thought.

If the industry says "Herschel, you need to come in

and take a test today." I say "For what?"

They say, "Because of this." And I say, "Okay. I'll be in."

"I can't come in today, I'll be in tomorrow."

You-you don't fuck around with that.

Goddammit! Fuck, she's gonna get me.

Goddammit. What the fuck!

[woman] She doesn't even know

who you are.

[Sharon Mitchell] I'm into this

testing protocol

for eight or nine weeks

and I'm down flipping the last few people

that haven't been tested.

And...this is it. You know, I knew it.

It has to be, like, who, you know, like, why don't...

Why doesn't he come and show us that it's not him?

If that's, if that's what it is,

it'll take simply take a blood draw

for him to show us that it is not him.

And he couldn't be bothered to do it.

I was kinda buried in editing.

[Marc Wallice] It was maybe two weeks,

maybe two weeks and I just

kept putting it off.

And it's not really worth my time.

[Tricia Devereaux] Maybe he really

was just that much

of a fucking piece of shit

and selfish asshole.

To hear that you had worked

with five girls that all came up

HIV positive and you were the only person

who had worked with all five of those girls is,

maybe he's just stupid.

It wasn't at the top of my... It wasn't a priority.

It didn't seem necessary and it didn't sound urgent

from them. "Oh, Marc!"

They just said "Marc, you need to come down."

"We need to get another test."

I just thought it was another test.

[Sharon Mitchell] It was clear that Marc was

avoiding it every which way

and I'm calling him as my friend

and he's giving me the jive talk, it's bullshit.

And I know something's wrong.

Something was clear, you know, clearly wrong.

[Luke Ford] He would dissemble,

he would lie.

He would push it off.

He-he found it insulting.

He was at that point editing a series that he was doing

that he was doing for Elegant Angel

and claimed that he was not performing and that he hadn't

had on-camera sex for a while.

So, he didn't have to present any test that he claimed

that he hadn't even worked with these women...

Just anything to deflect it from him.

Um, I don't have an answer as to why Marc would refuse

to get a test.

He knew something was up obviously.

He knows I've got him by the balls.

[Marc Wallice] So then after the weekend,

Patrick Collins called me

and said, "Marc, Sharon has called you three times

to come down to AIM to take a test."

And he tells me, "You have to do that

or the cops are gonna come to your house."

I go, "What are you talkin' about?"

He says, "Just go take the test."

-This is the police. -Alright, alright.

Get your fuckin' hands up.

You with the bad haircut, up against the wall.

I'm not workin' today. I'll go down today.

Be there in ten minutes.

[engine starts]

Uh, you know, I'm not proud of what I had to do

but, I had to...

I had to go to Patrick Collins

who he was working for as a director

and tell him what was going on and what I suspected.

And I had Patrick hold out $10,000 and say he was going

to meet him in a van and I put him in the van

and I basically fucking kidnapped Marc to draw his blood

because he was that reluctant.

I know that's not ethical.

I'm telling you that's what I fucking had to do.

It was the only way I was gonna get proof.

Um, I'm not really proud of that

and I really haven't talked about that,

but...I had at this point,

like, 425 people at, at risk.

And I already had four girls, you know, grow in numbers

every week, I'm finding...

[sighing]

What the fuck would you do? You know...

Uh...he was not happy that night.

But it came back that he was positive.

He was clearly patient zero in this.

[instrumental music]

[Marc Wallice] Fuckin' Sharon.

She didn't do that.

That never happened.

Kidnapped? Thrown in a van?

Brought to AIM? Fuckin' Sharon Mitchell.

Wow. Wow.

It took really the insistence of Patrick Collins

to get him to come in for testing,

uh, and, you know, at that point they found his infection.

And since he was really the only thing in common

with all of the women who had turned out to be positive,

it's accepted fact in the industry at this point

that Marc Wallice was what they call "Patient Zero."

The person who had it first.

[telephone ringing]

[Marc Wallice] I got a call from Jim.

I go, "Hey, Jim, what's up?"

And he said, "You're positive."

And I don't remember anything

because I don't remember anything

at that moment.

[Tom Byron] I fuckin' remember the day

it happened, he just kept sayin'

"It's all over, man. It's all over, man."

"It's all over."

And then he, uh,

he went on another drug binge.

I-I-I was so incredibly

distraught during that period.

You have no idea.

I still... To this day, I still...

[sobbing]

[instrumental music]

[man] Not unlike certain other

culturally marginalized guilt,

the porn industry is occluded and insular in a way

that makes it seem like high school.

There are cliques, anti-cliques, alliances,

betrayals, conflagratory rumors, legendary enmities

and public bloodlettings.

You're either in or you're not.

So, Sharon Mitchell announced at an industry meeting

that Marc Wallice was patient zero

and that he was HIV positive.

This was a difficult time and I had to reveal what happened.

[Marc Wallice] Sharon announced

to all these people

that I'm HIV positive.

It was like public knowledge

that I was HIV positive.

I had to do what I had to do

and, and I know Marc's a big enough man

to understand that.

[Marc Wallice] Sharon Mitchell exposed

my medical records without my permission.

Sharon Mitchell...

Sharon Mitchell broke the law

and she'll be prosecuted for that.

That was an evil thing to do.

I hung him by the balls.

My job was to get him in there to get that fuckin' blood...

To tell the industry what was goin' on.

Marc Wallice was fucked

[Luke Ford] once Sharon Mitchell said

"We think he's patient zero."

From then on he was, he was fucked.

I mean, you need to have an unbelievable

public relations team to try to turn around that narrative.

I've got four and five chicks crying

because they were unaware that they were at risk.

And that's just as fuckin' ugly, isn't it?

I get so nervous, you know. I'm so scared--

[Sharon Mitchell] I had to tell these women,

"I'm sorry...you got HIV."

I'm sorry.

Are you, like, a real doctor?

[woman] Don't be so scared,

it's alright.

Um, you know what?

-Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. -Fuck you...

[Mark Kernes] After it was discovered,

he was HIV positive

and it seemed pretty likely

that he was patient zero,

he became incredibly defensive.

I don't exactly know why.

I walk out the door and I realize

"Shit! Everybody knows I'm HIV positive,"

when that's supposed to be a private diagnosis.

I don't know what you're sayin'. So I can't answer you back.

You know what? Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

At one point he claimed that he probably got it

from Tricia Devereaux, the first person

who showed up HIV positive, but that I think was ruled out

by tracing the genealogy.

He said "I think, maybe, you know, maybe the girls

gave it to me."

I haven't done nothin'.

It's part of what made the industry hate him.

[Jim South] All of a sudden,

people didn't like Marc.

This rumor was going around.

That rumor was goin' around.

And he sort of disappeared for quite a while.

He became vilified and-and he, he withdrew.

He, he hid for a while.

I just didn't know what to do.

What else... what would you do?

-Amaze. -Amazing.

What would you do if you were

famous or popular?

Just wanna thank everybody involved in the movie

and of course, Ms. Serena.

Then you're in the limelight and everybody knows who you are

and everybody loved your work...

Yes, I would especially like

to thank my buddy, Marc.

And all of a sudden this guy infected...

all these girls.

Holy shit! It was a dream.

[Tom Byron] All these questions started

coming out and it was just,

it was fucked up, man.

And the thing that made me have to cut off contact with him

was his tests.

In 1998, there was a male actor who was HIV positive

who was going to county health clinics and forging his tests.

I discovered that this man gave six women HIV.

People were still tryin' to figure out what was going on.

And one of the reporters from AVN was very diligent

about saying this doesn't make sense.

When Marc Wallice was discovered to be HIV positive

with PCR DNA, he showed Sharon Mitchell

and other people in the industry

a copy of an ELISA test that he had.

He had this test from, uh, early March

that said he was HIV negative.

"Look, here's, here's my HIV test.

I'm not positive. I'm not infected."

So, is Marc, like, modifying his test results?

[Mark Kernes] His test looked okay,

but it was from a testing organization

that virtually no one else in the industry used.

And when myself and my then editor, Mark Logan,

went over to, uh, that testing facility

and spoke with the doctor,

we got a look at the original test.

It said, he was a woman.

It said he was a 49-year-old female.

And on the test that Wallice showed us,

it said he was a male.

So that test had been altered.

He was faking his tests.

[instrumental music]

It was like a fuckin' nuclear blast.

[instrumental music]

It was a complete fuckin', like... What?

Is Marc a monster?

I was chilling. I almost shit my pants.

They look at his tests and it says

he's a 49-year-old female.

And the address for the testing center i-is wrong.

[Mark Kernes] Wallice's test had the clinic's

old address rather than its current address.

The clinic had moved from there a year before Wallice's test.

So the test that Wallice had been presenting was different

from the one that the clinic had in its files.

That, of course, raised even greater suspicions

and we got the test directly from the doctor

who was running that clinic.

So there's no question that the test

that we saw was the legitimate one

and apparently it had been altered by Wallice.

[instrumental music]

[Tom Byron] I knew the guy

better than anybody

and I'm going...

I-I didn't believe it.

I never changed the results of any tests.

It was clearly forged.

[man] Do you remember

what part was forged?

Yeah, uh, where it says negative.

I changed the female to male

because I didn't want to show up with a test

that said female on me and I didn't even think that

"Oh, wait, it's got my name on it."

That's just a typo.

I researched it. I called the doctor.

I did background work

It was a forged test.

I'm telling you, they were forged results.

I'm absolutely positive.

I never changed the results from positive to negative

which is what people say I did.

Hindsight is a motherfucker, man.

Because probably a year earlier

he got busted.

He had changed the date on a test

and somehow he got called on it.

[Luke Ford] In 1996,

he was written up in AVN

for changing dates on his HIV test

for VCA and De Renzy productions.

He could have been doing this for two years prior.

It's unbelievable, man. Geez.

[Marc Wallice] Every 30 days,

you need a new test

and I had to work tomorrow.

Grab my test, grab my wallet, and today...

Oh, shit. It's a day late.

And I remember somebody gettin' turned away

from a job because their test was two days old over date.

So I just changed

the-the one to an 11,

just added a number to it.

So I was able to work on that day.

And then got a new test the next day.

He was not fictitiating his results,

he was fictitiating the date the test was taken.

It's bad, if he's saying he was altering his tests,

because it's just bullshit.

You know what you have to do.

You oughta know what you have to do.

You have to make sure you're current.

I said, "Dude, that's not good.

You know, why'd you do that, you know?"

And he said "I didn't have money for the test."

which kind of was weird.

I was kinda like, "Whoa, dude

the fuckin' test, what's it's $35. I mean, what the fuck?"

I couldn't even think of changing the...

You know, I mean, it was I'd miss the job.

This was unheard of, this was not something

that I know anyone else doing.

I couldn't give you an example of anyone else

to change the dates on their test, I'm sure it happened.

I mean, I-I-I hadn't heard of it. I'd never done it.

Did that mean he was doin' it all along?

-I don't know. -Actually, proactively...

-That's weird. -Go in and change a test.

To even take that hack... Man, it's bad.

[Tom Byron] If I didn't have the money

to go get a test, I'd go

to my agent and say, "Jim, front me $35

so I can go get a test, so I go get a test."

You know what I mean? So, altering, I...

No, I don't think anyone ever did.

Forging test is fucked.

Shouldn't be ever forging tests, period.

To even go there, you're way off the line, man.

You're way off the line.

I didn't give it a second thought.

I didn't think I was doin' anything wrong.

I just changed the date on a negative test.

However long he was forging his tests

and apparently HIV positive, he knew he had somethin'.

No one forges their tests.

No one would even want to be questioned.

They... You're-you're thinking,

I hope they don't see it. I hope they don't see it.

I hope they don't see it.

You better have something to say for yourself,

you fuckin' scumbag.

No one else was forging tests. I never forged a fucking test.

I was, like, working as much as anybody back then.

I'm not defending Marc, but God bless him

he stayed so screwed up on drugs.

I'm not excusing if he did what they say that he did

but anything is possible with him

as screwed up as he used to be.

[instrumental music]

[Mark Kernes] It came out that

he was a gay escort

and essentially prostituted himself.

He had done gay porn.

I knew he liked to walk on that wild side.

[Marc Wallice] No, no fuckin' way.

A gay out call? No, no.

What for? What for?

[Jim South] With the amount of money

Marc made,

I mean, I kept this guy busy.

That's why it doesn't make sense

about the out call stuff.

[Tom Byron] He disappeared

for days at a time

and would come back where I knew

he had been gettin' high.

And when you do cocaine and you do crystal meth,

you do things that you would not normally do.

And I also knew that he was fond of shooting cocaine.

[instrumental music]

[Marc Wallice] I did dabble with needles

maybe three times

and that was with coke, not heroin

and that was on my own.

Never with anybody.

[Herschel Savage] What's the difference how

he contracted it?

Either way, he was not

living a smart life,

just leaving yourself open to that kinda debauchery and shit.

I mean, your body's truly your temple if you're a porn star.

You gotta be clean, man.

[Mark Cromer] He never seemed to suggest

directly where he thought he got it,

which I thought was interesting.

He never said, "You know, I think I got it from X."

He never did.

[instrumental music]

[man] How do you think you

contracted HIV?

I don't know.

[man] You must've been curious.

I didn't think about it. I didn't want to think about it.

How he got it? I don't know.

But he certainly did have enough behaviors

that he could very easily have contracted it.

So, on the one hand, uh, you know,

I'm as compassionate as anybody else for somebody who has HIV,

but on the other hand, I'm aware that he faked a test,

that he, you know, tried to deflect the possibility that

he was patient zero, he tried to deflect that completely,

he blamed other people for this,

when I think he knew that he was HIV positive

or at least suspected it, and that's why he faked his tests.

Marc said that he never knew that he had HIV,

that everything on the test, of, it's saying that

he was a 44-year-old woman,

the fact that he went to a clinic

that didn't even exist anymore,

that all of those things are a complete coincidence.

That, him not going to get a DNA test

was simply because he couldn't be bothered to.

Well, that shows how much he cared about our family.

[instrumental music]

He betrayed the rest of us.

He was blowin' people's lives away, man,

left and right.

That's so fucked up.

The narrative was...

he was a monster.

There's nothin' like the presence of evil

to shake a few bricks loose

from a solid foundation.

He knew that he was positive and...

he fuckin' worked anyway.

And he fuckin' infected all these girls.

People were after him and Marc

was absolutely fuckin' terrified.

It was like "Frankenstein."

With a fuckin' torch and there

chasing the poor fucker up

that castle, you know?

There he is!

[Sharon Mitchell] I just felt like that was Marc

running up that tower,

being scared of the fire

and Marc just thinking...

"Fuck, it's just me. Marc."

[upbeat music]

[gunshots]

Can we point now at Marc and say

"This is a man of such unfathomable evil?"

And that's what the industry did.

They went from Marc is our friend

to he is not one of us,

and he is the one responsible

for wreaking havoc on our beautiful industry.

The film generated a lotta money for a lotta people.

[Luke Ford] If it wasn't for Marc,

everything would be blowjobs and lollipops.

[gunshots]

[instrumental music]

You have to realize this man was absolutely

fuckin' terrified.

[Luke Ford] The dominant view

was that he was a sociopath,

that he knew he was HIV positive

and that he was passing it along to girls in the industry.

[Herschel Savage] How the fuck do you

do that, man? What are you sayin',

maybe she won't get it?

What the fuck is wrong with you, man?

[upbeat music]

You have to fuckin' have a line!

Or, like, I'm fucking her life up.

And if you don't have a line, you have to, like,

displace your personality and just

become a zombie, emotionally and say

I gotta cover myself, I gotta cover myself!

[Bill Margold] He was being bandied about

as a criminal, as a murderer, as an assassin.

-Don't shoot me! Don't shoot me! -Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

He was just infecting girl after girl.

He's a serial killer just trying to get away with it

for as long as he could.

[Bill Margold] If he had been all

of those things, and one of the girls

had found out that he absolutely knew,

one of those girls could've easily made a phone call

to some boyfriend who woulda blown Marc's brains out.

[Ron Jeremy] If any of the girls were Italian

you would not be talking to Marc on this documentary.

I made my bones while you were sniffin' out

your first piece of pussy.

[Sharon Mitchell] I know people wanted

to hang the guy.

It was ugly.

[gun firing]

[upbeat music]

[gun cocking]

[gunshots]

[audience cheering]

I watched an entire industry turn their back

on someone who was a huge,

huge, huge influence in the adult industry.

To this day, his name is not spoken in this fuckin' business.

I can't take this anymore.

[Mark Cromer] He seemed so stunned

that the industry could turn on him.

He'd just been cast out from...

a group of outcasts.

What'd you guys just win for here?

-Couple sex scene. -It was real.

It's a hard pill to swallow

when you've made as much money

for so many people as Marc did...

Alex Jordan, "Body And Soul."

[Sharon Mitchell] To be ridiculed

and humiliated.

I haven't been close to anybody like this in so long.

I cut off communication with him, 'cause I, I...

It was hard to deal with the fact that your...

Your friend had a potentially fatal disease,

and because I was so closely associated with him,

I was sort of being dragged into

what he was going through.

The sense of betrayal was very clear.

I just cut off contact.

He-he called my answering machine.

He said "I just want to hear it from you."

I didn't call him back. I didn't have the balls.

They haven't... I haven't talked to him since.

[Ginger Lynn] I don't know if you've ever

been in a position

where you're so down,

you're so depressed, you're so lost,

you have no money, you have no food, you have nowhere to live,

everyone's turned their back on you.

What do you do?

Marc Wallice disappeared.

He went into a-a downward spiral.

[Marc Wallice] After I found out I was

HIV positive,

I packed a bag, called a cab,

checked in a hotel.

[instrumental music]

Yeah, it was rough.

He was a man on the edge and he understandably

had a suicidal impulse, you know.

"Let me just end my life."

[Marc Wallice] I spent the next

month and a half doing

as much coke as I could,

just never running out.

Scoring every couple days, havin' it delivered,

and just hoping I wouldn't wake up the next day.

But, uh...

that didn't work.

[man] Do you feel that you

betrayed him?

How can I not?

You know...

Uh... I... Of course I should've been there for him.

He was my friend.

[woman on TV] Choose adult entertainment

24 hours a day.

Adult entertainment 24 hours a day.

Adult entertainment 24 hours a day...

Adult entertainment... Adult entertainment...

-You look fabulous. -Adult entertainment...

Adult entertainment...

Adult entertainment 24 hours a day.

Adult entertainment 24 hours a day.

-Money. -Money.

Shut...

[Tim Tritch] Marc Wallice may indeed be

patient zero for all these people getting infected.

But, and this is a big but...

I know for a fact that neither of those tests

are forgeries.

I came in with AIM around 2001.

And-and it was through AIM, and talking with Sharon Mitchell

that I'd learned about all of this.

One day, she told me, you know, the whole story

of what prompted the whole beginning of AIM.

And she told me about this guy forging tests

and I kinda realized,

"Hey, this is that thing that happened

when I was working at TCL

and MSI and Bio Cipher."

And I began to look into it myself from then.

And I went, "Hey, these were, tests weren't forgeries."

The 49-year-old female day was just

part of that thing that happened one day

when I had to put that whole crew together

to fix all these reports.

And then, I looked at the other report

that said the location was different.

And I said, "Yeah, that's when they closed their location."

And we took all the stuff over to the other location.

These are not forgeries.

On the Lord above, I'm tellin' you the truth.

I did not want to get bad news about Marc 'cause I liked Marc.

But the doctor himself's a forgery.

There's a couple things that don't fit.

Perhaps now that I look at it.

But I saw that this was done, so I thought, "Oh, wow."

[Tim Tritch] One of those tests had

information on it that said

he was a 49-year-old female.

There was a mix up of papers in our laboratory that night.

The person inputting information made a mistake

and they'd flipped over two pieces of paper at one time,

and without matching up the numbers,

simply put in another patient's information.

And as a result,

34 patients that night

got the wrong patient information

put into the computer system.

One of those patients was Marc Wallice.

[instrumental music]

I did personally see Marc Wallice's original test

which we obtained at the clinic.

I asked the doctor.

I said to the doctor, "Can there be any other mistake?"

And he goes, "No, no. That had...

This test is the problem."

[Mark Kernes] Again on the original test,

it said he was a 49-year-old female.

Actually, I know the name

of the 49-year-old female.

I-I know her name because I was the person who was in charge

of fixing that whole mess.

[Bill Margold] I can't tell you how many

females came back as males,

and males came back as females.

-But it was common. -It-it wasn't uncommon.

Let's put it that way, there were mistakes.

[man] Can you explain why Marc's

test would have had the address for a clinic

that had closed a year earlier?

Uh, North-East Valley Clinic had three clinics at one time.

Each clinic had a separate account number,

so that all of the results would go back to the proper clinics.

When one clinic closed,

they took all of the laboratory supplies that were in there

to one of the other clinics.

They also took the requisition slips,

and eventually, someone used those slips

with that address on it.

When that location closed,

the laboratory updated their computer system

so that any outstanding result

from that account number and from that location

would go to one of the other locations.

So it was actually just a simple thing of

the requisition slip for the laboratory from that location

being brought over to one of the other locations.

How did they fuck up this one guy?

How does that fuckin' happen? What...

I mean, talk about a...

That's a weird thing to happen, don't you think?

You know, because of who he is.

[Tim Tritch] He fit in the genealogies,

he had a past history of altering that test.

I think that was a real big factor in it,

and so they thought this is a smoking gun,

he used an old test or something

and forged the dates on that again.

And I believe that past bad act

had a lot to do with people

assuming that he had done it again.

I don't understand how he would've gotten away

with his tests for two years.

[Tim Tritch] He had to be showing tests

to work in all of these previous shoots.

And I assume they were all showing he was negative.

-You've been working a lot or... -Yeah.

These were ELISA tests at the time.

The initial ELISA can have a false negative.

[Tim Tritch] It's rare, but Marc Wallice

might've just been one of those people

who may have indeed been HIV positive,

but his body just did not develop the antigen

that would make an ELISA test show positive.

[man] This is called

a False Negative test result.

[instrumental music]

[Luke Ford] It is entirely possible that

Marc Wallice might've had some ELISA tests for HIV

where it showed up negative when he was in fact positive.

It's very, very rare that a person

who has HIV would not have sero-converted yet.

Um, so they would not be coming positive

on the ELISA tests that they were doing.

Oh, yeah, he could've gone six months

with negative tests without knowing.

[instrumental music]

[Tim Tritch] A routine window

for this ELISA test

they say can be up to six months.

And if they say it's up to six months, well...

it can be possibly, in some people,

be even longer than that.

I think it's still really unclear

when Marc Wallice was actually infected.

Marc Wallice was a very active performer in 1997 and before.

So what about all the other women who worked with Marc?

[Ron Jeremy] Barbara Doll claims that

she got HIV, uh, from Marc.

Hi, there. I'm Marc Wallice.

Hi. I'm Barbara Doll.

It appeared to me that he was the most likely source

for Barbara Doll's infection.

-She requested us. -Yeah. Specifically.

[Luke Ford] She was infected in 1995.

But HIV is very difficult to transmit.

-She likes us. -And...

[Luke Ford] So it doesn't surprise me

that Marc could work with women

and they not get HIV.

[man] Having a low viral load

decreases the risk

that you will pass HIV through sexual contact.

[Tom Horowitz] Is it possible

for one encounter

to cause an infection? Yes.

Is it possible for there to be

hundreds of contacts and no infection? Yes.

The person who has a non-detectable viral load

is much less likely to transmit the virus.

It's possible that he had a viral surge

and then being a healthy man

could have went down to a normal level for a while

and not infected anyone and resurge.

So it is possible.

Is it possible? Yes.

Add in the whole wrong age, wrong clinic

all the waffling and change the stories about what happened

and it definitely brings up a lot of red flags in my mind

about had he seen a test that said something different.

[Tim Tritch] According to Marc Wallice,

he never started HIV treatment

until after that PCR test with Sharon Mitchell.

Boy, you'd think someone would have started treatment for it.

He was an adult, if he had HIV, he was gonna get treated.

Unfortunately, nothing works.

You wouldn't have a miracle drug on you by chance, would you?

[mumbles]

I don't think that the possible explanations

explain his behavior.

If he had gotten his HIV test when everybody else did,

Brooke wouldn't have HIV, Caroline wouldn't have HIV,

Kimberly wouldn't have HIV from him.

So he was still negligent, and his behavior is not excused.

I can tell you, I can tell you

from the bottom of my heart,

I did not infect these women...

knowingly with HIV.

Whether or not what he says is true,

the amount of selfishness could only come from a person

who just has no humanity.

And I'd never had a word

said to me from him,

certainly not "I'm sorry this happened."

Um...nothing. Not a single word.

That-that--that's an indication of guilt to me

in not taking responsibility for something because

to not have that sense of remorse

except to feel "Woe is me," um... "Poor me.

Fuck...my fucking life, you know?

Fuck these..." It's just, it just shows a...

a lack of humanity and...

Just think about being a victim

and never being apologized to.

Just to live with the fact that this guy

fuckin' infected them with HIV

and he never fuckin' said I'm sorry.

Look at the fuckin' health issues I got now,

look at the meds I have to take.

You don't think these people are thinkin' about that?

Believe me, every fuckin' day of their lives.

I honestly believe Marc never conscientiously worked

knowing that he was HIV positive.

[man] And that's just a gut feeling?

It's a gut feeling

that if Marc had realized

he was HIV positive,

realized that his life was over,

he would've ended his life.

I think Marc woulda killed himself.

I can't deal with this anymore.

I need to get out, and I have something.

I absolutely believe that

Marc Wallice is responsible for my HIV infection.

[instrumental music]

[woman] When you came in, was there

something unexpected that,

like, surprised you?

Um, I was real surprised at how much I liked everybody.

I mean, I wanted to sorta hang back

and just treat this as a business and that's it.

But I liked everybody, so I moved out here,

and I never wanted to do that, but I did.

He absolutely deserves every bit of karma

that will come to him someday.

[instrumental music]

[man] Do you think that he knew

he was HIV positive?

[Tricia] I do think that, most likely,

he knew.

[man] So you think that he was

intentionally infecting women?

I don't know. I don't know.

I know that he was in denial for sure.

In one way or another, in denial

that he wouldn't get caught, or in denial

that I can't possibly be the person.

But like I've said a few times,

I know that there are at least three girls

that would not have HIV today

if he had not been in denial about something.

[instrumental music]

I-if it's true that he really didn't know and this happened,

he would be devastated,

and not for his own personal misfortune,

but for theirs. And to me

that's the greatest indication of guilt,

because it's your behavior post blow up

that shows who you are and, and what you did.

[Mark Kernes] Is there definitive proof that

Marc Wallice was HIV positive

and faked his test in order to conceal that?

I don't know for sure,

but it certainly seems likely

considering, you know,

the entire concatenation of events

that took place around that time.

You gotta understand there's a, there's a tremendous

emotional quotient here.

A tremendous emotional quotient.

And it has to do with shame,

and shame is something that's a reality

within all of us to a degree

in the adult entertainment industry.

Could I have done better? Could I have been a real actor?

Could I have been different?

Shit, I did a few gay movies

to pay the rent? Do I have to hide anything?

Oh, my God. Fuck. I've got HIV.

I can't, I can't let this out. I can't.

They'll blame me, they'll hoist me on a petard.

I'm going to be the "Frankenstein" monster.

We have to remember where my friend Marc was at.

He was at a fuckin' dark, scary place.

And he knew it.

Um...

Ah, once you're called patient zero in HIV

outbreak in the heterosexual porn industry,

I mean, sure, you can fight it,

but, I mean, you know, you're fucked.

[scoffs] You're fucked.

[man] Where would you be today

if you had never contracted

the HIV virus?

I would've been...

[scoffs] I'd have been doin' really well.

I would probably have

if not a million, a couple million in the bank.

I'd be running my own company,

like a lot of my peers

are right now.

And instead, I'm living in a trailer park,

on disability and...

by the 25th of the month, I don't have a penny left.

[Herschel Savage] You know, in reality,

if somebody does something

so fucked up to other people,

and they have to live out their whole life,

maybe a worse sentence than death.

But did Marc know he was sick? That's the question.

[instrumental music]

[Bill Margold] People who get sick, get sick,

and there's a defense for all of that.

And if you get sick, and you're not even knowing

what's going on, how can you be blamed?

And I think that the adult entertainment industry

was running out of people to blame

for all the problems we were having.

We didn't know how exactly to cope with it

and Marc was easily a scapegoat for it

because Marc was fragile and Marc couldn't fight back.

The industry had every incentive to say

there was one rogue performer

and one bad guy

and he was responsible for what happened here

because they knew that this was the type of thing

that could blow up and shut down their honeypot.

[man] Regulation may be needed

in the industry to make sure that people are safe.

We've got this thing under control,

we don't need more government intervention,

we don't need more government regulation,

we don't need more scrutiny from the mainstream media,

we don't need any bad news.

This is just one rotten apple.

It was such an un-unforgettable year,

both tragic and exhilarating.

E-everybody was looking for a source to blame,

so we could close the book on it.

[Jim South] Do I feel that the industry

threw him under the bus?

Absolutely, and stepped on the, the accelerator.

They hung this dude out to dry, man.

[man] Today's adult industry

is still hypersensitive

about what it perceives as fascist attacks

on its first amendment freedoms.

[instrumental music]

Our nation is in desperate need for healing

and repentance from sexual sin.

Animals have more protection in the making of films

than porn performers.

[man] Porn is now a hard-lobbying

political force

no less than GM or RJR Nabisco.

[indistinct shouting]

The industry was coming under a lot of scrutiny

for this going on and they needed to get it over with.

And if they could say, "Hey, we found the guy who did it,

he's no longer performing,

we're all good to go now,

everything is safe again."

That's what the industry needed to do and...

without really looking into,

without really asking the right questions,

they weren't able to clear Marc Wallice,

therefore they found him guilty.

He could be completely innocent,

or he could not be.

Nobody knows but him. I...

That's the bottom-line.

[Mark Cromer] Whether or not Marc Wallice

intentionally thought he was exposing

any of the girls that he's accused of,

I, I'm not convinced of that.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle,

I think the truth is a lot closer to

he had his own sets of worries, his concerns

and my sense of it is, he probably didn't know

that he was infected with HIV,

but he kinda didn't want to know for sure

until he could no longer get out of taking additional tests,

and, and then it-it hit him like a-a ton of bricks.

[instrumental music]

There you are. I found ya.

I'm not saying his actions weren't reckless.

We'll, we'll never know.

No one can tell you except Marc Wallice,

what he knew, and when he knew it,

and he has to live with that,

and, um, hopefully he can.

[instrumental music]

♪ Well she's on the dance floor ♪

♪ At your local juke ♪

♪ Tryin' to sweat a bunch of fools ♪

♪ She done already took ♪

♪ But when that gal gets down ♪

♪ You can't help but stare ♪

♪ 'Cause that frame's lit smokin' ♪

♪ Like a signal flare ♪

♪ She's on fire ♪

♪ Ooh she's on fire ♪

♪ Lord that girl is smokin' ♪

♪ On fire ♪

♪ Light 'em on up she's on fire ♪

♪ We tried to look away we all tried to be cool ♪

♪ But she had an ass ♪

♪ As thick as an army mule's ♪

♪ She asked out for a drink just a battin' those eyes ♪

♪ We all was reaching for our wallets ♪

♪ Man she's a light she's on fire ♪

♪ Ooh she's on fire ♪

♪ Oh that girl is smokin' on fire ♪

♪ Light 'em on up she's on fire ♪

♪ That girl is on fire ♪

[instrumental music]

♪♪♪

♪ With a smooth proposition ♪

♪ She's got you in hand ♪

♪ I hear you say you don't care boy ♪

♪ Are you a man she's on fire ♪

♪ Ooh she's on fire ♪

♪ Ooh she's on fire ♪

♪ Ooh she's on fire ♪

♪ Ooh help me she's on fire ♪

♪ She's on fire ♪

♪ Ooh she's on ♪

♪ Fire ♪

♪ She's on fire ♪

♪ That little hussy's on fire ♪

♪ She's on fire ♪

♪ She's on fire ♪

♪ She's on fire ♪

[indistinct chatter]

[instrumental music]

[laughing]

[laughing continues]

[indistinct chatter]

♪♪♪

[laughing continues]

[woman] Did I mention we don't take up

much space on the road?

[laughing continues]

[woman] Yeah, did you mention that?

[instrumental music]

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

♪♪♪