BIOHAZARD's EVAN SEINFELD Is Reinventing Himself

Larry Getlen of Bankrate.com recently conducted an interview with Evan Seinfeld of BIOHAZARD and DAMNOCRACY fame. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Bankrate: Now that the [filming of the VH1 "SuperGroup"] show's over, what are you concentrating on?

Evan Seinfeld: "Musically, which is 10 percent of my time, I'm reinventing myself, going back to my roots. I grew up on THE WHO, THE STONES, THE BEATLES, THE DOORS, LED ZEP ..."

Bankrate: So what's the other 90 percent?

Evan Seinfeld: "I run an adult film studio. I'm the CEO of TeraVision, which is my wife Tera Patrick's [adult film star] studio. We are the biggest small studio, or the smallest big studio, in the adult industry. On a day-to-day basis, I'm writing movies, producing, directing, doing postproduction work and the licensing. Plus I'm my wife's manager. I book all her appearances. We have a book deal, a calendar deal, a poster deal, a distribution deal with our sister company, Vivid Video, who does over $100 million a year. We operate several pay sites, ClubTera.com being our mother site. I'm the guy who bridges the gap between adult and mainstream. I write for Stuff magazine. My wife writes for FHM in the U.K. She's the publisher of Genesis magazine, and the resident 'sexpert' for AdultFriendFinder."

Bankrate: With 4.5 million BIOHAZARD records sold, were you able to save or invest a lot of money?

Evan Seinfeld: "None at all. Nothing. I'm the kind of guy who lives in the moment. We should have kept our merchandise and done it ourselves, but early on we needed some money, and we signed a deal with (merchandising company) Winterland. We gave away millions like that. To be honest, a conventional record deal is a terrible deal. Now that I'm a businessman and know my way around business deals ... we sell an adult movie for $15. I pay the cost in shipping and replicating it, it's a buck. So we keep 14 out of 15 dollars. An album sells wholesale for what, eight bucks, seven bucks, if that? The band sees maybe 25 cents out of seven bucks, and they have to pay their manager and their accountant and their agent, and if they have a publishing deal they get even less. The only bands that really make money are bands that own their own publishing and sell millions of records. So I don't have a nickel saved. When I met Tera, which was four and a half years ago, all the money I had in the bank was from 'Oz', and it wasn't a lot of money."

Bankrate: How well did "Oz" pay?

Evan Seinfeld: "Horribly. I wasn't doing it for the money. 'Oz' just paid SAG (Screen Actors Guild) scale, which is crap. It paid way less than BIOHAZARD paid. I just had that money in a separate account and saved it. By not going on tour with BIOHAZARD and by doing 'Oz', I was losing money. But I loved acting, and I loved the environment. I loved the show so much I was willing to do anything to do it. I was on the show five years. I did 40 episodes."

Bankrate: So between BIOHAZARD and "Oz", in the long run they did nothing for you, financially?

Evan Seinfeld: "Nothing. I won't complain about it, because I lived well and never had to go without. I'm a pretty simple guy. I've always had a nice car to ride, a nice motorcycle to drive, been able to go on a vacation here and there, live in a decent place, went out to dinner. The funny thing is, the more celebrity status you get in America, the fewer things you have to pay for."

Read the entire interview at Bankrate.com.