BACK STORY
Madeleine Altmann, a suburban housewife drops off her kids at school and goes to work at a local TV station. It is apparent that it’s a happy and successful place. We see awards on the walls and cheerful coworkers greeting her as she walks to her office. We see senior and student volunteers working on a TV show with war veterans. As soon as she gets to her desk a man walks in and hands her an empty cardboard box and a manila envelope. She has been fired and needs to leave the building immediately. Reason for Termination: She is deemed too dangerous to be around children because 20 years earlier, Madeleine Altmann started Babes4U.
Flashback to:
It’s the late 1980’s. Madeleine, a sexy, smart, Brazilian-raised, liberal arts school- educated feminist artist is a grad student at the San Francisco Art Institute working with her advisor, famed underground filmmaker George Kuchar. One of her guest lecturers is the celebrated founding father of alternative video art, Nam June Paik. He keeps spewing the same line: “the only things that sell are sex and violence.” Not a terribly original statement, but coming from Paik it was revelatory for her. It means she can be both artistic and exploitative at the same time: the two aren’t mutually exclusive as her liberal arts education has taught her.
While at S.F.A.I. Madeleine creates a television show called Madeleine’s Variety Television, MVTV. It’s airs on public access in San Francisco. It’s inspired by her work with Abbey Hoffman. This is, of course, before the existence of the internet as we know it. There’s no mass distribution venue to broadcast alternate voices and non-mainstream material except through this limited cable access. Her goal is to use creative approaches to the aesthetic, stylistic and political problems of entertainment television. MVTV is unapologetic about its politics; it supports community activism. It jeers at the hypocrisy of the American system. MVTV dedicates itself to individual freedoms and expressions and gives a voice to many disenfranchised from mainstream society.
The mélange of Live events is captured by cameras, some of them as low tech as the Fischer Price tape recorder, in a way that intentionally destroys the perfected seamless illusions put forth at great expense by mainstream TV. It switches in a fluidly expressionistic and layered style often utilizing found footage as key material. The music
is woven in from sound bites and vintage records. The regular channel surfer gravitates to the show’s radically different look and feel, and it soon becomes a cult classic. VHS copies of episodes are traded. The slogan is ‘break the rules’ and with that comes full access. Almost anyone can showcase their work. Whether it was a panhandler or an experimental filmmaker or a comedian, all are welcome and a controlled beautiful layer of chaos ensues.
The San Francisco Guardian calls it “David Letterman run amuck.” And the Chronicle says “on MVTV anything can happen – and usually does.” At the end of the run a curious professor named Nick West comes from New York to watch a show taping. After 52 episodes the lack of income and the burnout from doing the show and working at a videotape duplication company on the night shift burns her out. Madeleine needs to make some money.
She sees the painful economic tableau in the United States. Madeleine doesn't have a lot of marketable talents in a speedily downward spiraling economy. She chooses a perennial best-seller to market.
She knows her platform is again to be on cable television. She gets a time slot on Viacom’s leased access channel, a hybrid of public access that allows the sale of advertising. Taking advantage of San Francisco’s deeply liberal bent, she starts a magazine-style show called Erotica S.F. The subject that sells? SEX. It’s partly educational, partly erotic, and mostly profitable due to advertising sales. Her guests range from porn starts to activists, corset trainers to authors. The topics range from the personal, to the political, to the professional. It’s the antidote to the scientific, odd sterility of Dr. Ruth. She gets the show aired in a number of other cities to expand the profit potential.
Ryan White is in the news. Artist Keith Haring has just recently died. Basketball star Magic Johnson announces he’s HIV-positive. AIDS is at the height of it’s epidemic, and San Francisco is an epidemic epicenter. Erotica S.F., as a socially responsible act, does an episode to raise money for the AIDS crisis. It’s a freewheeling show, and at one point a female performer does an improvisational dance number with a black rubber dildo.
Viacom, the cable television giant and owner of the cable system airing Erotica S.F., decides that this is indecent and pulls the show. Unfortunately for them, the cable goliath is up against a David in the form of Madeleine Altmann. According to the Cable Act of 1884, indecency is to be defined by community standards, not massive, profit seeking corporations. She marshals the help of the ACLU and sues Viacom.
This is not some crusty, sleezy porn merchant in a wheelchair. Madeleine is a young, sexy, woman going up against a row of corporate lawyers in their grey suits. A much more appealing story for the press. She wins both a monetary settlement and, more importantly, upholds that giant corporations like Viacom can’t censor what Americans view. A Federal Appeals Court ruling states, “we hold that not only does the first amendment prohibit government from banning all indecent speech from all access channels, it also prevents the government from deputizing cable operators with the power to effect such a ban.” She gives the money to the lawyers who represented her pro bono.
Meanwhile, across the continent, an innovative new masters program has been started at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
It’s called ITP, the Interactive Telecommunications Program. It’s mission is “to explore the imaginative use of communications technologies — how they might augment, improve, and bring delight and art into people’s lives.” They describe it as ‘The Center for the Recently Possible’. It’s led by a powerhouse of a woman, Red Burns. Most of the students don’t come with backgrounds in computer science: they’re diverse. Painters, poets, doctors, lawyers.
It’s a center of creative innovation at the very beginnings of the internet revolution. Nick West, the professor who had traveled to San Francisco to see Madeleine’s cult classic MVTV, seeks her out and the school woos her with a scholarship. She’s the type of diverse student they seek. Not to mention that the NYU Law School teaches about her valiant fight against Viacom, to protect freedom of speech. She moves to New York and dives into the headiest of times in this deep pool of creative innovation. Her classmates include the Great Fredini, a sword swallower and fire-eater, and Vica Miller, a Russian born writer and literary salon host.
They really open up a new world: one of the projects is YORB, developed by Madeleine’s mentor, Nick West. YORB is an ongoing experiment in building an interactive virtual community. Viewers can reach YORB from their phone, computer, or television set. They can simply watch the virtual neighborhood as it is displayed on cable, or they can participate by telephone. Up to four phone callers can talk to each other live at the same time. One of these callers is designated as the pilot, who controls the journey through YORB by pushing touch-tone buttons on the phone. Compared to the future it’s rudimentary; but at this point in time it’s revolutionary.
The World Wide Web is still in its nascent form. ECHO and WELL are the main bulletin board systems, text based communication platforms. Pictures and videos are mostly exchanged and distributed via usenet groups, not live or interactively. This is the time of the dial-up modem. This is the story of the beginnings of the modern internet as we know it, and as we now take for granted.
Madeleine is, of course, inspired. Who wouldn't be? She wants to create a way to harness this new technology and make some money while doing so. She’s confident in her sexuality. She’s a bit of an exhibitionist. Her feminist beliefs allow her to see potent female sexuality as a thing that women need to wrest back control of.
As Nam Jun Paik says, "Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body's new membrane of existence. Walking in Times square past the strip clubs, Madeleine has an Eureka moment… ‘Oh my god, just the babes on the internet!’ Madeleine’s brainchild is named Babes4U. She decides to figure out how to use the evolving technology that she’s learning to get women out of sleazy peep shows and into a safe environment, while putting them in control of the content and the profit.
Initially 800 numbers were used to connect and download software that then needed to be installed on PCs only. Then a small square little window popped up and the customer could see a laggy image of a Live Babe. She could not see him and there was no audio. People at home didn’t have video capture cards and cameras that cost thousands of dollars to set up. But they were happy to just see and interact with a real person. They often did not believe it was live so would ask the Babe to hold up three fingers or blow a kiss. CD drives were mistaken as cup holders and other fun mishaps as the public had to navigate windows and the B4U service on the internet with their home computers. The learning curve for the client is high. Most importantly they had to trust the internet with their credit card numbers. Luckily sex is a big motivator.
Unfortunately Red Burns, the head of the department, is disappointed with Madeleine’s amateurish performance so far in Yorb. She had tried some live events and it ended up a totally flat. Red questions Professor Nick West’s decision of giving Madeleine the work study scholarship. No one
She finds a partner, Steffani, who can deal with the talent while she deals with the new technology. She hires Deija and Tina to work at BAbes4u. She’s much older than Madeleine, and that makes her seem responsible. It turns out in time that Steffani really isn’t so stable or responsible.
Madeleine and Steffani rent a studio space on 14th Street and 8th Avenue. Not the high-end shopping mall it later becomes, but a street filled with drug rehab centers and sleaze. They set up the studio with the cheapest furniture that can be found. Free is best. The palette is brown, beige and stained. It’s the ugliest office in history. Her future clients are not going to be concerned with interior design. She creates three live recording areas that each have a camera connected to a computer, connected to a high throughput T3 internet connection. There is also room for the back end staff that keeps the business running. Babes4U runs 15 hours a day. A schedule of the performers is available for clients.
The studio is located above a Mexican restaurant that has a live, and loud, mariachi band every night between 10:00 PM and 3:00 AM. Prime time for her new on-line sex business. They install wall-to-wall carpeting, brown of course, but it does little to stop the rattling. Then come the endless covers of the new hit song ‘Macarena’.
Next door to the studio is a recording studio whose nighttime clientele are rap performers creating the soundtrack for this period in New York , along with their endless entourages. The recording studio doesn’t allow smoking, so they spent lots of time smoking cigarettes and weed in the filthy hallway. The flow of Babes from Babes4U going to use the shared bathroom sends these men into a constant frenzy. The opening door reveals a pornographic fantasyland for them. The word spreads and just keeping men out becomes another business challenge.
The Babes are paid hourly and get profit sharing. Besides being the boss, Madeleine is a Babe too. She won’t ask a woman to do something she won’t do herself. Her employees appreciate this. And there’s quality control. And the business is just starting, so every penny counts.
Because Babes4U is owned and run by a woman, many of the men felt very protective and are always 'looking out’ for them. Madeleine gets advice about marketing and investment strategies from businessmen who normally charge high fees. One customer is an investment banker and gives Madeleine stock tips that she uses to multiply the profits that start pouring in from Babes4U. The secrets men will spill even in a virtual bed.
Fraud is an anathema for the business. New customers have to be limited to how much they charge to their account. One the biggest problems for Babes4U is fraud and chargebacks. At first more than 25% of their customers are either fraudulent credit card users or simply refuse to pay their credit card bill for the service. The companies who handle credit card processing have a negative bias toward adult companies. Many don’t accept the business, so there are limited options. They charge up to $25 per bad transaction. If a customer charges $25 four times on a fake credit card because Babes4U doesn’t catch it in time not only don’t they get the $100, but it costs an additional $100 in fees. The people who make the most money from the on-line sex business are the processing companies. Madeleine and her people soon begin to more easily spot the customers most likely to be fraudulent. Within a few months of operation they deny all access from Australia when they discover that four out of five users are fraudulent
Being a women run porn business helps in many ways. It means the guys love it because they feel they’re helping the women that they had all along been accused of exploiting. Women love her because she is reclaiming female sexuality back to it rightful owners. The customers love it because it’s the ultimate safe sex.
The press falls in love with the story. They can sell sex themselves, but under the shroud of some sort of political correctness. A young, over-educated, female entrepreneur creating a new business model for the oldest business in the word. She ‘leans in’ before the term is created. The massive press coverage brings in business and money beyond their imaginations.
Of course there’s drama and politics. NYU is mortified. This is NOT the kind of ‘delight’ they envisioned bringing into people’s lives through new technology.
Tragically, the innocent virtual peep show created by these brilliant feminist, sexually confident women gets quickly corrupted by the profit hungry and the morally corrupt to be what now in part fuels the rampant misogyny in our culture. Within a year of inception there are numerous competitors online.
Babes4U tells the story of the very beginnings of the internet as we know it, and how the boldness, innovation, and fearlessness of visionary women who leaned way in and helped forge a new frontier.
WGA Registration Number: 1896648