HAARETZ: The bearded receptionist wears a yarmulke.
In any other office, this wouldn't seem remarkable. But this is the midtown Manhattan headquarters of Lucas Entertainment, one of the largest gay adult film companies in the world.
The yarmulke - worn in memory of a recently departed grandmother, it turns out - seems weirdly apt once you meet Michael Lucas, the 37-year-old founder and CEO of the 11-year-old porn conglomerate, which in August released what it claims is the first gay adult film made in Israel with an all-Israeli cast.
"Men of Israel" is characterized as a labor of love for the Moscow-born Jew, whose complex public persona fuses outspoken ardor for Israel, fervent antipathy for Islam ('ugly') and right-wing Orthodox Jews ('parasites'), and canny promotion of raunchy sexuality. Lucas has become as infamous for acid pronouncements - likening the Quran to "Mein Kampf" in a notorious 2008 Stanford University talk, for instance - as for movies like "New York Hunks" and "Feet Extreme!" two of the more printable titles from his company's extensive catalog.
Likewise, Lucas claims that his motivation behind "Men of Israel" was not just titillation, but also a counterbalance to lopsided portrayals of Israel in mainstream media. "It's free PR for Israel, and it's much better than the PR they're getting on the news," he said during a tour of the company's expansive second-floor offices, with views of the New York Times building across the street. "The reality is that Israel has only one face to people on the street, and that's the West Bank and Gaza. All people see in the media is a country of disaster. They get images of a blown-up bus."
By contrast, Lucas said, the images in 'Men of Israel' - filmed in telegenic Tel Aviv, Haifa and desert locations by Israeli fashion photographer Ronen Akerman - amount to a pornographic stimulus campaign for gay tourism.
"Nobody goes to Israel for Golda Meir, I'm so sorry," Lucas said in heavily Russian-accented English. "People don't care that you have a great orchestra, and they're not particularly interested in the Holocaust museum. Gay people, and straight people, want beautiful beaches, beautiful nature, beautiful men and women, good food, good hotels. Israel shouldn't be mistaken about why people go there. They need me." Neither the Israeli Consulate nor the Israel Ministry of Tourism office in New York returned calls or e-mails for comment.
Lucas was born Andrei Bregman in Moscow into a family of "Russian intelligentsia." His father, Lev Bregman, is an engineer; his mother, Elena Treivas, who passed away last year, taught Russian literature. According to Lucas' six-page official bio, they gave their son the maternal surname "to curb as much anti-Semitism as possible." Lucas's private office is accessorized with antique-style furniture his mother left him, along with a collection of vintage cameras, framed family photos, rows of adult-industry awards, and a wall of his own press clips and magazine covers.
"Growing up in a communist nation as a gay-Jewish boy, Lucas faced much oppression and discrimination," the bio says. After graduating law school, he started a small travel agency that he claims was run out of business by the Russian mob. Seeking "greater acceptance," Lucas left for Germany; after successful stints as an escort and porn actor (dubbed by a French director, with unintended historical humor, as "Ramzes Kairoff"), he left for New York in 1997, where he adopted the nom de porn that stuck. "I wanted to make money, and all I had was my body, so I used what I had," he said. >>> By Michael Kaminer, The Forward | Tuesday, September 22, 2009
