‘Pornstreaming’ is star’s aim in LV

Tera Patrick isn’t just one of the world’s biggest porn superstars — especially since Jenna Jameson retired — Patrick is also in talks with a big-name hotel to become a regular fixture in Las Vegas. She’s meeting with execs this week to add, possibly, her stamp of sex appeal on the place.
“She’s putting together a modern-day rock ‘n’ roll burlesque show, with the hottest models and dancers imaginable,” says Patrick’s husband, Evan Seinfeld.
This could be a boon for the hotel and partially re-brand it because Patrick can draw both men and women who contribute to Patrick’s multimillion-dollar empire of DVDs, Web sites, magazines, toys and other businesses — not to mention the publicity she would generate.
If you think only men would go, oh, how wrong you’d be. Patrick claims one of every three customers who buy her adult store products is a woman. At autograph signings, it’s women who occasionally feel her up, not men.
And do you know how many mothers have thrusted their babies into her arms?
“I’ve kissed babies,” Patrick says. “I’ve AUTOGRAPHED babies!”
You’ll probably see a long line of women marching into her fashion show and lingerie party at Voodoo Lounge at the Rio tonight. (Starts at 10 p.m. Men pay $20; women get in free till midnight, then pay $20.)
What’s more, even though Patrick is a porn icon, a Patrick burlesque show in a hotel could be less risque than some other nude-ish productions that support the Vegas economy, such as “Fantasy” at Luxor, “Crazy Horse Paris” at MGM Grand and “Zumanity” at New York-New York.
Patrick and Seinfeld cautiously told me snippets of the deal in the works on Monday, while she was promoting Mistress Couture during a lingerie convention at the Rio. They didn’t want to name the hotel or go into any real details because talks are ongoing.
This is yet another mainstreaming of “adult” entertainment in Las Vegas, or as Patrick calls it, “pornstreaming.” The very nature of Las Vegas is as an adult Disney World, of course, but Vegas is generating more money with name-brand icons of adulthood, be it the Playboy Club or the Penthouse Club.
Patrick, 31, hasn’t been filming movies lately, but she releases DVD material every year, and she’d star in films again under the right circumstances, she says.
It’s been a weird journey for Patrick. She modeled from 13 to 18. She wanted to be a doctor, “but I wasn’t smart enough.” She made it into nursing and cared for geriatric patients in a Boise, Idaho, nursing home, working 12-hour shifts.
I say to her that must have been tough, but she says it was a happy time, partly because she has a nurse complex — her mother was a nurse and would take her to work — and partly because it was a validating way to help people.
“It is a hard place to be because families dumped them off there and never came to see them,” she says. But “I loved to hear their stories. I loved to get to know them.”
So how did she burn out?
“I went to work one day, and a patient threw a bed pan at me,” she says.
After that, she went back to modeling, then posed for Playboy and Penthouse, and entered the adult world of movies. At 24, her husband — an actor and former bassist and vocalist in the rapcore band Biohazard — helped her make the transition from star to entrepreneur.
Now she’s helping other women to start their own companies in the industry and to do more female-friendly work.
“We want to see women not being degraded in my movies. They’re glorified. And they don’t look like they’re having sex against their will,” Patrick says.
If Patrick sounds more sober and together than the average adult-industry celeb, you don’t know the half of it. Hanging out with her for a morning and afternoon feels like you’re watching a savvy, smiling entrepreneur at the top of her game.
She doesn’t just autograph posters and pose for pictures absent-mindedly. She remembers people she’s met before and chats with them. She’s an impressive CEO. And just so you know, I’ve never seen one of her movies because I know that’s what you’re thinking.
Doug Elfman’s column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.