"Adored: Diary of a Male Porn Star" Incorrectly Shipped To Mormons

Anyone buying a DVD copy of "Sons of Provo" probably knows what to expect: A PG-rated comedy about a clean-cut LDS boy band.
But three recent buyers got a surprise: An Italian melodrama about a gay porn star.
And if it weren't happening to his company's movie, Kurt Hale might be able to laugh about it.
"It's a big publicity stunt - nobody knows that yet, though," Hale, president of HaleStorm Entertainment, said Tuesday.
In reality, it's a headache for the Orem-based distributor of such comedies as "The Singles Ward" and "Mobsters and Mormons," which learned last week that three people who popped the "Sons of Provo" disc into their DVD players found themselves watching "Adored: Diary of a Male Porn Star."
The first return was of a disc sold at a Deseret Book in St. George. Hale said his initial thought was, "This is some kid who's messing with us." When a second return was reported from the Deseret Book in Riverdale, Hale said, "it sort of confirmed our notion that it was a local prankster."
Then an out-of-state customer who ordered the disc by mail reported the same problem.
HaleStorm checked with the company hired to replicate the disc, and learned the company (which Hale would not name for legal reasons) also had been contracted by San Jose, Calif.-based Wolfe Video to make copies of "Adored."
Corey Eubanks, a publicist for Wolfe Video, said the company stopped working with that replicator several months ago - and the master disc for "Adored" must still have been in the files. "They must have popped in the wrong master," Eubanks said.
"It's not a porn film, it's a film about a porn actor," Eubanks said of "Adored." He added that "it's our company policy not to sell hard-core pornography," and that Wolfe Video is the only major gay-and-lesbian film distributor that doesn't deal in gay porn.
"Adored," which was released theatrically last spring after playing at several film festivals, tells of a rich porn star (played by the movie's writer-director, Marco Filiberti) who seeks fulfillment by reconnecting with his family and trying to adopt a son.
In contrast, "Sons of Provo" is a mock-documentary in the "This Is Spinal Tap" model, following the plight of a three-man LDS-inspired boy band called Everclean.
"The day we found out our replicator was replicating the [other] title, the first call we made was to our retailers," Hale said. "We said, 'Guys, you have to pull everything.' "
"We took it right off, right after the St. George complaint," said Gail Halladay, spokeswoman for Deseret Book.
Other video sellers, whom Hale would not name, opted to keep "Sons of Provo" on the shelves. "They said, 'Hey, it's Conference weekend - we'll take our chances,' " he said.
At worst, Hale said, 25 copies of "Adored" would have been packed inside the 50,000 copies of "Sons of Provo."
Halladay said HaleStorm has promised that new discs, replicated by a different company, will be coming soon. Deseret Book will stock the movie "if [HaleStorm] can assure us that, 100 percent, they are clean and are the product that they're supposed to be," Halladay said.
Hale said "untainted" discs should be on sale by Friday, but the mistake has proved costly.
"We probably put $50,000 into an ad campaign that was blown because there was no product on the shelves," Hale said, adding that HaleStorm is seeking reimbursement from the replication company.
from The Salt Lake Tribune