I’m not a desk-job type person if you might have noticed.” So I had to come up with a different career, something that would be fulfilling to me. “I’m like a broken person,” Vegas says, looking back. And the performers own the content, meaning they earn residuals, which is not the case on a regular studio shoot.Īfter that, firefighting was impossible. They get together, have sex on camera, and then publish the content on the paid streaming websites they own. Except no one is getting paid today: This is a trade shoot, also known as a content trade, which means that the performers organize the shoot on their own time, shoot it with their own gear, and handle their own paperwork. Michael Vegas, the man in the red tracksuit, is about to shoot a porno. Studio lights and a digital 4K camera on a tripod face the gray couch in front of the windows. Otherwise, the set-a standard king on the sixth floor of the Trump International Tower-is pretty much ready to go. When he comes back a few seconds later, he tells me that we have a problem.

He checks the closets and drawers without success. In a hotel room in Las Vegas, a barefoot man in a red tracksuit is frantically searching through his luggage.