For our first podcast of 2015 we’re reaching back into last year’s archives to honor a legend of adult cinema who is in need of our help: Kay Parker: Many Lives – Podcast 32.

About a month ago together with Jill Nelson and Mark Murray, we set up The Golden Age Appreciation Fund after learning that Kay is experiencing financial difficulties which have forced her out of her home. The goal of the drive is to raise enough money to cover Kay’s first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit. Many of you have already generously donated and for that we thank you.

The drive for Kay will run until this coming Friday, January 9th at midnight. This is a non-profit initiative so 100% of your donation will go directly to Kay – no donation is too small. And feel free to also leave a message for Kay when you donate – we will ensure it is passed on to her

Thanks so much – and Happy New Year!

This episode running time is 100 minutes.

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Kay Parker

Kay Parker is one of the true legends of adult cinema. In a career that started in 1977 and spanned over a decade, she became one of the industry’s most recognizable and best-loved figures. Since her retirement, Kay has dedicated herself to the welfare of others, working as a freelance New Age metaphysical counselor and writing a book about her spiritual experiences.

From her beginnings in war time Birmingham in England, Kay Parker was introduced to the adult film industry in the mid 1970s by playing small non-sexual roles. It was director Anthony Spinelli who talked her into doing her first sex scene in the 1977 film SexWorld, and Kay was soon one of the leading lights of industry. Kay is perhaps best remembered for her role in the original ‘Taboo‘, where she plays the mother role and is partnered with Mike Ranger, who plays her son Paul Scott, in one of the golden age’s most memorable scenes.

Apart from her film roles, Kay also became a prominent spokesperson for the business – appearing on television, college campuses, and in magazines, passionately defending the rights of the filmmakers and the performers. She is remembered with great fondness and respect by all who worked with her, including such luminaries as Seka, Eric Edwards, and Richard Pacheco.

Kay was recently featured in the book ‘Golden Goddesses’ by Jill Nelson (Bear Manor Media), and interviewed for The Rialto Report podcast – where both her appearances received much positive attention proving that she is still remembered and loved by her many fans.

The Golden Age Appreciation Fund would like to highlight Kay’s need, and also make it easy for anyone who wishes to make a donation to her. Together we can help Kay get back into a place of her own. Please donate – every penny donated to Kay will go directly to her.

The Golden Age Appreciation Fund is a non-profit initiative, that was established in 2014 to help raise funds for those formerly associated with the golden age adult film industry. It was set up by Mark Murray, Jill Nelson, and Ashley West.

The post Kay Parker: Many Lives
Podcast 32 (reprise) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

A sincere thank you to everyone who contributed to the Kay Parker fundraiser over the last month. Thanks to your generous gifts, we have raised almost $3,000!

This is a wonderful achievement, and we are extremely grateful to you all for your kindness.

Kay has been deeply moved by your gifts, and sent us all the following message:

To all my dear friends who contributed to this amazing gift, I thank you most sincerely! I am deeply moved by the support and compassion I feel. Many people have experienced hardship of late so I know I’m not alone. I’ve used this time to really acknowledge some very old and suppressed emotions and “heartbreak” and I urge everyone to do likewise. It’s so important to our health to do so. I am humbled and so very grateful, thank you again.

Blessings and love and a very happy new year,

Kay

For more details, please visit the Golden Age Appreciation Fund.

About the Kay Parker Fundraiser

The Golden Age Appreciation Fund kicks off with a fundraiser for Golden Age royalty, Kay Parker through January 9, 2015.

Kay Parker is one of the true legends of adult cinema. In a career that started in 1977 and spanned over a decade, she became one of the industry’s most recognizable and best-loved figures. Since her retirement, Kay has dedicated herself to the welfare of others, working as a freelance New Age metaphysical counselor and writing a book about her spiritual experiences.

Kay turned 70 in 2014, and in recent times Kay has unfortunately experienced severe financial difficulties which have forced her out of her home. A few months ago she was forced to move out of her apartment and has effectively been homeless since then, relying on the kindness of friends for a place to stay. She would love to move into a place of her own, but has struggled to collect enough money for a down payment to cover the first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit. Due to the low-paying nature of her work, she has little hope of coming up with this herself.

This stressful situation is also taking a toll on her personal well-being, as Kay herself admits: “I’m so frustrated and saddened after everything I have done in my life; this is not where I’d expected to be at this stage.”

About The Fund

After the success of a late 2013 fundraiser organized by Mark and Miranda Murray to assist actor Robert Kerman (aka R. Bolla) with expenses related to health issues of himself and his beloved cat, the idea was born to continue to help participants from the ‘Golden Age’ of adult films (1968-1988) in their time of need.

In December 2014, The Golden Age Appreciation Fund was launched by a trio of fans/historians with the sole purpose of giving back

Currently we plan to do 2-3 fundraisers a year so we can maximize the needs of each fundraising effort and to not over saturate the need for donations.  To stay informed we ask that you please be sure to sign up for our emailing list on the right and join our Facebook page as well.

The Golden Age Appreciation Fund founders donate their own time, resources and monies, receiving no compensation whatsoever and greatly appreciate your help and support.

The post Kay Parker Fundraiser:
A Thank You appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In recent years, we’ve been lucky to have seen the publication of several biographies of ‘golden age’ adult film stars, such as John Holmes, Seka, Richard Pacheco, Serena, as well as the compilation volume, ‘Golden Goddesses’.

But what happened to the long-rumored autobiography of Jamie Gillis?

Jamie worked on his memoirs, entitled ‘Naked In Public’, for a number of years before finishing it shortly before his passing in 2010.

The result is much more than just a biography of an adult film star; his film career plays a significant part in his story, but Jamie was never defined by porn films.

It’s a unique and compelling blend of biography, random memories, diaries, existential musings, quotations, letters, and remembrance of times passed.

It’s moving, erudite, beautiful, crude, intelligent, disturbing, touching, obscene, wistful, soul-searching, and revelatory.

It’s also one of the best books we’ve ever read.

The Rialto Report is working with Jamie’s estate to publish the book. In the meantime we’re proud to present a selection of short extracts from the manuscript of ‘Naked In Public’.

For an audio interview with Jamie, please listen to our podcast here.

All excerpts from ‘Naked in Public’ are the property of the estate of Jamie Gillis and should not be reproduced without prior consent.

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Jamie Gillis: ‘Naked in Public’

I get invited to a number of events where I, a former sweaty toiler in the fields of porn, might otherwise be unwelcome. So there I was one evening at a soiree or whatever the fuck they are called, comfortable, but horrifically under-dressed in my favorite wreck of a denim shirt with its seriously frayed collar. (I did wear a tie, hoping to pass as being, at minimum, civilized). I slipped into a conversation that a tall smiling, geeky old guy was having with another fellow when I overheard him complain that, while his name was James, he really loved the idea of being called Jimmy but that it was too late in his life for that. I encouraged him to pursue his dream.

An attractive woman, who introduced herself as the wife of the gawky geek, explained to me that I had been speaking to Nobel Prize winner James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA structure. “And you,” asked Mrs. Watson, “who are you? From the looks of you, I would say you were an artist, a writer, or a brain.”

I just laughed at the preposterousness of having to discuss my X-rated history in such rarefied company but, seeing she was not about to let me simply wriggle away, I wrote my name on a piece of paper and told her that when she got home she could Google me, and if she still wanted to know me after that, I would be pleased to continue our conversation.

The gossip columnist, Cindy Adams, was at the party and the next day she wrote in her New York Post column:

“In one corner James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix. And who’s he chatting up? Porn star Jamie Gillis. Only in New York, kids, only in New York.”

Over the next few years I became better acquainted with the Watsons and enjoyed their company on several occasions.

I write this memoir in much the same spirit as I offered my e-mail address to Liz Watson; for anyone who thinks they might like to get to know me better, here I am.

*

I was a dirty boy from the time of my very first memory at age three when I was in the hospital with contagious thrush.  A glass enclosed room separated the screaming children from their visitors. Mom just sat there complacently as I jumped up and down in my crib-like bed and wailed in her direction. Actually that was her general demeanor at all times – very unaffectionate, no touching, no holding, and no kisses. I don’t think she was being cold or cruel. She was just generally exhausted by life, having had six children and very little money.

We lived on welfare for awhile, in a mouse-infested railroad flat that swarmed with roaches and bed bugs – the bathtub (no shower) was in the kitchen and covered by a metal top when it was not in use.

She was a quiet woman who could not bring herself to talk about sex and was never able to answer my insistent question: “Why does a woman need a man to have a baby?”. She finally asked my dear brother in-law, Dickie, to explain the facts of life to me and he did a good job, letting me know that the man’s “tinkler” went inside the woman.

I was a boy who liked when it rained because then I would not be expected to go out and play. When I did go out I was often alone. We lived near the 103rd St lake in Central Park and I loved searching the area for frogs and tadpoles; I brought tadpoles home occasionally but they always mysteriously disappeared by morning. I was told that they must have jumped out of the bowl they were placed in – but I came to realize, though I never accused her, that they were being flushed away by dear old mom.

One day while walking in the park I picked up twigs and branches that I liked the look of and was approached by a few bullies who grabbed them away because thought they might be something of value. When they saw how ordinary they were they handed them back to me and left me alone. They could not grasp the fact that I thought the wood was just interesting looking, and they treated me kindly as if I was demented.

My heroes were typical boy heroes, cowboys and supermen and a comic book character called Captain Blackhawk who would do stuff like parachute into communist countries and carry out top secret operations with his private army. There was another side too though: The part of me that liked to occasionally curl up with a comic book aimed at girls. I don’t really recall much about them but a small percentage of my comic reading time was spent on them.

*

Dad got himself a girlfriend with a beautiful 17 year old bitch of a daughter named Joy who became my girlfriend for a short time. Mom was fat, fierce and was very proud of her white plastic covered couch which was reserved exclusively for company to sit on. Along with the family, I was not considered “company” and was forbidden to sit on the couch.

Joy, being her mother’s daughter, had similar rules. It was the era of frozen hair, all sprayed and lacquered (or whatever it was they did) and every hair perfectly in place. I was allowed to fuck her but NOT allowed to get my filthy hands anywhere near her hair. She would get herself into positions where no strand would come undone. One of her favorites was to lie flat on her belly and watch TV while I sat up behind her with my cock pounding away. She never showed any sign that she was being fucked. At the time the whole thing didn’t seem very erotic but later on in life I developed a fetish for women who ignored me, or, perhaps more accurately, pretended to ignore me while we had sex. I liked it when they watched TV or read the paper. One woman actually did a crossword puzzle as she leaned over a counter while I quietly slid in and out so as not to disturb her thought process as she groped for the correct word.

Joy was a perfect little brunette but she wanted to be even more perfect and was planning on getting all her perfect teeth capped. She also solemnly swore that after she was married she would be getting up an hour before her husband to put her makeup on. He should never see her before she was prepared.

She always made me feel like a filthy beast for wanting to have any kind of sex and that was a turn on. Revulsion for anything physical seemed to run in the family. We horrified her aunt one day when we more or less innocently asked her how many “positions” there were: “There is only ONE position!” she boomed.

*

I saw Marcel Marceau at the age of nineteen and was instantly captivated. I actually went backstage and mumbled “bless you” to him. This was in 1961 or ’62, long before mimes were subjects for mockery and derision. I felt in fact that I had entered a kind of monastery of the theater. Purity in those days was important to me. I had thought for a while that I would concentrate on having a career as a Shakespearean actor and, in that way, forever avoid selling out to the commercial world.  Marceau’s performance changed that: I was a mime now. My body, I thought with all the arrogance and tenderness of my nineteen years, was to be used as an expressive living temple that would communicate profound and subtle thoughts.

I spoke to Marceau several times about the possibility of studying with him but he was always touring and unreachable as a teacher in those years. He seemed to be jealously guarding his talent but always held out the hope to the small band of mimes in the world that he would someday have a company and impart his great secrets to us.

*

“Seek not what you want to happen,

Seek to want what happens.”

– Epictetus

*

I got good enough grades at Rhodes to be accepted to the Columbia School of General Studies. 1968 was an insane year to be at Columbia. It was the year students were occupying buildings and police were going in to bash their heads in and drag them out. On one particularly memorable afternoon the entire school was surrounded by mounted police. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I had never expected to be in that school. I was raised nearby in poverty and Columbia was where the rich and privileged went. As much as I sympathized with the students I also felt that they were a bunch of stupid brats. What was the point of shitting in your own crib? Why do blacks burn their own neighborhoods? You want to go torch a recruiting station to protest the Vietnam War, ok, for that kind of action I would have a lot of sympathy.

I had always hated the idea of war even as a small boy and I even recall thinking that I was lucky because by the time I grew up people would surely realize how stupid it was and it would somehow be abolished by common agreement. I used to feel, and to some extent still do, that war was a reaction to repressed sexuality, or perhaps an expression of a need for a greater kind of sex. Mankind has been on the hunt for a bigger bang from the very beginning. The bigger the bang the bigger the release somehow. It’s all really all about fucking in the long run.

One day while passing a newsstand near Columbia in 1968, I saw the first issue of Al Goldstein’s Screw newspaper and that did greatly impress me as being a sign that society really was changing. For the better.

*

“I’m not a politician, I’m an artist. Depravity is part of the job description.”

– author Sebastian Horsley after being refused entry to the US because of a drug conviction

*

It would never have occurred to me to actually seek the kind of job I found under part time job listings: the ad read something like:

“Nude models – Cash”

What the hell, I thought. Sounds easy – let me give it a shot. I called the number in the ad and was told to come by for an interview. The studio was a basement on West 14th St, right next to a funeral parlor.

It was early in 1971, no one had yet heard of Linda Lovelace but she got her start fucking a dog in that same basement. The place was a grimy hole with an old dirty mattress which had a spring that often broke through and popped out. This was essentially the place that porn was born. There was a little of it going on in Los Angeles where it was illegal. This was New York. Good old filthy New York.

Bob Wolfe answered the door. He was a pudgy, hippy looking type in a pony tail and overalls who somehow got the job of churning out the 8mm loops for the jerk offs in the 25 cent Times Square peep show machines run and owned by Marty Hodas.

He asked me to pose for a Polaroid that he would put in his file and he’d let me know if there was any work. He called soon after and to my delight when I arrived there was a very pretty Brazilian girl already sitting on the mattress and ready to go. I had no problem at all performing for the camera because I wasn’t performing for the camera. I was just having a good time with a pretty girl. I got thirty bucks for the job and thought I was the luckiest guy in own. That was roughly the same amount I cleared driving a cab at the time and it was sooo much easier and a lot more fun

I badgered Bob after that for other work which he gave me on a regular basis, although he occasionally complained that I was getting overexposed.

These were silent 8mm films about ten minutes long. Sometimes they were done in costume. I was Superman, Dracula, and others, but mostly they were just two people fucking.

Bob’s wife eventually absconded with their young son and twenty grand he’d hidden in a shoebox. They were a little kinky. On several occasions Bob asked me if I would like to fuck her. She really wanted me, he said.  I finally said “Ok sure”. While I was doing her he was at the door peeking in the room holding their infant boy. I found out later from other ‘studs’ that they were also politely asked if they would like to fuck her too.

Bob split for San Francisco one day because he got scared when he learned that his business partner was killed because he pissed off one of those guys you don’t want to piss off. He did stay in the business for awhile out there but finally left it, telling me one day that he just got tired of telling people what to do with their genitals. He has pretty much been lying low for over twenty years and, because of his current ‘clean’ lifestyle does not want to talk about his not so glamorous past.

*

Marc Stevens was an early porn star who was bright and amusing; a lot of fun to be around. He was very concerned about his looks though, in the way only a gay man can be. (Marc could work with women and did, but his reference was men).

On the set one day a hot light fell on him and it burned him and left a bruise. Marc instantly froze as if he was in shock. He just stared coldly ahead and stayed perfectly still and mute when anyone confronted him to see what could be done. We were all freaked out by his reaction.

Finally I went over to him, knelt down and said as sympathetically and gently as I could, “Marc, listen it could have been worse.” He remained frozen and then I added: “It could have been me”.

He was still in pain but he collapsed with laughter, and then we all did, and the show went on.

*

“If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.”

– John Cage

*

I was awakened one morning about 6 am by detectives pounding on my door. Just before I left New York I had worked on a film called ‘All in the Sex Family’. At first I turned down the job because I was acting with Jean Erdman‘s company in an evening of Yeats‘ plays. Jean was the wife of the renowned author/teacher Joseph Campbell, but he was just Joe to us when he’d pick up his wife after a rehearsal. We’d already done the plays in Montreal where the cast was put up in a nunnery.

Jack Bravman, producer / director of ‘All in the Sex Family’ begged me to work for him swearing he’d get me out in time for that evening’s performance and I relented.

At one point while I was fucking my co-worker doggy style, I said to Jack:”I gotta go”. He said: “You’re gonna come?” meaning he wanted to know if he should concentrate the camera on my ejaculation. I said:”No, I can’t come, I gotta go, I gotta get to the theater.” So I came and he let me go and I went.

We were shooting the film in very conservative Suffolk County, and the shoot included exteriors of the town, including the homes of some prominent politicos. The film was then later shown at the local porn theater. The community was outraged, not so much that it was a porn film but that we had the audacity to shoot it in their town and then let it be shown in their own porn theatre.

Everyone connected to the film was arrested on obscenity and conspiracy charges. The detectives who came for me searched through my pants for a weapon before they allowed me to put them on. “Hey”, I said, “this is about sex. I’m a lover not a killer”. The cops didn’t smile. Cops never seem to smile, at least not when they’re working.

I was living in Los Angeles at the time so I was technically a fugitive from justice – and I was put on high bail. My buddy, porn star Marc Stevens, later confessed to me that he gave the police my address.  I never really had any hard feelings about it—I know that detectives can exert a lot of pressure. Generally speaking Marc was a funny lovable character and I usually smile when I think of him.

After my arrest (my first and only), I was ushered into a large holding area housing about fifty guys. I can still hear the heavy clang of the steel door closing behind me. Toilets were out in the open and lined up along a wall and the arrested men were a pretty scary crew.

The only inmate who seemed educated and sensitive enough to actually have a conversation with was an ex-Nazi who was in for credit card fraud. I’m not sure if I mentioned to him that I was Jewish but I don’t think he’d have minded. War is war and duty is duty and all that.

Most of our time was spent playing chess with a set of pieces we crafted out of cast off aluminum papers from cigarette packs. I spent the weekend in jail and was released on my own recognizance after I agreed to get myself back to New York to face the charges. I explained in a phone call to the Suffolk county D.A. that I didn’t have the fare and he barked: “Walk!” I ended up taking the bus. I didn’t really mind. The bus left from a Hollywood stop just steps from where I lived and brought me to the midtown bus terminal in Manhattan – practically door to door.

*

“The dirtiest book in all the world is the expurgated book.”

– Walt Whitman

*

Walking behind two obvious gays in Greenwich Village I heard one of them say, in what I took to be flowery fag language, “His buns are noble”.  I was curious, and I looked around to see if I could spot the Adonis he was pointing out to his companion.

I then noticed that they had arrived at their destination, and what he had said was: “Here’s Barnes and Noble.”

*

I first encountered New York magazine restaurant critic Gael Greene at a book fair being held on 5th Ave where she was proudly displaying her best seller ‘Blue Skies, No Candy’. We knew each other by reputation and talked for a little while. Gael had seen ‘Misty Beethoven’ or, more accurately, ‘The Opening of Misty Beethoven’, as producer /director Radley Metzger always wanted it to be known.

Radley used the name ‘Henry Paris’ for his X-rated features because, he said, he didn’t want his mother to know he was making porn movies. I think he was serious, after all he was a nice Jewish boy, but you never quite knew with Radley. He had a wonderful, ironic sense of humor. A few examples:

1)     We once ran into someone Radley had worked with for years and Radley brushed him off. The guy was hurt and said: “You know, when you were struggling you were much friendlier. Now that you’re successful, you walk around like you’re superior to everyone else”. Radley stopped, looked at the guy and admonished him: “I resent that. I was ALWAYS superior.”

2)     I was scheduled to fly to Europe with Radley to shoot ‘Misty’. Not only was I always afraid to fly but a fan had recently done me the ‘favor’ of doing my astrological chart, and told me I should NEVER get on an airplane. I called the prick up and said, “Listen, I have to go to Europe. I know I should never get on a plane but I need to know more information about my chart.” He called back with the warning that above all I must not travel on November 18th. The 18th was right about the time we were going and I was afraid Radley would be angry and possibly replace me. (I was not even his first choice for the role; he fired that guy before the first day of shooting because he said he didn’t like his attitude). With some trepidation I explained the problem and Radley’s reply was: “Well, one thing I can tell you for sure Jamie. You’re not flying with ME on the 18th.”

3)     When we got to Paris, Radley put me up in a room next to his in a hotel on the right bank. I told him I preferred the left bank and was sentimental about a hotel I stayed in when I first went to Paris in 1963. He said, “Jamie, you’re staying here where I can keep an eye on you and be sure everything is ok. I can’t have you running around getting lost in Paris”. I relented and said, “Ok Radley but ya know that other hotel is about ten times cheaper”. He then insisted I move immediately.

The term ‘porno chic’ was being used a lot in the in the late seventies. All of a sudden, for a little while, we was klassy—imagine dat! It had become acceptable to be seen going into an X-rated theater. Talented people like Radley made that possible. The screening for ‘Misty’ was even held at the fashionable and renowned Four Seasons restaurant in New York.

At the book event Gael fluttered like a schoolgirl as she talked about having seen me in ‘Misty’. I was amused but not really interested in her. It was a time in my life when this young lion was being tossed hunks of prime meat on a regular basis and I was kept quite busy satisfying my lust with more or less perfect young women.

Gael asked for my number and told me she would perhaps invite me to a reviewing dinner. I just gave her my service number and never bothered to reply.

Fortunately I ran into Gael again at a wine tasting which I attended with my lifelong good buddy Jeff who was selling wine for a living. I say fortunately because I sensed that if I could get past the fact that middle aged Gael had a less than a perfect teenage body, I might be in for some fascinating good times. I thought this almost as soon as she approached me; full of confidence and fresh wit even though I had never even bothered to return her call. I saw that nothing would stop Gael. The world was hers to create.  She invited me to a dinner party at Le Cirque that she was giving with Danny Kaye’s daughter Dena who taught me the Charleston that night.

I found her boldness delightful. Her enormous appetite for life was a beautiful thing to behold.  I decided that I would absolutely attend the party and had no qualms about going home with her afterwards. At her Upper West Side apartment, I let her have her way with me. Why not? She was a very special woman and she deserved it. Of course once she got a taste she was insatiable and constantly called to ask me out to this or that restaurant either with a small group or just the two of us.

*

I recently got a card from an old flame along with two packets of herbs that said:

“Darling,

Just a few scents from my garden.

Turned on the TV the other night and there you were, looking so, so

Delicious, and I remembered

The softness of your skin (among other things)

How happy I am to

Have run into you

Anno 197…something.

It hit me like a wave

When I saw you, and

Your voice, oh la la!!

Running out of space, so

I’ll stop this sentimental

Note. I will always

Love you, Anna”

*

I first eyed Serena when she was posing for Sam Menning in his Los Angeles studio in 1973 or ‘74. She was writhing around naked while Sam snapped away and I was immediately smitten. He told me she was living with some guy in a remote area of northern California. I gave him a “too bad” shrug and left but I never forgot her.

A few years later she showed up single in New York City as the featured dancer/stripper at the Show World Center on Eighth Avenue and 42nd St. The place was going strong as a multi-level Times Square sex emporium and as I lived in the area, it was my neighborhood ‘playground’. A couple of floors featured 25 cent peep show girls.  What a great relief it was to be able to go look at a naked girl for almost nothing and either stay to masturbate to her or simply  bask in the wonder of it all…

An upper floor was dedicated to live sex shows and then there was the star stage reserved for that week’s headliner.  Among the legendary acts that appeared there were Honeysuckle Divine who shot ping pong balls into the audience from her cunt, and Monica Kennedy, (perhaps one of THE Kennedys?), who some think outdid her by ejecting  frankfurters from her butt. Their respective talents were regarded with awe by the cognoscenti.

Serena’s act was much more demure. She danced around the stage with very easy, fluid motions, waving her arms overhead as if she were a young sapling bending with the breeze. You weren’t so much aroused by her performance as moved by it. You just wanted to hold her and love her—anyway, that was my reaction. Maybe I was just pleased that this angelic, blond vision with the great ass and snub nose (standard Jew boy dream material) had come to a place and time where she was within my reach.

All I really had to do was go backstage to say hello and she was mine.  I was Jamie Gillis, and in Serena’s world at that time that meant a lot. She knew me by reputation and was very pleased and excited to meet me. We laughed and joked backstage with other visitors from the porn crowd as Serena sat on the lap of her loving new daddy.

Serena

*

There is a newspaper clipping taped to the top of my computer:

A very old woman was asked what she liked most about her life:

“That I’m alive, I guess. That’s the big thing. That I’m alive.”

*

If I wasn’t Jewish I think my next choice would be to be black. At the risk of insulting anyone with embarrassing clichés, I have to say I admire their warmth, humor, general physical looseness and their ability to strike a little fear just by walking by you on a dark street.

I saw ‘The Great White Hope’, starring James Earl Jones, on Broadway in 1968. Muhammad Ali was in the audience, seated alongside a typical, pasty faced overweight, middle aged theater crowd and he shone and glistened among them like a black jewel. I had never, as an adult, asked anyone for an autograph and I didn’t really want Ali’s. I just needed an excuse to get close to him and see what his fists looked like. Surprisingly, I don’t recall that any other members of the audience approached him. Some cultural icons just seem to be too impressive to bother. A few years later I saw Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward walking on Broadway.  Not only did no one approach them, people actually backed away from them as if they were afraid of being burned by the great light that radiated from their glorious young selves.

About 30 years after his Broadway success I ran into James Earl Jones in San Francisco. I had been  impressed by his Othello that I’d seen in an  off Broadway theater several years before he did ‘The Great White Hope’, and as he was lately becoming known for somewhat sillier projects I thought I’d let him know that I was aware of his great talent as a classical actor.

Jones thanked me, winked at me, and said “I like your work too” – and bringing a clenched fist near to his face, added in that beautiful booming voice: “You’ve got LOTS OF FIRE.”

It’s amazing what a great equalizer sex is; I never imagined he would have any idea who I was. I’ll never be able to look at Jones again without realizing he’s only human.

*

Fragment of a letter from Liela (a Dutch girlfriend), June 6th 1994:

“Just a little letter to let you know, you stole my hart once and forever, whatever you did do, will do, simply because you enjoy without depending on other men’s opinion. Which is the only pleasant lifestyle.”

*

I met Mark Arnold Krinsky aka Ed Powers on a set in LA. He had a small X-Rated film distribution company that was handed to him by legendary porn mogul Reuben Sturman. Ruthless Reuben was something of a mentor to Ed (“he fixed my teeth,” Ed had once told me). I would have paid scant attention to him but, to impress me, he told me the story of how he had taken home two hookers who tied him up and robbed him. That was nothing special but when he added that after he managed to get free he went out looking for them again because he was so excited by the ordeal, I was intrigued. Here was a guy nuttier than I was about sex and had the balls to do anything for a cheap thrill. The clincher came when he said if you don’t believe me I’ll call them right now. Sure enough, after exchanging pleasantries with her, he puts me on the phone with a hot sounding bitch who tells me she is so happy because she just got a new gun which was even bigger and deadlier than the one she used to terrify Ed.

After that first meeting I often stayed with him at his house when I was in LA. He had enormous energy, was generous and usually fun to be with.

One day outside a supermarket I gave some change to a panhandler.

Ed then said to him “Here’s a dollar.”

I responded “Big shot, huh? Here’s two dollars”.

“Ok, fuck you, Jamie, then I’m going to give him five dollars.”

The old beaten down panhandler stood stupefied and totally still, his head bent over his cup in wonder, as we continued the escalation until his cup was literally overflowing. Finally he put a stop to our madness by quietly saying: “I guess I can go home now”.

Ed was one of the few guys I ever met who was more sex-driven than I was. We would, on many occasions, pick up a whore and then as soon as he was done with her he would want to run out and cruise for another. One day he bored a tiny hole in the wall that separated our rooms in case I wanted to peek in on his latest thing. The hole was barely big enough to make anything out and one day while I was zeroing in on what I imagined was his new girl in a hot pair of panties I was mildly disgusted to realize that I had been staring at Ed in his underwear all along.

I was dividing my time between Los Angeles and San Francisco, venturing up to San Francisco and staying in hotels whenever work called me. One afternoon I was working on a film being produced by Allan Shustak. He was sitting next to me on the set when I became overwhelmed by the tedium of doing another stupid, scripted porn film in which the actors were clearly thinking “Who do I have to fuck and how quickly can we get it over with so I can go home.”

I said to Allan “This is ridiculous, why don’t we just throw a girl in a car and take her outside and find someone who really wants to have sex with her and film that?” I’m not even sure if I was serious but Allan casually replied “Ok, let’s do it, but let’s use a limo to give it a little class.”

We had no real idea what we were doing or what it would be called – we just rented a limo, got a hot girl with a lot of personality (Renee Morgan) and took off into the San Francisco night. Just for the hell of it I asked a woman I had recently met if she wanted to come along for the ride. She did, but she felt that the experience might be a little too much for her, and so left early.

I was having a ball sitting in back of the limo as Allan filmed the proceedings that evening. It was so refreshing to be going out to record real sex with real guys who weren’t being paid but who just wanted to get some pussy. I felt liberated and relieved – no more dumb scripts – we were out in the real world.

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“It’s never too late to become what you might have been.”

– George Eliot

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April 23rd 2009:

I find it difficult to write the words because the acknowledgment will make it even more terribly real, but I was told this week that I have a very serious, rare cancer that will kill me in the near future.

So, that’s it, maybe I’ll write some more, but tomorrow I go to see my cancer specialist at Sloan Kettering for the first time and he’s gonna take a look up my ass and figure out how long I have to live. I’ve been told that my biopsy says I have a melanoma of the anal mucosa if you want to look it up.

It’s Shakespeare’s birthday. By my calculations, I’ve so far survived about 13 years longer than he did. So, I might well ask, who the fuck am I to survive Shakespeare?

I’m supposed to take TWO enemas this morning before my doctor’s appointment. Funny thing, but I don’t ever recall taking an enema either for fun or medical reasons. Sure enough I was told to buy the Fleet enema which is the same one used on porn sets before anal sex scenes. I have this tumor that squeezes out of my anus with every bowel movement and I have to push it back in after I wipe. It is a little like getting fucked.

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When the actor David Janssen died, a girlfriend of his was quoted in the paper as saying “time to him was like a holiday”. I loved that thought; it seemed to express my philosophy of life perfectly, that we are all on a brief holiday from eternity, that our time in ‘time’ itself is a holiday from death and should be treated as such.

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“…everything I look out upon fills me with tenderness, nostalgia for life.”

– letter to Jack Kerouac from Neal Cassady, 2/13/51:

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November 23rd 2009:

My tumor was removed in May but growths in my rectum have returned. I went for a cat scan yesterday and depending on results the next course of action will be determined. From what I understand there is very little, if anything, that can be done. My partner Zarela is quite upset of course, but I begged her not to tell anyone yet because I hate to spend whatever remaining time I have having everyone treat me like some pathetic dying thing. There will be time for that when things get really bad. Maybe everyone should be indoctrinated from a very early age with the idea that we are all ‘some pathetic dying thing’. It might help people to stop worrying over little things.

Death is really boring, common, and banal. What is rare is that a living individual arrives once (as far as we know) during eternity. That unique life is a miracle. Reminds me of a Whitman line I always loved: “A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.” So I guess my message for the day, kids, is don’t make yourself crazy over anything and enjoy the miracle while it lasts.

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These days I’m reminded of a joke:

A man goes to a doctor and is told he has serious heart disease and has at most three weeks to live.

When he relays this to his wife, she says, “So at least thank God it’s not cancer.”

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November 30th 2009:

Saw my doctor today and the CAT scan result ain’t good—the cancer has spread. One of my doctors said that the way it was advancing was “impressive”, which I thought was a funny way to refer to it, but he wasn’t smiling.

Tomorrow I’m off to Cleveland to sign autographs at a convention called Cinema Wasteland. I decided to do it partly because it really does look like I’m on my way outta here and I thought it would be nice to give the fans who really want to see me an opportunity to do that before I’m gone. I also thought it would be a bittersweet experience for me—sort of a waving goodbye to those “wonderful people out there in the dark” (Gloria Swanson in ‘Sunset Boulevard’) who think I’m a cool guy.

I came across the following online shortly after I decided to go:

“I know there are members here at AV Maniacs who are J. Gillis fans. Here is your chance.  Do you want to risk missing another Wasteland guest who unexpectedly dies months later?”

I guess it’s as good a time as any to end this book. I don’t really think there’s any need to drag it out and include the miserable details of my illness as I decline.

I am planning to donate my entire body to medical research.  I can, therefore, expect to be naked in public for at least a couple of more years even after I’m gone. I won’t, of course, be paid for it but there is always the possibility that some pretty doctor will be looking on with interest.

So long. Don’t pity or mourn for me. I wouldn’t have traded places with anyone.  Hope you will be able to say the same.

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The post ‘Naked in Public’:
The unpublished autobiography of Jamie Gillis appeared first on The Rialto Report.

‘Wet Rainbow’ is one of the most accomplished works from the golden age of adult film in New York. It received rave reviews by the likes of Andrew Sarris and Gay Talese.

And yet it’s also one of the most mysterious films from that period too.

It starred Harry Reems and Georgina Spelvin, two of the biggest names of the era – but the identities of those who made it were concealed for a long time behind a series of assumed names.

To tell the story behind ‘Wet Rainbow’, The Rialto Report has interviewed two key people: the director, Duddy Kane, and the star – ‘Rainbow’ herself, Valerie Marron.

Two contrasting lives – that came together for ten days on an adult film set in 1974.

Their lives included porn, mobsters, murder, rock stars, Barbra Streisand, famed dietician Dr Atkins, New York Philharmonic, 42nd St theater owner Chelly Wilson, underage adult films, the Peraino family, robbery, a mysterious lost film, the ‘Deep Throat’ film crew, threats and blackmail, and much more.

Two lives. One mystery solved. Another Rialto Report.

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‘Wet Rainbow’ – Cast and crew:

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‘Wet Rainbow’ – Synopsis:

From University of Chicago Film Program:

Georgina Spelvin plays an art professor’s wife on the verge of mid-life crisis who experiences a reawakening upon meeting free-spirited student Rainbow (played by Valerie Marron). Spelvin’s burgeoning attraction sets off a wave of self-inquiry – about her marriage, artistic career, and general station in life – before the sex actually occurs.

Director Duddy Kane shoots most of the dramatic scenes in mobile long-takes that emphasize the casualness of married life, not to mention the charisma between Spelvin and her old friend Harry Reems, atypically understated here as her husband. In form and content, the film often resembles the great Krzysztof Zanussi‘s ‘Quarterly Balance Sheet’, which was made around the same time.

Valerie Marron, Georgina Spelvin in ‘Wet Rainbow’

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Duddy Kane’s story – Part 1:

The Rialto Report interviewed Duddy Kane in December 2014.

Who is Duddy Kane?

Duddy Kane is me.

I made up the name from the Richard Dreyfuss film ‘The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz’ (1974) that came out in theaters the same year as ‘Wet Rainbow’. And of course, ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941).

Where were you brought up?

I was born in the former Yugoslavia, and I came to the U.S. in 1965 to study architecture. I lived in the town of East Hampton, NY.

I started working at all kinds of stuff. I was a fisherman for a while. Then, because the East Hampton area was an artsy community, one day someone put a camera in my hand. I took some pictures and gave them to the local photographer to develop. He called me up and said, “We’re organizing a show and would like to include your pictures.”

I said, “I only have this one roll of film I shot.”

He said, “Well I think that they are great pictures, so we’ll show those.”

What were your pictures of?

I had three pictures in the show. One of them was a fire hydrant. One of them was a graphic photograph of the parking lot behind the store – a photograph from a very high angle to look like a painting. It’s almost like a beginning of minimal art. And another one was just a shot in a house that I was living in, just a chiaroscuro thing.

The dean of the arts school in NYU saw the show and looked me up, and I received a letter asking me to come to New York to teach and I did. That’s how I became a photographer – because I’d never ever taken pictures before I did that.

That led to teaching and then opening my own studio. Then I left for Montreal for a few years during the Vietnam War. Whilst I was in Canada, I set up a pretty big studio, a successful studio.

You went to Montreal to escape the draft?

Correct, yeah, with my wife. We went to Montreal. We thought of going to Brazil – but we only had $750 so it wouldn’t get us there! That’s basically how we chose Montreal.

So you were a U.S. citizen by then?

Oh no, I never became a U.S. citizen. I had a green card but they could still draft you… which was news to me. From there the photography led to films because I always loved movies.

When you were growing up, what were the films that you really admired?

At home in Belgrade, I always said that the Cinematheque there was my real education because we went every day and it has a great library of films. There were pictures like Erich von Stroheim’s ‘Greed’ (1924) – which still is my number one film of all time.

When did you first want to make a film?

I started to make a film when I was in Montreal – a political film. It was all about corruption and the influence of American capitalism in the developing countries around America. I wanted Gian Maria Volonté for the lead role; he was a communist. I went to Italy and I met with him. He wanted to do the film, but we couldn’t pull it off because we couldn’t get him a visa, so the film never happened.

I moved back to New York, and started teaching photography again.

So what was the genesis of ‘Wet Rainbow’?

My wife’s cousin, Ron Wertheim, had worked on ‘Deep Throat’ (1972).

How did you raise the subject of making an adult film with him?

I asked him, “How difficult is it to put a film like ‘Deep Throat’ together?”

He said, “It’s not difficult at all –it was all new to me when I started out.”

I said, “Let’s do it, because it’s the only way I’m going to get a film made.”

Ron Wertheim had been on the New York sexploitation scene as an actor and crew member from the mid 1960s,including directing soft core films such as ‘Invitation to Lust’ (1968) and ‘The Spy Who Came’ (1969). In the early 1970s, he worked with Gerard Damiano in a number of different capacities, including being the production manager on the landmark ‘Deep Throat’ (1972).

So you were making ‘Wet Rainbow’ as a serious project?

Yes, absolutely. My main reason was that I wanted the experience of making a whole film – from start to finish. It’s an irreplaceable experience to make a film, so I treated it as such.

We used state-of-the-art equipment and shot on 35mm. I wanted to do it just as if I was doing a regular film – and to me, it was a regular film.

Except that it had explicit sex.

I didn’t really get into the sex or exploitation part of it. Actually when someone saw it after we finished it, they kept saying, “What the fuck? This is not dirty enough. What are you going to do with it?!”

Do you remember films becoming more explicit at the time?

I remember ‘I Am Curious (Yellow)’ (1967). That’s what brought down the barriers. That’s what started it all. It played on 57th St forever. It opened the door for people, the ‘regular audience’ as we called them, to have an excuse to go and see sex in films.

How did you decide on the subject for ‘Wet Rainbow’?

I wanted to write a soap opera, a romantic soap opera, relating to normal married people.

How much was Ron Wertheim involved in the production?

Ron helped me bring in people like Harry Reems and Georgina. And he put together a crew for me that included many of those that had worked with him on ‘Deep Throat’ (1972) and ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ (1973).

It took them a day or two to realize that this wasn’t going to be shot like regular porn, but they soon got the idea.

Ron Wertheim, interviewed for ‘Inside Deep Throat’ (2005)

What was Ron like?

He was just another guy who always dreamt about making movies and was in that whole group of filmmakers, beatniks, who made up that scene. He had to be at least ten years older than me or even more. In fact I was closer to his younger brother.

He was a very interesting guy, extremely knowledgeable, but clearly mentally unstable. He was always pursuing some project, some screenplay or other.

Talking to him convinced me that I’d be able to make ‘Wet Rainbow’. I didn’t know anyone else to ask. He was very helpful.

Who shot the film?

The cinematographer was Joao Fernandes – but it didn’t start off that way.

We had to fire the guy that I originally hired. We screened the first dailies that we got back from the lab and they were out of focus.

This caused us to panic – what the hell was going on? We checked the cameras. Everything was working fine. Then the guy admitted that he was having a problem with his vision.

I had to fire him. That’s when Joao came in.

Georgina Spelvin, Harry Reems in ‘Wet Rainbow’

Did your wife have a part on the production team?

She was an editor at that time. She was assistant editor with a commercial company. So she edited ‘Wet Rainbow’. That was the beginning of her editing career.

The editing credit was for ‘Natasha Gottlieb’. Obviously everyone’s name was changed?

Yes – we were very careful not to use anyone’s real name. None of us wanted to be known for making a sex film.

Did you write the script?

Yes, it was written by me and my friend, Paul, who took the name ‘Roger Wald’. We’d written the script for the political film in Montreal together.

When we decided to make this movie, it was funny because neither of us was part of that milieu at all. It was all new to us. We were complete virgins in the industry.

‘Wet Rainbow’ was shot in Westbeth, a nonprofit housing and commercial complex dedicated to providing affordable living and working space in Greenwich Village for artists and arts organizations in New York City.

How did you come to select Westbeth as a location to shoot?

I lived there. We’d only raised $50,000 so that meant we had to be as efficient as possible, and I wanted to shoot as close to home as possible to save costs.

The open space there allowed me to do tracking shots and so on. I didn’t want to shoot in locations that locked me up with the camera not being able to move.

We didn’t use the actual space that we lived in, but we shot in a bigger loft that belonged to a friend of ours in the same building.

Valerie Marron, Harry Reems, Georgina Spelvin in the Westbeth loft location

What was Westbeth like in those days? I imagine it was a great community for artists.

It was fabulous. It was full of creative, talented people – but it was also like a mental institution.

There was always some great drama happening, like people jumping to their death, or Diane Arbus committing suicide; she was on the same floor as me and had killed herself a couple of years previously.

Did you have a producer or someone who raised the money?

My two friends raised the money; Paul – who I wrote the script with, and a guy named Peter (who we called ‘Rob Trenton’ in the credits). They were the ones that put together the finances.

The investors were very straight people. In fact one of the main investors was Dr. Robert Atkins, the man behind the ‘Atkins Diet’.

Chelly Wilson, who owned many of the theaters on 9th Ave, was another investor.

What were your memories of Chelly Wilson?

Oh my God! She was a total trip. I always wanted to make a movie about her. She was a very interesting person running that whole goddamned theater business down 9th Ave. I don’t know even how many theaters she had.

How did you get to know her?

My friend Peter, the guy who was the second producer, he did a play on Broadway that she produced. Something called ‘Harry Harry’ or something like that, I forget the title.

When we decided to make this film, he said, “I have a person we can call”.

We knew nothing about anything in that business and didn’t even know who to speak to, so he called her and she said, “Sure.”

Do you remember meeting her?

We went to see her in her office. It was above one of the theaters. She was not a very attractive woman, and she was propped up on this day bed, like a couch, or whatever. She had this woman, a very dyke-y woman serving her.

Three of us walked in. Three uptight regular guys. When she saw us, she couldn’t believe it.

“What do you want make?” She spoke with a very heavy accent. “Why do you want to make those kinds of films…? Why do you want to make those kinds of films…?” She always repeated herself.

Then she said, “Okay, okay. Read me the script.”

We looked at her. I just couldn’t make myself read the script, so we made Peter, who knew her, read it to her.

We said, “Okay, we’ll just go out and let him read to you.”

She said “No, no, no. You sit here. You sit here.” So we had to sit and wait while the whole thing was read to her!

Fortunately she agreed to provide some of the funding.

The cast is very small; do you remember how you cast the film?

I held a casting session. We had an office on 57th St, and we did the casting there. But it wasn’t an open call like most of the porn films at that time. And I never asked anyone to take their clothes off.

The funny part of it was when Harry Reems came in.

He said he loved the script, so I said, “I’ll use you, but you have to shave your mustache.”

He almost fainted. He said, “Are you kidding me? That’s my trademark! Everyone knows me because of this!”

I said, “What the fuck are you talking about? What have they ever seen you in?”

He said, “You’re crazy. You don’t even know who you’re hiring with me!”

I said, “Okay, okay, keep the fucking mustache.” He just had a fit.

Harry Reems, Valerie Marron in Wet Rainbow

What do you remember about Georgina Spelvin?

Georgina was extremely professional as she always was. She was also older than me so she was good at giving advice. Everyone was giving me advice!

Ron Wertheim plays the cab driver in the movie as well.

Correct. He was originally an actor. He was one of those people that went to Hollywood on a contract and was in some movies. It’s an interesting story; his journey is one that a lot of people make, trying to make films, and then somehow they eventually get sidetracked or whatever.

Ron Wertheim as a taxi driver in ‘Wet Rainbow’

What do you remember about Valerie Marron who played the lead role, Rainbow?

I can’t remember who brought her to us. She was a very lively girl. I thought that she was good for the role.

I asked her, “Why do you want to do this movie?”

She said that it was none of my business what she wanted to do it for.

Valerie Marron, production still from ‘Wet Rainbow’

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Valerie Marron’s story – Part 1:

The Rialto Report interviewed Valerie Marron in July 2008.

Who is ‘Valerie Marron’?

I was born Valerie Merians on 22nd October, 1955.

What was your upbringing like?

My father was Ron Merians – he was pretty well-known in the 1970s because he owned a music bar in Woodstock, NY called the ‘Joyous Lake’. He ran it from 1970 to 1979, and it was really successful.

At first it had shows by many of the famous singers and bands who flocked to Woodstock to record their music, but then it became a venue that bands would on insist on playing as part of their touring schedule.

It only had about 200 seats but everyone played there… the Police, Muddy Waters, Joe Cocker, Todd Rundgren, Johnny Winter, Patti Smith, Charles Mingus, The Band, old blues musicians like Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry… so much great music. My father knew them all; he was a great guy.

Joyous Lake, Woodstock

What effect did his interest in music have on you?

It caused me to love music. And musicians! I always loved hanging around in music clubs with bad boys…

Was it a happy upbringing then?

Er, no. Not at all. My parents divorced when I was three, and they both remarried. And that’s when my problems began. My stepfather was a nasty, unpleasant man. He abused me from the age of six.

Were you able to communicate this to your mother?

Yes, but that only made it worse. When she found out, she became jealous and blamed me for it.

From then on, she just wanted to get rid of me. Eventually I was shipped off to a boarding school when I was 14.

Was it good to get out of the unhealthy home environment?

Not really – I hated boarding school. I couldn’t stay. Eventually I ran away when I was 16.

Did you go and live with your father in Woodstock?

No – I headed to Manhattan. I didn’t know anyone there so I was homeless for a while.

That was a particularly dangerous time to live on the streets in Manhattan. How did you survive?

Tell me about it! It was scary. I was the target of all sorts of low lifes – pimps, criminals, you name it. They saw that I was underage, and I seemed to be a target for them. I was picked up by people for food and money all the time. It was the only way to survive.

How did you get involved in the adult film industry?

I can’t remember exactly. Someone told me that there was easy money to be made for writhing around in an orgy scene. An artist was filming it for something he was putting together. That turned out to be Ed Seeman. I was only 16 when I did that.

Valerie Marron in ‘Wet Rainbow’

You appeared in a number of films over the next few films. How did they come about?

I met people like Jamie Gillis and Marc Stevens on that first set, and they would call me up and tell me about film productions that were looking for actors. It was a strange little community, everyone was friends, and it was a close knit bunch of people.

I got on well with them all, even though they were mostly quite a bit older than me. People like Georgina Spelvin were in their late 30s, I think. I was underage when I made most of the films.

Valerie Marron in ‘Wet Rainbow’

Were you close to anyone in the industry?

I dated Jamie occasionally, but he was more like a brother to me. That was the good thing about the group; everyone was pretty protective towards each other, so in some ways that gave me some stability, some sense of family that I didn’t have.

Andrea True was good to me as well. We became close friends. And Helen Madigan too. She was great.

Did you like appearing in films?

I liked it best when I had some acting to do. I enjoyed feeling that I had a proper part to play. The sex wasn’t difficult for me, but that was probably because I’d been abused. I was numb sexually.

What was your life like in New York at that time?

Once I started getting a bit of money and meeting people in the film business, things got better. I started hanging out at the music clubs, places like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City.

I started dating Mickey Ruskin, who was the guy who opened and ran Max’s Kansas City and the Ninth Circle Steak House. He was cool and he knew everybody. Max’s was a great place. I’d be there all the time.

Mickey Ruskin

What do remember about ‘Wet Rainbow’?

‘Wet Rainbow’ was the first film I made after I turned 18. It was more ‘serious’ than most of the other films that I’d done. The people who made it were like ‘real’ filmmakers! There was a script with lots of dialogue – so I was happy to do it.

It was the first time I had the starring role – because I was ‘Rainbow’ – so I asked the filmmakers to use a different name on the credits. I change my name to ‘Marron’ because I didn’t want to embarrass my father. ‘Marron’ means chestnut in French.

Valerie Marron, production still from ‘Wet Rainbow’

Was it a smooth production?

Mostly yes – though I had a serious accident during one scene.

I had to have sex with a life-sized statue, which was difficult because I had to balance myself on top of it so that it could penetrate me. It took a long time to film and I got pretty tired.

All of a sudden the dummy broke off inside me and caused me a really unpleasant injury. You can even see that moment in the film – they left it in the film…

I suffered for years because of that. It caused a number of repercussions on my health.

Valerie Marron, in Wet Rainbow

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Duddy Kane’s story – Part 2:

Were there any problems in the pre-production of ‘Wet Rainbow’?

When we started casting, the first call we got was a guy who said, “Who gave you permission to make this movie?”

They said, “You have no permission. Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you think this is ‘Lawrence of Fucking Arabia’?”

It was really funny, but it wasn’t pleasant.

The caller said they were offering their services: “The business is very tough. You’re so young. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. You don’t know whom you’re dealing with. You have no way to protect yourself.” All those kinds of things.

How did this resolve itself?

The calls stopped – and we thought it had passed. We didn’t hear back from them until after we had finished the film…

Do you remember how long the shoot was?

It was 10 days. We had the usual problems with the unions; you know the way Teamsters are. I had a truckload of equipment, and they showed up. We were shooting a scene down on 6th Ave. They showed up and confronted us, not threatening – but not being very nice either.

They realized it was a little movie but needless to say, they scratched the negative at the lab to get back at us. So the insurance had to pay, and we had to re-shoot it.

They wouldn’t bother you if you used their cameras and people. But we pulled out equipment that was legitimate, and that made them think it was a bigger production.

Georgina Spelvin in ‘Wet Rainbow’

There are several artistic touches in the film – such as the superimposed images – that work very well.

I think it came out from my ambition to do a regular film and being a photographer. I tried to do creative things as long as they wouldn’t cost any more money – like the projected images of Rainbow on the walls which I always liked. That’s really where it all came from.

The soundtrack is memorable – who did you hire for this?

The guy who did it was Rupert Holmes who became very famous later on. After he did my films he went on to work with Barbara Streisand.

Rupert Holmes is a British-born American composer, singer-songwriter, musician, and author. He is widely known for his number one pop hit ‘Escape (The Piña Colada Song)’ (1979). Barbra Streisand used his songs in the movie ‘A Star Is Born’ (1976), and Holmes also arranged, conducted, and wrote songs on six other Streisand albums. In 1975, Rolling Stone magazine compared him to Bob Dylan.

How did you meet him?

The people I knew from the art scene were always flirting with the idea of doing films but it was very hard to do. When I decided to make a film, people that I knew from that world came forward and recommended people from theater, music, whatever. These people just thought it was a cool thing to do.

Somebody said, “You should speak to this guy Rupert. He’d be great to do something.”

So I spoke to him and he said, “Absolutely”. He would do the real thing – write a real score, record it in a real studio and everything.

Through his connections, we got booked into a recording studio on 57th St. I think it was called Studio One. It was a huge studio.

Can you remember much about the recording sessions?

It was recorded with the players from the New York Philharmonic.  I don’t know if you remember but there is a very lush sound of strings. That’s them.

It was interesting. As we were recording, the lead violinist looked at Rupert and he said, “Rupert, what kind of movie are we doing?”

Rupert said, “Why?”

The violinist said, “Well… just asking, just asking.”

I don’t think that they ever knew what film they were recording the music for.

And then Rupert went on to work for Barbra Streisand?

Someone heard that song from Rainbow, and the Barbra Streisand people called him.

When he got the phone call from Barbara Streisand’s office, he hung up, thinking that someone was playing a joke. They had to call him three times before he picked up the phone – and then they asked him to come to L.A. to discuss her next album with her.

Was Chelly Wilson interested in distributing the film?

Yes. When we finished the first cut, she came to my studio on 5th Ave. She first couldn’t believe the space – I had a 10,000 square feet loft. My wife was cutting ‘Wet Rainbow’ on a moviola at that time.

These two old ladies came by: Chelly Wilson and Mrs. Goldberg. They sat on each side of my wife to look at her work. Paul and I just ran out; we didn’t want to sit there watching sex with these two old women.

My wife said it was the hardest thing she’s ever done; these two women sitting behind her exclaiming, “Oh! Oh! This is good. This is good! Oh! Oh! This is very good.” She just died. She couldn’t believe it.

Then Chelly made an offer to buy the movie. She said, “Okay, it is beautiful. I want it”.

Valerie Marron, Georgina Spelvin in ‘Wet Rainbow’

How much did she offer?

She made an offer of $250,000 which was mind-boggling to us. I immediately started computing how many movies I could make with that money.

We decided to celebrate, so we went to the Jersey Shore as Paul had a house there.

When we returned on Sunday night, I saw that my elevator was stuck up on my floor – so I realized that something was going on. I ran up to the 11th floor, and found the place had been robbed. Every single frame of the film including the trimmings had been stolen. It was all gone. It was absolutely gone.

What did you do?

First we called Chelly because she was supposed to be the distributor of it.

She said “Oh my God. Let me check it out. I have connections.”

Then she came back to us and said “I can’t buy that film. It’s damaged goods.”

We always wondered if she had something to do with it.

So without the physical film, did you lose control of the film’s distribution?

It pretty much went into other people’s hands.

We tracked the distribution end, and we had a lot of unpleasant meetings with distributors.

So who ended up being the distributors?

It was Bryanston. The same company that had distributed ‘Deep Throat’.

One Sunday I get a call from my friend Peter, the producer.

He said, “Did you read the New York Times yet?”

I said, “No.”

He said, “It’s on the cover page. ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’, ‘Deep Throat’, and ‘Wet Rainbow’ are controlled by the Colombo family.

I said, “Are you kidding me?”

He said, “Yes! Investors are calling me asking me, ‘Did you know you’re in business with them?’”

They basically took it over from then on.

In the article in the New York Times they said ‘Joe Lane’ aka Joe Gentile was the one who was controlling it.

Did you meet the Perainos – who were behind Bryanston?

I met them all. I guess that’s who actually distributed the movie. It was well-distributed and marketed and everything – but they basically took it away from Chelly Wilson.

But they never tell you, “We’re taking it.”

How did you come to meet them?

One of the investors we knew was Italian. He wasn’t from that world – but he was Italian. We told him what happened, and he said, “Let me check out who that could be”

He set up the meetings. We had what they called a ‘sit-down’.

I just found it to be a priceless experience. First of all, you had to get dressed properly when you went to meet them – and I never wore suits. I had to wear a fucking suit and tie and the whole thing. We went to this very chichi restaurant where everyone was bowing to them.

Can you remember who you met with?

The older Peraino, Tony I think was his name. He was in Italy most of the time. He was a proper elder.

His younger brother, Joe, the guy who ran the business, the father of the guy who came to Hollywood, he was a pig. He was a fat pig who was straight of central casting.

Most of the others were very proper though, nothing like ‘Goodfellas’. This was a real business for these gentlemen.

Were you afraid of these guys?

I was not, but I must say my friend Peter was very nervous. I actually enjoyed meeting them.

I’ve always wanted to write about a story about these three schmucks from New York making their porn film, and getting involved with the mob.

I presume you didn’t see much profit after that either?

No. They did pay the investors properly – but I forgot how much we made. Maybe five grand each or something like that.

As you know, those movies made millions of dollars for certain people; we didn’t make those millions of dollars.

But it was a great, great experience to meet these gentlemen. They were extremely interesting. I wished they didn’t take the movie, or had better accounting or at least been more generous with us but still it was worthwhile. They were real characters.

‘Wet Rainbow’ opened on 30 October 1974 in New York.

Were you happy with how the movie turned out?

I was happy with the movie for what it was. The fact that we did the movie from beginning to the end, it came out as something that I could stand by.

However I must say I have never taken the picture and shown it around, but a lot of people saw it.

What about the poster art? It’s unique.

We had a great illustrator – Gilbert Stone.

Gilbert Stone was an artist whose work is still exhibited around the world, and was purchased for many public and private collections, including the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Collection at the Smithsonian Institution, and the Brooklyn Museum. His illustrations appeared in publications such as Esquire, Sports Illustrated, New York Magazine, Playboy, National Geographic, and on many album covers before his death from AIDS in 1984.

How was the film marketed?

I insisted that the movie had to be advertised as a regular film. I didn’t want it advertised as a 9th Ave porn film. We put ads in the New York Times for example.

That’s how ‘Wet Rainbow’ got to the next level. It did show in some of the 9th Avenue theaters, because Chelly Wilson owned most of those theaters and she was one of the investors. But we also got it into art houses too.

Did you have any sort of premiere opening for it?

We didn’t have anything special. There was no red carpet or public event like that.

I was naturally shy so I wasn’t pushing for any kind of a public premiere. There was a little opening at a theater… it was an art theater off 3rd Ave. I forget the name of it. I think it was around 3rd and 2nd.

What was the critical reception like?

I thought it was pretty good. Andrew Sarris wrote about it, and it was well-received for what it was. Because it played in the legitimate houses as well, it brought an audience that would not go to the 9th Ave or 42nd Street theaters. It got an interesting response.

Then it won a ‘Golden Tonguey’ – which they claimed was the Academy Award of Pornography! I didn’t go to that ceremony. My friend, Paul, who was the producer, did.

I actually have the Golden Tonguey itself. We still joke about it.

“The most important erotic film I’ve ever seen” – Al Goldstein

“The first sex film about love” – Gay Talese

“The most significant X-rated film of all time. Stylish intelligent, exceedingly well-scripted, superbly acted, genuinely erotic. Wet Rainbow single-handedly breaks every rule that porn has suffocatingly established for itself and through the process of self-liberation, it liberates the audience as well” – Sir magazine

“It is a breakthrough in the history of porno-movies, and there is a pot of gold at the end of this ‘Wet Rainbow” – Swank magazine

Ron Wertheim told me he thought that ABC Nightly News played a clip of ‘Wet Rainbow’. Do you remember that?

Yeah. Actually my mother-in-law called and said, “Your movie is on ABC Nightly News.” I said, “Get the fuck out!”

She said, “It is, put it on. Put it on.”

I did, and the guy gave it a review; he gave it a great review actually.

It was crazy because I just looked at ‘Wet Rainbow’ as a fun thing to do – and then forget about.

Did you have any adverse reaction from family or friends when they found out you’d made a pornographic film?

The funny reaction was when my wife’s family came to see the movie.

They came into a theater in the Village down between West Broadway and 5th Ave. They all came… her mother, aunt, uncles. My wife’s mother was basically not even looking at the screen… It was all new to them.

And the uncles just wanted to know: “How does Harry Reems keep it that hard for so long?”

Italian one-sheet for ‘Wet Rainbow’

So the ‘Wet Rainbow’ experience encouraged you to make another porn film?

I came up with this idea to do a political satire as a porn film. It was about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returning to earth to join the sexual revolution and he can’t get laid.

I met this guy who had written a vampire script – I think his child went to the same daycare as my son. I read it – and I said this is something that I can build on and make  into a movie.

We rewrote it and called it ‘Vampire Lust’ – it was totally off the wall!

The main character Vladimir is always in leather. The only thing that you see of him is his tongue and his dick. He comes out of the marshes of New Jersey looking at Manhattan and saying, “Oh my God …”

Who did you get to appear in it?

I didn’t want to cast porn people; I wanted to cast regular people. John Leslie was the only porn actor in it.

It was an interesting casting call because actors from Broadway shows showed up. I remember meeting one woman who was starring in a musical. I looked at her resume’ and I couldn’t believe it. I said, “I think you’re in a wrong place.”

She said, “No. No. I want to be in this movie because my friend told me about it.”

I hired people that were good actors and had good faces.

But it was still going to be an explicit film?

It was explicit, not as explicit as what my partners wanted, but it was still explicit.

We shot it in my loft and locations like Grand Central Station, and The Plaza Hotel. We made it for a less than ‘Wet Rainbow’; it cost about $35,000.

It was great fun to make because I shot it myself.

Was it released?

Yes – it was funny because when I was finishing the movie, Paul, my partner and producer, and I decided to move to Los Angeles.

We were so excited – we were going to find a distributor that was completely unconnected with the guys in New York. We couldn’t wait.

We got in touch with the Mitchell Brothers to distribute it. All of a sudden one of the Mitchell Brothers said to me, “I don’t know if we can distribute this because it already has a distributor.”

Then a phone rang at Paul’s house. It was our friend ‘Joe Lane’ from New York who said, “Pauly Pauly! Congratulations! We have your picture. Did you ever think that we’re not in the whole country? We have business that is everywhere.”

They intended to distribute it but when we showed it to them, they were turned off because the film was more of a satire than a ‘normal’ porn film.

One of them even said, “Where are the come shots?”

I said, “Do you pull it out of your wife when you’re doing it?”

He jumped up at me… it was an interesting scene at the screening room.

Was it ever properly distributed?

We never really heard. But once we were screening it for some friends, and the projectionist said, “I already saw this movie.”

I said, “You couldn’t have seen it because it hasn’t played anywhere.”

He said, “It’s played in San Francisco for six months already.”

That’s how we found out that they must have put it out…

Did you contact the Italians?

We called them up. We had another sit-down with them as and told them I’d found out that the movie had played in San Francisco, earning this money, and that we never got anything.

It was all this big talk, talk, talk, and then they sent us a little check.

I don’t even know who has it now. We’ve lost track of it completely. That’s the end of the story.

Do you have a copy of it?

I have a 35-million reprint of it. I always wanted to remake it as a legitimate film and political satire because I always loved the idea of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin not getting laid.

I personally liked that movie much better than ‘Wet Rainbow’ because it was a more interesting story.

Did you ever think about striking a print from your 35-millimeter and actually putting ‘Vampire Lust’ out yourself?

No. To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to be in porn business. Second, I didn’t know who would surface with the rights. My negatives were at Movielab in New York. I have no idea who pulled them out. It’s one of those things that I chose not to pursue because I didn’t see any upside from it.

Did you ever come into contact with anyone from ‘Wet Rainbow’ later in your life?

I saw Joao Fernandes out in Hollywood once when I was preparing this film ‘Reckless’ that I shot there. I thought of using him but I forgot… and we lost contact again.

Then Valerie Marron got in touch with my partner Peter. He’d written an article for a magazine like GQ or Esquire that was about the making of ‘Wet Rainbow’.

She wrote him saying that she got sick or injured or something on the set of ‘Wet Rainbow’. She got some tumors. She blamed it on the ‘Wet Rainbow’ production.

Valerie blamed us for it I guess.

So what effect did the experiences of making the two adult films have on your career?

I can’t say that making those two pictures opened the door for me, but they did give me confidence that I could make a film. And they also convinced me that that’s what I want to do.

Unfortunately I got involved with writing, which I hate, in Los Angeles.

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Valerie Marron’s story – Part 2:

Do you remember seeing ‘Wet Rainbow’ in the theater?

Yes, sure. Jamie took me to see it at a cinema in the Village. He liked it.

What did you think of it?

It was pretty good – definitely the best film I made. It would have been good even without the sex scenes.

Valerie Marron in ‘Wet Rainbow’

‘Wet Rainbow’ was one of the last films you made; did you make a conscious decision to leave the business?

Yes – I was getting more involved with Mickey (Ruskin), and he wasn’t happy for me to continue. So I just stopped.

In an interview with The Rialto Report, Jamie Gillis was asked about Valerie Marron, and he had the following to say:

“Valerie was a sweet but damaged girl. I had a fling with her and she told me she’d been abused by her stepfather. That was probably true.

But she also developed obsessions with people – especially musicians, rock stars, and artists – that bordered on stalking. For example I remember she became friends with the artist, Peter Max, and told people that they were dating. She really wanted to be accepted by the music and arts crowd – maybe to impress her father, who knows?”

How do you remember the time making films?

It’s weird but even though I made a bunch of sex films, the most controversial part of my life happened a few years later…

What did you do after you stopped making films?

I started making music. I wrote and sung my own songs, and I had encouragement from musicians I knew, so I started doing that.

I experimented with drugs as well – psychedelics, mushrooms, mainly. Then cocaine in the 1980s. It was a rock n’ roll lifestyle I guess.

Then I started dating Felix Pappalardi.

Felix Pappalardi was a renowned American music producer, songwriter, vocalist, and bass guitarist.

Pappalardi was credited with fashioning the ‘heavy’ rock and roll sound, emphasizing loud guitars and a thumping bass.

As a producer, Pappalardi is best known for his work with British psychedelic blues-rock power trio Cream, beginning with their second album, ‘Disraeli Gears’ followed by ‘Wheels of Fire’ and ‘Goodbye Cream’. Pappalardi has been referred to as ‘the fourth member of the band’.

Felix was married to Gail Collins Pappalardi, a songwriter and artist, who co-wrote Cream’s ‘Strange Brew’ with Pappalardi and Eric Clapton. Her artwork appears on many album covers of the time.

Felix Pappalardi

How did you meet Felix?

He was a friend of my father. He played at the Joyous Lake a bunch of times.

What was your relationship like?

By the time we met, he was heavily into drugs so we did a lot of that together. He gave me advice on my music and we spent a lot of time together.

But you knew he was married?

I knew he was married to Gail, but he said he was estranged from her. They had an open relationship anyway and they’d got tired of each other.

What was Felix like?

He was a strange guy in some ways, not super friendly. He developed deafness because of all the loud music, so he was doing less of that when I was with him. He just liked taking drugs, having sex, and hanging out.

And he loved guns…

Transcript of a 911 call. April 17th, 1983

Gail Collins Pappalardi: I killed my husband… I didn’t mean to.

Operator: How did you do it?

Gail Collins Pappalardi: Anger… but, ah, not intentional, never, never, never.

‘Rock Star Shot Dead’, New York Daily News, April 18th, 1983

Felix Pappalardi, the producer of the rock supergroup Cream in the ’60s, was shot dead yesterday in his elegant apartment above the East River. Police charged his wife in the slaying.

Detectives from the East 21st St stationhouse said 911 emergency operators received a call from Pappalardi’s wife, Gail, 43, about 6 a.m. When police arrived at the apartment, they said, they found the musician lying on the bed in his underwear, a single bullet in his neck.

Pappalardi, 41, was pronounced dead at the scene. A .38-caliber two-shot derringer was lying nearby, police said.

Mrs. Pappalardi apparently called her attorney after notifying police of the shooting. Authorities said she refused to answer questions at the couple’s fifth floor apartment at 30 Waterside Plaza, a fashionable residence overlooking the river at 28th St, until her attorney arrived a short while later.

Mrs. Pappalardi was charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon, police said. She later was admitted to Belleview Hospital after complaining of severe head pains.

Neighbors said the couple had quarreled just before the shooting. They reportedly had a history of arguing.

What was your reaction to Felix’ death?

It was horrible. It was terrible that Gail could do that. I knew she was a crazy person and had a really bad temper, but to shoot Felix with one of his own guns…? It nearly killed me.

The murder of Felix Pappalardi caught the imagination of the press in New York, and it was splashed all over the newspapers and nightly news. Was it a crime of passion committed by a jealous wife? Or was it just a tragic accident?

The prosecution insisted it was murder.

‘Slain rock star mystery’, New York Post, April 1983

The framed wedding certificate that had hung over the bed of Gail Pappalardi and her slain rock star husband, Felix, was found ripped to pieces. Mrs. Pappalardi swore that the destruction of the wedding certificate was another accident. She said Pappalardi tore it when he was clearing a desk of old papers.

Gail maintained Felix’ death was an accident.

Trial testimony from Gail Collins Pappalardi

“Felix was trying to get me to be familiar with (the gun). Something happened that I have no recollection of – a noise, something… and I moved or something, and the gun went off. Time froze for a second when I realized Felix had been hit. I could not remember my own name at that point.”

Gail Collins, during the murder trial

To implicate Gail, the prosecutors needed a motive – and fortunately for them, Valerie was available to play into their hands.

Did the police contact you about the case?

Yes. I told them that Felix must have told Gail he was going to leave her because he was in love with me. She killed him in a jealous rage because we had plans to get married.

I was also contacted by the newspapers. They interviewed me.

“Valerie: Felix put our love in a song”, New York Post, September 22nd, 1983

One of the last songs written by slain rock star Felix Pappalardi was dedicated to his attractive 27-year-old blonde lover Valerie Merians – the woman prosecutors claimed drove Gail Pappalardi to kill.

It is one of the last enduring relics of a hectic 11-month love affair, she told The Post last night.

In an exclusive interview, the singer-songwriter spoke of Pappalardi and as she did so she fingered two other love tokens – a wedding band engraved “Je t’aime – Felix” and a gold watch engraved “I love you – Felix”. The song, recorded in France by popular French-Algerian singer Enrico Marcias, is also called “Je t’aime – I love you.”

“Felix wrote the song for me one night in my apartment, playing my piano,” Valerie said. “The words were, “Je t’aime, Valerie. He had been worried about a trip to Paris to produce Enrico’s album and nervous about whether he would like the material.”

“We were very much in love and we had talked of marrying. We talked of getting an apartment together – even of going to Australia together.”

Valerie speaks out, New York Post, 1983

What was the effect of your testimony?

I really wanted to be heard. I was the only one who knew the whole story. I was the only one that Felix confided in so I should have been the star witness. I showed them the gifts he’d given me, the letters and everything.

Instead I was dismissed and ignored.

“Valerie: Felix put our love in a song”, New York Post, September 22nd, 1983

Miss Merians, who was slated to appear as a prosecution witness but was never called, was branded a pest, hanger-on, groupie sicko and flake in trial testimony.

What was the outcome of the trial?

Gail basically got off. They’d charged her with second-degree murder, but in the end she was just convicted of ‘criminally negligent homicide’. It was disgusting.

‘Rock Star’s Wife Beats Murder Rap’, New York Post, September 22nd 1983

Gail Pappalardi collapsed in her lawyer’s arms as she was told she’d been acquitted of murdering her husband. A six-man, six-woman jury bought her story that she shot her husband dead during a bizarre bedside firearms lesson with a loaded derringer. Mrs. Pappalardi came close to being totally exonerated – until a few minutes before the verdicts were handed down, there were four jurors holding out for acquittal on all counts.

Grace Walters (juror, speaking to the New York Post)

We were very impressed with her. We did believe her story. We felt there was no intent; she did not want him to die.

Do you know what happened to Gail after that?

She was released in 1985, and I heard that she had a boat business that took tourists around Manhattan Island for a while. I was disgusted that she was just carrying on as if nothing happened. Then after a couple of years, she suddenly disappeared and no one knew what happened to her. No one knows where she is. To this day! It’s a complete mystery.

‘Gail Collins found dead in Mexican village’, New York Daily News, February 22nd, 2014

Gail Collins, a lyricist for the bands Cream and Mountain who gained infamy in New York in 1983 when she shot and killed her rock star husband, Felix Pappalardi, has died in the Mexican village where she lived as a recluse, the Daily News has learned.

Friends said Collins, 72, had been undergoing experimental cancer treatments in Ajijic, an expat resort town south of Guadalajara.

“She left instructions for her cats to be euthanized so their ashes could be mixed with hers,” said neighbor, Joan Montgomery. “Who does that?”

What was the lasting effect of the trial on you?

I was devastated. He was the love of my life. I had problems with drugs and depression after that.

But I moved back to live in Woodstock, and I finally got myself clean. I’ve been off narcotics for 22 years since 1986.

How have you been since then?

It’s been tough. In 1989, my father suffered a massive brain aneurysm and died. He was only 55.

I’ve had a number of serious illnesses – including liver failure, and I broke my back last year.

In fact due to health problems, I currently have no teeth – it’s a long story – and very little money. But I’ve found a dentist who will replace them so I’m looking forward to that.

What do you do nowadays?

I’m still living in Woodstock – and guess who my roommate is?! Andrea True. We live together in a two bedroom apartment.

I’ve found God, and I believe that everything has a purpose so I don’t have a problem talking about the old days. I’m also into medical marijuana in a big way.

In fact I’m writing a book about my life. I’m using a speech recognition package because I have difficulty typing.

And I have a daughter who’s in her 20s that I’m proud of. She lives nearby.

Has ‘Wet Rainbow’ ever come back into your life since it first came out?

I don’t regret doing it. It was a good film. But the injury I got from it caused me some big health issues that I still suffer from.

I tried contacting the producer years later but I never received a reply.

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‘Duddy Kane’ went on to be an active and successful screenwriter writing for every major studio in Hollywood; his credits include Rialto Report favorite (non adult film), ‘Escape To Victory’ (1981) that was directed by John Huston and starred Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine… and Pelé.

If anyone has any information about the ‘Wet Rainbow’ ‘follow-up’, ‘Vampire Lust’, you can get in touch with the director through The Rialto Report.

‘Valerie Marron’ died on October 13th, 2008 at the age of 52 in Woodstock, NY.

‘Wet Rainbow’ is currently only available on DVD in a poor quality release by Arrow.

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The post ‘Wet Rainbow’ (1974):
Two Lives in Contrast appeared first on The Rialto Report.

For many people Radley Metzger’s 1976 film ‘The Opening of Misty Beethoven’ was the greatest adult film of all time. It had everything – a witty script, great cast, international locations, and was made by a talented filmmaker.

And it had the enigmatic Constance Money. Hers is one of the iconic roles in the golden age of adult film.

She was an unlikely star; unlike other actresses in the industry, she made very few films – and two of those, she says she appeared in without her consent, when Radley Metzger re-used footage of her that was shot for Misty Beethoven.

So how does she remember the ‘Misty Beethoven’ experience?

The truth isn’t pretty, and she has outspoken and shocking thoughts on the subject.

After ‘Misty Beethoven’, Constance Money continued to surprise. She managed a hunting lodge in Alaska, appeared in a famous Playboy feature – the first X-Rated actress to do so, and featured in the Blake Edwards film ‘10’ with Julie Andrews. She lived with adult film actor, John Leslie, for a number of years, had a complex relationship with Jamie Gillis – her Misty Beethoven co-star, had a son, and made a surprising comeback for one film in the 1980s.

But what happens to your life when you are still remembered for that one film made forty years ago?

On this episode, for the first time Constance Money speaks about her life, in and out of films.

And in another first for the Rialto Report, we also speak to her father. What is his view of what happened?

This episode running time is 81 minutes.

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Constance Money photos:

Constance Money Playboy pictorial

Constance Money Playboy pictorial

Constance Money Atom Video contest

Constance Money Playboy pictorial

Constance Money Playboy pictorial

Constance Money Playboy pictorial

Constance Money Playboy pictorial

The post Constance Money: The Re-opening of Misty Beethoven. And her father.
Podcast 46 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

You know the situation. You may even have found yourself in the same position at one time or another.

You’re young and athletic, and decide to become a soldier and commit your future to the army. It’s not easy to get in because you dropped out of high school, but eventually you’re accepted and you put your signature on the dotted line. The future is mapped out for you. Combat, conflict, commandos. Basic training is about to start.

And then you decide to become a porn star.

Of course you do.

So what do you do next? How do you get out of a binding army contract that you’ve already signed?

The Rialto Report tracks down and interviews Lisa Cintrice – who found herself in this position in the winter of 1981, and remembers the brief moment when a New York porn star hit the newspaper front pages and the TV chat show circuit, whilst trying to free herself from the grip of Uncle Sam.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Lisa Cintrice’s time in adult films was short but sweet. She made a handful of films in the early 1980s, including Robert McCallum’s film ‘Society Affairs’ (1982), Radley Metzger’s ‘Aphrodesia’s Diary’ (1983), and Henri Pachard’s ‘Mascara’ (1983), before disappearing a couple of years later.

Cintrice – Beginnings:

Do you remember first being aware of the existence of adult films and magazines?

I remember seeing my father’s sex magazines when I was a little girl and I was grossed out by them. I was such a late developer. I was from Long Island and had a pretty sheltered upbringing until I got married.

Did you get married early?

I lost my virginity when I was 15 and got married when I was 16!

Was it to the same boy?

No – my first time was with a boy who was five years older; he was 20. I held off for a long time but then got pregnant as soon as we did it for the first time. So I left school and started working at Dunkin’ Donuts. The guy just took off and disappeared.

So if he left, who did you get married to?

I met this guy who came into Dunkin’ Donuts. He took a shine to me, brought flowers and romanced me. He didn’t care that I was pregnant. We planned to get married, but I lost the baby. We got married anyway on July 4, 1979.

What was the relationship like?

Not great – he drank a lot and we didn’t have much in common. We had a very conventional sex life. We ended up getting divorced two years later on July 7th 1981.

Where were you working at this time?

I went to work at Jamaica Hospital, NY as a bookkeeper when I was still married. I worked there for two years. My husband made me quit that job, and then I left him. I started waitressing.

When did you decide to join the army?

I’ve always been a tomboy – and I figured it would be a good way of sorting out my life after my divorce. I signed up in July 1981 and joined as part of the Delayed Entry program – which meant that the army would take me in November 1981.

It wasn’t easy to get accepted to the army – I really had to fight to get in! I’d dropped out of high school in ninth grade and I had no high school diploma. My recruiter had to go to my high school and demand a diploma from the principal so that I could get into the army. They handed it right over, which was crazy…. all my friends had to go to summer school and work on their grades while I hadn’t been to school in years!

What did you do while you waited to enter the army?

I was just waitressing waiting for basic army training to start. My ex-husband’s sister was a dancer at the Melody Burlesk – she was called Dominique and she helped manage the Melody too.

She was also working with Peter Wolff at Oui magazine, and one day she suggested I try and get some extra work there. So she took me to meet Peter and one thing led to another, and I ended up doing my first adult layout in August 1981.

I also appeared in a December issue of Oui magazine as an elf. Santa was a midget!

Peter Wolff was a pioneering adult magazine publisher in New York who changed the face of the business in 1970s. He worked on many titles, including Ace in 1972, High Society in 1975, Cheri in 1976, Partner in 1978, Adult Cinema Review in 1980, and Oui in 1981. He was almost as well known for being a bon vivant – partying all night, gambling at the OTB, and having tabs at numerous bars that he seemed to live in.

Peter Wolff (left) with photographer Peter Hurd

What was Peter Wolff like?

Oh my God, Peter was the best. Peter was … he was so cool, just laid back, and his wife was amazing. I stayed at his house a lot. He was an alcoholic, but he always looked out for me. He was brilliant and knew everything about the magazine business in New York. He was crazy, fun, and wild.

Did you enjoy the modeling work?

Sure. I’d led a sheltered life and I had little idea that this world existed so I got a kick out of going to the parties, and meeting all the crazy people who were producing the magazine layouts and making adult films. It was an exciting and wild world. It was unique.

One of the first people Lisa met through Oui magazine was Ken Yontz. Yontz had entered the adult film industry as Seka’s boyfriend but Seka had split from him acrimoniously. Ken didn’t have a good reputation in the industry, being variously described as a suitcase pimp and abusive hanger-on by those who knew him.

When did you meet Ken Yontz?

I met him because he was hanging around that world. He’d just split from Seka, and he was still trying to get over it – and not doing a great job of it. He saw himself as a real player and insisted he didn’t need Seka to be successful. He was trying to convince everyone that he was a producer of adult films. He was creepy.

Men magazine, ‘Lisa Cintrice – 9 In The Can’, Colette Connor, September 1982

Lisa Cintrice was a frail, shy 18 year old girl from suburban Long Island.

She was awed by midtown Manhattan, in love with her manager/boyfriend and simply agog at the lifestyle (sexual and otherwise) in which she found herself involved.

Did you start dating Ken?

Yes – very briefly. I was pretty naïve at that point in my life. He wanted to make me his new Seka, someone he could promote and live off.

Partner Sex Stars magazine, Winter 1982

Lisa Cintrice: “Meeting Ken was a real eye opener. That’s why I think I’m in this business. My husband deprived me and I’m catching up on lost time. I didn’t know shit from shinola.”

What plans did Ken have for you?

Ken had written an autobiographical script called ‘The Starmaker’ and he wanted me to star in it.

It had many of the big New York stars of the time – Jamie Gillis, Tish and Dave Ambrose, Sharon Mitchell, Ron Jeremy, Robert Kerman, and was a pretty big production.

He truly believed he was the starmaker. He was the quintessential guy that winks and says, “You want to make some money?” So he made himself the star of the movie too.

Partner Sex Stars magazine, Winter 1982

‘The Starmaker’ directed by Ken Yontz tells about Yontz’ life after Seka left him. It starts with Ken depressed looking for another bombshell. Cintrice plays the innocent secretary who takes notes at the casting session and ends up getting the job.

What do you remember about the production?

It was my first experience in a porn film so I didn’t know what to expect. It was intimidating but it was fun as well. Everyone treated it as a party most of the time.

You have to understand that I was doing things on camera that I’d never done before in my private life. My scene with Sharon Mitchell was the first time I’d been with another girl for example.

We shot one scene at Plato’s Retreat because Ken was good friends with the owner, Larry Levenson. Larry even convinced Ken to give him a sex scene in the movie.

It all happened very quickly. My mom thought I was still waitressing.

From left to right: Lisa Cintrice, Ken Yontz, Larry Levenson, Sharon Mitchell, Ron Feilen

Partner Sex Stars magazine, Winter 1982

Lisa Cintrice: “And then I met Ken. I got perverted, learned how to give head and all kinds of things like that. Everything I did in those first movies was the first time I was doing them.”

What effect did all this have on your ambition to join the army?

Once I got involved in the sex business, I decided I didn’t want to be a soldier. There was no reason to go as I was making decent money – the first time I’d made decent money in my life.

So I went to my recruiter and said I wanted out.

What did he say?

He just said that there was no way I could get out of joining the army. He said we have a signed contract that tied me to the army for years. If I failed to show up it would be desertion, and that could result in a jail sentence.

He asked me why I had changed my mind, and in desperation I told him the truth. That I’d made a porno movie. He said it didn’t matter.

So I told him I had done lesbian scenes thinking that he’d be shocked by that. I even took out a picture of me and Sharon Mitchell having sex to prove it! He just smiled.

I reminded him I was going for the Military Police, and that this would be very bad for them. He told me that it didn’t matter, as long as the scenes didn’t misrepresent the army.

That’s what he kept saying: It was all fine as long as I didn’t link pornography to my army career.

So what did you do?

I went to see Peter Wolff and Richard Milner, who was another guy on the scene publishing adult magazines. I respected and trusted them both.

I told them about the problem and asked if they knew a lawyer.

The next day Peter called and said, “I have an idea. We’re going to get you out of the army.”

The Times Square Armed Forces Recruiting Station was opened in 1946. The station sits on a small traffic island between Broadway and 7th Ave., and it has the best view of the chaos that’s synonymous with Times Square.

What was his idea?

Peter said that if the army was so concerned about me linking them to the porn film industry… then that was exactly what we should do. I didn’t fully understand what he meant, but he insisted I should leave it all up to him.

The next thing I knew, he wanted me to do a striptease in front of the Army recruitment office at Broadway and 42nd St!

He told me to wear my Army uniform and to strip out of that.

When the day came, I remember going into a Beefsteak Charlie’s restaurant with a big black body guard. I was wearing some sort of overcoat over my army uniform, and then I just threw it off and walked outside when I got the signal from Peter.

Partner Sex Stars magazine, Winter 1982

Lisa Cintrice: “They set up people with cameras in Times Square, and I waited across the street in my army uniform. I was wearing a helmet like in Private Benjamin. So I slowly walked up to the recruiting station and started unbuttoning my blouse. The recruiter was inside, and he didn’t know what the hell was happening. And there were all these people walking by and taking pictures. We were there ten minutes, and we had two photographers there taking pictures so that we could get done faster, and then we got out of there – no cops or anything. People were applauding and following us down the street yelling ‘More! More!”

It was great; I got a kick out of it.”

Peter and Richard had alerted the press that you’d be doing this?

Yes. They’d called up newspapers, magazines and TV stations and told everyone to be there for the big event. And the press turned out in force – there seemed to more photographers there than people that day! We were covered by The New York Post, The New York Daily News, ABC-TV, the nightly news programs… you name it.

Interview with Ray Sturgess, police officer in Times Square, November 1981

“We had no idea what was going to happen. I just saw hundreds of people gather in front of the recruitment kiosk in Times Square so I walked over and saw this naked girl pose for pictures. Luckily no one had iPhones like they do today, so only a few people were taking pictures.

Unfortunately the newspapers were there though – and that’s what made it very difficult for us patrolmen”.

Were you at all concerned?

I was very nervous, especially when I saw all those people. I was kind of freaked out.

Interview with Ray Sturgess, police officer in Times Square, November 1981

“Everyone was in a good mood and treating it like a joke. But let me tell you, we cops got told off big time that evening back at the station.

It was a scandal from our side. All the kind of wrong publicity that we were told to stamp out.

It was bad news”.

Men magazine, ‘Lisa Cintrice – 9 In The Can’, Colette Connor, September 1982

With the help of some folks in the adult press, Lisa sauntered into Times Square at midday and proceeded to strip out of a rented army uniform, right in front of the Armed Forces Recruiting Station.

The Army certainly didn’t want anyone so rambunctious! One discharge for the naked private – as requested!

But the plan didn’t stop there?

Richard wanted to publicize the event even more to show what I had to do to get out of the army.

They did a photo spread of me having sex in a made-up recruiting office. We had a guy dressed up as a recruiter, and they decorated this office to look like a recruiting office.

We played out a sex scene whilst they took photos.

Didn’t you appear on a TV chat show as well?

I was on Tom Snyder’s ‘Tomorrow Show’ on December 7th. That was a really popular show back then so it was a big deal.

It was two weeks before the show went off the air. We got that booking through Jamie Gillis. He was amused by the whole thing, and he had an old girlfriend, Andrea, who worked for the production team of the ‘Tomorrow Show’.

How was Tom Snyder with you?

He was very pleasant, very respectful. I was very nervous, because I didn’t know what he was going to ask me, but it went well.

In fact I was on the same night as Jerry Falwell and Jose Feliciano.

I was going to flash Jerry Falwell in the hallway, but he wasn’t very approachable!

Did the plan work in terms of getting you out of the army?

Oh yes. There was no way the army would take me after that.

In fact I got a call from the recruitment office, and the officer said I would be let out of the agreement – as long as I let him have a copy of the pictures from the photo layout!

We went to Fort Hamilton and got my discharge papers. And then we had a party to celebrate!

From left to right: Ron Jeremy, Lisa Cintrice, Lisa Be, Marc Stevens, Annette Heinz

What happened after that?

The week after I got out of the army, we finished shooting ‘The Starmaker’. All the publicity made it pretty successful.

Porn Stars magazine, May 1982

Lisa Cintrice: “After we finished filming ‘The Starmaker’, I broke up with Ken. He is much older than me and I’m sure that he’ll eventually find someone who loves looking at old Seka movies and admiring her stills in magazines.

I moved in with a photographer who I thought was my friend. One night Tiffany Clark and Fred Lincoln asked me to join them at the Hellfire Club. My roommate was there too and got jealous so I moved in with Fred and Tiffany instead.

I made two films straight after The Star Maker – one a documentary for Gerry Damiano called ‘Consenting Adults’”.

Men magazine, ‘Lisa Cintrice – 9 In The Can’, Colette Connor, September 1982

The publicity made her an overnight celebrity in porn circles and Lisa dove in head first.

After less than a year in the adult business, Lisa has made nine full length porn films. Yet unbelievably she’d never seen a porn film until after she’d made four of them herself.

Did you stay in the adult film industry for long?

Not really. I made a handful of films, less than ten in total, before moving west to live in California.

In fact I lived with Ron Jeremy for a while – he used to babysit for me!

Men magazine, ‘Lisa Cintrice – 9 In The Can’, Colette Connor

The post Lisa Cintrice:
Porn, the Army, and the scandal in Times Square appeared first on The Rialto Report.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve been granted permission to reprint a number of vintage adult film star biographies first published in the 1970s – starting with ‘Here Comes Harry Reems!’ published by Pinnacle Books in 1975.

Written by Harry Reems and his ghostwriter Eugene Boe, the book is a fascinating, entertaining and intimate look at the early film career of the star of ‘Deep Throat’.

The book is now available from The Rialto Report, and includes eight pages of original photos.

Below we present an extract from the book – telling Harry’s story of the making of ‘The Devil in Miss Jones‘ (1973), and also part of a new forward written for this edition by Ashley West.

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‘Here Comes Harry Reems!’ – Extract from the new forward by The Rialto Report’s Ashley West:

I first met Harry Reems in 2007 long after he had hauled himself back from the brink, and I was surprised on two fronts.

Firstly he was happy and eager to talk about his career in adult films. Reports that he’d become a born again Christian and was unwilling to revisit his porn past had been greatly exaggerated. In fact, the only thing he seemed unable to tolerate was intolerance. The trademark mustache of his youth was long gone but the humor and same easy charisma remained. He was willing to share his memories, and every answer was punctuated by his asthmatic laugh as he recalled the days when he was the most recognizable male face of the sex industry and ubiquitous star of hundreds of films and stag loops.

The second surprise was that his health had not weathered the years successfully, and at times it was alarming to see his physical discomfort. Old friends of his had told me that he was always the fittest amongst them back in the 1970s; he was a regular in the Broadway Softball League, would never waste time walking when he could run, and would likely challenge you to press up contest. When I met him, he walked with a cane, had a sickly pallor, and dragged an oxygen cylinder wherever he went. He was great company though, and still as garrulous and social a person as you could hope to meet.

Above all he was content. He was happily married, had kicked the bottle, and had reinvented himself as a successful real-estate broker in Utah (albeit still using his still infamous nom de porn). He was basking in the afterglow of the publicity from the documentary ‘Inside Deep Throat’ (2005) in which he played an understandably significant part. He was also upbeat about discussions with a major book publisher about writing an autobiography. “I’m one of the threads that tell the story of social change in America” he’d say. “I think I have an important story to tell.”

Harry Reems in ‘Inside Deep Throat’ (2005)

Eventually the book deal fell through, but it had reinvigorated his interest in his own past, and we began a series of weekly phone calls in which we would revisit the early chapters of his life. He’d been through many transformations – from pimply kid to athletic marine to aspiring actor to porn star next door. The alcoholism that had blighted his middle years had left his memory ragged, so I suggested using ‘Here Comes Harry Reems!’ as the basis for our conversations.

At first Harry dismissed the idea. The book was an attempt to cash in on his notoriety, he claimed. He didn’t even write it himself. It was ghost authored by Eugene Boe, an author and former columnist for New York’s Cue magazine, after a lengthy series of conversations between the two of them. Harry didn’t even remember reading it at the time and he reckoned it was probably sensationalist.

He was curious though, and as we read through it, his impression changed, and with it fragments of memory returned. He re-discovered parts of his life that had been hidden for decades, and he was surprised, amused, even impressed with his younger self. The conversations increased his appetite to know more about his long forgotten exploits. For decades the world had reduced him to a one-dimensional media caricature of an old time porn star, and perhaps part of him had started to believe that version of himself.

‘Here Comes Harry Reems!’ contains a wealth of detail and chronology about Harry’s early years as a performer in New York’s first pornographic films. It tells the stories behind the making of many adult films – like ‘The Devil Miss Jones’ (1973), ‘Deep Sleep’ (1973), ‘High Rise’ (1973) and ‘Memories Within Miss Aggie’ (1974), not to mention the landmark ‘Deep Throat’ (1972). It provides a groin-eye view of what it was like to work in the nascent porn business, and it features character sketches of fellow early performers such as Tina and Jason Russell, Dolly Sharp, and Jamie Gillis.

Some of the names in the book were changed to protect the guilty (Harry’s early burlesque dancer girlfriend ‘Fabulous Fanny’ became ‘Astonishing Assie’, early cohorts Patrick Michael Wright and Lillian ‘Tallie’ Cochrane were renamed ‘Michael’ and ‘Florabel’, Deep Throat house owner ‘Handsome Harry’ was actually Baron Joseph ‘Sepy’ Dobronyi, and early pornographer Sam Menning was simply referred to as ‘Sam the cameraman’) but by and large the cast of characters is a colorful who’s who of who filmed who.

So how accurate is the book? Most of the events recounted have been corroborated by Harry’s contemporaries over the years, and are faithful and honest accounts. Where discrepancies occur, it is difficult to piece together the truth. We spoke at length about the sequence of events concerning the filming ‘Deep Throat’ but his memory had been eroded to such an extent that the real story was long gone.

Harry’s enthusiasm and good humor was not dimmed by the discovery of his terminal illness in 2012. Our conversations continued unabated and new anecdotes continued to emerge, the only difference now being the frequent detours to talk about his love for his wife Jeannie and the pivotal role she played in saving his life from the depths of drink, debt and despair.

It’s a shame that Harry never got the chance to tell his full life’s story. He was right; it is an important and sobering tale. On the one hand it’s a broad social history – a cautionary tale about the puritanical streak that continues to define American conservatism. But it’s also a simple story of one man caught up in events bigger than he can comprehend. “I enjoyed those early days, and I wouldn’t change anything about them. It felt like we were pioneers creating something new. But we had no idea about what we about to unleash.”

‘Here Comes Harry Reems!’ remains a valuable contemporary record of those early days of the adult film industry.

Extract from ‘Here Comes Harry Reems!’ recounting the story behind ‘The Devil in Miss Jones‘ (1973):

Gerry Damiano stole my bottle of Jack Daniels, went home quickly, and dashed off something over a weekend. He asked me to read the completed manuscript.

“It reads great, Gerry,” I said. “Where did you get the story?”

“I made it up.”

“The only thing is,” I said, “is that I seem to have seen this script before. Or something damn close to it.”

“What do you mean, you’ve seen this script before?”

“Gerry, it’s a steal. Jean-Paul Sartre. This is ‘No Exit’ in the thinnest disguise.”

Gerry huffed and puffed for a minute before conceding anything.

“Well, what do you expect? I wrote it in a weekend.”

So ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ was born.

In addition to having a part for me, Gerry wanted me to be production manager and to cast for him – all except for the female lead. He had the lead, so he thought.

“She’s really a dynamo,” Gerry assured me. “She’s voluptuous. She’s got a wild afro-cut and an ass that just won’t quit.”

Her name was Ronnie. “I can fuck and suck better that any woman doing this shit,” Ronnie was telling everybody.

I had seen Ronnie’s dumpy body on film and knew she wouldn’t do.

The film was going to be shot at the farm in Pennsylvania where I spend so much of my leisure time.

One late October day I was carving pumpkins in my New York apartment. I invited over a woman whom I had met a couple of days earlier at one of the casting sessions for ‘The Devil’. She had made it plain she didn’t much like this end of the acting business. She had been in Broadway and off-Broadway plays and thought of herself as legitimate.

“Listen,” I said, “we’re cast and set to go. We haven’t got a thing to offer you. But we’re going to be up there in the boondocks. Miles away from restaurants or hotels or any kind of catering services. How’d you like to come and cook for us?”

“I’d love it,” she said.

She dug carving pumpkins. I dug her.

“What are you into sexually?” I asked her casually.

“I’m gay,” she said.

“Does that mean you won’t make it with a man?”

“No. It’s just that I prefer being with women. At least the woman I’m with now.”

“Have you ever made it with a man?”

“I’ve made it with plenty of men. I’ve been married. I have children. Right now I’m into women.”

“Could you do it on camera with a man?” I asked idly.

“It would depend on the man”.

“If you dug the guy, what would you be willing to do?”

“If I dug the guy, I’d be willing to try anything. Sex can be very beautiful. With either sex. Even if it’s somebody you don’t know.”

I liked her. She was honest, her body was good, and whatever way she swung, she was sexually ‘together’.

“Gerry,” I said the next day, “I’ve found Miss Jones.”

Gerry was not impressed with my candidate – until she took off her clothes and he saw her marvelous body.

Fortuitously, Ronnie called in with an impacted wisdom tooth a day or so before filming was due to start.

“How’s Ronnie going to do blow jobs with an impacted wisdom tooth?” I asked Gerry. Good question. Gerry threw in the dental floss. Ronnie was out and Georgina Spelvin was in.

A lot went wrong in the making of that movie. Locations were lost. We went over schedule. The picture was almost dropped in midstream. Two guys had each put up $15,000 to make ‘The Devil’. When it was made, one of them was convinced it was a bomb and asked to be bought out.

But for those of us who hung in there, it was one of the loveliest shots ever. It was Georgina’s first big movie, and she did a damn fine acting job in it.

No, she didn’t really cut her wrists in that opening suicide scene. We got a little blood pack and covered it over with dermawax maybe half an inch wide. That’s what the razor cuts into, spilling all that stage blood.

On the set Georgina fell in love with Herman. We all did Herman was the boa constrictor who appears in the movie. It’s hard to direct a boa constrictor. But Herman was a born ham. We let him improvise his scenes and just photographed what he did.

With the help of a good dentist, Ronnie got into the picture after all. Her mouth healed enough so she could do a scene where she gave head to the tremendous phallus of the actor who owned Herman. In one scene that same phallus meets another big cock head-on when each is exploring the charms of Georgina from a different angle. They almost dance, cock-to-cock.

‘Borrowing’ extravagantly from ‘No Exit’, as I said, ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ is about a girl who takes her own life without ever having lived. En route to hell she has a stopover in some never-never-land long enough to discover all that she had missed when she was alive. It’s as if she’s trying to squeeze a lifetime of missed fucking and sucking into her brief reprieve. She becomes possessed with lust and is sent to the hell that’s appropriate for her – a place where there’s no fucking and sucking. Her cellmate is a guy. But he’s a guy so deranged he’s not going to be able to help her out. “I’m not crazy,” he keeps saying. “It was a fly. A fly did it. I can see the speck.”

For his cameo bit in ‘The Devil’ Gerry played that loony. And surprisingly well.

Gerry never saw much of the millions ‘Deep Throat’ made. He knew he had a masterpiece now and started editing carefully. He asked for – and got – extra money to commission an original score.

In total, ‘The Devil’ cost $37,000 to make. To date it may have grossed as much as $20 million. My salary was $125 for acting and $150 a week as production manager. With promises.

Purchase the book here.

The post ‘Here Comes Harry Reems!’ (1975):
Portrait of a Legend appeared first on The Rialto Report.

For the first time on The Rialto Report, we feature a current day adult film performer. But the twist is that Nina Hartley is also one of the true stars of the golden age, having appeared scores of films since her start in 1984.

By any standards, Nina is a unique person.

The daughter of a socialist blacklisted writer, she was raised in Berkeley, CA and became a registered nurse whilst dancing at the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell theater.

For many years she was married in a troubled menage-a-trois arrangement, having both a husband and a wife.

And since 1984 she has acted, directed and produced over 400 films, covering many types of sexuality, and even had a role in the hit mainstream film, ‘Boogie Nights’.

Today Nina is widely respected as a pro-sexuality feminist, and one of most outspoken supporters of the adult industry and free speech issues. Her fights have taken her to speaking to state legislatures, and national TV shows as Oprah.

She is married to Ira Levine, also known as Ernest Greene, legendary BDSM and fetish filmmaker and editor of Hustler’s Taboo Magazine.

And she is still going strong, still speaking out, even appearing as Hillary Clinton in a recent lesbian film.

So how does she remember starting out? How has the industry changed since those early years? And has she really been having a long-running affair with a school friend she first met in high school?

This episode also features Carol Queen, author, editor, and sexologist active in the sex-positive feminism movement, and Nina’s close friend for many years.

(The above image is from the Suze Randall archives).

This episode running time is 101 minutes.

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Nina Hartley

Find more of Nina’s photos, videos and writings on her website.

Nina Hartley & Sharon Mitchell

Nina Hartley & Ernest Greene

The post Nina Hartley: The Importance Of Being (With) Earnest
Podcast 47 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Towards the end of 2014, we wondered why there didn’t appear to be an exhaustive career-encompassing interview with Lasse Braun.

On the face of it, he is one of the most important pioneers of adult cinema.

Who else was there at the start the industry in the early 1960s – and was still involved in the 1990s? Who else made sex loops, documentaries, feature length films, and videos – and had his work shown at the Cannes Film Festival? Who else distributed pornography between countries when it was strictly illegal – and did so because of a profound belief that it was healthy for society? And who else made films in Holland, Denmark, Sweden, England, the United States – and Trinidad and Tobago?

Thanks to a mutual friend, Michele Capozzi, we contacted Lasse Braun in Rome, Italy in December 2014. He was happy to be back in the country of his family – ironically a country that he’d been prevented from entering for many years due to his choice of career.

We spoke on the phone and he was engaging and entertaining company. He was happy to talk about the past though he was reluctant to be typecast as a ‘porno filmmaker’. Nowadays he viewed himself just as much as a writer, and was a published author in Italy.

We agreed to stay in touch, and perhaps record his story in his own voice for a future Rialto Report podcast.

Sadly Lasse Braun passed away on 16^th February 2015 aged 79.

What follows are Lasse’s memories of his life up to the success of his feature film ‘Penetration’ (aka ‘French Blue’) in 1975. It’s a remarkable and unique account of the birth of the adult industry – covering photos, magazines, stag films, covert distribution networks across Europe, large profits, even larger legal risks, Reuben Sturman, Berth Milton, court cases, sex, intrigue, and lots more.

And Lasse Braun was consistently at the heart of it all.

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Introduction

When I first contacted you, I sensed you were resistant about an interview?

I’m not sentimental and I like to look ahead. And my life has been crazy and busy, and so it’s difficult to include everything properly.

Yet you published a biography in Italy in 2009…

A biography is a difficult task – remembering and recording the truth is a big responsibility. So many events, so many people, so much time. And time changes the way you remember.

How difficult was it to write?

Fortunately I still have diaries, and I made calls to old friends, lovers, and contacts to refresh my memory.

I tried not to omit anything, but I have so many stories to tell.

1. Beginnings (1936 – 1960)

Where did it all begin?

I was born Alberto Ferro in Algiers in April 1936. My mother was a progressive thinker, into new diets and health care, so I was born at home and taken care of by Arab nannies. I’m sure that made me love the company of women from an early age.

What did your father do?

He worked in the diplomatic service. They’d been in Algiers for a year when I was born, and as Algeria was a French territory I automatically had French nationality – as well as diplomatic immunity. Not a bad start in life…

The world was on the brink of war in the late 1930s, so what was life like for your family?

It was always good; my family was comfortable, and we had maids, nannies, private tutors throughout my childhood. I never needed anything. My parents were distant but I was always well taken care of.

In 1939 my father transferred to Germany to be a diplomat to the Third Reich. We were in Germany when the Second World War broke out, and so my father was often absent. I lived with mother in a villa in Frankfurt. A German nanny was hired to teach me German and take care of me. She was a member of the Hitler Youth, and she had Nazi flags and pictures of this strange man with a small mustache on her wall.

Once my father took me to a meeting he had with German officials. I recognized the main speaker. Everyone was cheering for him, so I ran towards him. He was the same man as in Helga’s pictures, and he picked me up and smiled. My father loved to tell the story of how Hitler carried me in his arms.

Do you remember much about the war years?

We moved around a lot – we transferred to Rome in 1940, and I started school in a place run by nuns. The religiosity and imagery was traumatic, and put me off churches forever. I pretended to be ill just to get out of the church services.

In 1942 we went to Belgrade, and I had a private tutor. We had a big apartment and we hid Jewish families in rooms. We fed them and I played with the little Jewish girls. Everybody was happy!

We had to flee in April 1943 because the Russians were coming, so my mother and I went on a train to Milan. My father stayed behind and I didn’t see him again for the next few years. It was a terrible journey with gunfights and violence every day. It wasn’t much better when we got to Milan, because it was being bombarded so we hid in underground bunkers to keep safe. Eventually we went to Lake Como to stay with my uncle.

We took a large villa there and I went to the local school; this was the first time I had been surrounded by girls and they fascinated me.

I was discovering sex and death – and it was a lot for a boy of my age to take in. One day I witnessed a massacre of local fascists which was a terrible thing to see.

Did this have a big affect on you?

I wish I hadn’t seen these things – and perhaps they caused me to throw myself into sexual discovery even more to try and escape the memories.

How did you find out about sex?

There was no sex education at the time. My parents never sat down with me to talk about where babies came from, so my curiosity ran wild. One guy who taught me a lot was this black American GI. He was in Italy after the war helping with the reconstruction, and he would answer all my questions.

Do you remember discovering film?

I fell in love with cinema. The first film I remember going to see in the cinema was ‘Queen Christina’ (1933) with Greta Garbo. It was censored just like in the film ‘Cinema Paradiso’ (1988). The projectionist would hold his hand in front of the projector whenever she kissed her lover – so the audience wouldn’t see her lust! This just increased my sexual desire.

I remember Rita Hayworth (right) driving me wild; I had a picture of her up over my bed.

I had always loved books too – the classics like Dumas’ ‘The Three Musketeers’ and ‘The Odyssey’ – but these images were so much more powerful. I could see how people were afraid of pictures.

Do you remember being interested in sex?

Oh yes… my sexual curiosity had no limits. When I was 12, we were living in Innsbruck and I was going to a German speaking school. It was the scene of my first sexual scandal in my life. I remember showing my schoolmates how sex worked. I drew pictures of the sexual parts on the blackboard. The principal said that my behavior was obscene, and he wrote a letter to my father. My father wasn’t too concerned but I was proud of myself. I felt it was an honor to have reprimanded in this way. I liked to defend sexual expression even as a young boy…

What was your first sexual experience?

I started learning about sex from the housekeeper we had in Austria. She was about six years older than me – I think she was 19 – and she was called Dedi. She taught me a lot about how to please a woman.

I soon started having sex with all of the maids and cleaning girls in the area, and kept a diary to keep track of what I learnt. I also told my rich friends about it but they told me I should focus on better quality girls from good families. I disagreed; it was always important for me to have lots of experience, lots of sex. I wanted to make love to thousands of women.

I wasn’t jealous or possessive with my girlfriends. I encouraged them to see other men and come back to tell me about their adventures.

What were you like as a teenager?

I was young, attractive, I spoke many languages, I was friendly, well-read, and happy.

I liked going to jazz, theater, and bars. I liked serious discussion and philosophy. I like sports – tennis, football, and skiing. I was head of a few cultural clubs and we organized events. Life was good.

Lasse Braun (1955)

Did you go to college?

From 1955-60, I studied Law at the University of Milan, and also attended classes at the Sorbonne in Paris.

It was a good time to be an intellectual, and I went to classes by Sartre and Camus, and Carl Jung. I read every philosophy book I could find. I became political and interested in how people were being deprived of freedoms that they should take for granted.

What did you do in your vacations?

I would organize trips around Europe for young people, especially females – and I would often go along with them. I would act as their guide. But my main aim was to see how many girls I could sleep with. I got a few pregnant because I never liked condoms much, so I became proficient at arranging for girls to have abortions all over Europe.

Once I returned to a hotel that I’d visited the previous year and met a girl that I’d slept with. Unknown to me she’d given birth to a baby boy and I was the father. She didn’t name me on the birth certificate and I never saw her after that. She called the baby Peter. To this day I sometimes think of the boy and wonder if he turned out well.

Did you graduate from university?

I decided that my graduate thesis would be about the legal questions around censorship – especially sexual censorship. I was more and more interested in this – and was surprised that nobody else was. I thought it was a human rights issue – the right to see whatever I wanted.

I couldn’t find a professor at the University of Milan who was willing to support my thesis, so I transferred to Rome but found the same problem there. In the end I dropped out even though I’d finished writing my thesis. I was proud of it. I thought my thinking was revolutionary. My father was disappointed because he wanted me to be a diplomat like him.

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2. The Smuggling Pornographer (1961 – 1966)

How did you first get involved in pornography?

It was in September 1961, and I was in Milan. I read in the newspaper that a group of pornographers had been captured. That immediately got my attention. I found that they had been arrested bringing obscene materials – magazines and photos – into Italy from Monaco in the back of their car.

I noticed that the leader was called ‘Pitre’ – which was the same surname as an old girlfriend of mine. So I called her up and she told me it was her 27 year old brother, Pino. She was crying and going crazy, so I got the contact number for her brother’s lawyer, and I called him up.

What was the nature of the sexual material involved?

It was mainly nudist magazines from Sweden and a few photos of women that had been re-touched to remove any hint of pubic hair. This was tame stuff!

What did you say to Pino’s lawyer?

I was a naïve at the time, but I was working on my thesis about censorship and so I suggested a new way of defending Pino. I said that as pornography was just a visual representation of a normal human activity, there was no way it could be considered obscene. Or criminal. I told him about the long history behind depictions of sex – from pre-historic drawings to the famous artists.

Did they take your advice?

No, the lawyer wasn’t convinced by my arguments and so he ignored it. The case dragged on for a few years. Pino eventually got a suspended prison sentence.

So how did you get involved?

I saw an opportunity – mainly an idealistic idea, but also a way to make money. I knew languages, I knew law, I knew lots of European countries, and I liked sex. I was in the right place at the right time.

I asked Pino to take me to Monaco and show me how his business worked. His passport had been confiscated so he couldn’t leave the country – but I had a diplomatic passport, which had a big benefit; my car had ‘Corps Diplomatique’ number plates which prevented it from being stopped and searched at customs.

So I took Pino to Monaco in my Triumph and he introduced me to his contact who supplied him with the ‘pornography’. I suggested to Pino that we become partners.

He had all the book store contacts in Italy, and I had the diplomatic car – so we drove back and forth from Monaco importing all the sex books and magazines we could. No one was ever allowed to stop us.

What did you do with the pornography once you had in back in Italy?

We stored everything in an apartment in Alassio – which was just over the border from France on the Italian Riviera. From there Pino sold to a number of shops in Northern Italy who sold material ‘under the counter’.

Was it profitable?

Yes, but I knew that we needed to cut out the middle man in Monaco – so in 1962 I found that the real suppliers were two guys in Brussels called Leon and Frenchy. They took Scandinavian magazines and printed hundreds of copies of them, and had a network to move them around Europe. The guy in Monaco who we dealt with was just one of their clients.

The worst thing was that these guys didn’t care about the quality of their magazines. Their reproduction process was so primitive and so bad, that they made the sex look disgusting and bad. It was horrible. I was embarrassed to be selling it.

In fact their big storage space was a farm in Belgium that was so cold they called it ‘The Fridge’. I went there and the magazines were literally frozen together. I was sad to see the way they treated sex.

Did you start to deal directly with Leon and Frenchy?

Yes, but I needed a bigger car so I bought a Mercedes – still with diplomatic immunity number plates! – and then we started importing directly from them in Brussels.

You had a privileged upbringing so why did you want to do something criminal?

My goal was to see mass legal acceptance of pornography. I viewed it as my mission, my spiritual duty. I thought it was good for society. I thought I was part of a long line of people throughout history that was linked to the Gods of love. I was working for Eros, Venus… This was important!

Did you have others who shared your philosophy?

I was alone in thinking this. Actually most of the others, people like Leon and Frenchy were afraid of legalization as this would end their profits. They wanted to keep it all underground. They were afraid of social change.

I wanted the opposite; I wanted to legalize everything, attract more money, increase the quality, break down barriers, change laws, and enlighten people with better quality pornography. I wanted sex to be everywhere.

To do this I needed to expand our business beyond just Italy – but there were very few places to buy products, so I let Pino focus on the Italian market and I started to develop contacts in the rest of Europe. We set up a few import/export companies to make it all seem official.

And it was still just you and him?

Yes. From 1962-66, I drove all around Europe distributing the materials in my Mercedes. I went to the Scandinavian countries, Austria, Belgium, France… and built up a big network. My clients all relied on me to get them products. They called me Santa Claus because I always left behind a free gift – a few magazines or sexy pictures – for them to keep.

I felt like James Bond, mystery during the day and gambling in casinos at night.

Did you ever think of trying to smuggle materials to the U.S.?

That was more difficult because I could only sell what I could physically carry. And it was difficult to get through customs in America.

I went to New York and Chicago in the mid 1960s to investigate, but they seemed to be happy with Playboy and were scared of the more hard core material that I was offering.

Do you remember seeing a change in the legal climate in Europe towards the late 1960s?

Nothing was going to change unless we took direct action. We needed to become activists. Legal changes were necessary to improve the quality of pornography, and so I decided I should try and force this in any way possible.

I knew all the markets intimately – and I thought that Denmark would accept liberalization before anyone else. I was sure that once one country started to accept pornography, others would follow so I went to Copenhagen to work out the best way to make this happen.

I knew that change would be caused by the politicians not from the pornographers, so I made friends with a politician called Rasmussen. I shared my university thesis with him and he translated it into Danish. He passed it around his politician colleagues, and he started to work on a new law eliminating censorship.

It worked – but the new law that was passed only covered books and writings and not images.

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3. Moving behind the Camera (1966 – 1967)

At what stage did you decide to make your own product?

I started taking pictures when I was in Paris. I found some girls who were willing to pose with their legs apart, and the photos sold well so I started doing more and more. The pictures were much better than anything else available, the girls were prettier, and they were more artistic. In the end Frenchy and I published a black and white magazine that we called ‘Shadows’ which had all these pictures.

I also met a Belgian publisher called Leo Madsen who had a magazine called ‘Week-End Sex’. It had no hardcore pictures at the time.

Leo was great, intelligent, witty, and entertaining. We had a good relationship and shared the same mission. I took pictures for his magazines.

How about film? What was the market like for stag films or loops in the mid 1960s?

There were these short films but they were so primitive. Black and white, no sound, ugly people, no editing.

I wanted to start making films because I knew that we could make better films. But it was complicated as I didn’t know any film cameramen, or ways to develop the film, or any girls willing to make them… so I just continued to take still pictures.

How did you come to make your first film?

It was in 1966. I suggested to my French girlfriend that we make a sex film. I bought a small 8mm camera and we shot it on several rolls of 8mm film. She was excited by the idea so we did it together.

How easy was it to do?

Difficult! I had to learn how to use a camera, as well as make a good film, and star in it with my girlfriend. We spent a lot of time doing the lighting and having special make-up and furniture and props. My God, it took us a long time… Each roll of 8mm film was 4 minutes and so the whole film was shot on about 25 rolls!

I based it on the Puccini opera, ‘Madame Butterfly’, and I called it ‘Golden Butterfly’.

How did you get the film developed without letting anyone know that you had shot hard core sex?

I found out that 8mm films were developed by automatic machines so nobody actually saw the film.

Then I edited it. It looked like a Frankenstein film – I stuck all the pieces of film together with tape and it kept falling apart. The final film was about 15 minutes long.

How did it turn out?

Pretty good… it was in color and it was better than anything that I had ever seen before.

What did you intend doing with it?

The main reason for making it was that I wanted to sell the film in Copenhagen to force the issue about censorship. I formed a company called AB Beta Film in 1967, and I hired a secretary to do administration and correspondence. I set this up in Stockholm where I had an apartment.

I asked a local photographer, Ole Nyquist, to be the legal owner the new company so that I could keep myself hidden. He had a huge studio which I used for to take my photographs.

How many copies did you think you could sell of ‘Golden Butterfly’?

There had never been large scale duplication of sex films – typically there were only about 20 -40 copies of each film that were ever made, and I wanted to see if I could do this on a bigger scale. I wanted to sell hundreds.

I found this lab technician called Rejo West and showed him the film. He was shocked as he hadn’t seen anything like this. But he agreed that it had an artistic quality and he agreed to make an initial 30 copies. We made a 16mm inter-negative that we could use to make other copies quickly and easily in the future if we wanted to.

How well did it sell?

We sold the 30 copies immediately and everyone starting asking for more. Rejo was afraid of using the lab facility where he worked because he could get caught. He suggested that rather than use an external lab for duplication, we should set up our own facility. He was right, but that was going to be expensive.

Also I knew that my existing distribution model of transporting the goods to all my contacts across Europe in my car would not work. Too much overhead, too much work, too much risk.

So I decided that I should start a mail order business model to send the films out. I would start with the customers in Italy.

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4. Mail Order Pornography (1968 -1969)

With an unusual lifestyle, what kind of relationships were you having with women?

The best loves only last for a year or two. You need to discover new people all the time. If you stay still, boredom arrives. That’s not good for either person. But you have to be honest as well. I always wanted my partner to have affairs with other people, and not rely on me for all their fun.

I had many affairs in the 1960s and some ended with children. An American model I slept with gave birth to my second son in 1961. Then a girl I was seeing gave birth to my daughter in 1966. Another girlfriend gave birth to my son Alessandro in 1966. He was brought up by a guy she married. I got to know him later in life when he came over to see me in California. We gave him the porn name Axel Braun.

And I got married in 1967 to a girl from Milan, and we had a daughter together. We got divorced about six years later.

Were you still business partners with Pino?

He was starting to lose interest because of the risks. He’d been using our import/export businesses for shoes and clothes and wanted to get out of the illegal pornography business, so I was on my own. This was in early 1968.

So how did you start the mail order business?

I tested the appetite for ‘Golden Butterfly’ by placing an ad in two Italian magazines – one was ‘Men’ and the other was ‘King’. They were publications which featured nude pictures of women – but were very soft.

I had to be careful about the wording of the first ad. It basically said: “Swedish Film Company seeks 8mm film collectors”. I asked people to send 1,000 lire – which was about 50 cents in those days – to our Swedish address and they would receive the AB Beta film catalogue. The ads cost me only about $40 so it wasn’t a big cost.

A few weeks later, I called my secretary in Stockholm and she said that she’d received over 1,000 responses. And they kept coming in. By Easter we had received thousands of replies!

What did you do with the money?

My secretary would bundle up the letters and send them all back to me in Italy. I then drove over the Italian border to a bank to the Swiss town of Chiasso where I opened up a private account for AB Beta Film. The account was in the name of Ole Nyquist – who was still the nominal head of AB Beta Film.

Then my secretary sent out the catalogues from Sweden so that no one would suspect that an Italian was behind the company.

You say you sent out a catalogue, but what was in the catalogue because you had only made one film – ‘Golden Butterfly’?

I invented four other films – which didn’t even exist, and I called them the ‘Eros Films’ series.

If people wanted to buy the films, they had to send U.S. Dollars to my Swiss bank.

Did you get many buyers for the films?

I called up the Swiss bank in March 1968 to check my balance. To my amazement nearly $100,000 had been deposited! I got straight onto the phone and put more ads in more Italian men’s magazines! And the money kept coming in.

How much did you offer the films for?

I think each film at the beginning was about $250. That was a higher price than other films but I knew that the quality of what I was offering was higher.

Did you manage to avoid the attentions of the authorities?

Unfortunately the Italian customs started to open some of the bundles of letters that my Swedish secretary was sending me. They saw the reference to AB Beta Film and realized that this was related to pornography, so they started proceedings against Ole Nyquist.

How did you find this out?

I was always well-connected..! In this case I had a friend who worked in the Army for Italian customs and he called me to tell me that they’d connected Ole Nyquist to me. I knew I had to leave Italy quickly as they would come after me. My wife was pregnant but we gathered up everything, drove to the Swiss bank, took out the money, and went to live in Stockholm.

What did you do about fulfilling all the orders for the film?

I had to shoot the other four! I went into the bars in Stockholm and met girls and invited them to take part in the films. It wasn’t difficult in that period in Sweden. The guys I used were mostly North Africans who were friends of mine as they managed the sex shops there.

We made ‘Sex on the Motorway’, ‘Blow-Up ‘70’, ‘Chains of Eroticism, and ‘Suzie La Blonde’.

I then made my first short 16mm film – called ‘Dream of a Nymphomaniac’.

Can you remember any of the set ups to the films?

Sure! I was proudest of ‘Dream of a Nymphomaniac’ because it showed anal sex for the first time ever in color. Three guys and one beautiful German girl that I found in a bar.

How were you reproducing your five films?

By this time my lab friend Rejo had set up our own lab in Stockholm. We called it ‘Be-Re’ after ‘Beta Films’ and ‘Rejo’. It was the most secret part of our operation.

How did you mail the films out?

It was just a reel of 8mm film that we packaged in such a way that no one would know what was in the envelope.

Were they successful?

Yes – they sold very well, and we had a lot of letters complementing us on the quality.

How did you capitalize on the success?

I set up a number of other Swedish companies and I developed a different catalogue for each of them. Some sold books, some focused on magazines. They had names like Cineteque, Golden Rose, Mondial Post, and Pantheon.

Where did you get the products for each of these companies to sell?

There were several pornographers who wanted to sell us their product – people like my friend Leo Madsen and his magazine ‘Week-end Sex’.

I also became attracted to one particular line of magazines called ‘Private’. It was a new magazine – there were only two issues out at that time – and it had just soft core picture sets of girls. But it was well produced and so I approached the owner who was called Berth Milton. I bought a lot of magazines from him to sell.

What was Milton like?
He was arrogant, had no class, and worst of all he was afraid of rocking the boat. I pushed him to be more explicit in his magazine but he was always reluctant until someone else had done it first. He refused to show hardcore for example. He didn’t even like to refer to ‘pornography’. He always said that his magazines showed ‘erotography’…! I also encouraged him to be more political – this was 1968 so revolution was in the air! – but he was selfish and didn’t get it.

What was it like running a business like this. On the one hand it was illegal, but on the other hand it was a regular business with many customers?

It was very professional. I insisted that we mail out the product within 24 hours of receiving the order so that we would encourage people to order again.

It worked. We were making over $30,000 each week. We expanded our mail order business beyond just Italy, and I also sold the films through the European network that I had developed over the previous few years. I still drove the films around in my car. We also started selling sex toys as well.

Were you still using your diplomatic credentials?

I stopped around that time. It was unfair on my father as it was a risk to his reputation. So I sold the Mercedes with the diplomatic plates and I started acting as a Swedish citizen.

What happened to the legal investigation that had started in Italy?

Poor Ole Nyquist received a letter saying that he was under investigation by Italian police.

Then I heard that the French authorities had seen an ad that I put in ‘Paris Match’ magazine and so Interpol started an investigation on me as well.

After that the legal charges came thick and fast. I probably faced around 50 legal cases in the period 1968-72.

I was sentenced in absentia in Italy to two and a half years in prison, and given a twelve month prison sentence in France.

How difficult was that for you personally?

Not difficult for me because I knew what I was doing was good for people. But not everyone agreed; my wife returned to Italy to raise our daughter there. I couldn’t go back as I’d be arrested.

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5. Becoming Lasse Braun: Sexual Freedom in Denmark (1969 -1972)

How successful were you in your political efforts?

The best part of it was that we finally managed to overturn the ban on obscenity in Denmark. I had kept close to Rasmussen – the Danish politician. We kept publishing items that would push boundaries – and we did this to test the limits of the laws. In 1969, the Danish parliament passed a law legalizing the depiction of explicit sex in pictures and films. Pornography was finally legal there.

Did this have the immediate effect that you had hope for?

In some ways it was even more than I expected. Suddenly there were sex fairs and conventions in Denmark, and everyone wanted to be involved. The market quickly opened up and there was healthy competition as everyone tried to make money.

I re-located from Stockholm to Copenhagen to take advantage of it. There were some interesting people there at the time who were also fighting for sexual freedoms – like the English woman, Tuppy Owens – who I became friends with.

Did other erotic filmmakers start to make films like your ‘Eros Films’?

No – that was surprising. There was only one person, a Danish filmmaker called Ole Ege, who did anything remotely interesting. He worked with Leo Madsen on ‘Week-end Sex’, and started ‘Color Climax‘ films – but apart from him, there was no one.

Ole Ege and friend

Where did the name Lasse Braun come from?

The original Lasse was a carpenter who re-modeled our office in Stockholm. He wanted to be a porn actor and was always hanging around. One day when I was out, some Interpol agents came by and he was happy to show them around our offices as if he was in charge! After that I said that I might as well adopt his name going forward.

I took his name in a legal way; I had a contract with him and I paid him to use his name as my brand. I liked the name because it sounded Scandinavian, and the initials ‘LB’ reminded me of LiBido or LiBerty.

As your business grew, who did you have working for you?

I hired mainly friends as I could trust them more. So my assistant was my lover, a 19 year old Danish translator called Lykke Larsen. Her sister, Birgit, and Birgit’s Italian husband came on board too. I employed them all through a company I set up in Copenhagen called ‘Golden Rose Center’.

How did you grow the company further?

I knew that the market for short sex films was still undeveloped, and I want to make more. But it was always important for me to make something really different, something interesting. I couldn’t just film two people having sex. That was boring. I wanted my films to be challenging and shocking. I wanted to show people the true power of sex. All the infinite possibilities.

So I went to the Caribbean in 1969 and made a series of films there called the ‘Tropical Films’. I hired a cameraman called Per Hasselrot and we went to Trinidad and filmed three short films there called ‘Limbo’, ‘Tropical Paradise’, and ‘Black Power’. It was great. We found some beautiful local girls and guys, and shot them in exotic locations.

Unfortunately one of the girl’s mothers tried to blackmail us to get more money, and when we ignored her, she threatened to go to the police and tell them what we’d been doing so we had to leave the island in a hurry!

Did the ‘Tropical Films’ sell well?

Yes – this was the breakthrough. No one had seen sex in beautiful locations like this before. Also we branded them as ‘Lasse Braun Productions’ for the first time. It created a strong identity. The films had the signature ‘Lasse Braun’ and my photo as well.

Your cinematic style was distinct from the start; how would you describe this?

I wanted to challenge the viewer by shocking them, so I wanted to thrust the images into people’s faces. This meant close ups, vivid colors, quick editing, always a moving camera. The plot set-up was always economical as well; I wanted to get into the action as quickly as possible.

Lasse Braun catalogue (early 1970s)

You were a very prolific maker of short films in the early 1970s.

I made films all the time in that period… Between 1970 and 1973, I made about 20 ‘series’ of films. Each series consisted of 3 short films – typically 10 minutes each. Each of the series had a different theme, so that it would appeal to different types of people.

So for example, there was a ‘Perversion series’ in which we filmed sex in strange places like a pig pen on a farm, there was a ‘Top Secret series’ which was all about sex, spying and voyeurism, and there was a ‘Violence series’ which explored rape and non-consensual sex.

You weren’t afraid to tackle taboos…

I especially looked for taboos! One film was called ‘Delphia, the Greek’. I met this beautiful Greek tourist, and she was happy to experiment, so we made a film with her that featured the first double penetration ever filmed in color.

Still from ‘Delphia, The Greek’

In ‘Ky Sen, The Vietnamese’, we showed the first erotic pissing scene, and in ‘Women’ there was the first color fisting scene.

But it was about more than ‘what’ we were showing; it was about ‘how’ we were showing it. I spent a lot of time on clothes, makeup, close-ups, editing, and selecting the most attractive people. I spent a lot of money on each of them, and we sold them for a high price. I still think that they are my best work.

How many copies would you sell of each?

Every one sold more than 20,000 copies. The most successful was ‘Delphia, the Greek’ which sold about 45,000. My competitors never sold more than 1,000 of any film.

Did you ever have a problem with people pirating your films?

Aaaah – it was a constant problem.

What did you do?

You can’t complain to anyone because you’re not going to find anyone who will help you. So you do the only thing you can do and tackle the pirates yourself.

Which means?

One of my employees, Birgit’s husband actually, would get a group of men together and pay them a visit.

I assume they didn’t visit them just to talk?

No. They left behind some damage. We were just protecting our interests.

What kind of damage?

Anything. Phones were ripped out, cabinets were trashed. That sort of thing.

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6. Breaking into America: Reuben Sturman (1972)

Did you consider the U.S. as a potential market for your short films at this time?

I flew to the US and I went into all the 42^nd St book stores. The product was low quality. They were starting to import Scandinavian product but it was early days.

I wanted to be part of that market because it was huge and there was big potential to change laws and get rid of the hypocrisy that existed in America at the end of the 1960s. I knew that the only way was to find a partner, someone who was already a major distributor. I was told that the most important person was Reuben Sturman and his company Sovereign News in Cleveland, Ohio. I sent him a long letter introducing myself, and I included our catalogues and told him about my films.

Did you hear back from him?

Somehow someone got a copy of ‘Delphia, the Greek’ to him, and he liked it so much he visited me in Copenhagen in early 1972 to discuss acquiring exclusive rights to my films in the U.S.

What was Sturman like?

I liked Reuben. He had class and culture, and had a degree in Business Administration. We made a big feast to welcome him. I told him all about our battle against censorship laws in Denmark, and I told him I wanted our films to be part of a revolution in America too.

What did he offer you for the films?

Reuben explained that he was unwilling to receive regular mail from us. It was too risky. He recommended that we give him an inter-negative for each loop that he could use to make copies which he would distribute from Cleveland. He wanted to put my films in his peep show machines that he was installing all over the U.S.

He would pay us $15,000 upfront for each title – and at that time we had made thirty titles to offer him. He would also give us $1 for each film that he sold as a royalty.

My only non-negotiable term was that the films and the box covers would not undergo any changes. I didn’t want my artistic vision to be changed.

How did you get the inter-negatives over to Cleveland?

I took them over myself with Lykke and Birgit! We took a flight to New York and packed the films in between clothes in our suitcases. It was crazy!

How did Sturman pay you?

He gave me the $450,000 in cash in a bag. I flew back to Switzerland and deposited the money in my account there. Simple!

That’s good money at that time…

Not only that but I signed a similar deal with a company called Rodox Trading in Copenhagen. They would buy the rights to the films and they would sell them on Super8. They paid $20,000 per title which amounted to a total of $600,000!

What do you do with that kind of money?

I bought a yacht of course! What else do you do when you’re young!? And I had some great times on that yacht…

I also wanted to invest some of the money in my own studio. I wanted a new base that was closer to the center of Europe – and I chose the town of Breda in southern Holland.

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7. Breda (1972-1976)

Why was it important to move?

I wanted to be in a younger, more bohemian and cultural place. I didn’t want to be just a pornographer. And it was cheaper too – so I could build a big studio just for my productions.

I found a big, old bicycle factory and set up there. We called the building ‘the Satellite’, and I worked there from 1972 to 1977. I wasn’t allowed to go back to Italy or France because of the prison sentences that I had been given there, so it was my home.

What was the range of your activity at the Satellite?

We had an industry there – lots of creative people. We shot photographs for magazines, I continued my short films, and I hired graphics artists to do the artwork and things like that.

The best thing about our place was that it attracted young designers, artists, talented people who wanted to be part of our group. People came from all over to join us.

How would describe yourself politically?

I was an anarchist! I was becoming rich, but I was always an anarchist!

How well-known to the public were you becoming in the early 1970s?

There were more and more articles about me. I was called the ‘King of Porn’. But it was attracting too much attention and the Italian customs started apprehending all the customer’s money which caused us to lose a lot. In the end I shut down AB Beta Film. It was sad, but after that all my business was through the new company ‘Lasse Braun Productions’.

Lasse Braun outside of his office (early 1970s)

What was your casting process like for your films in Breda?

Casting was my favorite activity! I would often have sex with the girls when I interviewed them in the studio as I needed to see how uninhibited they were. I would talk to them so that they knew what I was doing and they were free to leave at any time. It was a beautiful experience. I also appeared in my own films when the leading male had performance problems.

Did you have any favorite performers from that time?

One day, this girl called Sylvia Bourdon (left) walked into the studio. We immediately became friends. She was from a rich, aristocratic family, and was intelligent and artistic. And she liked rough sex.

I featured her in a new series called ‘Bondage’. She became a big advocate of mine when she returned to Paris.

She’s been very successful in her life and is now an expert on art and design. She advises the European Commission.

So the Breda studio was a big success?

Yes, but we over-extended ourselves. I expected Germany to pass similar legislation to Denmark, and so we prepared to take advantage of a big increase in the number of stores in Germany. We printed 500,000 copies of a magazine called ‘The Lasse Braun Magazine’ that consisted of very high quality photography of sex.

Then Germany changed direction and actually passed more repressive laws, and we lost about half a million dollars… There was just nowhere to sell that number of magazines.

And yet this was the opposite of what was happening in the U.S.?

Yes, ‘Deep Throat’ had come out in New York and so you could now see a sex film in a regular cinema there. And Reuben Sturman was making millions with his company too, and he started selling our films to Larry Flynt who was putting out his own peep machines too.

Lasse Braun loops for sale in America

For the first time, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now there were articles about me which concluded that our sexual revolution had been a failure.

I wasn’t so sad to lose money, but the continued repression was the worst.

How did your short film ‘Cake Orgy’ end up in court in the U.S.?

Reuben and I often joked about one day producing a film that was so ridiculous and offensive that it would result in a full Federal prosecution in America. So in the summer of 1973, I went to Terschelling, a beautiful island in the northern Netherlands, and made this Fellini-esque film in which three women and two men have sex whilst covering themselves in cakes. And it ended with one of the girls, Claudine Beccarie, urinating on the others. It was an orgy in every way…

I thought that the film was a masterpiece! It was symbolic and surreal.

Lasse Braun directs ‘Cake Orgy’ (1972)

‘Cake Orgy’ was seized in the U.S. in 1974, and Reuben Sturman was charged with obscenity. One of the jurors held out stating that it was impossible for a normal person to have a morbid and degenerate interest in sex, and managed to convince the rest of the jury. Sturman was acquitted.

‘Cake Orgy’ (1972)

Claudine Beccarie became one of the big stars of the new adult film industry in France; what do you remember about her?

She was introduced to me by Sylvia Bourdon. Claudine (right) was a stripper in Paris, and was a beautiful, thin girl.

Sylvia told her about my films. Claudine was excited and wanted to find out more for herself so she came to Breda to stay with us. She’d never done a film before she arrived.

It was Claudine and Sylvia who came up with the idea for ‘Cake Orgy’.

Did you ever make a film that was rejected by buyers as it was too shocking?

Reuben rejected a few – but that was because the American market did not tolerate the combination of sex and violence.

One controversial series was ‘Forced to Sex’. Claudine featured in a film called ‘Hooked’ which was about a country girl who is caught stealing. She is punished by this old man who has a hook for a hand. Claudine was amazing in it. It had humor but also violence, golden showers, anal sex… I can’t believe Reuben refused to take it!

*

8. Breakthrough: ‘Penetration’ / ‘French Blue’ (1974)

And all your films were still being sold via mail-order?

Yes. I was frustrated because I saw that in America hard core films were being exhibited in theaters. There was nothing like that in Europe. My films were still being sold on 8mm reels through our catalogues and in a few stores.

Is that why you decided to make a feature length film to break into the American theater market?

Yes. I wanted Reuben to help me distribute a film that would become a big porno/art hit in the U.S.

This was the film ‘Penetration’ (1974) (aka ‘French Blue’). How did that come about?

I had a young English guy working on and off with me in Breda from 1973 to 1976. He was called Falcon Stuart.

Falcon Stuart was a London photographer whose fashion shots were featured in magazines like Vogue in the late 1960s. In 1969 he enrolled at the London International Film School and became involved in underground film-making, winning the ‘Sucker’s Award’ at the first Wet Dream Film Festival in Amsterdam in 1970. After graduating in 1971, he worked with Nic Roeg, and directed films on Peter Blake and Robert Altman.

What was Falcon doing for you in Breda?

I was always looking for people to direct new Lasse Braun films so that I could increase the number of films we had for sale. I taught him the basics of how to shoot pornography, and together we directed a film called ‘Funny Priest’ which was a satire on the Catholic Church.

Falcon was talented and I was impressed with him so I made him the director of another film, ‘Tour Eiffel’ which was shot in Paris. I couldn’t go into France for legal reasons so he worked with Sylvia Bourdon there and made a good film.

He had the idea of filming a documentary about the making of an adult film. It would show how unglamorous and technical it was, and it would be both sexy and a satire of our industry. It would be the first time anyone had seen the backstage of a porn film.

How did you find the lead, Brigitte Maier?

First I considered Claudine Beccarie and an American girl, Joan Kohler, that I knew in Amsterdam – but I wanted to use an American star if possible so that the film would be easy to sell the U.S. market.

I was visiting a friend in Stockholm who had a live sex club called ‘Chat Noir’, and I met two American girls there who were auditioning. One was Lavelle Roby and the other was Brigitte Maier.

Brigitte Maier

Lavelle Roby was an aspiring actress who had known for small roles in ‘Finders Keepers, Lovers, Weepers’ (1968), ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls’ (1970), and ‘Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song’ (1971).

Brigitte Maier had made a few short appearances in adult films in America.

They had come to Sweden for two weeks to appear in a local softcore feature, and they finished their work on it the previous day. Brigitte was intrigued by the idea of appearing in a live show and Lavelle was accompanying her to check it out. They were returning to America the next day.

I invited them to come to Breda and stay with me there.

What was Brigitte like?

Beautiful, like an angel. She had this incredible white skin.

She was born in Austria to Austrian parents. Her parents moved to the U.S. when she was two years old. She was still Austrian when I met her – she had a green card to live in America but no U.S. passport.

She fell in love with me immediately – which caused big jealousy problems with this other girl that I was seeing back at the ‘Satellite’ in Breda…

Brigitte Maier

Was Brigitte interested in appearing in your films?

I proposed that she appear in a film called ‘Double Pleasure’ that was part of my next series called ‘Deep Arse’. I wanted to try and shoot a double anal penetration with her. Falcon found the idea so ridiculous, and suggested that he would film this for his documentary.

Lasse Braun directs the action in ‘Penetration’ (1974)

It became a famous scene in the documentary ‘Penetration’; what do you remember about it?

We wanted to show how ridiculous sex can be… so I played the director who takes everything very seriously. For comic effect, we hired two actors who were ugly and thin which contrasted with the magnificence of Brigitte.

We didn’t shoot it in Breda because we needed a bigger studio – so went to a place in Hilverenbeek which was a town nearby.

Brigitte Maier and actors respond to Lasse Braun in ‘Penetration’ (1974)

What did you think of how that sequence turned out?

It was like a surreal, comic cine-verite’ sequence. We were all playing roles, but they were versions of ourselves. I liked it a lot.

We then added footage from my other short films that had a comic element, like ‘Casanova and the Country Girls’, ‘Penetration’, ‘Tour Eiffel’, ‘Funny Priest’ and of course ‘Cake Orgy’, and we got my friend Siné who was a famous French cartoonist to put together a four minute cartoon which we added to the beginning of the film (right).

We finished the film in early 1974, and it was better than I expected. It was a great.

How much did it end of costing?

We spent about $45,000 – and that was everything… music, editing, all post-production.

How did you intend releasing it?

I had this dream of showing a porn film at the Cannes Film Festival – which had never seen a sex film… not even a soft-core one. I wanted our film to break down barriers and be a pioneer… I wanted to shock middle class values with a hard core sex film… so I wanted to show it there.

But you were still barred from entering France?

Yes – and France was still heavily repressed in terms of censorship. Falcon liked my idea but we knew that the film would never get import approval. But then we had some luck… the conservative president of France, Georges Pompidou, died a few days before the festival opened. He was replaced by the more liberal Giscard D’Estaing, and during the period of confusion after Pompidou’s death, we got the film approved by the French customs.

This was the start of a unique, but short, period in France where censorship was abolished. Sadly it only last a few months.

Who was present from your production team when the film premiered in Cannes?

Just Falcon. I didn’t tell Brigitte because I didn’t want her to go there and make a big scene like a typical starlet. I wanted our film to be taken more seriously than just a cheap sex film, so I sent her back to the U.S.

What was the response to the film at the 1974 festival?

Falcon presented the film in three midnight showings, and they were all sold out. We had a lot of press coverage. It was a ‘succès de scandale’. For the first time, I made something that everyone was talking about.

And your big intention was still to take it to the U.S.?

Yes. I called Reuben and told him about the success in Cannes, and he sent a guy over to Breda to see it. Unfortunately this guy was an idiot and he told Reuben that ‘Penetration’ was just a spoof sex film, and that Americans preferred sex that was erotic and ‘real’. So Reuben wasn’t interested.

Fortunately a Greek/American guy from New York like it a lot. He had been to all the showings in Cannes and became friends with Falcon.

He was called Daniel Bourla and he was involved with an American distribution company called ‘Variety Film’.

Wasn’t Chelly Wilson connected to ‘Variety’ as well?

Probably – the Greeks owned many of the dirty cinemas in New York at that time.

I sold the North American rights to Variety for $100,000 plus royalties. I could have asked for more but I just wanted to get into the American market to challenge people’s conservative way of thinking.

Daniel suggested that we change the title from ‘Penetration’ to ‘French Blue’ for the American audience – which was a good idea.

Did you have any problems in physically getting the film into the United States?

Daniel took care of that. There were seven film cans which made up the inter-negative that he would use for the duplication, and they were heavy! He flew them into Canada and then someone drove them down into the U.S.

I assume Variety Films handled the publicity for ‘Penetration’ / ‘French Blue’?

Yes – Daniel marketed it as the first big European sex and art film to open in America. He wanted to present it as a cultured, refined and intelligent look at the erotic film industry.

We had some luck because when Brigitte returned to Los Angeles she appeared in Penthouse magazine – which was as big as Playboy then. Daniel put together a campaign for ‘French Blue’ that announced ‘Brigitte Maier – Penthouse Cover Girl’. Bob Guccione, the owner of Penthouse, didn’t like that.

Why not?

He said that he didn’t want Penthouse associated with a hardcore film… and he took legal action to get us to remove all mention of ‘Penthouse’ from the publicity. We got a good attorney and fought the case. We won on the basis that Brigitte had the right to own her own image which included all references to the work she had done. It was a great defense, and we got good publicity for the film from that.

Brigitte Maier on the cover of Penthouse (July 1974)

Where did the film premiere in America?

It opened at Cine Lido on West 48^th St and at the Lido East on East 59^th St in December 1974.

Were you in New York for the premiere?

Yes – I flew in from Breda and stayed with Daniel. I went to the premiere and it was full of people. I also went to see other showings in New York so that I could see what people’s reactions were. People responded very well.

Daniel was always looking to have more publicity so he tried to arrange for me to do a press conference. I refused; I didn’t want to have a high profile because I knew the FBI would be interested in talking with me because of my association with Reuben. Reuben told me that whenever he was raided in Cleveland, the cops always asked him, “Who’s ‘LB’? And where is he?”

How did you market the film if you were keeping a low profile?

Daniel did a great job – but Brigitte worked hard too. She was busy granting interviews all over the place to big newspapers like the New York Post, and she did a number of personal appearances at the theaters too. She would do anything for me.

How successful was ‘French Blue’?

It was big! For months, we were in the top twenty biggest grossing films in the country according to Variety magazine. It opened in many theaters all over the country.

I felt that the world was ours, the future belonged to sexual freedom. The modern era was about to begin.

*

The post Lasse Braun Interview – Part 1:
The Early Years of a Trailblazer appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Make no mistakes about it, Howard Ziehm is one of the people who invented the adult film industry.

He was there taking still photos for adult bookstores in the 1960s – when the most you could reveal was a girl in her underwear. He made some of the first color loops – when all you could show was the subject writhing on a mattress by herself.

And then in 1970, as the market finally demanded hardcore, he made the groundbreaking ‘Mona: The Virgin Nymph’.

Time magazine called it the ‘The Jazz Singer’ (1927) of fuck films. Variety called it “the long-awaited link between the stag loops and conventional theatrical fare” and it was listed it their annual Top 50 grossing films – the first pornographic film to feature. And it was the first nationally released 35mm adult feature film to play in actual movie theaters.

In short, it was the blueprint for the 1970s porno chic hits that followed.

Howard went onto make many more adult films over the next decade, including ‘Flesh Gordon’ (1974), a science fiction adventure comedy erotic spoof of the Flash Gordon serials from the 1930s.

So who was the mysterious Howard Ziehm behind these films?

Fortunately he’s finally completed his autobiography which The Rialto Report is assisting Howard to publish shortly. And it’s a hell of read. It’s a huge, entertaining, and riveting book that names names, settles scores, and tells truths. It’s also one of the best biographies you’ll read about anyone in the film industry.

And it turns out here was someone who was going to be a theoretical physicist, owned one of the most successful clubs of the 1960s folk scene, worked as a nude model, had a drug running scheme importing marijuana across the border into the US, played guitar in a Los Angeles band called Father Plotsky and the Umbilical Cord – and all that before he ever even thought of making a porn film.

Today we’re joined by Howard Ziehm to talk about his surprising life leading up to the film ‘Flesh Gordon’. It’s quite a ride.

This episode’s running time is 99 minutes.

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For those interested: Howard Ziehm’s soon to be published memoir, “Take Your Shame and Shove It: The bare truth exposed” tells in vivid detail the surreal and picaresque forces that almost prevented Flesh Gordon from being made and the hedonistic bacchanal that followed that quickly found itself being swallowed by a rising tide of drug abuse and mysterious diseases that nearly destroyed the newfound freedom of a world unrestrained by puritan chains.

‘The Virgin Runaway’ (1970) (directed by Howard Ziehm)

‘Hollywood Blue’ (1970)

Japanese one sheet for ‘Hollywood Blue’ (1970)

 ‘Mona’ (1970)

 ‘Harlot’ (1971)

Newspaper ad for ‘Harlot’ (1971) (using an alternative name)

Newspaper ad for ‘Harlot’ (1971) (using an alternative name)

 Beverley Cinema

The post Howard Ziehm: Mona… (and marijuana, music, and M.I.T.)
Podcast 48 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

‘Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy’ is one of the best-known adult films of the golden age in New York.

It was released in 1976, enjoyed international distribution, and was listed in Variety’s top grossing films for the year.

It’s a unique, colorful, inventive, entertaining and sexy feature – featuring a Playboy model in the leading role, well known character actors, and a familiar list of New York porn regulars.

But it also remains one of the strangest, and perhaps least understood, of the 1970s films too.

    – What is the truth behind the various R-rated, X-rated and XXX-rated versions that have appeared over the years?

    – What was Bill Osco’s involvement, and where did all the huge profits disappear to?

    – Why was a West Cost production filmed on the East Coast?

    – How was a children’s story made into a musical, porn film?

    – And is that really the founder of the ‘Juicy Couture’ brand of clothing who appears in a prominent role?

The Rialto Report looks for answers, and speaks to four people:

Jason Williams was the co-producer and production manager of ‘Alice in Wonderland’. He also played the part of the White Knight.

Kristine DeBell was the film’s star.

Juliet Graham played the Queen of Hearts.

Larry Gelman played the White Rabbit.

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‘Alice in Wonderland’ – Cast and crew:

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1.     Beginnings

How did you get involved in ‘Alice in Wonderland’?

Jason Williams: In reality, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was my movie, not Bill Osco’s.

I’d known Bill Osco for a few years, and I’d starred in the movie ‘Flesh Gordon’ (1974) that he’d made with Howard Ziehm.

Jason Williams (center) as ‘Flesh Gordon’ (1974)

What was your understanding of the relationship between Osco and Ziehm?

Jason Williams: Ziehm and Osco had worked in an adult bookstore in Los Angeles and they’d made two of the very first hardcore films, ‘The Virgin Runaway’ (1970) and ‘Mona’ (1970).

Ziehm was the director, cameraman… he did everything. He went to MIT so he was kind of smart. Howard would make the movies, and then Osco would fly to New York, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Philadelphia, all the major cities with theaters that were showing pornography, and he would sell a print to a theater owner for a flat amount and that was it.

The theater owner would then run that movie and make as much money as he possibly could with it. There was no percentage or anything. They could run it until those sprocket holes wouldn’t run in a projector anymore.

So you got to know them when you worked with them on ‘Flesh Gordon’?

Jason Williams: Yes, they sold ‘Mona’ to Sherpix and that’s the money they used to make Flesh Gordon.

After that Howard continued to make movies, but he went up to Frisco because there was less heat from the authorities up there. It was a more liberal place than Los Angeles at the time.

They had some acting parts that were not porno that I did in those films. You know, like a pimp, a preacher, and so on, so I played those straight parts. While I was doing that, I was around enough to see what Howard was doing, see his technique, and see how to make these movies.

Then Howard had a falling out with Bill and they split up.

What happened when Howard and Bill split?

Jason Williams: Bill had all these great connections, he knew all these theater chains that were buying adult films – and there weren’t a lot of people making movies at that time. So I said to Bill, “I can take over and start making these movies, and you can sell them.” So I made several movies, a couple in Hawaii and then three or four more in Los Angeles.

Do you remember any of the names of these films?

Jason Williams: Yeah. One was originally called ‘Blue Hawaii’. They changed the name to ‘Hawaii Shuffle’ or ‘Hawaii Hustle’ or something like that.

Do you mean ‘Honolulu Hustle’ (1974)?

Jason Williams: ‘Honolulu Hustle’! That was it.

The credited director was ‘Lee Betts’ so that was you?

Jason Williams: That was me.

Who financed the films?

Jason Williams: Those two pictures in Hawaii were financed by a theater owner in Cleveland who Bill had met. He was a black guy, and he put up fifteen grand or something like that, and we made both of them for that amount.

Were they successful?

Jason Williams: When we came back to Los Angeles, I took one of the movies to the lab, and a few days later I saw an ad for a newly released movie called ‘Our Ms. Brooke’ or ‘Ms. Brookes’ or something like that. I thought, “Jesus, that’s weird” because the girl’s name in my movie was Ms. Brooke. So I went and saw it and it was my movie! I couldn’t believe it. One of the movies I’d made had been released in a theater here in town before I could even get the print… there was somebody in the lab that stole the print and duped it. They got it into a theater here in town before I even saw the final answer print!

My title for that movie was ‘Final Test’. It was about a girl in Hawaii who was doing something at the University of Hawaii.

So I went to that theater and said, “Jesus! Where did you get this movie?”

The guy said, “Why?”

I said, “Well because it’s my movie!”

He lifts his shirt up and he’s got a gun in his holster, and he said, “It’s not your movie.”

I said, “Okay.” I went back to Osco, I said, “I am done. I’m not making any more of these cheap movies. We gotta do something else. Why don’t we make an X-rated musical? It could be like Flesh Gordon.”

On the face of it, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is a strange choice for an adult film; it’s a children’s fairy tale, it’s a musical, and it’s a porn film. What made you think that this would be a good idea?

Jason Williams: I thought it would be a good idea to have the polarity, the contrast. Contrast is interesting and gets your attention. Our job is to entertain, and any time we have a person’s attention we’re entertaining.

Bill liked the idea so we got this guy, Bucky Searles, to write it.

Bucky Searles, as Humpty Dumpty in ‘Alice in Wonderland’

What did you know about Bucky Searles?

Jason Williams: He was a comic writer and comedian. Bill was dating Mitzi Shore, who owned The Comedy Store in Los Angeles. We were hanging out and we saw Bucky there.

Bill had known Bucky for a few years because Bucky also wrote the script for ‘Mona’ (1970).

Jason Williams: Yes, that’s right, and we also gave Bucky the part of Humpty Dumpty in ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

Bucky wrote ‘Alice in Wonderland’; he did the script and also this great, fun musical score which was really the heart of the film. It had a lot of cute songs in it. He was talented.

Where did the money for the shoot come from?

Jason Williams: Bill had this connection in Phoenix, a lawyer by the name of Hirsch. Hirsch had seen ‘Flesh Gordon’ and was keen to work on a film with us.

Bill said, “How much is it going to cost?” I drew up a budget and said it would cost about a hundred grand.

Hirsch said, “Okay. I’ll put up a hundred grand.”

*

2.     Making ‘Alice in Wonderland’

So you set up a production company for the film?

Jason Williams: Hirsch set up a production company called ‘Cruiser Productions’, named after the nickname of the guy who acted as a liaison between himself in Phoenix and Bill and myself. We called this guy ‘The Cruiser’ and so ‘T. Cruiser’ was also listed as the executive producer.

Why did you decide to leave Los Angeles and go to New York to make the film?

Jason Williams: I said, “There’s no way we can make this in Los Angeles, there’s too much heat. There’s a lot of talent in New York, and a lot less risk. I’ll go to New York and get this going.” That was in early summer 1975.

I went up to New York, and rented a little loft near 42nd St. I ran an ad in the Village Voice that said: “X-rated musical, ‘Alice in Wonderland’: You must be able to sing and dance”, and people started showing up straight away.

I held casting sessions, and picked three or four people for each character to come back for a second audition with the film’s director.

I also came across Dorothy Palmer’s agency and she sent some people over too. I think that’s how we found Kristine DeBell for the part of ‘Alice’.

Kristine DeBell: Dorothy Palmer’s name rings a bell. It sounds funny but I have very little memory. I have friends now who have to fill in my memory for me. I’m honestly the worst person to interview. I found out much later in life that I have what’s called ‘selective memory’. When I grew up, my father was a rage-aholic. He’d get angry. So whenever I’m in a situation where I get excited or stressed, I realize I remember very little.

Born in Chatham, NY, twenty year old Kristine DeBell had begun her career as a fashion model with Macy’s.

Kristine DeBell, early modeling pictures

Kristine DeBell: When I graduated from high school, I spent a year at Berkeley, studying fashion merchandising and then ended up in New York. That would be around 1974.

I started modeling at Macy’s. I was really just a tall, skinny kid. I wasn’t popular at all. All the girls that were very shapely back then were much more popular than me. I finally remember seeing a picture of Twiggy and saying, “That’s what I’m supposed to be doing.” When you’re size 8 and very thin and have no breasts, it wasn’t easy.

Macy’s had a modeling program, and I joined it. They’d have young girls model the clothing at Macy’s. It was a whole program. I did that as a young teen. I also did runway modeling.

One day I walked into Eileen Ford‘s office in New York. The receptionist looked at me and said, “Do you work here?” I said, “No.” She said, “Would you like to?” I said, “Yes!” And I went into Eileen Ford’s office right then and met her!

I started work there immediately.

Who was going to direct ‘Alice in Wonderland’?

Jason Williams: I guess I was going to be the director originally. I’d directed these other films for Bill and I. However as the workload increased, I told Bill, “Look, I can’t direct this. I’m too busy. I’ve got all this production stuff going on. I still have to go find the locations.”

How did you come up with the choice of Bud Townsend for the director?

Jason Williams: Bud was a high-quality commercial director. I’d been going with an actress by the name of Tiffany Bolling who’d done a commercial with him. She became friends with Bud and his wife Patty, so I met Bud through her and we used to go over to their house. Then, I read for the lead in a movie that he did called ‘Terror House’ (1972) (aka ‘Terror at the Red Wolf Inn’).

Bud Townsend’s ‘Terror at Red Wolf Inn’ (1972)

What made you think he’d be suitable to direct ‘Alice in Wonderland’?

Jason Williams: I thought he was a really good director and had talent so I knew we were going to get something that looked good. He’d never directed a sex film before – in fact he’d one really directed that one feature film – but I knew he was kind of into erotica so that suited the material.

Plus Bud and his wife Patty were like a directing team. She was always his script girl, so they were tight and worked well together. Everyone knew Patty as ‘Booby’ because she had no boobs.

They were quite a bit older than the rest of us as they were in their late 50s when we made the film.

How was Bud involved in the casting process?

Jason Williams: Bud and Booby came to New York with Bill, and I arranged a call back for the top three choices that I had made for each of the characters. I just gave them my list and I said, “Here are the choices for Alice, here are the choices for the Mad Hatter” and so on.

Juliet Graham: I remember auditioning for the lead role of Alice at first because they liked my long blond hair. I don’t think I was interested enough to push for the lead though. I think they made the right choice with Kristine.

I don’t remember auditioning for the role of the Queen of Hearts at all (below). They just offered me that part instead, so I accepted it.

Did you know much about the New York actors you hired?

Jason Williams: No, I didn’t know any of them. I knew that many were regulars on the porn scene, but I didn’t know them. They just showed up at my loft to audition.

We also hired a few character actors. For example Larry Gelman was a fairly well known actor in L.A. He was a friend of Bucky Searles so we got him for the part of the White Rabbit.

Larry Gelman: Bucky Searles took me to a diner on Fairfax and told me about the film. He offered me the part of the White Rabbit. It sounded fun so I agreed with two conditions. Firstly I asked for round trip tickets to New York for my wife, our two children and me. And secondly, I asked that I would keep my clothes on for the entire production. Bucky agree to both requests. Especially the second!

Did you audition their dancing ability?

Jason Williams: Yeah. Several of the porn actors had a dance background – such as Nancy Dare and Terri Hall. They had to sing and dance a little bit. I forget how that worked. There was a piano in the audition room. I don’t know if we had a piano player or some kind of scratch track for them to perform to.

They had to be able to dance, but singing wasn’t so important as we were going to record the music afterwards with proper singers.

Nancy Dare, Terri Hall

Kristine DeBell: When I auditioned for the film, obviously they didn’t think that they were going to find a ‘porno star’ who could sing. The funny thing was I started out in musical theater, and I’d sang for years.

I studied voice and ended up auditioning for ‘The Sound of Music’ in my high school production when I was 14, and got the role. Then I did Summer stock with this theater company for four seasons every summer throughout high school. So I had a lot of experience singing and dancing.

You were putting all the production together yourself. Did you have any one helping you?

Jason Williams: I was seeing a girl called Gela Nash at the time. She was kind of my girlfriend. We dated a little while in L.A. She was a dancer. She was a jack of all trades and kind of an assistant to me. She did everything. She helped out with the wardrobe too.

In fact she ended up playing a part in the movie as one of the dancers. She’s actually the girl who plays on the Knight. She kind of sings a bit where she’s on the black guy and she lifts up her dress: “What’s a Girl like you doing on a Knight like this?”

She didn’t want to do any nudity but she was good spirited about getting involved. She was just real cute and fun. She used the name ‘Gila Havana’ (below).

Did she do other adult films?

Jason Williams: No – and actually she ended up starting the ‘Juicy Couture’ clothing line years later! She made a fortune as the owner of that empire. And she married Duran Duran’s John Taylor. I wish I had her money…

The big house and garden location was very striking – where did you shoot the film?

Jason Williams: ‘The Cruiser’ (the guy who was looking out for how we spent Hirsch’s money) was tight with a real estate guy in Tannersville in upstate New York called Jeff Prince who got us all the locations.

Jeff Prince took me around to various places up there. We used four or five different sets, but mostly we shot on this country estate; it was a place that had some great architecture and some land that we could work on.

‘Alice in Wonderland’ was filmed mainly in Palenville, NY, on an old family estate that is locally known as ‘White’s Castle’. The property is currently the home of Jed Root, founder of Jed Root, Inc., one of the leading artist management agencies in the world.

Externals were also shot ‘guerrilla style’ at Olana State Historic Site, a National Historic Landmark that had been the home of Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), one of the major figures in the Hudson River School of landscape painting.

Where did everyone involved in the shoot stay?

Jason Williams: Jeff, the real estate guy, got us a place nearby to stay so I rented it out for the duration of the shoot. All the cast and crew lived in that one big place. It was a real old place and had about 20 rooms. I hired a chef that cooked all the meals for them so it was like a boarding house situation.

Everybody stayed in there except for me and Bill, and Kristine and Gela. We all stayed at the actual house where we were filming. It was a lot of fun.

Kristine DeBell: One of the things I remember most clearly was this disgusting old house that they rented for us to stay in. There were crabs in the couch or something. We all got crabs!

What do you remember about the film’s star, Kristine DeBell?

Juliet Graham: Kristine was very sweet. And young. She might have only been two or three years younger than me, but she seemed a very young 20 or 21 to me. She had that innocence that they were looking for.

She didn’t really have to act or project too much, just be incredulous and open. But she was great at that.

(from left to right) John Lawrence, Kristine DeBell, Juliet Graham

Larry Gelman: Kristine was a sweet, innocent, and serious girl. She was like me and just wanted to make a proper film. She was very earnest did a really great job.

Kristine DeBell: Was I rebellious? Was I headstrong? Absolutely. Why else would I have done that type of film? You know what I mean?! I was very rebellious at that time.

I was drinking quite a bit. I joke now that if you were a friend of mine, I’d thrown up on you at some point.

I didn’t even start drinking until I was 16 to 17 I think, and it didn’t get to be a problem until I started doing drugs when I was in California – and cocaine was introduced. Then, by 26 I was done… I had a very short drinking and drug career. My wild years were short, and I actually have 33 years of sobriety now.

Were you at all uncomfortable with the nudity?

Kristine DeBell: No. It’s funny but for some reason I was always very OK with being exactly what I was. It must’ve been the rebellious side of me because it didn’t bother me a bit. It’s like, “They’re paying me to stand there naked. I’m getting paid.”

Production still, with  Kristine DeBell, Terri Hall

What do you remember about the other actors?

Juliet Graham: Alan Novak (right) played the Mad Hatter. His real name was Alan Coolidge. I knew him. He worked in some acting agent’s office in midtown in New York. I used to go in there and leave my pictures and hope that they would call me for something. He died of AIDS not too long after AIDS began.

He was trying to be a mainstream actor, and was a great character type. He could have had a lot of work being some kind of weird character like he was in this movie but it didn’t work out for him.

Tony and Sue Richards played Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They were everybody’s favorite couple. They were on the porno scene for a short while, and were both really nice. They really loved each other. They didn’t really like to do scenes with anybody else.

Jason Williams: The cast seemed to bond well. Most of them knew each other from the New York porn scene so it was like a trip away for them all.

Kristine DeBell: I didn’t know a soul. They seemed part of a different world.

Production still, with (from left to right) Terri Hall, Kristine DeBell, Nancy Dare

How did you hire the crew – people like the cinematographer, Joseph Bardo?

Jason Williams: Joe Bardo was a local guy in Los Angeles that we knew.

Joseph Bardo was a cinematic jack of all trades, acting in films since the 1950s (he was one of the characters declaring “I’m Spartacus!” in the Kirk Douglas film ‘Spartacus’ (1960)), as well as directing, producing, and shooting a large number of films with a variety of aliases. A successful college football player in his youth, Joe had started out as one of Mae West’s ‘muscle men’ in her lounge act.

Jason Williams: Joe was friends with Bill. He was a big guy, an ex-football player. He drove to New York from the West Coast for the shoot in his van and he took all his equipment with him. He was going to put up the equipment and be the cameraman and provide some of the additional crew members – which ended up being members of his family. That was the deal he had with Osco, and he was supposed to get a percentage of the movie as payment.

So for example the lighting director was Joe’s son-in-law, and there were other family members that he picked up in his van along the way. Joe brought in William Wang too.

Joseph Bardo films Kristine DeBell in ‘Alice in Wonderland’

William Wang did the sound?

Jason Williams: Yes, William was the sound recordist who was friends with Joe Bardo, and he was from Los Angeles. I knew him from some pictures that I’d done and Joe had worked with him as well.

He owned the ‘William Sound Service’ on Highland for the longest time. He had a 16mm room where you could go in and do stuff. I had used it a few times over the years.

William was real nervous about doing an X-rated movie because of his wife. During the shoot, he stayed with the rest of the cast and crew and somehow he got crabs. I don’t know if it was from the wardrobe and costumes… but somehow the crabs got into his clothes and he was so fucking scared that his wife was going to freak out. He had no idea what they were, and he just kept shouting, “I got a crab! I’ve got a crab!”

Were you happy with the directing job that Bud did on the set?

Jason Williams: Yeah. He was great. I mean he was slow and I was the one trying to make everything happened as fast as possible. That’s the only problem I had with Bud.

I was trying to get to the damn show done, and he was trying to do a good job.

Kristine DeBell: Bud was very sweet. They were very kind to me. It seems to me that everyone was.

I remember falling in love with the script supervisor, who was the director’s wife. I also was fascinated with her job. It was during ‘Alice in Wonderland’ that I realized because of my OCD that’s a job that I would love, matching the scenes up.

Coming from the theater world that was also something I knew nothing about that. I loved that. I kept thinking, “Wow, that’s something I’d be really good at.”

Juliet Graham: I have absolutely no memory of the director. I remember the two producers more than I remember him. The director didn’t seem to be the most dominant person on set.

Larry Gelman: Bud Townsend was a quiet, sweet older gentleman. He style was to whisper to people rather than shout instructions.

Juliet Graham: They started with some of the porn scenes, so I figured that it was just another porn movie with a bigger set and a little larger cast. But then when I saw the musical numbers and how they got everybody up to speed to do them I was incredibly impressed. This was one of the best productions I’d been on.

(from left to right) Juliet Graham, Kristine DeBell, Melvina Peeples, J.P.Paradine, Larry Gelman, Alan Novak

Do you remember how long the shoot was?

Jason Williams: It was shot over 10 continuous days in June / July of 1975. And everybody was up there for the full 10 days in that one location that they lived in. It became like a dorm of porn people.

Juliet Graham: It seemed like we were up there for weeks. It was never ending.

How were the musical numbers filmed?

Jason Williams: Bucky had done a rough version of the soundtrack, not a fully scored treatment or anything like that but a rough, simple version of the soundtrack. So we had a scratch track of the music to work with, and the actors mimed to that.

Juliet Graham: My main memory of the film was that I had to sing. On a porn film! And … well, I more or less talked instead of singing, and I really didn’t have any arias, thank heaven. It’s hard to say whether you could even call it singing.

I remember this exchange where Alice goes, “If I’m found guilty, will I be dead? Not until I get some head,” and it goes on like that. It was cute.

Kristine DeBell: They had already had the music done, so we just had to lip sync. It was really strange and funny. They blasted the music through some speakers and we just jumped around.

I knew the songs by heart, as I’d listened to them a lot. So when they played them during a scene, I would just sing.

How about the dance numbers?

Jason Williams: Bud and Booby recommended a friend of theirs, Buddy Schwab, who was a successful choreographer. He had some decent credits and had worked on Broadway.

Kristine DeBell: I’d taken ballet classes over the years so the dancing wasn’t difficult.

Juliet Graham: I couldn’t really dance and was basically very klutzy. I tripped up a few times in the heels they had me wear, and in one instance I fell down badly on my ass. They didn’t seem to mind as they said it was part of my character so they left it in the final cut.

Nancy Dare and Terri Hall had both danced professionally for a while so they were able do whatever the choreographer wanted.

Terri was very sweet; she seemed a little off in her own world at times but at other times she was very, very savvy and totally aware of what she was doing and what persona she wanted to project. She was funny too; she was just about to start a sex scene with one of the skinny actors, and she leaned across to me and said “Boy, the guys in this industry don’t have much in the way of muscles, do they?”

Was making the film an enjoyable experience?

Juliet Graham: Yes – we laughed lot. Bucky Searles in particular was hilarious. He was so funny. He cracked everybody up in between takes and during takes. I remember him very well.

Larry Gelman: Bucky was so talented. One of the best. He was a lovely man – gentle, good, and sweet.

Juliet Graham: I remember John Lawrence who played the King of Hearts. He was this big black guy. He wasn’t much of an actor but I guess he was trying to be. He always cracked me up because his way of acting was with his finger. Every line, every word, he’s gesturing with his finger.

I liked him though. I remember asking the writer to write a love scene between John and I so I’d have an excuse to sleep with him in the movie. It didn’t happen though…

Was it easy to keep the film under the $100,000 budget you had?

Jason Williams: When I made the budget I didn’t realize that it was going to become this elaborate, and everything went got bigger as we went along, right? For example, we were going to shoot it in 16mm, then Bud somehow talked us into shooting it in 35mm which then jumped the cost up.

Was the film always intended to be hard core?

Jason Williams: It was initially going to be hardcore – and the idea was to have the contrast of a film that was hardcore one moment and then funny, light and musical the next.

But when we got up to the location and started filming, the vision for the film rapidly started expanding. We had these big sets, elaborate design, and we had this big opportunity. So we had this relatively short shooting schedule and we didn’t have much time to go in and do a lot of close-up stuff that you need for hardcore. There was too much work just to film the scenes, so we mostly got wide shots which don’t really work in a hardcore film as you can’t really see what’s going on.

We had to figure out what we were trying to do and ask ourselves, “Is this an apple or an orange here?” So some parts are more explicit than others.

The main thing was for it to be a fun film that was not too prurient because it would have taken a lot more time to do it to make that happen, and we didn’t have the time.

Larry Gelman: I approached it like a serious film. As far as I was concerned I was making a regular version of the film. You wouldn’t have known it was a hardcore film for most of the scenes.

Who handled the communication with the actors in terms of telling them that they would be required to perform hardcore sex scenes?

Jason Williams: I did originally, so I think everybody was geared up that there was going to be sex in this movie, real sex. I didn’t go into any explicit details on what that the real sex was going to be. I left that to Bud. He and Booby dealt with all of that, and I think they handled it tastefully. They were sophisticated people.

Kristine DeBell: No one really knew what they were getting involved with before we got up there. No one knew what kind of film it was. They kept it very hush hush. I was thinking that I was auditioning for this adorable ‘Alice’ film, and once we got on set I was told, “We’d like you to do this and this.”

I was like, “Excuse me? You want me to do what? Maybe I could do this and this, but I’m definitely not doing that. No. No.”

Larry Gelman: I wasn’t allowed to watch any of the sex scenes! They would keep me away from the action. It was a very strict set. My family was there so that was another problem. I tried a little bit but I didn’t see anything!

Most of the actors were veterans of the New York sex film scene, but Kristine DeBell was not. Was her involvement in the sex scenes made clear to her?

Jason Williams: I’m not sure how all that worked out, and what was thought was supposed to happen, and what actually happened, and what everybody thought was going to happen, and what was…

Kristine DeBell: I did my scenes and then left, and didn’t really know what they were shooting after that.

I used to joke that I don’t remember every portion of my life because I was drinking and using, but then I realize that there are portions when I wasn’t drinking and using that I still didn’t remember. Then I realized what it was. I was reading something, and I said, “‘Selective memory’, that’s it. That’s what I have.”

What do you remember about your sex scene with Kristine?

Juliet Graham: She had one scene with me, and another with the prince I think. She was fine, not difficult or temperamental at all. She was the only one who wasn’t part of the adult industry but she didn’t seem to be prim or objecting to anything. It wasn’t simulated, and it worked out fine.

Kristine DeBell: I guess it’s OK that I don’t remember. Being on that type of production maybe I shouldn’t remember stuff anyway. I was a little bit wild, though.

Juliet Graham, Kristine DeBell

When Howard Ziehm split from Bill Osco, Howard accused Bill of ripping him off. What was your relationship like with Bill making ‘Alice in Wonderland’?

Jason Williams: Here’s the gig with Osco: Very few people were putting their names on these movies at the time. But Bill was unique as he wasn’t afraid of having his name associated with them. That meant that the theater owners knew Bill, and they knew his films. And they were good films; Howard Ziehm was making good movies, better than everybody else. So it got to a point where the theater owners just wanted another ‘Bill Osco’ movie. They made the checks out to him personally. They didn’t know that it was someone else making them!

Then he started to get attention in the mainstream press. Joyce Haber gave him a huge front page in an L.A. Calendar section, about the ‘Boy King of Porno’ and how he was changing society and he was breaking barriers with his artwork. He would say, “Yeah, yeah, I’m like Fellini. I’m a real artist.”

The problem was that he had nothing to do with any of the movies! Bill was only ever the business guy who put the deals together. He was never making any of the movies himself. It was all just such fucking bullshit. It was so thick it was incredible.

When I started making pictures with Osco, I was the director, editor, writer, of all of them. I did everything myself. And that continued with ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Bud directed it, I produced it, and Bill did very little.

Larry Gelman: Bill was a businessman. He wasn’t involved in the film-making process; he acted like a big shot producer, a mogul. I didn’t have much to do with him. People seemed intimidated by him.

Knowing that Howard accused Osco of dishonesty, were you wary of working with him?

Jason Williams: In terms of me, no. I heard that Howard had problems with Osco and his honesty but you can’t look into the future if you’re only in the present.

I just stepped in when Bill and Howard split up, and me and Osco became friends. I started making the movies like Howard had done, and then Bill would go and sell them and get cash. I’d get some of that cash  and that was that.

Juliet Graham: One of the producers, Bill Osco, the obnoxious one, made a pass at me on set one day. I told him I was Jamie Gillis‘ girlfriend and I had no interest in him. Then he threatened not to pay me if I didn’t go to his room with him. I didn’t sleep with him, but I did end up spending one night in his room.

I just said, “This is ridiculous. If you want, we’ll stay up. We can talk all night if you want, but I’m not going to have sex with you.”

The money was good on this film so I didn’t want to lose it. I seem to remember I got paid $1,000.

*

3.     Selling ‘Alice In Wonderland’

Once you finished shooting in upstate New York, what did you do?

Jason Williams: We came back to L.A. and we needed some finishing funds so we met with a bunch of people who’d been fans of ‘Flesh Gordon’. Then we met were these two guys who ran Kaleidoscope Films.

Kaleidoscope Films was the most successful movie advertising firm of the 1970s.

It was started in 1968 by Andy Kuehn (right), who is considered the father of the modern trailer.

Kaleidoscope Films produced the trailers for the biggest films and film makers of the time, including ‘Jaws’, the Indiana Jones trilogy, ‘Top Gun’, and ‘Back to the Future’.

Jason Williams: Kaleidoscope Films was the premiere advertising company for all of the major studios. They had contacts with every studio, every person, and at that time, they were the shit. There wasn’t anybody else as well-connected as them. Up until 1985 or so, they’d made the advertising campaigns for something like 70 of the top 100 grossing movies of all time. That’s how powerful they were.

One of their guys was into adult movies and knew all about Flesh Gordon and Osco, and so he started saying, “Oh, Osco, he’s a great filmmaker, blah, blah, blah.”

Anyway we went to meet with them and told them that we’d just done this X-rated musical.” They watched it and said, “We think there’s something here – and we’d like to do all of the post production for it. In return you give us 25% of the picture.”

What was your reaction to their offer?

Jason Williams: I said to Bill, “Listen, we got to take this. We’ve spent the initial $100,000, we don’t have any money to finish it, and this is going to be way past what I’m able to edit and cut together. And we need a lot more than that. We need proper music and everything else.”

So you accepted their offer?

Jason Williams: Yes, the guys at Kaleidoscope got involved from that point onwards.

And they did an amazing job. They were involved in cinema research so they were able to add new kinds of techniques that were just coming into the cinematic field. Like the way of dissolving pictures from one scene to the next, creative editing techniques, a lot of visuals, all kind of things.

The editor of our film, Shaun Walsh, was one of Kaleidoscope’s top editors. They used the top guys, the top editors, the top everybody, and put $250,000 to $300,000 into the finishing of the movie.

They put way more into the post-production budget than we’d put into the production budget! That’s really what gives the film its quality and upscale feel. A lot of that was done in the post production by Kaleidoscope.

How was the musical soundtrack recorded?

Jason Williams: Peter Matz handled that. I think he came to the project through Kaleidoscope and they paid for him. We never could have afforded him with our $100,000 budget.

Peter Matz (right) was a musician, composer, arranger and conductor, who won three Emmys and a Grammy award. His musical career spanned fifty years, including working with people such as Marlene Dietrich, Noël Coward and Barbra Streisand.

The year that ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was released, Matz was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music for the Streisand musical ‘Funny Lady’ (1975).

Jason Williams: Peter saw the movie, and went back and recorded full versions of songs with a full orchestra and beefed it up considerably. He did a great job.

Was the soundtrack record ever released?

Jason Williams: No. There was never a soundtrack.

Did you dissolve your production company at this stage?

Jason Williams: Yes. In fact ‘The Cruiser’, who was the go-between between us and the finance guy, Hirsch, ended up killing himself. I don’t know why exactly but…something, I don’t know.

He was just a young kid, our age at that time. I don’t exactly know what happened. I never really… I was never friends with him except for that week or so that he was around the shoot.

Once Kaleidoscope finished their post-production work, what happened next?

Jason Williams: Kaleidoscope spent several months finishing it. We’d shot it in the summer of 1975 and it was ready by the end of the year. They’d put all this money into the finishing of the film and they’d turned it into a really good film.

The first thing we did was to hold a couple of screenings.

Where did the screenings take place, and what was the reaction?

Jason Williams: We got one at MGM and we had one at Fox. Mae West came to one of them with Joe Bardo who she’d known from years before.

It played great, people loved it. No one had seen anything like it before. They left the theater with a really good feeling.

Did you have a proper premiere for it?

Jason Williams: Yeah. We had a premiere at the Plaza Theater in Beverly Hills. I showed up in my Ferrari in my Flesh Gordon costume.

Was there a New York premiere?

Juliet Graham: Yes, I remember Andy Warhol was there. It was in one of the main theaters in Times Square that no longer exists.

I invited my aunt and uncle, which was a sort of cheeky thing to do, and they were shocked. Afterwards they had nothing to say to me. Except to say that the whole thing was ‘perverted.’

Jason Williams: The picture played really well but… it had the same problem as ‘Flesh Gordon’ encountered. Nobody wanted to distribute it. Everybody loved it but we couldn’t find a distributor. Nobody wanted it because it was X-rated.

In the end I went to Ted Mann.

Ted Mann was a long time owner of theaters across the United States, including the famed Grauman’s Chinese Theater. In 1973 he had purchased the 276-screen National General Theatre chain which he soon expanded to a total of 360 screens.

Jason Williams: I said, “Hey, we did ‘Flesh Gordon’ and the numbers are good. We’ve done another one called ‘Alice in Wonderland’.” We screened it for their booker and they liked it. They said, “We’ll give you one theater in Tucson, AZ and we’ll open it there and see how it does.”

We had one just big billboard outside of Tucson that had a nice piece of artwork on it.

We opened the picture and it broke the house record. More money that had ever been made in that theater.

‘Alice in Wonderland’ plays Park Mall – one of the Mann Theaters, Tucson, AZ (April 29th 1976)

So how do you capitalize on that?

Jason Williams: I thought, “Here we are working with Kaleidoscope who make the best trailers in the whole world”, so we got them to make a trailer for us, and they made a fantastic one. It was cute, sexy, and fun.

It said something like “This is an X-rated musical – but it’s not for kids. It’s a bedtime story – but it’s not for kids.” It was real cute. It was right on the nose. Ted Mann ran the trailer in all of his theaters.

Did Kaleidoscope also come up with the artwork for the one-sheet?

Jason Williams: Yeah. It was put together by Kaleidoscope. They were really good. They really made the movie come to life. They really did. They made it special I think.

What happened after the successful run in Tucson?

Jason Williams: Then Mann gave us another theater, the State Theater in San Diego. We broke the house record there as well. So now the phone starts ringing off the hook. Everybody wants our movie – but we’re not distributors. So I said, “Well, shit, we’re not going to give it away to a distribution company now. Why would we do that? Let’s just get somebody in and distribute it ourselves.”

So we approached this guy, Harold Marenstein.

Harold Marenstein had been Vice President of Sales of Cinemation Industries, a New York City-based film studio and distributor owned and run by exploitation producer Jerry Gross. The company distributed exploitation films as well as hit independent films like Melvin Van Peebles’ ‘Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song’ (1971). The company went bankrupt in 1975.

Jerry Gross and Harold Marenstein (right), 1970

Jason Williams: Harold was a veteran guy, maybe about 70 years old, and had been around forever. We brought him in to run our distribution company.

What was your company called?

Jason Williams: At that time, there was a company called ‘National General’ which was a huge distribution company / theater company. They’d just gone bankrupt or had been acquired by somebody else and they were no longer a business.

I said, “Bill, why don’t we call ourselves ‘General National’? Everybody that we deal with will just think we’re ‘National General.’ All the theaters are used to dealing with ‘National General’, so if we just call ourselves ‘General National’ everybody will think it’s the same damn big company, and we’ll get treated in the same way”.

So Bill and I set up a company with Harold and called it ‘General National Enterprises’, or ‘GNE Productions’ for short.

The general release print of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was trimmed by three minutes so that it would be granted an R-rating, and thus play in more mainstream theaters.

How well did the film do once you started distributing it across the country?

Jason Williams: The movie went off the chart and ended up making… God, I don’t know how much. Millions. I could never get a real answer. Bill who was in charge of all of the money side, but nobody could ever get a real answer from him. Not Hirsch, the lawyer from Phoenix, not Kaleidoscope, and not me.

Did you get good publicity?

Jason Williams: We had a publicist. The Kaleidoscope guys told us what to do and how to do it. But once we started setting house records, it was easy to get the picture into theaters and it ran forever. It ran for almost a solid year in one theater Westwood.

And Kaleidoscope were doing everything they could to promote the film as well. They had the wherewithal to promote Kristine and put her out there because they knew that she’d be good publicity for the movie.

At the time ‘Alice in Wonderland’ came out in theaters, Kristine DeBell appeared on the April 1976 cover of Playboy, photographed by Suze Randall.

Kristine DeBell: Suze Randall photographed that, and we became friends. She was so sweet. No one had ever been on the cover before who had not been a Playmate first. She knew that I’m a tomboy. All these other girls are posing in very provocative ways with a bat, and I’m yelling the f-word, I have a beer can, I’m popping my cleats, and I was just like that.

How was foreign distribution handled?

Jason Williams: Harold handled the American distribution side, but Bill and I took the foreign distribution. But what Bill would do was to sell each damn territory off to multiple different people.

How would he do that?

Jason Williams: He would sell exclusive rights to Spain or Italy to someone and they’d give him a check for, say, $25,000 for the Italian rights. And then a fucking hour later some other guy would come in and Bill would say, “Give me $15,000 and I’ll give you the exclusive Italian rights. Yeah, completely exclusive. Don’t worry about it. You got them all.”

Kristine DeBell: I recently found some old interviews that I did around that time, and somebody asked me, “Were you upset that you did that kind of movie?”

I said, “Why would I be upset? I have 1% of the film”. I’d completely forgotten that I had that deal!

The film made over $100 million, and I didn’t see any of it. But I was a kid. I didn’t keep any contracts. I never saw any profits.

From The Kingston Daily Newspaper (October 21st, 1976):

“The producer of an x-rated film has been threatened with a lawsuit for using a state historical site, the Olana mansion, as a backdrop for his movie.

Lawyers for the Taconic Park Commission have said that despite a prohibition against filming on the grounds of state parks or historical sites without special prior consent, producer Bill Osco used the stately Moorish castle as a background for his film, ‘Alice in Wonderland.’

According to Linda McLean, curator of the former home of Hudson Valley artist Frederick Church, only educational companies are given permission to film the historical site, adding, “certainly not a film like ‘Alice in Wonderland.’”

Olana State Historic Site in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (1976)

Olana State Historic Site (2015)

Didn’t you make another film with Bill shortly afterwards?

Jason Williams: First we were going to make an adult ‘Wizard of Oz’ film. That’s when I met Suze Randall and her husband Humphrey. Humphrey was a writer and he wrote a first draft at of the ‘Wizard of Oz’ script for us.

Then we made ‘The Great American Girl Robbery’ (aka ‘Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend’ (1979)) with Kaleidoscope. I wrote and produced it, and starred in it.

We had also an ‘American Graffiti’ type film we were going to do, and I had a script that was a knock off of ‘Bad News Bears’ (1976) called ‘Pee Wee Pigskin’ that was about little football kids, but by then my relationship with Bill was deteriorating.

Kristine DeBell: Once I made Alice, I ended up going with the producers right to California, and that’s when I started getting acting parts there. I acted in ‘The Great American Girl Robbery’ which Bill and Jason made. I made some good connections and my acting career took off.

Kristine DeBell and Richard Gere (1978)

In August 1976, Kristine made her second appearance in Playboy, this time photographed by Helmut Newton in a pictorial entitled “200 Motels, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation”.

Kristine DeBell in a picture from her Helmut Newton pictorial “200 Motels, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation”

Kristine DeBell: Those photographs are so indicative of what I was then, this rebellious … My agent would say to me, “You need to dress in this way” and I’m like, “Why? I just want to go in jeans and a t-shirt.” I was absolutely rebellious at that time… I was a total tomboy.

*

4.     Controversy

When did you suspect that Bill was concealing the big profits from ‘Alice in Wonderland’?

Jason Williams: Bill ended up hiding everything. He’d tell everybody that the profits were tied up, they were here or there, he had to get it, it was this or that… but no one could ever get any details. Then, Osco just stopped paying anybody anything.

Meanwhile he bought a house on Sunset Boulevard that was on four or five acres of land. It was a huge estate right next to where Cher lived, and it dwarfed her place. It had a big enough front-yard to play football on the damn thing. It must be worth $25 or $30 million now.

He was deeply delusional… he actually thought that he’d done everything. This is what’s so incredibly strange. He thought that it was him that made it all happen, though in reality he was just along for the ride. His skill was that somehow he did have his finger, his little tiny finger, on the steering wheel, but he wasn’t really doing anything. Except his little tiny finger on the steering wheel somehow meant that he was in charge of everything, I guess.

In terms of producing anything to do with the films, he delivered nothing. Zero. But he got credit for everything which was actually pretty incredible.

Was there any truth that he was part of the Osco drug chain?

Jason Williams: No. Zero. Yet he told everybody that. His father was actually a barber in Ohio.

Eventually the box office value of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ as a softcore film played itself out. It was then re-released it as a XXX film by inserting additional minutes of hardcore footage.

There has been controversy about the hard core footage that was re-instated for the XXX version, some of it involving Kristine DeBell. What do you know about what happened there?

Jason Williams: Bill had started dating Kristine right when the movie started. As soon as he met her, he got right on Kristine.

When we first started making ‘Alice in Wonderland’, we weren’t completely sure it was going to be hardcore. Bill got Kristine to give him a blowjob as though he was the Mad Hatter on camera, and it was never included in the film. It was some footage that was never ever in the X-rated version of the film. He told her something like, “We’re up here and we need this, the picture needs it, blah, blah, blah. Hopefully we’ll never have to use it, blah, blah, blah. I love you, blah, blah, blah.”

A few years later, to try to make some fucking money, Bill inserted this little clip and some other footage that were obviously not even from the film that showed hardcore penetration. He got it from someplace else. He put these extra minutes of hardcore in the film thinking he’s going to make a new adult movie out of it and it’s going to become now become a big hit because he’s got this additional shitty ass hardcore porno in it. He did that to Kristine which I thought was just such a low fucking life thing to do. That’s really a dirt bag thing to put that little clip of her in there.

Horrible. I mean it really… What a character, a real bad guy.

Was this ever discussed with Kristine?

Jason Williams: I didn’t ever bring it up. I didn’t want to tell her. Let it lay that way. It ain’t going to do anything one way or the other at this point in time.

It was just such a low life thing to do, really. Unbelievably low life.

Kristine DeBell: They filmed all that X footage, and at first they basically made a soft core HBO-esque film. Then a while later, they add all this XXX stuff, and said, “We forgot to add this in”.

What?!

“Oh we filmed this during the filming, but we forgot about it…”

I actually read on Wikipedia what happened. I didn’t remember.

I just was this young kid. People will say, “How did that happen?” But I just went in and did my job. I was just this young… I didn’t think about those kinds of things like I would now.

Did you make any money at all for ‘Alice in Wonderland’?

Jason Williams: Nothing. I made nothing. I must have got cheated out of… I don’t even want to know.

How about money from ‘The Great American Girl Robbery’?

Jason Williams: Bill had brought his high school buddy out to Los Angles from Ohio. Bill had a limousine and this high school buddy was his chauffeur. It turned out the driver was one of the only guys who was actually getting paid every week.

I owned about half of ‘The Great American Girl Robbery’ that we made for Kaleidoscope. I ended up selling my percentage of it to the chauffeur! I don’t know why I sold it to him but I just took that money and left.

That was the only money I ever got… I had to sell my share of it to the chauffeur just to get any money out of it.

Jason Williams and Kristine DeBell (both center) in ‘Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend (1979) (aka ‘The Great American Girl Robbery’)

How does that make you feel?

Jason Williams: It doesn’t feel any good. Somehow, I look at it like it was for the best. But in reality we should have been at the top of the world. We were two guys in our twenties who had two number one hit movies in America. We were connected to a company that opened doors to every studio in Hollywood, and that door was wide open to really do something in this business. But Bill was bad. He stole from everybody, never paid anyone, and it just became intolerable for everybody.

In the end everybody had to sue him. Kaleidoscope sued him. Hirsch, the lawyer from Phoenix, sued him. I knew it wasn’t going to do any good for me to sue him, so I just left and went on my own way.

Who ended up owning ‘Alice in Wonderland’?

Jason Williams: Kaleidoscope’s owner, Andy Kuehn, took Osco to court and finally won the suit against Osco and he got all of the rights to ‘Alice in Wonderland’, and all of the rights to ‘The Great American Girl Robbery’. He had them in a vault.

Somehow Osco paid somebody at Kaleidoscope to go into that vault, steal all the negatives, and then Osco started releasing the movie all over again.

 *

5.     Aftermath

What happened to Bill after that?

Jason Williams: He ended up getting involved with this girl, Jackie Kong. She was his girlfriend, and she convinced him that she could make movies. She’d never been involved with any kind of film production, but Bill thought that she could do what me and Howard had just done with him. So he let her direct a few movies and he produced them – things like ‘The Being’ (1983) and ‘Night Patrol’ (1984) – and she lost all of the money.

And Bill actually starred in ‘The Being’?

Jason Williams: Yes – together with some great actors like Martin Landau, Ruth Buzzi, and Marianne Gordon.

The funny thing was that Jackie thought that Bill’s acting was so bad she wouldn’t let him use his voice in the movie. She brought another actor in to completely overdub his dialogue. The movie was so unbelievably horrible.

It’s really a fascinating story how someone could be acclaimed as a filmmaker when really he never did anything. The only movie he really made himself was a film called ‘Gross Out’ (1990) which has to be the most disgusting movie ever. It was terrible.

When was the last time you were in touch with Bill?

Jason Williams: He called me about 10 years ago and he says, “JL?”

I said, “Yeah? Who’s calling?”

He said, “Bill.” I said, “I said Bill who?” He said, “Who else calls you JL? This is Bill Osco.”

I said, “Well, what do you want?”

He said, “Well, I just wanted to get together and talk about old times.”

I’m like, “Talk about old times?” I knew the only reason he was calling me because somehow he wanted something.

I said, “There’s nothing to talk about now… The truth is we were in such a good place and you just cared about nobody except yourself and that’s why this whole thing didn’t work.”

Really it was true. He really is a pretty good description of the word sociopath. He fits in there where he’ll tell anybody anything. He’ll lie to you and it doesn’t make any difference who you are.

Did Alice ever come back to harm or haunt you in any way?

Kristine DeBell: Absolutely. In the 1980s, along comes the Internet with no filter, and I donated a ‘Meatballs’ poster for a fundraiser for my boy’s school, and a kid Google’d me, and there you have it. There’s all of ‘Alice’, right there, for these middle schoolers to see. My own boys were tormented. I ended up moving to Williamstown, Massachusetts, and not ever telling anyone. I used my married name to protect my kids. No one knew who I was.

I joke now that my oldest probably needs therapy. My boys have just made their peace with it. I said, “Look, we all do crazy things. I was an alcoholic.” I use that as an excuse, but I was wild, whatever. They’re over it, and my little one couldn’t care less. He just goes, “Whatever.”

The reality is we all do things we can’t take back. I have A.D.D. and I will often say something that I can’t take back. It’s the same thing with this film. It’s out there, and I can’t take it back.

How about you? Are you more comfortable with it now?

Kristine DeBell: In my 40s I made these really close girlfriends that I’m still very close with. It felt so odd that there was this whole portion of my life that they didn’t know about. One day, I took them aside and I said, “Girls, I have to tell you something horrible about myself.”

Maybe I didn’t use the world horrible, but I said, “I can’t be friends with you any longer and not share this stuff about me that you don’t know.”

I said, “I made an X-rated film when I was in my 20s” and I told them the whole story. I was worried they wouldn’t like me. And they just said, “We like you even better now.” It was pretty perfect.

Was I wild because I was drinking and using, or was I just wild?

It’s hard to pinpoint. Stuff happens. People do things. I have totally made peace with it. I’ve accepted it. It’s part of my checkered past. It’s made me who I am.

‘Alice in Wonderland’ was circulated as an R-rated version in VHS format by Media Home Entertainment.

The hardcore version was also available on VHS. Both have long been out of print.

In December 2007, Subversive Cinema released a DVD containing the original X-rated and the XXX hardcore version.

‘Alice in Wonderland’ continues to be known as ‘Bill Osco’s Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy’.

 *

6.     Whatever happened to…?

Jason Williams continued to act, direct, and produce into the 1990s, as well as work on an autobiography. In 2014 he made his first Comic-Con appearance to commemorate the 40th anniversary of ‘Flesh Gordon’. He joked that he would probably make more money at the convention than he made starring in ‘Flesh Gordon’ or producing ‘Alice In Wonderland’. Added together.

Kristine DeBell went on to star in ‘Meatballs’ (1979), ‘The Young and the Restless’ (1982), and many other films and television shows.

After taking a two decade break from the film industry to raise a family, she returned to acting with a vengeance in 2012. She is working on a website that will contain much personal information about her career and future activities.

Bill Osco continued to produce films. In 2007, he was credited with writing the book for an Off-Broadway musical based on ‘Alice in Wonderland’ that was staged at the Kirk Theatre in New York City. The show was entitled ‘Alice in Wonderland: An Adult Musical Comedy’ and flyers advertising it were designated ‘For Mature Audiences Only’. The show was set in a trailer park in Weehawken, New Jersey.

Bud Townsend directed three mainstream films before his passing in 1997. Patty ‘Booby’ Townsend died five years earlier.

Bucky Searles continued to write and perform comedy until his death in the 1990s.

Joseph Bardo formed his owned production company and made films with his daughter until his passing in the early 2000s.

Juliet Graham continues to live in New York, and has just completed an autobiography.

Larry Gelman lives in Los Angeles. Now aged 84, he still acts in films on a regular basis.

Terri Hall passed away from cancer in upstate New York in June 2007.

Peter Matz died of lung cancer in 2002.

‘Gila Havana’, or Gela Nash-Taylor (left, with husband, Duran Duran’s John Taylor), presided over the huge success of Juicy Couture, turning the velour tracksuit into a popular trend with celebrities such as Madonna, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton.

The company was acquired by Fifth & Pacific Companies in 2003. Sales at the time were estimated to be in the region of $200 million.

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The post ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (1976):
What really happened? appeared first on The Rialto Report.

When Jamie Gillis passed away in 2010, he left a collection of meticulously organized files.

In amongst personal documents, carefully preserved museum brochures, long-forgotten college essays, and many letters of polite complaints (his correspondence to Dunkin’ Donuts, lamenting their quality of service, is a particular highlight), are many scrapbooks of photographs.

The hundreds of photos come in all formats – black and white Polaroids, color Instamatic snapshots, photo booth strips.

They are nearly all taken by Jamie himself, are mostly of lovers – male and female, and many are sexual in nature. 

They capture intimate and off-guard moments with partners, show casual sexual encounters with anonymous hookers and transsexuals, and document relationships with girlfriends such as actresses Serena, Juliet Graham, and Lysa Thatcher. Often Jamie annotated individual photos with dates and names.

The Rialto Report is pleased to present a selection of these pictures, many of which feature adult film performers of the 1970s.

It is a fascinating, candid, and voyeuristic record of a unique life.

Note: Where the photos were captioned by Jamie, his narrative has been added below the relevant photo.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Serena…

Carter Stevens…

Lesllie Bovee…

Valerie Marron…

Ming Toy…

January 9, 1976

Helen Madigan…

Joe Middleton shoot – March 6, 1973

Jamie Gillis, Self-Portraits…

October 6, 1969

Lorraine Alraune…

Lysa Thatcher…

Lysa Thatcher, 1980

1980

1980

Jean Jennings…

January 1976

Joey Silvera…

Vanessa del Rio…

Unknowns…

August 25, 1973

Sgt Toni, early 1975

July 1973

More Jamie Gillis Self-Portraits…

January 13, 1972

September 1975

September 1976

Juliet Graham (aka Bonnie Schiffer)…

January 1975

May 1975

March 5, 1976

The Photographer…

October 1975

*

The post Jamie Gillis:
His Private Scrapbooks appeared first on The Rialto Report.

We recently published an interview with Lasse Braun that covered the early years of his career – as a distributor of pornography in Europe in the 1960s and a prolific maker of early loops, through to the substantial success of his feature film ‘Penetration’ (aka ‘French Blue’) in 1974.

If he’d never done anything else, his role as one of the most important pioneers of adult cinema would be secure.

However over the next 30 years, Lasse Braun continued to make films – traveling around the world to shoot in a surprising number of different places, including New York, Italy, California, Hong Kong, Ibiza, England, and Utah.

What follows are Lasse’s memories of the second half of his life – including the making of ‘Sensations’ (1975), ‘Body Love’ (1978), and ‘American Desire’ (1981), being exiled from Europe, making videos for Reuben Sturman and ‘Walter Dark’ in the 1980s, shooting soft-core films for cable television, working with Alex De Renzy and Ron Sullivan (‘Henri Pachard’), and introducing his son, the hugely successful Axel Braun, into the adult film industry.

Sadly Lasse Braun passed away on 16^th February 2015 aged 79. We’re pleased to be able to present the second part of this overview as a tribute to the life of a pioneer.

For the first part of the Lasse Braun interview, click here.

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9. ‘Sensations’ (1975)

After distributing his pioneering loops in the United States through Reuben Sturman in the early 1970s, Sturman decline the opportunity to be involved in Lasse Braun’s first feature length film, ‘Penetration / French Blue’ (1974).

Reuben Sturman had the chance to distribute ‘Penetration / French Blue’ (1974) but he’d thought it was too arty and un-erotic for American audiences – so he passed on it. When it turned out to be a big success, what was his reaction?

He was amazed… and a little bit pissed off. I went to see him in Cleveland after the film came out, and we talked about making a big budget 35mm hard core film that would be even bigger than ‘French Blue’.

Reuben Sturman

When you say ‘big budget’, what did you have in mind?

I wanted $250,000. I already knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to make a narrative film, not a documentary like ‘French Blue’, and one that would be very erotic and hard-core. I had a script in mind called ‘Sensations’.

I talked with Daniel Bourla (the American distributor at Variety Films who had been behind ‘French Blue’), and he said that we should take it to the 1975 Cannes festival.

Was Reuben interested this time?

Yes – I asked for $300,000, and he gave me $250,000 in cash for exclusive North American rights in perpetuity. I also gave him the rights to have the world premiere. So I went back to Europe to film it.

Where did you shoot it?

We shot it in different locations like Amsterdam, Dover, Brussels, and Breda. It was the story of the erotic adventures of various people who meet each other by chance. I got Brigitte Maier back to star again because she was a bigger star now because of ‘French Blue’. I also persuaded Tuppy Owens (right), my old friend from Copenhagen to appear as well.

You had a talent for casting striking looking people in your films…

It’s important to find people who are interesting to look at on screen. I liked to have people of all races, all different shapes, and old people too. We used this actor called Robert Le Ray, who had been an actor in some classic French films of the 1940s; he’d been a dancer at the Folies Bergère and he was in his 70s when he became a porn actor!

And you attracted strong crews as well.

We had a lot of notable people who wanted to be involved. Falcon Stuart came back, and also Ian Rakoff who had worked with Lindsay Anderson and on the film ‘Deliverance’ (1972).

Prodcution still from ‘Sensations’ (1975)

How long was the shoot?

We shot for 12 days – starting at the end of January 1975. The final scene was shot back in Breda – which was an orgy scene shot in my bedroom with Brigitte the center of the sexual attention.

It was very tight as we wanted to be ready for the Cannes festival in May. Reuben came over to see us when we were filming in Amsterdam. He was patient and supportive, but we had so much to do that he doubted we were going to finish in time.

How did it turn out?

A masterpiece! It was the best porno I had seen.

Lasse Braun, Brigitte Maier

When did you first show it?

The first showing was a private showing in Amsterdam. We hired a private screening room and invited friends and collaborators. Reuben returned to Amsterdam with his entourage to join us. Everyone went crazy. They stood up and applauded!

I was confident about its success so I personally paid for a double page spread in Variety magazine to publicize it.

And you then took it to Cannes?

Not me personally – I was still banned from entering France… but we got the film into the Olympia Theater for seven midnight showings. Falcon managed the whole operation in Cannes again – just like he did for ‘Penetration’. The irony was that Reuben attended the premiere… The big American pornography king was allowed to watch my film, and not me!

Afterwards Reuben told me a funny story. He was in a car going to the theater on the first night, but they got stuck in bad traffic due to large numbers of police and crowds in the streets. He thought there must have been a terrorist attack or something. In fact it was actually thousands of people who were trying to get to see ‘Sensations’. The cinema held about 1,000 people, but there were probably 10,000 outside! They had been lining up from the middle of the afternoon.

What was the reaction when people saw it?

People liked it. The critics like it. Everybody liked it. One newspaper, the ‘Nice-Matin’ said “Forget the official Cannes awards… ‘Sensations’ is the moral winner of the festival”. David Bowie was interviewed in Playboy and said that ‘Sensations’ was one of the ten films to save in the event of a nuclear war…

The theatrical market for hard core films was smaller in Europe than in the U.S., but ‘Sensations’ was one of the first films to get a general release in cinemas. How did that happen?

We sold the rights in France to a conventional film distributor called Jules Innocenti for $100,000 plus 50% of the box office. Jules wanted to rush it into the theaters to take advantage of the good publicity from Cannes – but we’d promised Reuben that he could show it first in America, so Jules had to wait until later in the year.

How did you transport the print of ‘Sensations’ into America?

With great, great difficulty… I offered to help, but this film was Reuben’s big investment and he wanted to do it his own way. He was this big shot porno businessman but he didn’t realize the difficulties of trying to bring a porn film into his own country.

What did he do?

Amazingly he tried shipping the inter-negative directly into JFK airport. He attached some footage from the 1974 football World Cup to the beginning of each of the nine 35mm film reels hoping that this would disguise the real content! It was a crazy idea…

Did it work?

When Reuben sent someone to pick up the film from JFK, they were told that all the reels had been seized for a few days until the U.S. Customs officials had time to view the content. Reuben went crazy. If they found that the reels were all pornographic, he would lose his investment and be arrested, and they would come after me as well.

I told Reuben to leave it to me. I arranged for a friend of mine to send the U.S. Customs an urgent telex from ‘Belgian Interpol’ – saying that the cargo had been shipped to America by mistake by a Catholic University, and it needed to be returned to Brussels immediately. Amazingly it worked; the U.S. customs sent it back without looking at it!

I then paid a couple of friends $1,000 to bring the film on a flight from Brussels to Montreal, and then to fly to New York. I gave them a fake letter to give to customs if they were asked any questions. The letter said that the film reels were a scientific documentary. My friends were in fact stopped by customs in New York, but they produced the letter, which got them out of any trouble.

Then Brigitte took the film reels with her and flew on to Reuben in Cleveland. He couldn’t believe we’d resolved the problem so quickly. He asked me, “How can I thank you?” I said, “Take out a full page ad in the New York Times for ‘Sensations’!”

It cost him nearly $20,000 but I wanted to make a big statement. It was the last time a porn film was advertised in the Times. Our ‘Sensations’ ad caused such an outrage that they prohibited it after that. It appeared a couple of days before the film’s premiere.

When did ‘Sensations’ premiere in America?

On 4th November 1975. I wasn’t there but it did well, and Reuben was happy to have the film to distribute around the country. He made a lot of money from it.

Your agreement with Reuben didn’t give you any share of the profits, unlike your deal in France where you were getting 50% of the box office. How well did you do from the French release of ‘Sensations’?

Ha! I remember sitting down one night and doing some calculations. Jules Innocenti, the French distributor, had booked the film into about 240 of his theaters in France as soon as the film had premiered in the U.S. This was going to be a big, big release. He told me that over the next three months, he would take in about $40 million – and half of that would be mine.

This would change everything! I started to think about using the money to make a film that would be my life’s dream… I wanted to make a sex film starring a famous actress. This would break down barriers and eliminate all differences between sex films and ‘Hollywood’ films. I thought of Catherine Deneuve. Or Jane Fonda. I would offer them so much money that they couldn’t refuse. The film would make everyone start talking about sex in films, about honesty and hypocrisy, about openness.

Then… catastrophe.

On 30 October 1975, the French government banned any porn film that was made outside France. Just like that. Overnight ‘Sensations’ wasn’t allowed to be shown there. The dreams of my $20 million disappeared.

Why was this law passed?

Probably because the government and film industry had the same realization as I did. That maybe real sex would start to be part of ‘normal’ films, and the French always considered their cinema industry to be too ‘pure’ for that.

Publicity for ‘Sensations’ (1975), with Brigitte Maier

There was nothing that could be done to release the film in France?

Innocenti re-cut ‘Sensations’ and dubbed it so that he could call it a ‘French’ film. Then he released it quietly in about 30 of his smaller cinemas in the south of France. But he’d already spent so much money in publicity… in producing 300 copies of the film, in dubbing costs, in lawyer’s fees… he never made any money. I felt bad for him. This should have been his biggest success.

How about you? Did you end up making money from it?

I couldn’t sell it to the U.K. because of their crazy censorship laws, and Italy and Spain were difficult as well because of the Catholic Church. The only other big market was Germany and I so I sold it there and it did pretty well.

It was more successful than films like ‘Deep Throat’ (1972) and ‘Emmanuelle’ (1974), but overall I didn’t make more than half a million dollars from it. Much less than the $20 million I hoped for…

‘Sensations’ soundtrack album

What effect did this have on you?

Looking back, it was a big crossroad in my life. I started to become discouraged. I’d been fighting the forces of repression for over ten years. We’d made big progress, and I’d made good money – but I wasn’t interested in doing the same thing for ever unless I could break sex into the mainstream industry.

I was approached to make a sequel to ‘Emmanuelle’ called ‘Retour a Roissy’ with Corinne Clery (right), who had been in the successful soft-core adaptation of ‘The Story of O’ (1975). I insisted that it had to be hard-core, but Clery refused so it never happened.

That was the final straw, and I decided to that I need a change my world.

What did you do?

At the end of 1975, I cut back on the staff in my Breda operations. I sold most of the equipment and let people go. It was expensive to have permanent people to look after. I figured that from now on I’d only hire people on a film-by-film basis.

But you were still making series of loops at Breda, just like in the old days?

Yes, but they were mostly being made by other people on a film by film basis – like this great photographer, Gianni de Martiis. He made a series of three films called ‘Big Tits’, and then another series of six called ‘V.I.P.’ He did a great job with those, but my involvement was small.

The last ever series that we made in Breda was called ‘Breda ’76’, and I personally made those.

Was it sad to be winding everything down there after many happy years of having a community of similarly-minded artists?

Not really. I was tired and bored of making the same type of films. By now everyone was making them – especially filmmakers in Holland and Germany.

I created a new company in Germany – called ‘Lasse Braun Productions GmbH’ – to take advantage of our biggest market, and I put a guy called Gerd Wasmund in charge.

Gerd was this small, aloof, ambitious guy, who’s face reminded me of the Nazis I’d seen when I was a kid in Germany. I had big hopes that he’d make the German operations very successful.

What did you want to do next?

In the back of my mind, I wanted to move to a warmer, sexually liberated environment. I liked the idea of Ibiza or California. I thought this would be the next best place to take our sexual fight.

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10. ‘Love Inferno’ and ‘Body Love’ (1976 – 1977)

What do remember about the production of ‘Love Inferno’ (1977)?

As I was selling up in Breda, I was contacted by a German porno company called ‘Love Film’. They’d copied my business model for short films, and had become the biggest producers of Super 8 sex films in Germany so I knew them well.

They were run by this guy, Manfred Menz, who loved ‘Sensations’ and now wanted me to make a similar film with them. I had a script called ‘Love Inferno’ which required a budget of $200,000. Manfred gave me half that, and I put the rest in.

We started shooting in June 1976, but I made the mistake of using a crew that was new to me and I wasn’t happy with the quality of their work.

What do you remember about the star of ‘Love Inferno’ – Catherine Ringer?

I can’t remember how I found her, but she was a theater actress and dancer who was 19 when I met her. She was a strong, forceful, aggressive and headstrong girl, and I fell in love with her thick dark hair, especially in her pubic area. It wasn’t difficult to convince her to appear in a hardcore film because she was such a rebel, an iconoclast, an anarchist.

Catherine Ringer, mid 1970s

Catherine Ringer went on to become a singer, musician, songwriter, dancer, choreographer and mainstream actress. As part of the group ‘Les Rita Mitsouko’, she became one of the most famous singers in France.

I remember after she became famous whenever I turned on my TV… she was singing on every program. She was a force of nature.

She was also in your next film ‘Body Love’ (1978).

And so was ‘Glenda Farrel’ – whose real name was Christine Dunning, a Swiss girl from Geneva. I had such a love affair with her. Incredible girl.

We shot it at this magnificent castle at Groeneveld near Amsterdam in August 1976, which was an incredible location.

Still from ‘Body Love’ (1978)

How did you get permission to film there?

The castle belonged to the state of Holland, but the lady who was ran the property was a big fan of ‘French Blue’ so she let us use it for a week.

‘Body Love’ feels like a more accomplished film than ‘Love Inferno’.

‘Body Love’ is a really good film; I still think that it is my most under-valued movie. It ends with this orgy scene that lasts over 20 minutes that I think works well even today.

It was shot by Peter Sinclair, an excellent cameraman who took the name ‘Peter Focus’ on ‘Body Love’. He became a very successful director of music videos in the 1980s.

Peter Sinclair went on to shoot music videos for AC/DC, Peter Gabriel, and INXS. He shot Madonna’s video for ‘Like a Virgin’ and Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’. He is a currently a cinematographer for British television.

How did the musical score for ‘Body Love’ come about?

Manfred Menz, my financial backer, showed a rough cut to his friend, Klaus Schulze, who was a famous electronic music composer, an ex-member of Tangerine Dream. Klaus is a genius – like a modern day Beethoven – and he called me to say he liked the film, and wanted to compose the soundtrack for it.

The soundtrack album was a successful LP around the world, and helped promote the film.

How did you distribute ‘Body Love’?

We finished the final cut of ‘Body Love’ in November 1976, and whilst we were working on it ‘Stern’ magazine in Germany did a five page article on us. Beate Uhse saw this, and immediately made us an offer to buy the German rights. The money she gave us covered all the production expenses for ‘Body Love’ and ‘Love Inferno’, and also made us a profit – so we accepted immediately.

Beate Uhse (1919 – 2001) was a German pilot and entrepreneur. The only female stunt pilot in Germany in the 1930s, after World War II she started the first sex shop in the world. The company she started, Beate Uhse AG, went on to be listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

How successful was ‘Body Love’?

It was pretty good. We premiered it in January 1977 in Hamburg, and then showed it at the Cannes Festival in May 1977. Unfortunately the film broke during the projection – and I took that as a sign, as a divine message… that I should start to do something new.

Having closed up the Breda studio, you made your final series of loops in London – a series of eleven films called ‘London ‘77’. Censorship in the United Kingdom was particularly severe throughout the 1970s and 80s, so did you experience any difficulties?

The biggest difficulty was just entering the country! I flew into Heathrow in February 1977, and the customs officers took me aside and searched me.

And what did your baggage contain this time?!

I had £50,000 in cash, and lots of sex toys that I was going to use in the London films…

Like what?

I had ropes, dildos, paddles, harnesses, strap-ons, nipple clamps, chains… I had everything!

And what was the reaction of customs?

They asked me what the purpose of every individual item was, so I demonstrated to them how to use them all! They were laughing throughout my presentation.

Did they know who you were?

Yes – and they figured out that I was coming to the country to make sex films, but they couldn’t arrest me for my intentions, so in the end they let me go.

How did you make the films?

I had all my favorite British collaborators help me. Falcon Stuart was the production manager, Peter Sinclair came to work the camera, and Vivienne Westwood helped me do the casting…

(Dame) Vivienne Westwood is an English fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream. In 1977 she came to public notice making clothes for Malcolm McLaren‘s boutique in the King’s Road, which became famous as “SEX”.

Vivienne Westwood (right, with Malcolm McLaren)

How did Vivienne Westwood come into the picture?

She’d been friends with me for a few years. I liked her fashions, and she loved the kinky S&M aspects of the films I’d made. When I arrived in London, I lived in Blake’s Hotel in Kensington, and I held casting sessions there. She sent over all the girls that we used – who mostly came from the punk fashion scene.

How did the shoot in England go?

We had a good time – and shot all eleven loops throughout the month of March 1977. These were technically the best short films we ever made because of the standard of the English crew.

My favorite was called ‘English Schoolgirls’ – which was a shocking film because of an extraordinary golden shower scene… which cost me an extra $50!

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11. Moving to America: Alex De Renzy, the Mitchell Brothers and the West Coast adult film scene (1978 – 1980)

How did you end up living in the United States?

I’d made a medical documentary about a new drug, and there was a chance to show it on TV in Los Angeles. I flew over and moved in with Brigitte Maier at Lavelle (Roby’s) house in Hollywood.

What was the nature of your relationship with Brigitte?

Brigitte was like my best friend… a conspirator in love and sex. She would find me girlfriends and partners, and set up wild nights of love. She did everything for me. We had many good times. We shared the same philosophy in life – that sex should be free and without strings.

I encouraged her to make more porn films in California because she was a big name now. She could have made a lot of money, but she wasn’t interested.

Brigitte Maier

Let’s back-track a little; what passports were you holding at this point? My understanding was that you had a French passport because of your place of birth – but you were barred from entering France. And you had an Italian passport because of the nationality of your parents – but were not able to return to Italy as well?

Ha! It was complicated. I’d been living in Holland for years and traveling with my Italian passport. However that was about to expire while I was in Los Angeles. And if that happened I’d be repatriated back to Italy – where I’d be arrested for my ‘pornography crimes’… so I had to stay in America.

My lawyer advised me to get married to an American girl.

Brigitte?

No – I tried but she didn’t have an American passport. She’d been in the United States from an early age, but she only had a green card.

So I met a girl at a party, and married her in Las Vegas a few days later. That was in June 1978. That was my second wife and it only lasted a few days, but it was good enough to give me the legal papers to stay in the country. I didn’t get a U.S. passport but I got permission to stay in the country.

Where did you live?

I got a house in Point Dume in Malibu, and lived there with Brigitte. It was near Goldie Hawn’s house, and Bob Dylan lived nearby as well.

How did that work out?

It was a great place to live but I felt like an exile in California for a few years because I couldn’t travel without a passport. I kept my location a secret from my European business partners because I still feared deportation back to Italy.

What did you do in Point Dume?

I wrote, became a Buddhist, studied philosophy and anthropology, and spent time with Lavelle and Brigitte and other women. I also worked as a Professor of Media Analysis at San Diego University for two semesters.

And I met and spent time with many of the California erotic filmmakers.

Who did you become friends with?

I stayed with the Mitchell Brothers and met Annette Haven there. She was the most beautiful woman I could imagine, and I decided to use her when I next made a film.

I became especially close with John Leslie and Ron Sullivan.

Ron Sullivan (and friend)

You had left behind a large business in Europe – especially in Germany that was being managed by Gerd Wasmund. If you weren’t traveling back to oversee it, how difficult was it to control it?

Not easy, and I found I was being cheated by Wasmund.

How did that happen?

He changed his name to ‘Mike Hunter’, and started selling all the Lasse Braun films from his company ‘Mike Hunter Productions’. He sold my films at a lower cost, so no one was buying films from my company any more. It was like he was bootlegging from us – but he used my own original negatives and prints!

He even put made his own ‘Lasse Braun’ films by combining some of my short films, and filming some additional footage to connect them together.

So your income dried up from Europe?

Not only that, but then the negatives disappeared from the lab where they were being stored. And after that the ‘Lasse Braun’ empire collapsed in a few months. Everything I had worked on disappeared, and I couldn’t go back to Europe to fix it. It was a frustrating, difficult time.

To make matters worse, my father died whilst I was in Malibu as well so I never got to see him again.

And the root cause for this was basically because you couldn’t renew your passport in France and Italy as a result of the charges against you?

Yes – the governments were victorious in the end, and they shut my business down.

How were the charges against you in Italy eventually resolved?

In the late 1970s, Italy brought in an amnesty for people who had charges outstanding against them. I still had to apply for this amnesty to a judge in Italy who refused to process my case unless I sent him a bribe. He thought I still had all the profits from the films.

In the end I gave him 100 million lire (about $60,000) and I was free to return to Italy from 1980. It was the first time I’d been able to visit for many years.

Did you leave California at that point?

Yes – I needed to get back into business and make money, so I re-located back to Europe. I moved Brigitte into a friend’s apartment and told her that I’d be back soon. I didn’t tell her the truth because I knew that she’d be too emotional, but that was the last time we lived together.

One of the first things I did was to go to Germany to visit Gerd Wasmund, who’d been making money from the Lasse Braun films, to get my money back.

Was that difficult?

The strange thing was that I actually liked Wasmund. He was smart, hard-working, and a good businessman. I was angry that he had stolen from me but I didn’t hate him. But I need money, so I took a friend who pretended to be a mafia hitman, and we had a gun that we used to intimidate Wasmund with. Wasmund ended up giving me about $100,000 back.

Gerd Wasmund

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12. ‘American Desire’ (1980 – 81)

The adult film business had changed since you’d been away – such as the introduction of videocassettes. Were you able to take advantage of this?

Yes – one of the first things I did was to put ‘French Blue’, ‘Sensations’, ‘Body Love’ and ‘Love Inferno’ on videocassette so I could start making money again. I even re-hired Wasmund to help me with this in Germany!

Did you get any offers to make more films?

Yes, first I got an offer to make a 16mm film in Hong Kong called ‘Lust’. I insisted on having Annette Haven as the star, and Peter Sinclair as my cameraman. We flew out to Hong Kong together and filmed for a few days but the rest of the financing fell through, so we came back.

Then I was approached by Beate Uhse’s son, Ulli Rotermund, and his business partner Edi Stockli, to make a 35mm film in America, that they could sell on video.

Was this ‘American Desire’ (1981)?

Yes. They offered me a budget of $150,000 and a $30,000 fee to me.

Was it frustrating not making the films for ‘Lasse Braun Productions’ anymore – and therefore not have complete control?

I was frustrated not being the ‘boss’ any more, but I told Ulli that I would only do it if I had complete creative control. He had no problem with that.

You chose to film it in New York. Why was that?

I was attracted to the New York adult industry, which I thought was more interesting than the West Coast at that time. They had some interesting talent and were making good films.

How did you put the production together?

I arrive in New York at the end of August 1980, and I took an apartment at the Mayflower on Columbus Circle.

I hired Carel Rowe who came to me as a fan. She helped me write the script, and found good locations on Long Island, Manhattan and in Connecticut.

She was also well-connected on the adult film scene, and she introduced me to Jack Malick who’d been part of the team that won the Oscar for Special Visual Effects for ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968). He was the cinematographer on the film.

How did you choose the performers?

‘American Desire’ had more plot than most porn films, so I wanted to choose people who were actually good with dialogue. I got R. Bolla, George Payne, and Alan Clement, who had all done proper acting.

R Bolla, Lysa Thatcher on the set of ‘American Desire’ (1981)

I also made friends with Roy Stuart who took me to this S&M club called ‘Castle of O’ with hundreds of men in the audience. Roy took part in the show there and was immense, so I gave him the part of the rapist in the film.

Roy did the music for the film as well. He’s a fantastically talented man, and went on to be a world famous artistic photographer.

How about the female parts?

Roy introduced me to Lysa Thatcher who was only 18 but somehow seemed even younger.

Lasse Braun, Lysa Thatcher on the set of ‘American Desire’ (1981)

Then I got an invitation from an actress, Mai Lin, to go to dinner with her. She arrived in a limousine and she looked incredibly beautiful. We had a brief love affair that started in the limo on the way back to the Mayflower… She was keen to have a part in the film so I was happy in include her.

How about the starring role?

I wanted Candida Royalle or Veronica Hart because they were both beautiful and could act. In the end I chose Veronica. I’m pleased that I chose her because she met her future husband, Michael Serigliano, on the set, as he was the lighting director.

Veronica was in the rape scene with Roy, which was controversial at the time. But what people didn’t realize was that it was the only scene that was actually soft core. The audience was convinced that they had seen a penetration scene but it wasn’t hard-core – which was a tribute to the cinematography and the editing.

The film looked great. It was technically well made and I liked it.

Lysa Thatcher in ‘American Desire’ (1981)

How was the film received?

Edi Stockli took the film to the Cannes film festival in 1981, and the critics liked it. When it came out in the theaters in Europe it did well. I remember seeing that it made more money than the Indiana Jones movie in Germany one week!

Were the producers, Edi and Ulli, interested in financing other films with you?

They weren’t sure if there was a theatrical market for films like mine any more. They gave me $50,000 to make a cheap 16mm film called ‘Un Folle Amore’ (1981).

I went to Rome to make it, and I hired Laura Levi, who was the top porno star there at the time, to be the star.

Were you concerned about making an X-rated film in Italy – just after you’d been given an amnesty?

…and it was still technically illegal to make a porn film in Italy! I chose to film it in August 1981 – because the summer in Italy is dead, and the police disappear completely… We had no problems.

How did you deal with a much lower budget?

It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t up to the normal Lasse Braun standard. The budget was too small.

In fact Edi and Ulli didn’t like it. They released it in Germany with the stupid name ‘Italo Sex’, and they decided that they would stop investing in new films. A few years later it was re-issued with another name on video, so they made their money back.

I decided that until I could work with proper budgets, I would stop as well.

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13. Reuben Sturman and the Video Age (1982 – 1990)

So what did you do in the early 1980s?

I made deals to get my films released on videocassette. Then I got married for the third time, this time to an American photographer who hated pornography. I travelled around the world – and lived in Paris, Greece and other places. I invested in a few TV and film projects but they came to nothing… and then my money started to run out.

Lasse Braun, 1983

What did you do?

I went back to my old friend Reuben Sturman. I met him in New York in 1985, and he offered me a deal to make six films on video. He had a partnership with Walter Gernert (aka Walter Dark).

Walter Genert, had founded VCA Pictures with Russell Hampshire, and subsequently, as ‘Walter Dark’ and one half of the Dark Brothers, produced successful shot-on-video films, such as ‘Black Throat’ (1985), ‘Let Me Tell Ya ‘Bout Black Chicks’ (1985) and ‘New Wave Hookers’ (1985).

Reuben and Walter were excited about how cheap it was to make video films. I hadn’t had any experience of it, and I didn’t like the idea of my films not being shown in theaters. They were insistent that it would be a good experience.

What was the deal they offered you?

They wanted me to make six feature length films on video for $150,000. They would give me a fee of $30,000 plus travel and accommodation expenses to shoot them all in New York. I also asked for the videocassette distribution rights in Germany – because I knew I could make a lot more money there.

What about creative control?

I could do whatever I wanted. I could hire whoever I wanted. Actually I ended asking Reuben and Walter for an experienced production manager because I knew that the FBI would be trying to bust me for anything. I wanted someone else to hire the actors, make payments, etc. and I was especially concerned about hiring girls from California and then bring them across state lines for ‘immoral purposes’, which was a crime in the United States.

Who did they recommend?

They got me Ron Dorfman (aka Art Ben) – a bearded New Yorker who’d been shooting porn films for ten years in New York. He and his wife had a home / office on the Upper West Side. Art knew everyone and made things happen quickly.

How much time did you have?

It was crazy. Reuben and Walter made me the offer at the end of June 1985, and they wanted the films by mid-September!

In July I wrote all the scripts myself, and then I had to cast all the parts.

Who do you remember from the casting process?

Let’s see – Kristara Barrington was so beautiful; she was an American / Korean girl with a great body that we flew in from California. And we brought in Stacey Donovan as well. Both of them were well known porn stars.

My favorite was Siobhan Hunter. She was from upstate New York, and was working as a call girl in the city. She hadn’t made porn films before. She had a lot of class.

I also brought in reliable guys like Paul Thomas and Joey Silvera for the male leads.

Siobhan Hunter (photo courtesy of Barbara Nitke)

How easy did you find it to work with video compared to film?

I used two JVC Betacam cameras at the same time; they were the same ones that TV crews used at that time. It was a lot quicker to make a film on video, but I still didn’t like the appearance of it.

We shot the first three in New York in seven days – that was ‘Secret Mistress’, ‘Flasher’, and ‘Young Nympho’.

Then we shot the remaining three (‘Temptations of the Flesh’, ‘Deep and Wet’ and ‘Hidden Fantasies’) in three days in a big house in New Jersey.

Then Art and I edited them, added music, and I gave them to Reuben and Walter on budget and on time.

It was hard work.

Did you make much money for them in Germany?

I sold them straight away for about $50,000 – so it was a profitable summer.

I wish the quality of the films had been higher, but Reuben was happy.

Did this success make you want to direct more video features?

I wasn’t in love with video like I had been with film. With film I was always hungry to do another project. With video, it was interesting but it wasn’t a passion any more.

For the next five years, I lived in Italy. I got a new girlfriend, fell in love, made new friends, wrote some screenplays.

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14. Return to California, and ‘Fantasy Nights’

Did you get offers to make films during the late 1980s?

Yes, but they usually had difficulties with the financing.

Then in 1990, an Italian company, Top Line, asked me to make two features on video. They wanted me to go to California and use the biggest stars of the porn scene there.

And they really had the money?

Of course not! But I only found this out later.

Most films were being made for less than $50,000, but I asked Top Line for $120,000 because I wanted to make something much better than the six New York films that I made in 1985.

Did they give you the full $120,000?

They gave me the first part of it, about $50,000. Enough to get started. I had two scripts: ‘Fantasy Nights’ and ‘Midnight Woman’.

You hadn’t lived in California since the 1970s so who helped you put the overall production together?

My old friend Ron Sullivan, who had become a successful director called ‘Henri Pachard’ did most of the directing, and John Leslie, who was also starting to be a successful director, was very helpful as well.

Ron and John were good friends with Alex De Renzy so we shot everything at Alex’s house in Novato, CA, and Alex was the cameraman as well.

I flew my son Alessandro (‘Ale’) over to be my assistant, and he lived in a room in Ron Sullivan’s office.

I’d met him in 1980, but during this time I got to know him well.

What was your relationship like?

He was proud of me and respected my achievements in film. He looked up to me. I liked him – he’s fit, good-looking, and intelligent. He picked things up very quickly and was eager to learn. He had passion as well – just like me when I was young. He studied martial arts and once or twice got into fights defending people. He’s a strong guy… We started giving him the porn name Axel Braun on this production.

You assembled quite an illustrious production team for ‘Fantasy Nights’.

Yes – we had the best filmmakers from the 1970s – Alex De Renzy and myself. Ron was the best from the 80s, and John Leslie was the best-selling director in the 90s. And then Ale… he’s become the best director in the world today.

What do you remember about Alex De Renzy?

De Renzy (right) became a very good friend. He was incredibly talented and had done everything it was possible to do in the industry. Like me he’d started with loops, and then made some of the best 35mm features ever. Alex and I were always happy to see each other.

He had this great house in Novato, which is where he shot films like ‘Pretty Peaches’ and ‘Baby Face’. His family was there, his office was there, and he made his movies there. It was great.

His wife Carol was talented as well, and she helped him on all his productions.

You were also able to get a very high profile cast.

I wanted one of each type of girl, so we had Viper who was a red head, Samantha Strong who was blonde, Rachel Ryan (brown), Jeanny Pepper (black), and for the actors we got Jon Dough, Jamie Gillis, Joey Silvera, Tom Byron, Jerry Butler, Rick Savage – and John Leslie too, though we cut his scene from the final version.

We shot in Spring 1990.

So did the rest of the money come through from the Italians?

No, it didn’t come through until it was too late. I wasn’t able to make both films, so in the end ‘Midnight Woman’ just became the soft version of ‘Fantasy Nights’.

I was angry as hell. I was risking a lot – my reputation and my money – so, instead of giving the finished film to Top Line, I kept it for myself.

What did you do with it?

I sold the U.S. rights to Russ Hampshire at VCA and the French rights to Marc Dorcel.

After ‘Fantasy Nights’, you got back into making films again.

I was having fun. In the early days of my life, I was on a mission to change the world. Now I enjoyed the journey more.

I went to Ibiza and made six video films in six days for Gerd Wasmund starring Carol Lynn. They were for the German market so he wanted them to be hardcore and very kinky. I got Ale to come over and be my assistant again. I got $50,000 for the week’s work, and I got the Italian distribution rights. They were called ‘Ibiza Dreams’, ‘Hotel Bizarre‘, ‘Ibiza Sex Mafia’…

And you also did your first soft-core work for television?

Yes. The money was too good to ignore.

I shot a five part series called ‘Hot Bet’ in Rome in 1991, then eight episodes of a show called ‘Diamonds’ in London and Amsterdam in 1992. We sold them to many, many countries including the Playboy Channel in the United States. They made a lot of money.

This was a time when there was a real market for soft-core films on cable TV around the world, such as channels like Cinemax.

… and I saw that, so I went back to California to make a few soft-core films. I went to see Alex De Renzy in Novato and we agreed to collaborate on three films that I had scripts for. They were called ‘Blame It On The Vodka’ (1992), ‘French Bath’ (1992), and ‘Michelle’ (1993).

Lasse Braun and Alex De Renzy working together on a series of films!

This was the big collaboration between the two pioneers of XXX! I would produce them, cast them, and finance them, and he would direct them. Historic! We made all three for $120,000.

It’s ironic that when the two of you finally worked together it was on films that were soft core…

That’s where the money was at the time. We could sell the soft films internationally to so many countries, so we made much more money.

And we kept Alex’s involvement secret by using a pseudonym, ‘Alec Edwards’, so that his porno notoriety wouldn’t affect potential buyers. People still don’t realize that we made those films together.

Were you present on set when he made these films?

No, whilst Alex was making the three films at his house, I got $180,000 to make two other soft-core films – ‘Tender Blue Eyes’ (1992) and ‘First Love’ (1992). I went to Utah and shot them in Park City and Salt Lake City.

Who was financing these American soft-core films?

Horst Peter in Germany financed all of the soft-core work I did. He’d bought my films in the early days, and then went on to run a German sex empire.

Did you ever have any contact with Reuben Sturman in the 1990s?

The last time I saw Reuben was at one of his Doc Johnson stores in North Hollywood. He was preparing to go to jail because he was suspected of bombing a sex store owner that he was in dispute with. Plus he had been arrested for tax evasion.

I considered him my oldest and most respected friend from the early days. I knew I probably wouldn’t see him again. I was very sad and we hugged and said goodbye.

I cried a few years later in 1997 when I heard he’d died. He was the most important person for me and my career. I loved him.

Reuben Sturman in prison, mid 1990s

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15. Lasse Braun and Axel: The Braun ‘Dynasty’

For the final films of your career, you went back to hardcore. How did this come about?

Part of the motivation was that I wanted to create a ‘Braun’ dynasty that would be continued by my son, Ale. We actually shot a series of gonzo films in Budapest that I called ‘MasterSex’. It was like ‘French Blue’ – because I acted as the director in them. I was shown picking girls up and explaining what I wanted them to do with the actors.

Then I went to Russ Hampshire at VCA and he offered us $30,000 to make a 90 minute video feature. He said I could do whatever I wanted to as long as there were no nuns or priests, rape or S&M, golden showers, or anything like that. He remembered my European loops, and he knew me well!

Ale and I wrote ‘Uncontrollable Lust’ (1997) together.

My plan was for Ale and I to develop a ‘Braun’ production house that would be funded by VCA and would make many films for them. I had lots of scripts ready to film, and I was also thinking of making a sequel to ‘Sensations’. It would be a father and son business.

Axel Braun

How did you share production duties with Ale on ‘Uncontrollable Lust’?

We each had a Sony camcorder, and we both filmed all the action. I was effectively the first cameraman, he was the second.

Casting was easier nowadays than when you started…

You bet – we had Jim South! He provided us with a lot of people, and we cast Stephanie Swift, Chelsea Blue, and Roxanne Hall.

Despite all your many years of experience, this was your first ‘conventional’ hardcore feature in the United States – how did it turn out?

It was a hot film. We had a dp with Stephanie Swift (right) that was very erotic. It ended up being 120 minutes long, but Russ like it and so I started talking with VCA about more films that Ale and I could make.

The problem was that Ale then cut his own deal with VCA behind my back to make two films by himself in Europe, and he left without telling me anything.

What was your reaction?

With the ‘Axel Braun’ name, I knew that he’d be successful but it stopped my dreams of creating a Braun dynasty. I was disappointed because I knew that we’d be able to make more money my way.

What did you do?

I waited for him to come back. I thought he’d be back soon, but he didn’t come back for a couple of years.

I didn’t want to lose sight of the big picture so I just waited for him.

I became friends with Reuben Sturman’s son David, who had his own company, General Video of America. He offered me $150,000 to make three features, so I made ‘Night and Day’ (1998), and then ‘Intrigue’ (1998) and ‘Possession’ (1998) back to back with the same cast and locations.

Lasse Braun, Christina Angel on the set of ‘Possession’ (1998)

And these films were made without Ale?

Yes – Ale was in Europe making his own films for VCA.

Was David Sturman as good a partner as his father had been?

Not really. He insisted on using these older, heavier Betacam video cameras and taking $8,000 for them out of the budget. It was already difficult to make the films with such small budgets, so when I finished them I also ended my relationship with David.

These were your final films?

Yes. Ale came back from Europe and he’d formed ‘Axel Braun Productions’. He’d become a good director and was having a great time making films. I was just happy that he was doing well and I realized that my plans for a ‘Braun’ dynasty weren’t right for him at that time in his life. We spent time together and our relationship was good.

I heard that you all appeared on the Jerry Springer show at that time. Is that true?!

Yes, that was Ale’s girlfriend’s idea. We arranged for her to appear with Ale, and for her to declare that she had fallen in love with me, her stepfather. Then I came on stage and we all argue. It worked out well. It was funny.

By now you’re considered a senior citizen of the adult industry, and a documentary was made about your life called ‘I Was the King of Porn… The Adventurous Life of Lasse Braun’ (2003). What did you think of it?

It was ok. The first part was reasonable, but it was not very professionally done, and in the second half they added interviews with people that I asked them not to include.

Like who?

Gerd Wasmund for example.

What have you been doing since you stopped making films?

Mainly writing. I write every day. I published my masterwork ‘Lady Caligula’ and have published many other books since then.

How do you view your contribution to creation of the adult film industry?

Quality was always my driver – it depressed me when this fell away.

Once porn became an industry, there was no way that it could be creatively relevant any more. I liked it best when you had to take risks and be dangerous. It’s no longer a form of art. That is sad. We could have done more.

I was the first, I was the original. For a time, I was the king of Porn.

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Lasse Braun passed away on February 16, 2015.

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The post Lasse Braun Interview – Part 2:
The American Years appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Jim South didn’t act in many adult films, and certainly didn’t take part in any sex scenes.

He didn’t direct, produce, or finance many movies either.

But if you watch any film made in Los Angeles since the mid 1970s, the chances are that Jim South was intimately involved in who you’re actually watching on-screen.

For years his company, World Modeling, supplied talent to the adult film industry. Actresses would converge there from all over the country for a chance to be cast in X-rated films. The agency represented adult stars such as Shauna Grant, Marc Wallice, Ginger Lynn, Savannah, Katie Gold, and Christy Canyon. His office was a hive of activity, always at the center of things. His huge casting calls were legendary, as were the picture books that he meticulously kept with Polaroids of every actress taken on the day they turned up in his office for the first time.

His agency was successful and profitable, but not without controversy. He had to weather all kinds of storms – the police had him under surveillance, he was arrested for pimping and pandering on several occasions, several high profile actresses that he got started in the industry committed suicide, he was charged over the underage Traci Lords scandal, and rivalries with other agencies sometimes spilled into physical violence. Somehow Jim survived. Maybe being an Irish, right wing Republican from Texas had something to do with it.

Over the years the adult film industry changed, people changed, and social networking replaced the old order, but Jim South is still in business. The golden days may have gone but he remains the same. He’s still out there, looking for the next girl, the next breakout star.

He’s one of the last of the original dinosaurs, and this is his story.

This episode running time is 72 minutes.

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Jim South’s World Modeling’s website is here.

Jim South (with actress Lucky Starr)

The post Jim South: The Last Agent
Podcast 49 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Following our article on the mansion used in The Story of Joanna (1975) and Through The Looking Glass (1976), this time we look at the restaurant and bar used in countless New York adult films, One if by Land, Two if by Sea.

The venue has changed remarkably little since it was used as a film location in the 1970s and 1980s. We look at two films where it was featured: Armand Weston‘s Take Off (1978) and Chuck Vincent‘s MisBehavin (1978), and feature photos from then and now.

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We were recently sat at the bar of One If By Land, Two If By Sea, a West Village restaurant located at 17 Barrow Street (between Seventh Avenue South and West 4th Street).

It has a long and storied past, and operates inside a historic carriage house built in 1767. It was subsequently purchased by Aaron Burr, the third Vice President of the United States (1801–1805) in 1794 and is still rumored to be haunted by his ghost. In the 1830s, the former residence was converted into a pub and brothel, before eventually becoming a restaurant in 1910.

Today it is often cited as being the most romantic restaurant in New York City, and is also noted for its signature dish, Beef Wellington.

In the 1970s, the owners became friendly with film director John Amero who lived in the neighborhood and drank there regularly between film shoots. Ever keen to find new locations for his films, he negotiated with them to use the restaurant out-of-hours. He also told fellow filmmakers, such as Armand Weston and Chuck Vincent, about this, and the location became both a regular haunt for the filmmakers and a location for their films.

Take Off (1978):

Wade Nichols descends the stairs at the ‘Blue Falcon’, 1978

Wade Nichols at the bar of the ‘Blue Falcon’, 1978

Wade Nichols confronted in ‘Take Off‘, 1978

The ‘Blue Falcon’, 2015

MisBehavin’ (1978):

Jack Wrangler and Kurt Mann in the restaurant, 1978

Jack Wrangler looks up to Eric Stanhope, 1978

The location, 2015

The location, 2015

Lesllie Bovee descends to meet Jack Wrangler, 1978

The location, 2015

Lesllie Bovee and Eric Stanhope, 1978

Lesllie Bovee, Eric Stanhope and Molly Malone, 1978

Lesllie Bovee, 1978

Lesllie Bovee addresses the camera, 1978

Lesllie Bovee‘s table, 2015

The credits to ‘Misbehavin’‘, 1978

One if by Land, Two if by Sea, 2015

The post New York adult film locations 2:
One If By Land, Two If By Sea appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Michelle Maren’s life has been eventful, surprising and difficult.

So much so that she has recently finished a documentary, ‘An Autobiography of Michelle Maren’ which she co-directed with award-winning filmmaker, Michel Negroponte. The film is starting to appear in film festivals around the country.

It recounts her troubled beginnings as a victim of abuse and domestic violence. By the age of 17 in 1979, she was homeless, living on the streets of New York, spending her days in Times Square and her nights in flophouses. The next years were a bewildering blur: she won the Miss Big Apple beauty contest and for a while was Tiny Tim’s support act. She worked in a succession of jobs – an increasing number of them in the sex industry, from sexual surrogate, go-go dancer, escort, and as a model in men’s magazines.

And all that was before Michelle even entered the adult film industry. In 1984, she starred in Gerard Damiano’s ‘Deep Throat’ sequel ‘Throat… 12 Years After’ (1984), and had parts in Henri Pachard’s ‘Public Affairs’ (1983), the ‘Flashdance’ adult film spoof ‘Flash Pants’ (1983), and others.

She stopped making films as mental illness and depression threatened to engulf her, and started her journey to recovery. For years lived she lived quietly, privately, virtually cut off from the outside world. Which makes her documentary all the more startling. It’s a remarkably open and brutally honest telling of her story.

On today’s episode, Michelle looks back and remembers her years in New York and her time making adult films.

Brace yourself.

This episode’s running time is 90 minutes.

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Michelle Maren:

Visit Michelle Maren’s blog here

Visit Michelle Maren’s Facebook page here

Visit Michelle Maren’s Google + page here

Michelle Maren, Miss Big Apple 1981

Michelle Maren, Miss Big Apple 1981

Michelle Maren, Miss Big Apple 1981

Anco Theatre, 254 West 42nd Street – with Flash Pants picture

Anco Theater, New York

Michell Maren today

The post Michelle Maren: A Reluctant Star
Podcast 50 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

What happens when an Oscar-nominated director makes a documentary film about a cult actress from the early years of the adult film industry?

Barry Spinello made ‘A Film About Sharon’ about Sharon Thorpe in 1975 – the same year he made the Academy Award-nominated short ‘A Day in the Life of Bonnie Consolo’. He’s a talented director with a unique style, and the unsentimental compassion he has for his subjects.

In between making a series of documentary shorts, Spinello also cut his teeth making ‘Bizarre Devices’ (1973) and ‘Massage Parlor Wife’ (1975) – one of Serena’s first films, two of the more interesting soft-core films of the era.

As for Sharon Thorpe, star of films such as ‘3 A.M.’ (1975) and ‘Coming Attractions’ (1976), she remains one of the reasons we were inspired to started The Rialto Report.

So what of ‘A Film About Sharon’? Why has it almost disappeared from circulation? And is it the best documentary about the business that you’ve never seen?

The Rialto Report speaks to the film’s director, Barry Spinello, to find out more.

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1. Beginnings

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. Barry Spinello attended Midwood High School where he was president of the band and orchestra and co-captain of the track team. He was a child radio actor on WNYE and WNYC FM, in New York City.

How did you become interested in film?

I went to Columbia University in 1962 and studied English, music and painting. Then I won a scholarship to the architecture school there, but I left after two years to study painting independently in Florence, Italy. When I returned I started making experimental animation.

I’ve had three careers: Experimental animation, documentary portraits about people, and feature films.

How did you come to make the film ‘Bizarre Devices’ in 1973?

In the early 1970s I was in San Francisco, a lawyer called me and asked me to make a documentary about a man named Dave Harvey, who’d been in a serious traffic incident. It was due to come trial within two weeks, and so he asked me to make a film about Dave before the trial. I made ‘A Day in the Life of Dave Harvey’ (1972) to show what it was like being a paraplegic. They showed it out of court, and he won the largest settlement at that time.

One of the things Dave Harvey wanted to do with his money was to fund a feature film.

I’d just collaborated with a guy named Paul Aratow, and made an educational film called ‘Film Graphics: Abstract Aspects of Editing’ (1973). It had been a positive experience, so the two of us co-produced and co-directed a film called ‘Bizarre Devices’ (1973).

Experienced San Francisco filmmaker, Paul Aratow, had worked in film in various capacities – including being the cinematographer on Alex De Renzy’s ‘Weed’ (1971).

What do you remember about the production of ‘Bizarre Devices’?

‘Bizarre Devices’ was a soft X, sort of sexploitation type film. Not that it was a bad effort, it was fine. The theme was there was a radio talk show, and people would call in and describe their experiences with bizarre sexual devices.

The budget of ‘Bizarre Devices’ was $70,000. It had pretty high production values. Paul Aratow’s cousin, a guy named Robbie Greenberg, shot it – he went on to have a big career as a cinematographer in Hollywood. Scott Beach and Terry McGovern, who were quasi-noted actors in the San Francisco area, were in starring roles.

Scott Beach and Terry McGovern were also in ‘American Graffiti’ (1973) that same year, and both went on to work with George Lucas on episodes of ‘Star Wars’ amongst other films.

I took ‘Bizarre Devices’ to Harry Novak to distribute it. Harry was great. He took it and said, “Yes, I want this film.” Unfortunately I couldn’t give it to him, because Dave Harvey and Paul Aratow decided to do something else with it. So instead Harry Novak says, “I’ll tell you what. If you bring me a different project tomorrow, I’ll fund it.”

Was that project ‘Massage Parlor Wife’?

Yes, I was walking home. I looked in the window of a porno bookstore, and I saw a book with the title ‘Massage Parlor Wife’. I never even bought the book. I went home and wrote a treatment called ‘Massage Parlor Wife’. Harry Novak gave me $35,000 to make it in Berkeley with me producing, directing, editing, gophering, basically doing everything.

‘Massage Parlor Wife’ (1975) was one of the first films starring future adult film star Serena (credited as Jen Gillian).

How did you come across Serena?

I put out a casting notice at UC Berkley, and I had a girl who really wanted to be in the film. I was rehearsing her to star in the film when I got a call from Harry Novak, and he said, “I’m sending a girl named Serena down. She’s going to be a star. She’s in it. The other one’s out.” I got off the phone and I had to let this poor girl go.

What do you remember about the production of ‘Massage Parlor Wife’

‘Massage Parlor Wife’ wasn’t a hardcore film. It wasn’t my intention to make an explicit film. Harry tried to push me to make it harder core. In fact there was one scene in the movie that I didn’t even put in. After I left Harry inserted the scene to make it a more hard core.

I didn’t like the experience of making Massage Parlor Wife. It was real hard work. It was ten days and we still hadn’t finished so I went to Harry and I said, “I need another day, an eleventh day.” Eleven days was an eternity for a movie shoot. Anyway he gave me the day, and then I went and edited it for four months in Los Angeles in his studio.

I then forgot about it. I didn’t realize that ‘Massage Parlor Wife’ was such a good film. I’ve had no connection to it. Since them I’ve seen people write about it. I was told by Harry Novak’s bookkeeper that it grossed over a million dollars for him.

2. ‘A Day in the Life of Bonnie Consolo’ (1975)

What did you work on next?

In 1975 I made a short documentary film, ‘A Day in the Life of Bonnie Consolo’.

Bonnie J. Consolo was a Kentucky native who was born without hands or arms. She tried artificial arms but found them uncomfortable and never acclimated to them.

Her life captured the attention of the American media in the 1970s when Spinello’s documentary was released. At the time, she was a housewife living in Columbus, Ohio.

The film received an Academy Award nomination in 1976 for Live Action Short Film. The release of the film also led Mike Wallace of CBS’s 60 Minutes news program to interview Consolo for the program. The segment became one of the program’s most popular interviews, and went on to become one of the show’s most heavily requested repeat segments.

What was your approach in making this film?

As with all my documentary films, they’re based on the person themselves. I consider them portraits of people, so I would interview the person, usually just with a tape recorder, and then understand everything about their life.

I wanted to show that Bonnie was like any other suburban housewife and mother. She had children, goes grocery shopping, and does everything that a woman in her position would do.

The trailer for ‘A Day in the Life of Bonnie Consolo’ (1975):

Did you go to the Oscar ceremony?

Yes, and I was nominated again for another Academy Award a few year later for another film, ‘Erica: Not in Vain, Once Upon a Time’ (1983) though we didn’t make the final shortlist.

3. ‘A Film About Sharon’ (1975)

How had you come across Sharon Thorpe?

I think I’d met Sharon in the context of interviewing people to make ‘Massage Parlor Wife’. I thought she was a fascinating person, completely principled. A wonderful person.

She’d graduated from college in New York, something like five years after me. Sharon Thorpe was just her stage name.

Sharon Thorpe, from ‘A Film About Sharon’ (1975):

I grew up in a few different small towns in the Midwest, where people were very repressive about their sex… very secretive, very ashamed of it. When I was 12, my parents began collecting a wonderful library – every time a sex book was written by a scientist, sociologist, psychiatrist… every one of them indicated, one way or another, that sex was good. It’s very healthy and a way that people can put an end to divisiveness. I felt that this was the way to live. However, the sexually repressive community in which I lived didn’t feel this way.

On the one hand, women try to look and act as sexy if possible, without ever indicating that they actually engage in sex and without indicating that they actually have genitals. In this kind of environment, I felt very outside in terms of my thinking that I couldn’t act according to my feelings because I didn’t want to be an outcast and I had no sexual attraction to people who I felt would brutalize me psychologically for having sex.

The minute I got out of that town, I went to New York to be a student at 17. I felt that in such a large city I could be so anonymous that no matter what anyone thought, I could engage in sex secretly now I’m alone. I could find out all about it.

What gave you the inspiration to make a film about her?

It occurred to me that Sharon, in some ways, was not that different than Bonnie. They were both forthright. They both had an interesting facet to their life. One didn’t have arms, and the other one was an actress in porno films by choice. When you see Sharon in the film, she talks about it and how she moved to San Francisco, and just graduated from college, and was treated badly as a secretary. When she went into this industry, she was treated very well, so she did it for a number of years.

‘A Film About Sharon’ is an 18-minute film narrated entirely by Sharon herself. She talks about her upbringing, her move to California, and her decision to make adult films.

Sharon Thorpe, from ‘A Film About Sharon’ (1975):

A friend of mine responded to an ad in the newspaper about one of these films. Then she got cold feet. The filmmakers called up where we both worked, looking for her. I was very curious about the whole thing and I decided to go in her place.

I felt very embarrassed the first time, but also very excited. The soundman being still to hear the breathing. The cameraman staring, watching for just the best angle. The light man lurking in the shadows. I’m always aware of the audience inside the camera. Always aware of what they’re going to see. What it’s going to look like to them.

I don’t really think about the fact that I don’t know who I’m going to make love with. Generally, I do know. I always ask. Occasionally, they switch the persons so that when I get there, I find a different person waiting for me than I expected.

I had never known anything about pornography until I was in a film. I had never seen a film until after I was in one. Secretly, I thought of sex continually. When I found pornography, I felt very liberated to finally have this opportunity for being totally open.

Sharon is listed as the writer; why was that?

That is because all the words come out of her. What I did was I found the visuals that would go to the words, and then I cut the words and the pictures around the visuals. It’s an opportunity for her to tell her story about herself. There was a sense that the women who were in that industry were drug addicts and strange people. Maybe some were, but that wasn’t the sense that I got of what was happening at the time.

The narrative is driven by Sharon’s words. The structure of the film is interviewing her on camera, and then using her on-camera interview, as well as taped interviews, then showing a little bit of her life, and then showing the actual work… the hardcore activity. It was those three things interconnected within a film.

She comes across as being very literate in the interview. It shows her in a very positive light.

Sharon is shown reading Germaine Greer’s ‘The Female Eunuch’ (1970) and ‘Understanding the Female Orgasm’ (1973) by Dr. Seymour Fisher. The editing crosscuts mundane tasks like preparing a meal and shopping with sexual activity, and even chopping up root vegetables with thoughts on gender roles…

Sharon Thorpe, from ‘A Film About Sharon’ (1975):

Sometimes in my own sex films, I’ve experienced a lot of negative criticism brought by sexually conservative men and women, and by radical feminist men and women. No matter what kind of reasons these people gave, in analysis every single time the reason was sex. Merely because it was sex.

In her book, ‘The Female Eunuch’, Germaine Greer talked about the kind of vilification suffered by women who lived outside the sexual laws. Conversations with college girls reveal that while they tolerate sex between people who are in love, any other kind is promiscuity.

My favorite part was, “The world will not change overnight and liberation will not happen unless individual women agree to be outcasts, eccentrics, perverts, and whatever the powers that be choose to call them.”

I’m glad to be a pervert but I have to be calm.

Who else was in the film?

There were only two other people in the film, Ken Scudder and Clair Dia.

Ken was a Princeton graduate. He was getting a law degree at the time and has been a lawyer since then. Clair was clever too; she’d gotten a degree from San Francisco State College, but she was a more minor character in the film – the main characters were Sharon and Ken.

The cinematography in ‘A Film About Sharon’ is excellent. The camera moves constantly around the rooms, filming the scenes from unusual angles, even through a gold fish tank at one stage. Did you have much of a crew?

My cameraman was Ken Blakey. He’d worked with me a few times already, and had shot my ‘Bonnie Consolo’ and ‘Massage Parlor Wife’ films. I hired crewmembers on a film-by-film basis and Ken was usually the cameraman. There would sometimes be an assistant camera and a sound person, but it was mostly me. I’ve made many films that way.

Ken Blakey became a noted and successful cinematographer in Hollywood with over 100 films to his name, and continues to work today.

In this film, you showed the sex in more detail for the first time.

Yes, unlike ‘Bizarre Devices’ and ‘Massage Parlor Wife’, this was a hardcore film. The sex is all there. That’s what the film is about.

Sharon Thorpe, from ‘A Film About Sharon’ (1975):

I don’t think I could be myself in the town in Midwest that I came from because I don’t think there’d be any people for me to be myself with. I just have to be myself, all by myself in the house, which would make me probably effectively a crazy old woman down the street.

The location for much of the film is a beautiful apartment – where was that?

That was my apartment in Berkeley. I added some Roman-style columns, statues, and drapes.

Where had the money for the film come from?

I raised $4,000 from two lawyers and two doctors who came up with $1,000 each, and so the whole film was made for $4,000.

How was the film distributed?

A big distribution company took it on, I forget their name. They were going to release it, and they sent me $2,000, so I gave $500 back to each of those four guys to start to repay them for the $1,000 they’d each contributed. But they never got the rest of the thousand, because I never saw any more money from it.

Do you remember how the film was released?

I didn’t have a premiere. I just showed it to Sharon at the studio. She thought it was great.

I have no idea where or how it was released. I have no idea what happened with that. That was typical; I’d make these documentaries, and I would never even go to the film festivals where they were shown. All of these festivals where my films were shown, I was entered by whoever was distributing the film. To be honest I didn’t have interest in that. I just wanted to go onto the next film.

Did ‘A Film About Sharon’ play a role in your life after that?

Just after I finished it, there was an event, ‘An Evening with Barry Spinello’, in which they showed ‘A Day in the Life of Bonnie Consolo’ which had just been nominated for an Academy Award, and also ‘A Film About Sharon’ and four or five of my previous experimental animation films.

A guy who had a distribution company called Par Films in Pasadena saw a pilot I had made, and said he would fund my future films. I was to be his bright-eyed boy in his company, and he wanted me to make a lot of films for his company. This was great news and a big deal.

So he and his wife came to see my films at this event. Par Films made strictly educational films, and when they saw ‘A Film About Sharon’… suddenly I was persona non grata. I never heard from them again.

Were you happy with how ‘A Film About Sharon’ turned out?

I was fine with how it turned out. I commissioned music for it. A piano player. They did a great job, and I’m told that it’s a beautiful film. The L.A. Times movie review by Kevin Thomas called it a remarkable documentary.

I wasn’t thrilled with the fact that I could never work for Par Films again, because I thought the future funding would be taken care of… It’s always a struggle.

4. Aftermath

What happened to ‘A Film About Sharon’ and why has it almost disappeared?

I have no idea what happened to it. I know I still have the original 16mm.

Did you keep in touch with Sharon after that?

I never had any contact with Sharon since then.

About six months ago, I had a screening of one of my films at the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley. Ken Scudder called me up and said unfortunately he couldn’t come, but he was interested in just touching base with me. He remembered it as a very positive experience.

Do you have any further plans for ‘A Film About Sharon’?

I have this idea of doing an update in a 2025, which will be the fiftieth anniversary of the film. It would be a postscript to the first one. In other words, fifty years later here’s what happened.

Do you have any regrets about making it – especially in light of the effect it had on working with companies like Par Films?

No – absolutely not. I’m proud of all my films.

How do you look back at that time of you life?

At that time in the mid 1970s, I was involved in one or two films of that nature, but the whole rest of my career was other than that. I had long career in lots of different things. I’d like to think people would re-discover all my work.

I think what you’re doing at The Rialto Report is extremely important. I think it’s a stepping-stone to something that has become something else. I don’t understand the porno aspect. I don’t understand what’s happening to the culture. It’s a total puzzle to me… I have no idea what it means. It has to effect in the deepest recesses of a human being’s mind, the relationship between men and women. You look at thousands of pictures of women. What the heck does it mean?

It’s more important than Hollywood movies in a way, because it affects the entire world, the entire perception of femaleness, and what the connection between men and women has become. All of the adult material is right out there, and very available.

What is this going to mean for us as a society?

The post ‘A Film About Sharon’ (1975): An (Almost) Lost Film appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Starting this week, we’re adding film reviews originally written on IMDb by the writer ‘lor_’. We start with a group of 25 films released in 1979, and over the next months we’ll add the rest from the period 1960-1985 which provide a year by year overview of the development of the adult film industry.

lor_ moved to New York in 1980 after a fan letter to Variety magazine’s owner, Syd Silverman, resulted in a job interview and a job offer. He worked at Variety from 1980-1993 focusing on exhibition and distribution, succeeding Addison Verrill, who had also covered adult films until he was murdered in the late ‘70s; Variety discontinued that coverage in part due to his death. lor_ rose to the position of Motion Picture Editor for the paper and Chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle in the period 1993-1994.

He’s been submitting reviews to IMDb since 2001 and using the same signature name as he used at Variety. His reviews are opinionated and often controversial, and we’re happy to showcase them here. Please send us your thoughts, reactions and comments via the relevant page for each film.

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This week’s film reviews can be found here (or by clicking on the Film Reviews link on the left menu), and include the following:

Deep Rub (directed by Leonard Kirtman)
Little Blue Box (directed by Don Walters)
Guess Who’s Hollywood’s Sweetest
The Sexpert (directed by Richard Mailer)
Superstar John Holmes (directed by Alan and Laurie Colberg)
One Way at a Time (directed by Alan Colberg)
California Cowgirls (directed by R. William)
Pier Groups (directed by Arch Brown)
Sheer Panties (directed by Chris Warfield)
Blonds Have More Fun (directed by John Seeman)
Tangerine (directed by Gary Graver)
One Page of Love (directed by Peter Balakoff)
Navy Blue (directed by Francis Ellie)
Killing Me Softly (directed by Francis Ellie)
Hot Teenage Assets (directed by Daemian Lee, Zachary Strong)
Angie Police Women (directed by Navred Reef)
Three Ripening Cherries (directed by Carlos Tobalina)
Secrets of a Willing Wife (directed by Norman Gurney)
Summer Heat (directed by Alex De Renzy)
Candi Girl (directed by John Christopher)
Sunny (directed by Shaun Costello)
A Girl Like That (directed by Richard Mailer)
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Lays…..! (directed by Walt Davis)
Librianna, Bitch of the Black Sea
Star of the Orient (directed by Harold Lee)

The post 25 Films from 1979:
Film Reviews appeared first on The Rialto Report.

When we contacted Sharon Kelly to request a Rialto Report interview with her, we suggested the conversation might take a couple of hours. She wrote back immediately expressing mild surprise that anyone would want to listen to her for that long.

Actually to be more precise she said: “Jesus Christ – two hours?! I wouldn’t listen to George Clooney beg to have sex with me whilst a resurrected John Lennon plays background music especially written for the occasion for that long”.

Well – that’s where we differ. Because Sharon Kelly is one of the rare actresses whose career straddled two very different eras. After dancing in clubs, from the notorious Clermont Lounge in Atlanta to the Classic Cat in Hollywood, she starred in a string of mid 1970s sexploitation films, many produced by Harry Novak. Along the way she also made appearances in Russ Meyer’s Supervixens (1975) and two of the Ilsa women in prison films – and had cameo parts in mainstream films like Hustle (1975) with Burt Reynolds and Shampoo (1975) with Warren Beatty.

She usually played wholesome though naïve girls, and her busty, freckled redhead looks invariably lit up the screen.

Then she abruptly disappeared for several years before reappearing in the 1980s – except this time she was called Colleen Brennan and she was making hardcore films. She won new generation of fans and a string of acting awards before retiring once again.

On this episode, Sharon remembers her two careers in film, her dancing years, softcore, hardcore, marriages, reform schools, phone sex lines, raising a daughter, cocaine, Ron Jeremy at the buffet table of Plato’s Retreat, and stories of Burt Reynolds, Warren Beatty and Roman Polanski.

And how good is it? Almost as good as listening to George Clooney beg to have sex with you while a resurrected John Lennon plays background music especially written for the occasion.

This episode’s running time is 72 minutes.

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Sharon Kelly / Colleen Brennan photographs

1982 Adult Film Association of America’s Erotic Film Awards

The post Sharon Kelly / Colleen Brennan: From Soft to Hard
Podcast 51 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Continuing our year-by-year overview of the development of the adult film industry through lor_’s adult film reviews, this week we focus on 1973 – the year after ‘Deep Throat’ was released.

lor_’s been submitting reviews to IMDb since 2001, they’re opinionated and controversial, and we’re happy to showcase them here. Please send us your thoughts, reactions and comments via the relevant page for each film.

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The film reviews can be found here (or by clicking on the Film Reviews link on the left menu), and this time include the following:

The Sexualist: A Voyage to the World of Forbidden Love (directed by Kemal Horulu)
Is There Sex After Marriage (directed by Richard Robinson)
Sleepy Head (directed by Joe Sarno)
Cousin Pauline (directed by John Salvat)
Guess Who’s Coming (directed by Shaun Costello)
Sex Psychiatrist
Sweet Sexteen (directed by Shaun Costello)
The Wayward Mistress
More Than A Voyeur (directed by Chrstine de Nueve)
The Love Witch (directed by Mort Shore)
Sexual Freedom in the Ozarks (directed by Shaun Costello)
Six Times Ingrid  (directed by Paul K. Grunde)
Whatever Happened to Miss September? (directed by Jerry Denby)
Tina Makes a Deal (directed by Shaun Costello)
Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death (directed by Antony Weber)
AWOL (directed by Anthony Spinelli)
Campus Girls (directed by Richard A’Antoni)
Maxines’ Dating Service (directed by Shaun Costello)
Heterosexualis (directed by John Hayes)
The Winning Stroke (directed by Simon L. Egree)
Bedroom Bedlam
Hypnorotica (directed by Peter Savage)
Sex Weirdo (directed by (Nick Millard)
Teachers and Cream (directed by Shaun Costello)
Curious Women

The post 25 Films from 1973:
Film Reviews appeared first on The Rialto Report.