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Danza Feb 16 Don't Look Back In Anger, Harry Nina Hartley writes about Harry Reems:
Ross Johnson's Series On Movie Financing In The Weekly Screen International Part five (on Carolco) is on newstands now. Screen International's weekly edition is not available over the internet. Part six due out next monday is on Saul Zaentz and all the wild litigation and dealmaking around his films. Part seven is Credit Lyonnais, where Frans Afman responds to David Mcclintock's Fortune piece that sealed Frans fate. Part eight is on the Neuer Markt and what really went on with Elie Samaha and the German stock market crooks. Part nine will be the money chasers, bank cowboys, and will drill down into the story of Peter Hoffman's financial schemes. Pull quote: "I should have never said it. Even though I was just trying to point out some audience's tastes, it came out completely wrong, and it created tremendous ill will between me and Mario." -- Peter Hoffman. Part 10, it's the new world order, where Johnson reports from China and Russia as to how the studios are trying to make piece with the pirates who are setting up distribution channels. Carolco: The Terminated Ross Johnson writes in Screen International:
John Daly's Hemdale Pictures Ross Johnson writes in Screen International:
Peter Biskind's New Book On Warren Beatty Beatty loves the press but he's a control freak. Biskind can bang a book out quickly but this one may take a while. I hear the negotiations between them are brutal. I thought Ellis Amburn did a good job with 2002's The Sexiest Man Alive: A Biography of Warren Beatty. In January 2004, Biskind published the business book Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. It didn't get as much buzz as his first book (1999): Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. Both books sold about 25,000 copies. Sirius, the satellite radio service, had a big party at Robert Evans's house to promote his new radio show. There's one big problem with Robert's show -- he can't talk because of his stroke. It's a whacky way for Sirius to get in business with Hollywood. They had to drag Robert out at the launch party and put him in front of a podium and he stood on a box to make himself look taller and he's drooling and trying to talk. Yeah, I can't wait to tune in to this radio show. I keep waiting for the Anthony Pellicano investigation to drag down some of Hollywood's most illustrious lawyers but nothing's happening there. I talked to some Hollywood journalists about Sharon Waxman's new book: Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System. They said it didn't break new ground. "For people in LA, it is no great shakes," says a journo. "The best thing that happened to that book was [director] David Russell [slamming Waxman] giving it a free plug." Waxman's book takes an arts and culture approach, meaning it should sell forever unlike a business book such as Down and Dirty Pictures, and James Stewart's new one Disney War, which have a limited shelf life. Mike McPadden aka Selwyn Harris Interview Mike is the editorial director of MrSkin.com and the editor of Mr. Skin's Skincyclopedia : The A-to-Z Guide to Finding Your Favorite Actresses Naked. Under the name Selwyn Harris, he wrote the funniest stuff (equal to the best work of Mike Albo and David Aaron Clark) I've ever read on the porn industry. We speak Tuesday night, February 15. Luke: "Bring me up to speed on your last five years." Mike: "I got laid off from the Chemical Market Reporter, which is a fine job." Luke: "How did you come to work there in the first place? How did you come to leave porn and how did you come back?" Mike: "I left porn in 1997 when Genesis was sold to Swank. I then went through a desperate two years where I was trying to scrub my resume clean in this frantic delusion that it was possible for me to be happy doing anything else. I worked for a weekly theatrical trade paper in New York called Showbusiness. Then I worked for a mega-billion dollar Hindenburg disaster dotcom called Organic. Briefly I was rich, in theory. "The only job I've ever been ashamed of -- I worked for eight miserable weeks for a hideous art-and-fashion quarterly in New York called Black Book. "I ran the editorial department of the Brooklyn College web site. "I got all these jobs through friends." Luke: "What were you doing at Genesis?" Mike: "I was the creative director. I was there from early 1996 to late 1997. Before that, I was at Hustler and briefly at Crescent [October '95 until January '96] aka Drake aka Blue Horizons. I worked on Cheri Undercover and High Society Insider. These were the last days of when they could put out anything in magazine form. They were just reprint books." Luke: "Did you meet [Crescent owner] Carl Ruderman?" Mike: "Never once. I'm fascinated by the guy. I'd love to know more about him. I'm not going to be the investigative reporter on that one. I'll leave that up to you." Luke: "Did you know [Crescent CEO] Bruce Chew and [Crescent exec] Norman Chanes?" Mike: "I knew Bruce Chew. I really like everybody there. I like Carmine [Belluci, VP]. All the higher-up guys. The Satanist guy [Bob Johnson]. A very good guy." Luke: "Did they consult with you before they set up their Internet scam?" Mike: "I can neither confirm nor deny anything like that." I ask Mike if knew various Mafia figures connected to the Crescent scam. Mike: "No. But as long as you are on this litany of musical-sounding names that end in vowels, the way I got that job was through one of my dear friends in life, Mario Grillo, who has been there for a long time. We both went to art school at SUNY (State University of New York) Purchase in the mid '80s." Luke: "Can you talk about your AA days?" Mike: "I drank insanely and I stopped." Luke: "Then you called everyone and said you were sorry?" Mike: "I did that with a couple of people I was particularly onerous to. Rick Hall, who worked at Crescent and presently worked at Evil Angel. He published a zine called Pantyline Fever, which I both disliked and viewed as competition to my Happy Land zine. "Like all good cowards, I think I saw him once, and thought I could beat him up, and then proceeded to bully him as much as possible. In print. "I didn't actually meet Rick until years later and I was never brave enough to bully him -- or anyone -- face-to-face." Luke: "Does porn go hand-in-hand with alcohol and drug abuse?" Mike: "No. Not for me. "The obvious answer is yes, because everyone I know is involved in some history of drug and alcohol abuse. But I'm happy to work in this business free of drug and alcohol abuse for a long time now as are a bunch of other people I know." Sexwrecks.com is owned by people in Chicago who would rather not be named. "None of us are going to jail though. It's not Mr Skin." Luke: "What's your role on sexwrecks.com?" Mike: "I'm going to give myself the title of creative director." Luke: "Who's Robin Bougie?" Mike: "He publishes an excellent magazine called Cinema Sewer out of Canada. He's obsessed with '70s porn. He's a dedicated researcher and he has no agenda other than being a fan." Cafe Feh Selwyn Harris writes on sexwrecks.com:
She tells sexwrecks.com: "The family has no problem with it, mainly for the fact that I made so much money--and legally. My best friend since third grade caught her dad and brother--at separate times--watching one of my films on the Spice Channel. That's when it gets weird." 'There's something very lovable about the big-breast lover' Dian Hanson tells sexwrecks.com: "They tend to be open, outgoing, physical, accepting of the flaws of women, happy with the functioning female body. They like the body that gets pregnant. They like the body that gives birth. They like the body that lactates. There wasn't the picky demand for perfection. They tended to be more rural men. They tended to live in the red states rather than the blue states. They were often slightly less educated. They were the kind of guys who in their personal ads would say, "Fats welcomed! All ages okay!" They loved mom." Detective Magazines As Porn For Sadists Dian Hanson tells sexwrecks.com: "When I lived with [artist] Joe Coleman I bought him as a gift a subscription to Forensic magazine and became familiar with Park Dietz in there, who was always the prosecution's witness in forensic cases. He's the most famous forensic psychiatrist. He had written about detective magazines as porno for sadists. There is no more perfect pornography for sadists, and he campaigned to have them suppressed in the 1980s. Going from that and having some knowledge of sadist behavior and knowing what's found in the homes of sadists, you find detective magazines. This is something they were regularly masturbating to. If we allow that sadists do have sex lives, this is going to be far more interesting to them as masturbatory material, and certainly was through the '70s, than any of the men's magazines out there." Tuesday At World Modeling Ryan Knox Ryan Knox Mia Bangg changes in her car before lunch Mia Bangg Mia Bangg Mia Bangg Jim South Sr, Mia Bangg Jim Sr, Mia, Jim Jr Veronica Bangg (18yo), Mia on Van Nuys Blvd Veronica Bangg, Mia Veronica Bangg, Mia Kalgan Rivers Kalgan Jim South Sr Jim Jr's girlfriend Holly Wellin Veronica Bangg, Mia Veronica Bangg, Mia Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Jim, Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Aussie Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Veronica Bangg Tricia Oaks Tricia Oaks I stop by World Modeling at 11:50AM February 15. This new girl walks in. She's unsteady on her feet. She strikes Jim Jr and me as messed up on drugs. To Jim Sr, she looks nervous. Jim Sr. asks if she has an appointment. She says no. Jim: "You know what this is, don't you? Nude modeling." She says yes. Jim: "How old are you?" Girl: "Twenty five." She has tattoos and looks lost. Jim tells her to come back at 1:30PM, when they're back from lunch. She says ok and leaves. Jim Sr returns to his phone call and the two girls sitting before him -- Mia Bangg (5'7", 32D) and her 18-year old friend Veronica Bangg (who graduated high school a month early, they've only just met), who wants to get into the industry. He says that many porn girls don't have cars but the guys do because they steal them. I ask Mia if Jim has been producing work for her. "No," she says with a smile. "He's a slackard." Jim's on the phone. He says no pets, no meth and no drugs. I think he's talking about renting out rooms to porn girls. The industry has been disrupted the past two weeks because HIV results from AIM were up to ten days late (normally there's a one day turnaround but I think AIM had complications with its lab, or maybe it changed labs). In porn three months, tattooed performer Ryan Knox has mainly worked for Brandon Iron. He asks Jim for a referral to adult.com who are shooting a lot. Jim draws a blank. I start listing off the companies that adult.com owns as well as the name "Sal," their principal shooter. Jim makes a call to Sal's assistant who then talks to Ryan. Mia says she "had a strict religious upcoming." Jim South Sr. invites me to lunch with the girls. Gladly I go. The girls insist on putting on their make-up. They were supposed to be at World Modeling yesterday to meet some directors. They didn't make it. Then they were supposed to be at World at 10AM today. They didn't make it until 11:50AM. They had to drive up from San Diego. Veronica Bangg says she's never had sex with a girl and Mia says she only did once, and she was heavily intoxicated. I ask Mia how she spent Valentine's Day. She said she was in a hotel with a bunch of strangers. Hmm, I wonder what exactly she was doing? In her year in porn, Mia has done about 25 movies. Both Mia and Veronica Bangg have tattooes behind their ears. Veronica Bangg, at 5'2 and 34C-24-34, is a compact soccer-playing package (she played competitively for seven years). She has bruises on the inside of her arms from rough sex a couple of nights ago in a rich guy's Dodge Ram. She can run a mile in under seven minutes. We cross the street. Both Jims and both girls smoke cigarettes. Mia studied dance from her fourth year on -- ballet, jazz, hip-hop and lyrical. Not bad for a girl with naturally D-cup breasts. I sit down on Jim's couch and interview Mia. Duke: "When you were a little girl, what did you want to be when you grew up?" Mia: "A mom. I never really had any goals. I never really thought about the future." Veronica Bangg says when she was a kid, she wanted to be a mom. "Other little kids had goals, such as veterinarian. I didn't. I don't think it makes sense to plan that far ahead because anything can happen. And you've worked that hard for what?" Duke to Mia: "What kind of crowd did you hang out with in highschool?" Mia: "The dancers, cheerleaders and jocks." Mia, 19, lost her virginity shortly after her 18th birthday. "It was a very intoxicated night in the back of a truck." Duke: "Do you have a lot of intoxicated nights?" Mia: "Not anymore. "Once I had sex, I went on a sex spree. I realized it was something I really enjoyed. I had a family friend who told me about the industry." Mia has lost a lot of weight on a "cigarettes-and-Red Bull-diet." Mia describes herself as a homebody. I ask Veronica Bangg why she is making this momentous decision. Veronica Bangg: "I'm sick of working my ass off for nothing. I waittressed in restaurants. I recently quit a secretarial job. It was just laundry and making lunch." Duke: "Are you nervous?" Veronica Bangg: "I am very nervous. I've never done anything like this. The most I thought of was stripping and that was far-fetched. But you have to take risks in life." Mia: "You have to expand your horizons." Veronica Bangg: "I'm ready to move out of my parents house." I ask Mia (who entered porn in early 2004) how her friends reacted to her becoming a porn star. "They were shocked because I was reserved in highschool." A Southern California girl, Mia has never been outside the United States. Jim South's autobiography has hit a block. Demi Moore registered at World Modeling over 20 years ago. She only wanted to do magazine work. She did a nude shoot for one guy. He called Jim looking for extra ID on her. Jim didn't have it. They pictures were never released. Jim no longer keeps a tape measure in the office because he doesn't want to touch the girls and have them start trouble. Jim's dealt with many angry boyfriends and husbands over the years. One guy objected when Jim told a girl that she was pretty and should consider modeling. I meet Australian rock star (from the Perth band Prawns With Horns) Kalgan Rivers, 32. He says his entire adult life, people have pestered him to get into porn. He's brought a laptop with DVDs of his amateur sex scenes. He thanks Jim for taking the time to see him and gives Jim a boomerang. I hear Bill Margold holding forth in his PAW office (Bill and Jim miss the excitement Rob brought to the building). I hear no other voices, so I assume he's on the phone. I walk into PAW and find him talking to author Kieran Mulvaney. I fear that I am interrupting. Bill says no. He introduces me to Kieran. He tells Kieran that it is an honor to meet me. For Kieran's benefit and our own, Bill and I remember our tumultuous history. It was Rob Spallone that brought Bill and I back to speaking terms. Rob did the same thing for my relationship with Jim South. Bill's concerned about Fred Salaff, an American pornographer jailed in Panama. He's often thought of making a porn movie where porn's biggest stars bust into some third-world country and free their comrades jailed for producing X-rated material. Bill: "The Heroes of X. Herschel Savage, Rocco, Nacho Vidal. Sharon Mitchell, Jenna Jameson and Juli Ashton seduce the guards while we get them out. Of course a couple of them would get killed. It would be a cool movie. Now it's really going to have to happen. We're going to have to get together all these people who became heroes in the eyes of society and put together a carnal commando squad and get these people out of Panama. "This is a nightmare I've expected for years. The foreign countries don't want us. "We used to go to foreign countries and then they'd shoot in bedrooms. You didn't even see the country they were so terrified. "Fred's a good decent human being and he's finding out that certain countries aren't as good as he thought. Maybe we'll have to get our own hit squad to get them out. Play a dangerous form of the Playground fight where some of them don't come back. I'll lead it. I've got nothing to lose. I'll probably blow up my own foot with a rifle." Bill sat through Inside Deep Throat yesterday. Duke: "What did you think of it?" Bill: "Not as much as a whole bunch of other people because I guess I knew it all. It's educational to people who know nothing. I felt sorrow that I couldn't honor Linda while she was alive. I will offer Reems the opportunity to be honored. We will offer Damiano the same thing. "Deep Throat came around when the nation wanted to rebel and they used Deep Throat as its bronco. A lot of the picketing in front of that theatre was purchased ticketing [by people promoting ticket sales]. "The Legs McNeil book is a birdbath. It's a shallow book. I'm misquoted in there. I never gave Seka her name. I discovered her. "There's a lot of me missing in important areas of that book. They should've talked to me about the Hal Freeman decision. I wrote the goddamn movie. I booked the film. I know more about that movie than anybody else. And I'm not in that section. I believe that because of his association with a lot of other people, I was edited out of that book more than I should've been. And it upsets me. "Your book is better. It has a lot of inaccuracies but your book is better because at least you investigated stuff and didn't just trust people to tell you stories. This guy turned on the tape recorder and listened without any kind of investigation. "The movie is a wading pool but nobody has gotten into this business. Not even you have. This business is an ocean and no one wants to go to the Mindanao Trench [deepest spot in the Ocean, off the Phillipines] to find the truth. "Your site went off on a tangent about what happened with the woman from NYU [professor Chyng Sun]. "Here is a business that says it should never talk to anybody. Now along comes somebody from NYU [professor Chyng Sun] who is supposedly going to make a documentary. Two people [Bill refers to Mark Kernes of AVN and Ira Levine] who attack this business for talking to people couldn't wait to bust open like ripe melons. They couldn't wait to talk. They couldn't wait to drop their shorts and show their shortcomings. And ohmigod, they find out that their little tiny weenies are getting served up as cocktail sausages for our enemies. What do they expect from these people? "I emailed her and said I'd be happy to discuss my vicarious revenge theory and never got an answer back. I wonder if this woman really exists." I believe she did the interviews with Ira and Mark and she replied to my email. Bill: "Under some form of pressure from Ira, she'll deny it, Nina, who I worship, said oh boo hoo, [professor Chyng Sun] didn't talk to me [Nina]. "Ira goes on and on. That he should've known better. Didn't he know better? Ira goes all the way back to [Dr. Robert] Stoller. How did we know to trust Stoller back in 1985? "If you don't talk to people, you don't teach people. It's a learning experience. You take your chances. Now they're crying about how they got badly burned. It's the chance you take. "If I am a hanger-on, they're welcome to cut off my fingers. Let's see the person who would dare do that. "I will offer once again an adult-industry write-off. Roundrobin. All challenges. We'll find impartial judges. Maybe we could go to the Kinsey Institute. As each person loses, they're eliminated from the industry." Duke: "Do you know what happened with the AIM ten-day blood testing delays?" Bill: "Maybe we're getting better testing. I've never been a fan of fast-food blood testing. Would you trust something that is supposed to be next day when you are dealing with life and death?" Bill and I took our first HIV tests in this room in 1998. Bill explains to Kieran: "We really were friends until the Stagliano situation [February 1997]. I thought I was talking off-the-record but I wasn't and it wound up all over the net. "He's a reporter. He's about as good as we're going to get. He's basically impartial. He's learned to be more impartial. He doesn't have any axes to grind with the talent unlike people who are jealous of the talent. He's not jealous of them anymore. He's been f----- by this industry physically. He's gotten laid. He laments about not getting laid but he's had his go-rounds with the industry. He can't say he hasn't gotten his pieces of flesh. He writes his own books. "His name strikes fear into the heart of those who have something to hide. I like that. I don't have that kind of site. I could not be that proliferate. I could not spend 24-hours in front of the computer. It would eat my fingers. I don't trust my computer. Sometimes it doesn't even get the commas in the right place. "AIM (Adult Industry Medicine) is a great line of [defense] for this business. It gives us more mental security than we had [before]." Bill tells Kieran about his latest feud with Ira Levine. "I use words as razor blades. Ira Levine decided he'd come after me, so I decided I'd go after him, by referring to him first as Eichman and then Goebbels. He now refers to me as an anti-Semite. "Any man who hides behind his religion deserves to be crucified. "He is the perfect definition of a blowhard. More hot air is expended than even Hart Williams. Williams just writes and after a while you've got to stop reading. He goes off on tangents. He's amusing in his self-worship. "Ira just talks. He started a campaign to get me drummed out of the business as an anti-Semite. I'm Jewish. I was born into the faith. I refused to be Bar Mitzvahed because I didn't want to be like everyone else in Vista Del Mar. They tried to bribe me with a Bible and money and a special meal. I don't need it. But I can guarantee you that I can say the Friday night prayer [Hebrew blessing over the Shabbat candles] better than he can." Bill says it. Then I say it. Not sure who did it better. Bill: "Then take the loaf of challah [bread] and throw it across the room, which I got punished for many times. "Ira is unfortunately married to one of the best two or three spokeswomen in the history of this business -- Nina Hartley -- who I refer to as the bowl of sunshine. I bask in her glow. She's a joy to be around. Maybe one day she will wake up and find it had all been a dream." Duke: "Would you like to marry Nina?" Bill: "I don't think any one adult performer could handler her. All adult stars are more than any one person can handle. I wouldn't mind sharing her. I just like to be around her. She radiates a glow unparalleled in the history of this business, even more than Gloria [Leonard], my favorite of all time. "I worked with [Nina] once, but she was my buddy and it had been years of having her as a hostess for the XRCO, and she sensed that I wasn't enjoying the blowjob. "I said I can't, because I hold you in a special position in my life. I'm having conscience pangs about this. "This was during the time when Nina had said that she had never done a scene where her character was coerced into sex. The scene between us in Jackhammer is a coercion scene. Another reason I probably felt more guilty. I think Viper wrote the movie. "She was hunting through a warehouse and I came up to her from behind and pushed my hard dick into her and she said, oh, you have to be taken care of. You're a security guard. If you're blown, you'll be a happy security guard." Early Story On Phone Sex
Yeshiva Bochur Gets Heter to be Porn Star BROOKLYN, NEW YORK - [TheKnish.com] Shimmy Goldblatt has a megawatt smile, killer dimples, incredible looks, a rock hard body with six-pack abs and an anatomical feature that has caused his friends to joke that the mohel didn't take off enough. Goldblatt knew at a young age that his aspirations were quite different than those of his friends. His fellow kindergarteners were mostly whiling the time away playing with firetrucks and dreaming of unfurling their hoses into burning places. Goldblatt would fantasize about accomplishing greater things. He wasn't entirely sure what his future would be, but he would certainly use his gift for things other than mere peeing contests. Puberty brought with it the realization of his aspirations, and Goldblatt spent his Beis Medrash years at the side of the Maikeldigeh Rav, carefully poring over biblical and talmudic texts in search of loopholes that would allow Goldblatt to attain his dreams. The process was exhausting, but Goldblatt had good recovery time and was always ready for more after a smoke and a hot shower. Today, Goldblatt is the hottest, and only, frum porn star on record. His years of careful study proved to be the money shot which allowed him to pursue his career. Concerning yichud, the cast and crew present during filming alleviate that concern. Nevertheless, the studio door is left open a wee bit to satisfy any chumras that may exist. Concerning seeing a woman with her hair uncovered, most of Goldblatt's costars are single and if they're not they're usually adorned with hair extenstions, which qualifies as a sheitel. The Maikeldigeh Rav is always present to inspect for any traces of Indian hair. Concerning spilling his semen in vain, he doesn't. Ever. By mandate of the JAPS (Jewish American Porn Stars) organization, all actors must wear condoms. This allows him to fake it and avoid trangression. Concerning shomer negiah, Goldblatt has endured several intense meditations and numerous desensitization techniques to allow himself to reach a point where he is able to perform his job bli derech chiba. Being frum has surprising conveniences in this field. For example, music is looped in during post-production, so filming during sfira or the three weeks isn't a problem. Also, Holy Sheet!'s don't need to be purchased, as Goldblatt's tzitzis can serve in place if his costar is interested in using them. Goldblatt's success has caused several members of his group of friends to become interested in his field. Soon, Goldblatt may face some stiff competition. (Ann Onimous) © 2005 TheKnish.com. All rights reserved. This material may be published, broadcast or redistributed as long as all the content remain intact, including this paragraph. Porn writer Rodger Jacobs writes: Luke: In response to Legs McNeil's assertion that snuff films do not exist and are just another part of our rich urban mythology, I submit the following article, "Snuffed Out", that I wrote for the June 1999 issue of Eye Magazine. David Moye writes: "I interviewed Legs McNeil and he refused to consider the German Snuff case. First, he hadn't heard of it. Then, he said his report focused on America." RPM writes: "Legs McNeil makes the same mistake as most newbies, which is to go along with the FBI's definition of a snuff film as footage that's made "commercially available." The porn industry relies on that dopey definition, too. It sounds like Legs McNeil's knowledge of the industry is mainly based on reading the AVN website. Once again, some gullible goofball will turn out another crappy work on porn that would benefit from your skepticism." Ian writes: "Hi Luke, I think it's silly for Legs McNeil to insist that there are no such things as snuff movies. He covers himself by insisting that, in order to qualify, they must have been made for 'entertainment'. I would have thought it was enough that they were made to show others and not just look at oneself. I belong to pictureview.com, a site which hoovers up the movie clips and pictures submitted to internet newsgroups and publishes them. A lot of it isn't porn at all, though a lot is. The site owners don't pre-censor the pics and clips, though they say they will respond to complaints. Over a couple of years I have come across a number of pics which might well have been extracted from snuff movies, and two movie clips (which I immediately trashed in horror) certainly classifiable to that genre. In one, an unconscious oriental woman is deliberately shot by a silenced gun, and quite obviously expires from the resulting hole in her chest. In the second one (labelled 'decapitation') I saw the first few seconds of a man having his head cut off with a large knife. The participants looked like soldiers and their prisoner, and the movie might well have been taken during the Chechnya war. If I (someone definitely not looking for this kind of stuff) can accidentally come across examples of it, is it plausible that those kinds of people for whom it is meat and drink are not having it deliberately made for them?" "SNUFFED OUT" ONE REPORTER'S PERSONAL DECISION TO STAY OUT OF THE DARKNESS "Snuff films are those in which the final act is sexual murder. No hard evidence has ever been presented that such films do exist, but rumor has it that there are a very few 8mm films to be had at a very high price. The major trouble with producing this sort of film is that you are constantly forced to be on the lookout for new talent." --- Stephen Ziplow, "The Film Maker's Guide To Pornography" It's like walking into that seedy bar on the wrong side of town. The stench of stale beer, spent cigarettes, and moral decay assaults your nostrils. All eyes are on you with suspicious and hostile glares as you push through the door, bringing with you a momentary glimpse of the sun outside, the harsh rays spilling over the darkened room and illuminating the nasty bit of business going down in the corner. There's a sudden sharp pain at the back of your head and seconds before you slump to your shaking knees to embrace the piss-stained floor with your face you realize that someone had come up from behind and struck you with a blackjack. God only knows what they have planned next. That's how I felt upon receiving the ominous warning; like I had stepped into a sordid establishment I had no business being in and it was time to back out the door, pretending I never saw the place before. Forget the address, forget the street it's on, forget even what city it's in. "Stay away from the snuff film angle," the strongly worded advisory from Henry, a fellow journalist, began. He sent me the e-mail on May 11, less than a week after I began probing into a ghastly tale that debunked the widely held notion that snuff films are nothing more than an urban myth. "Stay away from the topic completely as a journalist, in conversation, and in every way you can think. Just stay away from it." Henry is a trusted friend and advisor, a seasoned writer with keen insights and a few friends in law enforcement. If someone like that tells you to back away from a story you had better do as told or ponder the reality before proceeding any further that you may spend the rest of your life living in fear. The macabre story of Ernst Dieter Korzen and Stefan Michael Mahn, both sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany for committing murder during the production of a snuff film, fell into my lap quite by accident. On the morning of Thursday, May 6, 1999, I stumbled bleary-eyed to my computer and went on-line to summon up my daily dose of porn industry gossip from Luke F-rd's website. Luke, a porno outsider, is the leading purveyor of tabloid journalism targeted at the billion dollar smut industry. His reporting is often sloppy and inaccurate and he has been rightfully accused on several occasions of running with a story before pausing to verify the facts, which is why I immediately phoned him after seeing the story on his website that morning. "Where the hell did you get this story about the German snuff film, Luke?" "A source sent it to me last night," Luke replied lazily in his soft Australian accent. I could hear him clacking away at the keyboard while we talked, no doubt adding more salacious chunks of gossip to his website from the modest bungalow he occupies literally in the shadow of the monolithic structure of glass and steel that houses Larry Flynt Publications in L.A.'s Wilshire District. "I think they pulled it off a wire service." "Is it a reputable wire service? Send me everything you have on this. I need to verify that the story isn't a hoax." "Why?" He seemed bored and distracted, still banging away at the keyboard, unaware or indifferent to the gravity of the story. Over the years gallons of ink have been shed in magazines and newspapers to discredit the existence of snuff films, most naysayers citing the lack of direct evidence as proof that the trade is as mythical as Hydra. No such film had ever been discovered by any police force in the world --- until now. "I want to run with this, Luke," I said through a burst of adrenalin, that certain surge all writers get when pursuing The Big Story. Six weeks had passed since I turned in my last feature article for Hustler magazine; titled Beyond Extreme, the 3,000 word dispatch was a dark and gritty expose of the underground porn market. The article only vaguely touched upon the subject of snuff films. Now, with this horrific story filtering out of Hagan, Germany, I might have the perfect follow-up piece: SNUFF FILMS EXIST. "I find it hard to believe that there are people that get off on seeing other people murdered in a sexual situation. I think it's a myth. Of course, it makes a good story." --- Larry Flynt, Premiere Magazine, March 1999 Three months of research for the Hustler article on underground porn led me into some dark alleyways that should never see the light of day. Discussion groups on the World Wide Web are perhaps the best venue to locate purveyors of taboo pornography like bestiality and rape videos but be careful where you step because there are some twisted souls posting missives of perversion beyond your imagination. In a discussion group devoted to sexual sadism I followed one very busy and popular conversation thread devoted to "building the perfect guillotine to slice off a woman's breasts." A fan of the rather unpleasant subject wrote, "I can think of nothing sexier than seeing the sharp blade of a guillotine cutting through a plump breast." If anyone ever needed the Lorena Bobbitt treatment it's this group of gleeful psychopaths. Moving on to another subject in the same discussion group I stumbled upon a posting from a demented contributor who wanted to know if anyone shared his fantasy of "seeing naked young women burned alive at the stake." Backyard barbeques must offer up some intriguing fare at his house. There are demons walking among us, far too many to count, and I pored over their maniacal writings for weeks on end. Some of their fantasies are simply unspeakable, played out on the Internet in a blazing Heironymous Bosch-like tableau of sexual mayhem, mutilation, and torture. On a bad day Hell can look a lot like the World Wide Web. Within this context it was hard for me to believe that snuff films produced for a commercial profit did not exist --- certainly there are monsters out there who would buy the product --- but my editor at Larry Flynt Publications urged me to "stay away from snuff films" in my article "because LFP's editorial position is that they are an urban myth." But if the laws of science and metaphysics have taught us anything it's that you cannot discount the existence of something just because you can't see it. Through a discussion group devoted to underground videos I happened upon the man who calls himself Snuff King, a Denmark-based collector of esoterica and a student of the snuff film phenomenon who assured me that "a few real snuff films exist." While he has never seen the films himself Snuff King avows that "one (of the movies) showed a young, Asian female being strangled to death in a hotel room. It was impounded by the police before it reached the public. The other case that I know of is from the Bosnian War and was apparently recorded in a Serbian prison camp. It showed the rape, torture, and murder of several Bosnian women." I believed Snuff King. After three months of reading a laundry list of sadistic lust to prepare for my article I had more reason to accept his word than to dismiss it. "Soon ... hardcore films will be medical films. People will be jerking off to women laying around with open wounds. There's nowhere else for it go." --- from the screenplay "8MM" by Andrew Kevin Walker "Even the people involved around the fringes of that crap are extremely dangerous," Henry's e-mail warning me off the snuff film story continued. "You don't want to be on their radar, not at all. Even as a journalist you don't get a free pass with those types of people." To underscore the danger inherent in pursuing such a story Henry invoked the account of a New York City newspaper reporter who disappeared while investigating a similar story. With Henry's warning bouncing around in the back of my head like a wild pinball I contacted one of two reporters who contributed to the snuff film story for the news service bureau referenced on Luke F-rd's web site. It was after midnight in Vienna, Austria, when the very British and baritone voice of Nigel Glass, a frequent contributor to the BBC and London Times, came on the phone. I explained that I was a freelance journalist in the States looking for more detailed information on the murder trial of Korzen and Mahn. "What exactly do you want to know?" Glass asked in a most accommodating fashion. "Is it true? Did they actually make a snuff film?" "Oh, it's quite true," Glass replied placidly. The gruesome nightmare began on a November evening in 1997 when 36 year old Ernst Dieter Korzen and 27 year old Stefan Michael Mahn picked up Juleyha Akpinar, a 21 year old prostitute, on the streets of Cologne, Germany. Wolfgang Rahmer, the Chief Prosecutor in Hagan, Germany, would later describe Korzen as "a very dangerous man" known to police for his history of sexual violence, but the authorities had been unable to snare him because his victims were too terrified to testify against him. Korzen and Mahn took their victim to a bungalow in Kierspe-Roensal, near the city of Hagan, where they repeatedly raped and tortured her while a video camera recorded the details. And then the story takes an even darker twist: the intended "star" of their snuff film died too quickly, strangling to death by the rope knotted around her neck, so the would-be producers of the most heinous film on earth were forced to procure another player for the grim drama that they hoped to sell in the United States, according to prosecutors, for the odd sum of $16,000. "The second woman that they captured to complete the video managed to befriend one of the men" Nigel Glass related to me, "and as a result was able to escape and alert authorities." Mahn and Korzen were promptly arrested. Police withheld details of the crime for over six months while embarking on an international investigation into the snuff film trade, an industry that prosecutor Wolfgang Rahmer believes exists, telling the London Sunday Times: "We know that there is no sexual perversion that cannot be marketed, and you would be amazed at the sums offered for such perverse videos." "The greatest harm buyers of these films do is to provide incentive for producers to continue having innocent victims murdered." --- Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices "This is a major story, Rodger. This is the first time that police have direct evidence of a snuff film being made for profit." David Buchbinder, features editor at Larry Flynt Publications, judiciously considered my proposal to interview the key figures in the case --- mainly police and prosecutors --- before putting a damper on the whole affair by suggesting that I step deeper into the shadows. "The only way I see this as a feature story," David said, "is if you can interview the perpetrators, the girl who got away, and maybe the family members of the victim." That's when that small inner voice started speaking to me, the same voice that suddenly begs you not to get on an airplane, for instance; you follow the voice's commands, even though it seems paranoiacally illogical at the time, only to turn on the TV news two hours later and learn that the plane burst into flames after making a crash landing in a remote farm field. "All passengers and crew were killed upon impact," the news anchor says in somber tones as you stare transfixed at the TV and try to wipe the sweat away from the palms of your hands. I lived in Munich, Germany for two years, 1972 and '73. I watched the Olympics massacre unfold on television, a bloody and tragic episode occurring no less than half a mile from where I was living. Furthermore, the rabidly anti-American terrorist group The Baader-Meinhoff gang was merrily setting off pipe bombs all over Munich during this time. And if that's not enough, I had Thanksgiving dinner in 1973 at a U.S. Army facility outside the gates of the notorious Dachau Prison Camp. I have the misfortune to associate Germany with death and tragedy, and suddenly the idea of traipsing around the Deutsche countryside poking and prodding with a journalistic stick at things better left alone had a smell of bad fate about it. On an instinctive level I knew that snuff films had to exist even before I ever heard the names of Ernst Dieter Korzen and Stefan Michael Mahn, so what benefits could I possibly derive from pursuing the story any further? They don't award the Pulitzer Prize for this kind of journalism --- it's the kind of story people do not want to know about, a little bit of horror that everyone wants to believe is an urban myth, evidenced by the fact that American news services have been slow to respond and offer coverage of the apprehension and trial of Korzen and Mahn. But I can understand why nobody wants to hear about this story. Let's face it: if we have evolved as a species to the degrading point where sexual murder caught on film or video tape is considered entertainment to even a small percentage of the population at large then it's time to change your name to Noah and start building an ark because a hard rain is gonna fall, baby. I've been in the darkness far too long. When your work and research can compel you to make the casual conclusion that such acts of barbarism as snuff films do indeed exist then it's time to lighten your load a bit, maybe bury your head in the sand with the rest of the human race and pretend that there is indeed some limit to human cruelty. "There are some stories that really aren't stories, but something for law enforcement," my friend Henry wrote to me the day I decided to back off of the story. Henry is right. Korzen and Mahn will spend the rest of their days rotting behind bars in a German penal institute, and hopefully they won't spawn any imitators. If they do, I won't be there to cover the story. Lynne writes: What an incredible article, Rodger! Not only because it portrays Luke so exquisitely, but because you've really done some nasty homework. I'm glad that guy who told you to "stay away from the story didn't entirely succeed." Documenting the torture of victims for later enjoyment is extremely common among serial killers, whenever the technology is available that lets them photograph or, better yet, videotape their illicit activities without involving processing by others. Dahmer's souvenir Polaroid collection was a vast improvement over Jack The Ripper's collection of rotting uteri. As they say in the schoolyard, "Take a picture...it lasts longer." Black & white 35mm film is relatively easy to develop and print, and many serial killers have been amateur photo buffs. The first case I know of is that of Harvey Glatman, who photographed women in bondage before he raped and killed them. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley took pictures of child victims and recorded their torture on reel to reel audio tape; Jerome Brudos killed his victims first and photographed them afterwards (before amputating their feet for deep freezing.) Technology improves. Leonard Lake and Charles Ng videotaped their torture games. Roy Norris and Larry "Pliers" Bittaker made audiocassettes of their screaming victims. Randy Kraft and the afore-mentioned Dahmer had dozens of Polaroids of dead & dying boy toys. Type "forensic" and "photography" into any search engine, and you'll pull up sites chock full of sickening photos of men and women with knife wounds, heads blown away by shotguns... Gay with a fetish for dark meat? Pick up a scholarly book on lynching if dead black men hanging from a noose rings your chimes. The stuff is out there, people! There's more than one kind of of crazy: there's crazy enough to become aroused by fantasies of the existence of violent obscenity, and then there's crazy enough to make souvenirs of one's own handiwork. With the German case mentioned in Rodger's article, are we assuming that the perpetrators didn't enjoy torturing and killing in the least, and ONLY did what they did for potential commercial gain? Or were they trying to combine pleasure with profit, killing two birds with one weapon, so to speak? And that the latter is somehow worse than just being a murderous sociopath for one's own enjoyment? Apply the argument to garden-variety pornography. Is it criminal to document variant sexuality, or is it criminal to document it if it is to be sold? Or is the crime selling the documentation? And if the producer enjoys his product, is that more or less evil than when he only makes porn for the money? Hannibal Lechter, the fictional cannibal killer In "Silence of the Lambs," Hannibal Lechter, in his cell, is willing to trade information for just a glimpse of crime scene photos. Real-life sociopaths like Ted Bundy act as their own lawyers in part so that they can continue accessing photos of their handiwork. The tools of law enforcement, as Rodger's article concludes, become pornography in the right hands. Serial killer Ed Kemper said, when asked what he thought when he saw a pretty woman, "Part of me says...I'd like to date her. But another part of me says...I'd like to see her head on the end of a stick." I, personally, wouldn't want to do either, even for money. Pat Riley's favorite pornography disgusts me, but then I like bukkake Go figure. My most favorite pornography disgusts most everyone (right, Goddess?) Wanna jack off to dead people? That's not illegal, and there's no need to shoot one's own. There's plenty already out there from which to choose, even though "snuff" is only form of tobacco to stick up one's nose. johnny_rockin [in a CourtTV chat]: What is the history of porn? How did
the industry start? Lynne writes: Why do we confuse the history of porn with the advent of film and videotape? Men being men, porn began with cavemen drawing smutty pictures on the walls. Erotic writing...erotic art...French Postcards...Asian "pillow books." Indian bas reliefs of statues entwined in positions from the Kama Sutra. Irving Klaw photo sets. Commercial porn sales in this country blossomed with the distribution of "Tijuana bibles" featuring popular newspaper comic strip characters of the 1920's engaged in hardcore action. These little books were passed around schoolyards years before comic books were even invented. The porn distribution network for pseudo-photography, nudie cutie and nudist magazines evolved out of the comic book distribution network. Hedy Lamarr's "Ecstacy" was released in the 1930's without Wil Hayes' seal of approval, effectively classing it as porn. What about "I Am Curious, Yellow?" That's pre-"Deep Throat" porn. "Deep Throat" was a pornographic landmark, but it was hardly the beginning of porn... Rodger Jacobs writes l-keford.com July 25, 2001:
Serge Birbrair and the Crescent Scam Deep Throat calls: "You are something else. Yishai Habari and Serge's names would never have been attached to any of this except for you. Everything I've read has never mentioned Serge or Yishai [or Carl Ruderman]. Yishai has fled the country [more than a year ago] to Israel." A source close to the FTC told me in 2000: "The FTC knows about Serge. But he was only a click broker. He sold traffic. He didn't do anything illegal."
You'll notice that Brad Shaw never writes anything bad about Yishai Habari, who was involved in the Crescent scam, including the Gambino angle, much deeper than Serge. When Richard Martino and company turned over the operation of their Kansas City operation Harvest Advertising, they gave it to Yishai (where it became part of Yishai's Profit Plantation and Web Media Inc). But Brad has made major money from Yishai, so Brad doesn't write anything bad about him or Aussie spammer/scammer John Atheron. Legs McNeil vs Inside Deep Throat Burt Kearns, a TV producer and author, writes:
Luke says: I find it ludicrous for Legs to say Inside Deep Throat ripped off his documentary. His documentary is simply a recapitulation of previously published information with a few original documents (but nothing new unearthed by them). Legs didn't discover anti-porn crusader Bill Kelly. Bill has been talking to the news media about porn for more than two decades. The Court TV special didn't break any new ground on John Holmes and the Wonderland murders either. VCA's documentary WADD beat them to it, as did the E! True Hollywood Story. I haven't seen the Court TV special but I read everything here and the main things written about the special. I've yet to hear of any ground broken in Legs's new book. I know it's gotten a lot of hype but it doesn't advance the story of the history of porn. It just repeats things already known. Inside Deep Throat doesn't break any ground either. This new documentary and new book are triumphs of marketing, of style over substance. They are only of interest to people who don't know the territory, folks who haven't bothered to read about these topics on the net at such places as l-keford.com. So Why Did David Schlesinger Get Fired? David Schlesinger has worked for Vivid for seven years. He was the publicist, then the head of the Internet department, and then the head of branding. Suddenly, a couple of days after the opening of the Vivid club in Las Vegas, he's fired. Why? One theory is that David had points in the club and that Steven Hirsch, Vivid owner, looked at the bar's numbers for that one night and decided he didn't want to share the profits more than he had to. Another theory, the most popular theory, is that David was caught doing drugs at the club, either heroin or cocaine. Steven is a recovering drug addict, so he wouldn't want that stuff around him.
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