RIP Jim Holliday

Jack Point aka Rich Leather aka Randy Kaplan, former AVN journalist, writes circa January 1, 2005:

It certainly seems appropriate that after a long absence from porn boards that I should also take the opportunity to pay tribute to my friend Jim Holliday. He was difficult, outrageously opinionated, talented, dedicated, maddening, endearing - a good friend, a worthy adversary, a relentless pursuer of quality. Jim forgot very little - he never forgot a slight or a compliment, rarely forgot a favor, forgot very little about porn or popular culture but still forgot more than most anyone else ever knew about either subject. I doubt Jim ever visited this site, but I know he would not have been the slightest bit interested in it. What interested him was if the pornstars were good PORNSTARS - good on camera, good for the image of the industry, good to each other, good as people and happy as pornstars. I know that no matter how good my AVN colleagues were to me, and no matter how much I was welcomed into the industry by people like Steve Orenstein and Christian Mann and Steve Hirsch and Lenny Friedlander and Chris Roos and the late Bob Tremont, among many others, that I didn't feel like I was truly a part of the industry, and worthy to be respected as a critic, until I got the stamp of approval from Jim Holliday. And the day I got it is still one of the most memorable days of my life.

No matter how much we like to f--- the babes, sometimes there's nothing quite like sitting around and shooting the s--- with the guys - and that experience, for me, is DEFINED by the times I sat around and shot the s--- with Jim Holliday and Gene Ross. I was at the XRCO Awards the memorable night that Hooliday and Bill Margold - the "cosmic brothers" - buried the hatchet and ended their longstanding feud. I was so moved by their raw emotions that I approached Margold after the awards presentation was over, and said to him, "Bill, if you and Jim can end this monumental feud, you and I should certainly be able to bury the little hatchets we've been carrying around. Can you accept my apologies and can we move on as friends?" And when he told me to go f--- myself, I shrugged and turned away - only to bump right into Jimmy White Moccasins, who grabbed me, put his arm around my shoulder, and looked straight at Margold and said, "Well, obviously it's time for me to leave."

I wouldn't try to tell you that their feud reignited over me - it certainly did on and off for years, although they loved each other furiously - but the fact that, on a night when his focus was on a public reconciliation with Margold, Holliday did not hesitate to unfocus. for no better reason than to make me feel better for being slighted by Margold, struck me as one of the kindest and most graceful things anyone has ever done for me. To be sure, in the same instant I realized that Bill Margold's opinion of me mattered less to me than the opinions of all the maggots in the world put together, but nonetheless, it was an extraordinary act of grace on the part of Jim Holliday.

Jim was one of the few people in the business I kept in touch with regularly after I left LA - although you can bet that I would have called him all the time, just to hear his voicemail message. He changed it every couple of weeks, and it was, famously, the funniest voicemail messages ever heard on this planet of ours. Jim Holliday was one of the oddest and stubbornest people I ever met - but he was also truly unique. He was the self-styled "historian of porn" - although I think the business had passed him by - but, as the son of a historian, I can say that Holliday did indeed think like one. Even rarer, along with a sense of the sweep of events, the currents of culture, and the big picture, he had a great sense of the moment. He should be remembered and treasured as the adult industry's historian, voice, and uncompromising standard setter. He was also a kind and funny man who I was proud to call my friend. Atque in perpetuum, frater Jim, ave atque vale. In his honor, listen to some Del Shannon, and turn over a glass.

Bill Margold writes: "The "reconciliation evening" between Holliday and I (February 1995) was very special, and particularly moving, especially for me, as I had truly missed him from my life from the middle of 1991 until that moment at The Bel-Age when I was honored to induct him into the XRCO Hall of Fame. Whomever Jack Pointe really is, he would be fortunate to have such a person as Jim Holliday in his life for as long as I did."

Bill Margold Interview

I chat with Bill by phone Monday evening, January 3, 2005, about Randy Kaplan's comments on Jim Holliday.

Bill: "I've had a lot of wars with AVN people. I don't remember Randy coming up to me that day I put Holliday in the hall of fame [at the Bel Age in 1995]. By that time I had figured out, as you put, that he is a pompous blowhard.

"Randy aka Rich Leather was one of many Rich Leathers at that time. Many people wrote under that name [for AVN in the '90s]. He fell out of favor with me over a review of the Robert Stoller book [Coming Attractions]."

Rich Leather reviews the book for AVN (10/93 p.114):

Almost everyone comes off as sane, likeable, capable and professional. Two glaring exceptions: Bill Margold and Jim Holliday. Margold's stream-of-consciousness riff opens the transcripts in the book, and what an ugly consciousness is revealed: juvenile, egotistical, crude and full of hate.

"He didn't admit he for a long time that he was Rich Leather.

"Until that review, he was harmless. He was typical of the rollie-pollies that they hire at AVN. You could put together a professional football line with the tonnage they've had there. I didn't think much of him until he wrote that I bloviated in the book. I didn't think that I bloviated in the book. I was me. There would've been more bloviation had I not changed everything back to the truth.

"Stoller always said that he would protect the innocent and I said, nobody's innocent in my life.

"The book came out during a time that Holliday and I were estranged. The reconciliation began in '94 and culminated in '95.

"I missed Holliday. There was a strange phone call about some accident. A guy said that I had hit him. I said, I didn't have anything to do with that. He said, well, your name is Jim Holliday, isn't it? I asked, well, how is he? I mean, how am I?

"I realized what Holliday had done -- given him my address and name. I thought that decided that he and I were linked. I'll help even my enemies. Viper had been gone for three years. I was always concerned with what Holliday was up to.

"After I excoriated [Randy Kaplan] for making a fool of himself with me, he shows up at a convention in Las Vegas around 1998. I had a bunch of people at my booth. He called me after the convention and told me that he knew things about those people. I said, what do you know about those people? He said, I'm not going to tell you. And he wouldn't.

"To me, ignorance is bliss. He said, I can get you in a lot of trouble. I said, get me in trouble. That's my middle name.

"You know Hart Williams. That's your nightmare. Hart Williams smokes cigarettes like an SS officer, with the back-hand hold.

"I befriend him immediately when he came into the business. Then, when he lost his job at Hustler, the first thing he said to me was, now that I don't have any value to you, you probably won't like me anymore.

"I adopted him even closer. He'd been wronged by Hustler. He went to work at Adam. He played on a [flag football] team I had played on in 1983."

How did you guys fall out?

"I'm not sure. Because he was never really allowed to be part of the XRCO. That was more Holliday. Holliday and I had equal command of the XRCO. The other three kids -- Ken Dawson, Kent Smith and Lon Friend -- went along for the ride. We later made Jared [Rutter] chairman.

"You ran comments from Ernest Greene [Ira Levine]. His opening line says everything you need to know about that man. Because Holliday did nothing for me, I have nothing to say about him."

Ernest wrote: "He and I were definitely not friends and he was definitely not helpful to me in any way."

Bill: "Do you have to do something for something to say something about somebody who had that kind of impact?

"Ira Levine was brought into the Stoller fold by Holliday, or, if not, me. Bringing him out of obscurity to a man like Stoller...

"I worship [Ira Levine's wife] Nina Hartley because she is just a bowl of sunshine. Next to Gloria Leonard, she's the best speaker this business has ever had.

"You know why Ira and I are enemies. His name was on Mitchell's petition in May 1998 to get rid of me [from the proto-AIM]. When I confronted him about it, he said, I do what I have to do. I said, I think that was Eichman's terminology too. I referred to him as Goebels. My nickname for him is 'I'm on the train' because of his obediance.

"Hart befriended my writing partner Mark Weiss, who died in 1992. Mark was a wonderful kind man. Somewhere along the line, Hart decided he should be the only person in Mark's life.

"I stopped taking Hart seriously. He calls me once in a while. I don't respond.

"The last time he was on the football field, he kicked me as hard as he could in the groin. Everyone was appalled. I didn't even flinch. They threw him off the field and he was never allowed to come back to Coldwater [park].

"The last time I saw him was at the World Pornography Conference in 1998. He was carrying around his extra stomach and acting officious."

Did you talk to him?

"Yes. There was no way of escaping him. I had no choice. He would sit down and go off on tangents. I didn't know what he was talking about. Half the time when he was talking he was just entertaining himself. I can see why Holliday and he didn't particularly get along because they were both anxious to talk all the time. They both wanted to fill the room with what they knew but Hart knew a lot less.

"Hart called once after Holliday died. I did not return his call.

"Hart may be the bitterest person I've ever met. He's bitter because he has no one to talk to about himself.

"It goes back to the line I gave you the other day. We are lonely people in a crowd. By the nature of what we are, we are isolated from the rest of the world and we're scared to get close to people, so we isolate ourselves from our own family of X. It's not as much fun as people think.

"This is a place where people come to learn how to write. They can write little wrong. It's vanity press. We love to see our names in print. I'm lucky that I have a column to write what I want."

Ira Levine Responds To Bill Margold

Ira Levine writes:

Hi Luke,

Read this morning's comments from Bill Margold, re myself and others. I generally ignore Bill and whatever he says and does, as do of the working members of this industry, to whom heis nothing more than a persistent source of low-level irritation.

However, one or two of his cheap shots, as quoted in your interview, do require brief responses.

Contrary to Margold's typical misreading of my comments about Jim Holliday, my unwillingness to enter into a long discussion about Holiday on nina.com had nothing to do with whether or not Hoiiday was or was not helpful to me. I don't choose my friends on that basis. I recused myself from that conversation because my contacts with Holiday were infrequent and not particularly cordial. I felt that any comments I might make would be unconstructive after the fact of his death.

Margold's assertion that: ""Ira Levine was brought into the Stoller fold by Holliday, or, if not, me. Bringing him out of obscurity to a man like Stoller ... " is factually incorrect. I met Stoller through a parallel study Stoller was conducting on BDSM, When Stoller found out about my involvement in the porn industry, he invited me to participate in that project as well. After five years of close cooperation in the research for Coming Attractions, Stoller offered me the opportunity to collaborate with him as co-author on the resulting book. When Stoller was tragically killed in an automobile accident, his editor at Yale Press suggested I complete the book, which was nearly done at that point. I believe to this day that much of Margold's resentment toward me springs from this series of events. Margold seemed to believe that he somehow "owned" Bob Stoller and that he was slighted in Coming Attractions. In fact, I did not share Stoller's belief that Margold's ramblings were signficantly contributory, and would have cut them altogether, leaving them in entirely out of respect for my late partner.

And then there's this:

"You know why Ira and I are enemies. His name was on Mitchell's petition in May 1998 to get rid of me [from the proto-AIM]. When I confronted him about it, he said, I do what I have to do. I said, I think that was Eichman's terminology too. I referred to him as Goebels. My nickname for him is 'I'm on the train' because of his obediance."

Bill and I are not enemies. He hates me. That's his problem. I couldn't care less about him one way or the other. His long-time hostility toward AIM may well grow out of his thwarted attempts to either seize control of it or set up some kind of typically inept and corrupt competitive enterprise, but his relentless attempts to personalize this conflict with ugly and brutal insults toward Sharon Mitchell and myself speaks volumes about Margold's pitiful narcissism and nothing whatsoever about the actual circumstances of the dispute.

Again, Bill's rantings on this subject have been characteristically ineffectual, as AIM very much thrives in the face of his vile machinations, and could easily enough be disregarded considering the insignificance of their source. There is, however, one thing I cannot and will not ignore.

From the beginning of Bill's long vendetta against me, he as repeatedly slammed me with the worst insult that can be aimed at a Jew - comparing me to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. This kind of anti-semitic smear can never pass unchallenged. Whatever Bill thinks of me, this particular line of attack is a deliberate affront to every Jew in the adult business, and reveals all too much about Margold's bone-deep bigotry. He could do no worse by referring to an African-American member of the industry community as "David Duke." That a man of such rank prejudice should be allowed to represent himself as a spokesperson for this industry unchallenged is simply intolerable. His characterization of himself as somehow a victim of my Nazi-like persecution is absolutely characteristic of the mind-set the gradiose, paranoid hate-monger.

The personal invective Margold hurls at me washes off easily enough, but when he globalizes his resentments to slam all Jews everywhere, he steps over a line that must never be crossed without opposition. I would hope other Jews in this business would find such remarks equally offensive.

Hart Williams Responds To Bill Margold

Hart Williams writes: "If Bill Margold is going to badmouth me, then he OUGHT to try and be factual. As it is, I'm responding to his distortions, smears and inaccuracies in the only way I know how. I stopped when it was a good time to stop, but it does run about 4000 words."

The Confabulation of Bill Margold

By Hart Williams

www.moyst.org

The most important thing I learned in porn between 1978 and 1988 was that, while all people are composed of what we call 'good' and 'bad,' in a potentially lethal place like porn (and I know literally dozens of corpses to prove it) you have to make a judgment as to what the sum is -- and preferably quickly. I attribute my relatively unscathed odyssey through the Biz to acutely developing that faculty.

One person with whom I didn't develop it for far too long was Bill Margold. Case in point: like the dead louse Holliday, Margold and I also 'buried the hatchet' once. It was at the World Pornography Conference in August of 1998.

There, I thought the matter had been laid to rest, especially since most of the friends I still had in The Business had all but begged me to make 'peace' with Bill. I had very good reasons not to. So do not think me intemperate in opening a book I had thought closed. Margold started the dirty business and exhumed the corpse; I am only assaying the remains.

***

The thing that I did not understand about Bill Margold until the very end is the thing that needs to be said in the very beginning: Bill is ultimately too much in love with himself to love anyone or anything else.

In the final analysis, your utility to Bill is based solely on the cold calculation of an orphan who mistrusts the entire world, and whose raison d'etre is to have the world look up to him, to remember him fabulously.

That might seem harsh, but it is accurate.

I first met Margold on the set of Plato's The Movie, in the fall of 1979. I had been invited by the producer, Damon Christian, in my capacity as HUSTLER's resident film reviewer and editor of the reviews section.

My predecessor, Michael Stott (RIP, sadly, of a heart attack in that same year) had referred to Bill as 'the renaissance man of porn.' You undoubtedly know that line: Margold never loses a sound bite, nor does he ever alter one. The same tired lines that you hear in interview after interview are inflected in precisely the same manner, using the same words today that they were when he first spoke them decades ago. Over time, new 'Margoldisms' are added to the repertoire, but they are few and far between. Holmes was the 'Hindenberg.' 'God Created Man, but William Margold Created Himself.' 'No one ever died of an overdose of porn.' Et al. Ad infinitum. There is something pathological in quoting oneself: to do it excessively is excessively pathological, no doubt.

This accuracy of self-quotation does not, alas, extend to Margold's accuracy of recollection -- probably for the simple reason that the only person Bill actually seems to see in the world is ... Bill Margold. Everyone and everything else is fuzzy and vague. He precisely remembers his lines about you long after he’s forgotten you, per se.

***

'Confabulation,' by the by, is a perfectly good word, and carefully chosen. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, and in the sense that I mean, it means: '2. Psychology: To fill in gaps in one's memory with fabrications that one believes to be facts.'

Compare with the shared root for 'fable.'

I will respond to Bill's accusations, made in the interview on lukeisback.com posted January 3, 2005. But let's start with the last point:

MARGOLD: "The last time I saw him was at the World Pornography Conference in 1998. He was carrying around his extra stomach and acting officious."

LUKE: "Did you talk to him?"

MARGOLD: "Yes. There was no way of escaping him. I had no choice. He would sit down and go off on tangents. I didn't know what he was talking about. Half the time when he was talking he was just entertaining himself. I can see why Holliday and he didn't particularly get along because they were both anxious to talk all the time. They both wanted to fill the room with what they knew but Hart knew a lot less."

This may come as a great shock to Bill, but I don't mind being fat. Still, I doubt that he ever chided the bucket of lard Holliday on it. The point was to be insulting. If I learned anything in porn, it was that you judge people by their character, not by their looks. My friendship with Mark Weiss was not predicated on my reaction to him -- because Mark, dear as he was, was astonishingly ugly in personal appearance. It was based on the understanding that his 'inner self' was the exact opposite. Bill seems stuck on appearances. Right, Mole Man?

As regards “being officious I guess he's entitled to his opinion. You could check with Mark Kernes on that one, Paul Krassner or even Luke F0rd. I don't think that I was 'officious.' The point of Bill's comment was to be insulting, of course. And that's the point here.

As regards 'there was no escaping him,' I only talked to Bill the one time, and that was to 'bury the hatchet' (at least on my part.) But the insult that I was anxious to talk all the time is factually false (since I never spoke to him but the once, outside the Goldstein/Jeremy presentation). It is particularly telling that Margold should try to compare Holliday and myself, and draw some conclusion regarding our 'relationship' from that: Margold himself set up the feud between us, and I don’t ever recall conversing with Holliday (although I often listened to his endless blather at screenings at the old Technicolor screening room) after the initial meeting, as chronicled elsewhere.

And that really sets up the whole dynamic here: Bill 'befriended' me because he thought I was useful. I correctly divined that after my departure from HUSTLER, my usefulness might be at an end. It wasn't, but my intuition that it was the basis of our relationship was.

MARGOLD: "I adopted him even closer. He'd been wronged by Hustler. He went to work at Adam. He played on a [flag football] team I had played on in 1983."

I quote this only because it's a perfect example of Margold’s lack of a 'writer's eye' for detail. We played on the Southern California Butchers in 1984. It says so on the trophy we BOTH got. Why the nitpicking? Because if we're talking about 'facts' here, then accuracy matters. Had he said 'the mid-80's' that would be one thing. But his presentation of '1983' is MEANT to imply that he's really been paying attention. (Parenthetically, I met my current wife of 12 years while working at HUSTLER in 1979, so the experience was a valuable one, if only for that).

I began playing touch football with Bill and various other 'Coldwater Cats' in 1979. We played there at the Coldwater Canyon fire station in Beverly Hills until 1985, when I famously kicked Bill in the balls, and the field collapsed during the Northridge quake and has been rendered unplayable ever since (it turned out to be over a reservoir).

LUKE: How did you guys fall out?

BILL MARGOLD: "I'm not sure. Because he was never really allowed to be part of the XRCO. That was more Holliday. Holliday and I had equal command of the XRCO. The other three kids -- Ken [Luke's mistake, Bill said Jim] Dawson, Kent Smith and Lon Friend -- went along for the ride. We later made Jared [Rutter] chairman."

Again, Margold's inaccuracy looms large. It's 'Jim Dawson,' and there is no mention of Carl Esser or of the late William Rotsler, who designed the XRCO awards and who is, in many ways, far more accomplished in adult films than Bill is. But then again, mentioning a “competitor” would be out of character here, n'est ce pas? Lon Friend was not present, to my knowledge, and was invited to join later ('Because we've GOT to have HUSTLER!' Holliday/Margold would chirp.) I was not at that meeting, but I spoke to most of the people who were. So how is it that my recollection is MORE accurate than Margold's? Because Margold sees the world in stark terms: facts only matter as they congratulate Bill, sad to say. It is the lens through which he views events, and accuracy comes in a poor second to self-aggrandizement -- As I was to learn, painfully, shortly thereafter.

I was trained to be a writer: facts matter. Accuracy matters. But Bill writes and speaks (as did Holliday) to alter facts to the Cause of Margold. Without this understanding, parsing Margold becomes a very dodgy business.

That XRCO was our falling out is sheerest nonsense. Bill was rather wary after they formed XRCO. I had not been at the initial meeting and my 'friend' Margold did nothing to defend me. He has never mentioned that he did nothing to defend his 'friend' Mark Weiss EITHER! They rigged the rules so that Margold and Holliday would have a vehicle for their self-deification, and successfully flogged that pony for a couple decades. But I didn’t take offense at Bill, and he knows it.

In fact, he used to bait me on it, for months thereafter, as he well knows, to see if he could get a rise out of me. I had my reasons for NOT joining ANYTHING as you'll learn. But Bill always seemed disappointed that he couldn't get a rise out of me over XRCO. It was apparent to all observers. So, he would turn his attention to baiting me over Holliday. I would invariably reply that if Holliday was half the writer he BRAGGED that he was (and remember, at the time, Holliday was bragging about his pamphlet, The X-100, an execrably written fan-tract) that tickets to Stockholm would be forthcoming any day now.

Mark Weiss and I were roommates at the time, and we used to joke that we were the 'outcasts' of XRCO. But it hurt Mark, even though I had a strict policy of NOT joining any organizations at all, going back to not joining Delta Sigma Rho Tau Kappa Alpha, the national college debate fraternity in 1974. In those days, I was virulently anti-membership.

No: Bill used to delight in inviting Mark over to his house for, say, Holliday's 'famous' chili feed, with Mark told pointedly that Bill had a policy that Holliday and I could never be in his house at the same time. Mark used to come home and laugh. Mark was a great cook, eventually a caterer, and respected my 'New Mexico' chili -- where I'd learned to cook it in high school -- and thought that 'Jim Jack Holliday Nash' was a poseur, as well, but he let Bill treat him in that abusive way for years, telling Mark that for the first XRCO Awards show in 1985, Mark could be a 'runner' -- e.g. a XRCO 'gofer' -- as his humiliating way of being included in the group of critics in attendance.

Our falling out is really a prime example of how Bill works. In the autumn of 1984, Bill approached me about starting up a magazine. A fellow named 'Joe Julian' who had purportedly owned a restaurant in Las Vegas (which burned down and whose insurance money he was waiting on) wanted to start an adult entertainment magazine. Julian's claim to fame was that he was 'kind of sort of' the boyfriend of Helga, an older porn star with a pronounced German accent.

Bill was with Drea at the time. And HOT TIMES was the reason that I didn't have much time for XRCO, anyway.

Julian was one of those Caddy-driving, white-hair, white-belt, white-loafers Goodfella wannabes that Las Vegas is rife with.

Bill baited me into it with 'You're the last guy Julian approached. Everybody hates you, but nobody else could pull it off.'

Short story: I pulled it off. I had to fire the various cronies Bill brought in (a brain-dead graphic artist, whose skills turned out to be virtually non-existent; Julian's 'I made a deal printer-in-his-garage who couldn't even keep registry on a two-color cover; and Drea's AWFUL 'Swinging' column -- about which more later). I was virtually homeless through a large part of the process, and it was a very interesting experience to put together a magazine entirely from a briefcase. But I managed to get it up to snuff by the third issue.

That was when Bill and I had a 'falling out.'

Why?

Because Julian had lied to me. I told him going in that he had to be willing to run in the red for a year (since a lot of advertisers won't buy space until they’ve seen you publish 12 issues). He agreed. Swore up and down that he had the cash.

He didn't. He was running it off of his MasterCard, I would later learn. And by the second issue (from the fellow who had enough for twelve, remember), he was issuing me 'promissory notes' in lieu of a small salary. I had accepted it in return for a 'piece of the action,' a percentage of the magazine.

And Joe Julian -- who used to brag about how he played poker with Jim South, who Helga used to complain to me that he was 'creepy' and that she simply let him take her to dinner -- disappeared for a week. Just disappeared.

He was complaining about money. He was whining that we weren’t selling enough ads. I was wondering what happened to the money he said he had. Another week passed, and I did the smart thing: I cleaned out the office. I removed the files, the furniture, etcetera. And I put them in storage.

Because it was the only leverage I had. And Julian was turning out to be less than a man of his word.

Bill calls me up: 'Joe Julian says you stole the stuff in the office. He's calling the cops. I told him I’d talk to you.”

I told him Joe Julian was more than welcome to call the cops. But then he’d have to explain the promissory notes. And the other stuff (I won’t go into it here). Bill said: “You DO it for the GLORY.” I told him that glory doesn’t pay the rent, and doesn’t put food on the table.

Bill said he’d get back to me. He didn’t.

Oh, and Julian? He never called the cops. He sold the magazine. The entire reason Bill had roped me into the whole sickening charade (you know, the one where I worked for six months eighteen hours a day, wrote all the articles, edited the copy, wrote the captions, got the photos, did the illustrations, pasted up the magazine, spec’d the type, got and worked with the printer, and sold the ads? OK: I got Mark Weiss to write a brilliant two part piece on Desiree Lane ... ALL THE WHILE keeping up my freelance career to pay the bills) ... the WHOLE reason? So that Bill Margold could have a ten point credit: “WILLIAM MARGOLD, CREATIVE CONSULTANT.”

And what did his “consultancy” consist of? Exactly nothing. Foisting off wannabe graphic artists and the hideous writings of his wife was the full extent of it. And threatening me in the name of Joe Julian.

A little interlude here: Bill kind of pushed me, one night, to attend a “swing” party with Drea at the A-Frame, one of the oldest swing houses in LA. I had been writing for ADAM, a “swinger’s magazine” for years by then, and I thought that journalistic integrity demanded I should at least SEE one once.

Surprisingly, I found that it had all the subtle sexuality and hidden sin of a Methodist potluck. It was, frankly, less so. There was a buffet. Bored people kind of popped off into back rooms, and I found that I had zero stomach for “swinging.” Whatever it was, it was no turn-on that night. So I observed.

And then Drea and her boyfriend came up to me and begged me not to tell Bill. She was, it seemed, cheating on him with one specific LARGE fellow, and her visits were to conduct an exclusive affair with him.

I had been stuck with a thorny ethical issue: did I tell my friend what was going on? Did I betray Bill by NOT telling him? I had to think long and hard over that one. They really held him in contempt, and, all the blather and bluster notwithstanding, Drea was making a fool of my friend. But Bill answered the question for me: He wasn’t interested in virtually anything I ever had to say, frankly, and in a conversation that I was trying to steer to telling him the uncomfortable truth, Bill put on a show of Super-Margold-Man, World Conqueror that made me understand that he wouldn’t listen to me even if I did tell him, and that it was utterly futile. So, I have kept the secret until this very hour. But Drea left him shortly thereafter, so it really didn’t matter in the greater scheme of things.

So, the “new” issue of HOT TIMES comes out, and guess who writes the opening piece? You guessed it. Mr. “Creative” himself. Bill Margold. And he stole a little trick from me, as an insult, a trick that I’d often borrowed from Lewis Carroll: the acrostic (which Carroll was not the inventor of) which Margold chose specifically to insult me (he signed the editor’s name, interestingly enough):

Hart Williams has departed, but

O ur Publication “WILL” (sic) survive.

T o excitingly validate that sentiment. (sic)

T his issue features a unique selection of

I nsightful and intimate

M aterial, amusingly and arousingly

E xposing all facets of Adult Entertainment

S incerely Edited by (scribble)

Now: What would YOU do, when your “adopted brother” Papa Bear pulled something like that on you? Well, I didn’t do that. I just let it go. I tried to bring it up, but he was off on his “GLORY” tangent, and I was left with the solemn truth that my “friend” had sold me out to strangers for a ten-point line of type. His “consultant” credit meant more than six years of friendship.

Oh yeah: I got (from those months of work, and for creating the magazine from scratch) a $100 drafting table, a metal t-square, and an x-acto knife. Glory? None: Bill got all that. And my “percentage” and all those promissory notes were as worthless as Monopoly money. But Bill got his glory, which is why he said I should do it.

I just hadn’t realized that “Do it for the GLORY” had meant HIS glory.

This, from the man who would later write that he and Holliday were “paladins” (holy warriors) who understood “truth” and “loyalty” and “honor.” Yeah, well it was a lie then, and it’s a lie now. But still I did nothing.

Nope: What I did was move on. Just as Mark did. We were both realizing that if Bill could gain the slightest advantage, have someone quote him and further his dream of fame and immortality, well, we were expendable. Kenji learned that. Mark learned that. And I learned that.

Later, Bill would stab Holliday in the back verbally as he must have done to me, and when Brandy Alexandre began her first, vicious attack on me on the old alt.sex.movies newsgroup in 1995, she quoted Margold and Holliday extensively and with all inaccuracies intact to “prove” that I knew nothing about the Business, and was just, as Margold says here, “They (myself and Holliday) both wanted to fill the room with what they knew but Hart knew a lot less.” Except that Brandy was reared in the worship of the phony (another Margold sound bite) “Herodotus of Porn,” Jim-Jack-Holliday-Nash.

I wonder how he would know that? Margold never listened to much that I had to say, and, therefore, would have very little idea as to what I did actually know.

Nope. I continued to play touch football until that day when Bill Margold cheated during the count (we counted, since there was no rush), and when I complained, Margold arrogantly strode forth spewing rationalizations.

And that was when the whole XRCO-baiting, Holliday-feuding, Joe-Julian-ing, back-stabbing thing resolved itself in my head with utter clarity. I knew what to do as Bill strode forward, challenging me smugly on his cheating, Mr. “Honor” and “Loyalty,” this Paladin of Porn, this “friend.” And I thought of Melville’s BILLY BUDD:

I kicked Clegg in the balls and walked off the field.

But still Bill lies:

MARGOLD: "They threw him off the field and he was never allowed to come back to Coldwater [park]."

In fact, I stayed away for a long time, angry at Bill. But I returned to play. It was the first time that Paul Thomas had ever come out, and Henri Pachard was playing there by then, as well. So, even that part isn’t true, even though it implies that everyone loved Bill so much that they banded together in his defense.

Well, coming from Bill, what other story would you expect?

I have tried to remain on cordial terms with him, even given the enormity of the crap that my “friend” has dumped on me. I have turned the other cheek time and time again, but I’m not in a forgiving mood these days, and if my accomplishments either in porn or in my other, overground life threaten Bill, then I should take it as high praise indeed that he feels it necessary to lie about the facts in order to make me a “pariah.”

Sorry Bill, but kicking you in the nuts was one of the sanest things I ever did. And it’s nice to know that your brass balls are still reverberating, lo, these almost twenty years later -- your endless claims that “I wasn’t hurt a bit” to the contrary.

So, I leave it to you, Gentle Reader, to decide who’s telling the truth and who’s bending it to his own devices. I grant that Bill has enormous virtues. He has done porn great services. But he has, ultimately only been carrying on one long, unrequited love affair, which may explain why he hasn’t had any meaningful relationships with women since Viper left him about the same time as the ball kicking incident: self-love is a jealous mistress and will brook no rivals. Which may well be what he perceived in his “lover” Jim-Jack-Holliday-Nash: A kindred spirit. Holliday, as well, was incapable of any sort of long-term relationship with a woman.

Over the years, Margold has made an accusation of the industry that I believe gives insight into his psyche, but which I categorically deny: that the “gratification” of porn is in seeing the degradation of that snooty woman/girl who was “too good” to have anything to do with you. That the facial is an act of humiliation. It probably means that to Bill. But that doesn’t mean that it *is* that.

At any event, if you’re going to deal with Bill, just remember that you are valuable only to the extent that you further his ambition. I learned the lesson the hard way over years. And I offer it at a cheaper price than I paid.

And there you have it. Oh, there's this:

MARGOLD: "You know Hart Williams. That's your nightmare. Hart Williams smokes cigarettes like an SS officer, with the back-hand hold."

As anyone who knows me will tell you, that description's not even in the ballpark. What is Bill smoking, I wonder?

A long time ago, my mother told me that people generally accuse you of what they fear being accused of themselves. In this case, Bill opens a window into his own processes.

He slips in a slur that I’m “carrying an extra stomach.” Yes: Bill HAS put on weight, that can’t be denied. But he’s probably a lot more sensitive about it than I am. (Accuse HIM of it and see how loud he squeals.)

Margold accuses: “Hart befriended my writing partner Mark Weiss, who died in 1992. Mark was a wonderful kind man. Somewhere along the line, Hart decided he should be the only person in Mark's life.”

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have never demanded an “either/or” loyalty: that if you are a friend of such and such, you cannot be friends with me. I’ve been through divorces and never demanded of a *single* friend that they cut off the ex-wife, or choose between us. I don’t believe that love or friendship is a commodity that can be divvied up like a Domino’s pizza at a drunken frat party.

But it’s telling that Bill DOES engage in such behavior. And the “writing partner” characterization is another Margold lie: Mark Weiss wrote WITH Bill only occasionally. Mostly, he wrote FOR Bill, until he got out on his own and freed himself of Margold’s execrable prose and horrific rewrites. Again, Bill distorts the facts.

But Margold is an honorable man. A “paladin.” Mr. “honesty.” If you don’t believe that, just ask him.

Margold accuses: “Hart may be the bitterest person I've ever met. He's bitter because he has no one to talk to about himself.” Adding “He would sit down and go off on tangents. I didn't know what he was talking about. Half the time when he was talking he was just entertaining himself.”

Ugly accusations from our “Paladin” of “honor,” but much more applicable, again, to Margold than myself. One can only be “bitter” if one has been denied those things most ardently desired. I can’t think of anything I desperately wanted out of porn and didn’t get: I got plenty of sex. I wrote a lot. I was well paid.

And I didn’t need XRCO to prop up a non-existant or failed writing career: compare with Margold, who doesn’t review porn films except rarely, and then only if he can write about himself in some way in the review; or compare with Holliday, whose “legitimate” writing career was predicated on his being the XRCO “historian” thanks to Margold, which got him in the door at AVN and at ADAM. It should be noted that, at the time in question, AVN carried featured columns from the likes of Ron Jeremy -- not exactly the Gore Vidal of porn. (The cart, in that case, came BEFORE the horse. First belong to a critics’ organization; then use that membership to become a “writer.”)

In 1987, I was in eight magazines were on the newsstands in one month, and had two novels from Berkley/Jove out as well. So I guess I don’t know what I’m supposed to be “bitter” about. I moved on from porn to write for the KANSAS CITY STAR, the WASHINGTON POST and the PORTLAND OREGONIAN (among others) so I don’t think I retrogressed.

And, last year, I finished a porn movie for release that I had complete control over, and own outright, a trick that neither Margold (nor Holliday) ever managed. Even on that level, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be “bitter” about. http://www.moyst.org

On the other hand, Bill’s bitterness is increasingly apparent. Heck, the vicious tenor of his remarks about me are a testament to his deeply ingrained bitterness.

And speaking of “going off on tangents” ... who, more than anyone else in this field talks obsessively about himself and rambles tangentially about everything and anything -- having to do with “The Great Bill Margold”?

I don’t, as a rule, talk about myself or how great I am, or what incredible things I’m doing, et al. I tend to talk about politics and history. And the history of this “relationship” is demonstrably that Bill Margold was happy to use me to further his interests in porn, and equally happy to stab me (and Mark, and Kenji, etc.) in the back when it suited him. This “paladin” of “loyalty.” This honorable man.

LUKE: “How did you guys fall out?”

MARGOLD: "I'm not sure.”

Think about what an astonishing self-revelation of character that Bill completely f---ed me over on the “HOT TIMES” mess, and doesn’t have a clue as to WHY WE HAD A FALLING OUT??!!

Ultimatums about friendship, self-obsessive rambling, bitterness, and putting on excess weight? I think Bill should cop a plea bargain and move on. Because he’d definitely lose a jury trial.

Finally, Bill’s slander comes to an end: "It goes back to the line I gave you the other day. We are lonely people in a crowd. By the nature of what we are, we are isolated from the rest of the world and we're scared to get close to people, so we isolate ourselves from our own family of X. It's not as much fun as people think.”

"This is a place where people come to learn how to write. They can write little wrong. It's vanity press. We love to see our names in print. I'm lucky that I have a column to write what I want.”

Bill (starting, naturally, by quoting HIMSELF) projects accusations that everyone else in the Biz is a bad writer and a lonely schmuck. Everyone else is scared to get close to people. Everyone else isn’t having as much fun as people think. Everyone else is a beginner learning to write. It’s all a vanity press, but isn’t it great that Bill can write whatever he wants?

Who do YOU think that he’s actually describing?

Hart Williams Responds To Bill Margold II

I responded, evidently, to an incomplete version of the interview with Bill Margold. Luke assures me that he “was still transcribing margold interview. You did not see the whole thing before you responded, I guess.”

So let me add this:

A long time ago, my mother told me that people generally accuse you of what they fear being accused of themselves. In this case, Bill opens a window into his own processes.

He slips in a slur that I’m “carrying an extra stomach.” Yes: Bill HAS put on weight, that can’t be denied. But he’s probably a lot more sensitive about it than I am. (Accuse HIM of it and see how loud he squeals.)

Margold accuses: “Hart befriended my writing partner Mark Weiss, who died in 1992. Mark was a wonderful kind man. Somewhere along the line, Hart decided he should be the only person in Mark's life.”

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have never demanded an “either/or” loyalty: that if you are a friend of such and such, you cannot be friends with me. I’ve been through divorces and never demanded of a *single* friend that they cut off the ex-wife, or choose between us. I don’t believe that love or friendship is a commodity that can be divvied up like a Domino’s pizza at a drunken frat party.

But it’s telling that Bill DOES engage in such behavior. And the “writing partner” characterization is another Margold lie: Mark Weiss wrote WITH Bill only occasionally. Mostly, he wrote FOR Bill, until he got out on his own and freed himself of Margold’s execrable prose and horrific rewrites. Again, Bill distorts the facts.

But Margold is an honorable man. A “paladin.” Mr. “honesty.” If you don’t believe that, just ask him.

Margold accuses: “Hart may be the bitterest person I've ever met. He's bitter because he has no one to talk to about himself.” Adding “He would sit down and go off on tangents. I didn't know what he was talking about. Half the time when he was talking he was just entertaining himself.”

Ugly accusations from our “Paladin” of “honor,” but much more applicable, again, to Margold than myself. One can only be “bitter” if one has been denied those things most ardently desired. I can’t think of anything I desperately wanted out of porn and didn’t get: I got plenty of sex. I wrote a lot. I was well paid.

And I didn’t need XRCO to prop up a non-existant or failed writing career: compare with Margold, who doesn’t review porn films except rarely, and then only if he can write about himself in some way in the review; or compare with Holliday, whose “legitimate” writing career was predicated on his being the XRCO “historian” thanks to Margold, which got him in the door at AVN and at ADAM. It should be noted that, at the time in question, AVN carried featured columns from the likes of Ron Jeremy -- not exactly the Gore Vidal of porn. (The cart, in that case, came BEFORE the horse. First belong to a critics’ organization; then use that membership to become a “writer.”)

In 1987, I was in eight magazines were on the newsstands in one month, and had two novels from Berkley/Jove out as well. So I guess I don’t know what I’m supposed to be “bitter” about. I moved on from porn to write for the KANSAS CITY STAR, the WASHINGTON POST and the PORTLAND OREGONIAN (among others) so I don’t think I retrogressed.

And, last year, I finished a porn movie for release that I had complete control over, and own outright, a trick that neither Margold (nor Holliday) ever managed. Even on that level, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be “bitter” about. http://www.moyst.org

On the other hand, Bill’s bitterness is increasingly apparent. Heck, the vicious tenor of his remarks about me are a testament to his deeply ingrained bitterness.

And speaking of “going off on tangents” ... who, more than anyone else in this field talks obsessively about himself and rambles tangentially about everything and anything -- having to do with “The Great Bill Margold”?

I don’t, as a rule, talk about myself or how great I am, or what incredible things I’m doing, et al. I tend to talk about politics and history. And the history of this “relationship” is demonstrably that Bill Margold was happy to use me to further his interests in porn, and equally happy to stab me (and Mark, and Kenji, etc.) in the back when it suited him. This “paladin” of “loyalty.” This honorable man.

LUKE: “How did you guys fall out?”

MARGOLD: "I'm not sure.”

Think about what an astonishing self-revelation of character that Bill completely f---ed me over on the “HOT TIMES” mess, and doesn’t have a clue as to WHY WE HAD A FALLING OUT??!!

Ultimatums about friendship, self-obsessive rambling, bitterness, and putting on excess weight? I think Bill should cop a plea bargain and move on. Because he’d definitely lose a jury trial.

Finally, Bill’s slander comes to an end: "It goes back to the line I gave you the other day. We are lonely people in a crowd. By the nature of what we are, we are isolated from the rest of the world and we're scared to get close to people, so we isolate ourselves from our own family of X. It's not as much fun as people think.”

"This is a place where people come to learn how to write. They can write little wrong. It's vanity press. We love to see our names in print. I'm lucky that I have a column to write what I want.”

Bill (starting, naturally, by quoting HIMSELF) projects accusations that everyone else in the Biz is a bad writer and a lonely schmuck. Everyone else is scared to get close to people. Everyone else isn’t having as much fun as people think. Everyone else is a beginner learning to write. It’s all a vanity press, but isn’t it great that Bill can write whatever he wants?

Who do YOU think that he’s actually describing?

More Jew-Baiting from Bill Margold?

At the AEE in Las Vegas, Bill Margold (Protecting Adult Welfare) gave me a sentence for Ira Levine (Nina Hartley's husband): "Any man who hides behind his religion deserves to be crucified."

Then Bill continues: "Ira Levine is a horrible man. He is quintessential evil."

Ira Levine aka Ernest Greene writes Monday morning, January 16:

Little as I wish to make a continuing series out of the Margold v. Levine exchanges, this morning's post, once again, requires a response, to wit, Bill's comment in reply to may calling him out about his Jew-baiting: "Any man who hides behind his religion deserves to be crucified."

It is absolutely typical of the hardened bigot to blame the object of his religious and ethnic hatreds for the hater's actions. Margold quickly tries to steer the conversation away from what he said first to what I said in my reply. Unapologetic about his shameful attempt to link a Jew with the worst of Nazis, he instead accuses me of "hiding behind my religion."

No hiding on this end. When anybody utters such a vile slur, he puts himself in the way of the general loathing and disdain of all who oppose anti-semitism and other forms of prejudice. Bill chose to play the Jewish card in his nasty, personal vendetta against me and thus made himself an object of loathing (a status with which he is far from unfamiliar in any case) to every Jew and every enemy of anti-semitism everywhere. That was his choice. Now he's trying to run away from it by accusing me of hiding behind an issue he created. Typical. In the process, he just digs himself in deeper.

For example, his suggestion that I should be "crucified" for confronting him on this matter carries more than a little tinge of the bigotry conveyed by the original slur. Why the biblical punishment of crucifixion as opposed to, say, gassing? Again, is Margold indirectly invoking the ancient blood-libel against Jews as Christ-killers? Curious choice of words.

As to my being "a horrible man" and "quintessential evil," that is merely the opinion of one marginal, pathetic loser who hasn't held a real job or do one constructive thing in this industry in a decade or more. As I pointed out last time, no one cares what Margold says or does, myself included, until he crosses the line into religious hate-mongering.

It is to these pitiful lengths he must go to warrant even this much attention.