Monday, July 23rd, 2001

Jeff writes: Luke, I watched the 3 hour porn piece on Court Tv last night and I have to say it was quite good. I think more info was given regarding the porn industry in this piece than in any other porn news special I have seen. What Do you think?

Luke replies: We don't have CourtTV on my cable outlet, so I missed the show. But I've perused the material on CourtTV.com and can't find anything new on it yet.

Jeff replies: Do yourself a favor and ask if any of your readers taped it-and can send you a copy. Legs Mcneill was the host and he is now writing a book on the porn biz that he's been studying for the last 4 years. They had alot of interview footage of ginger lynn and her fights with traci lords.

Gene Ross writes: Legs McNeil, who's been writing a book about the porn industry, hosted a documentary which he produced for Court TV. It aired last evening and touched on a variety of familiar terrain already covered in E! Channel specials- from John Holmes' participation in the Wonderland Murders, the Traci Lords' scandal and the Savannah suicide. Curiously, McNeil who should know better, also buys into the oft repeated canard, mostly perpetrated by AVN, that porn is a $10 billion a year empire. [Which of course would mean that every participant in the industry is a virtual millionaire with 10,000 individuals hauling in an average of $1 million a year. Okay, let's say 20,000 people are making $500,000 a year.]

Jane Hamilton, Sharon, Mitchell, Ginger Lynn, Tom Byron, Bill Margold and Tom Blake, retired LAPD vice detective are among those interviewed. Hamilton notes that the main difference between the "outlaw" then and the now is the fact that the industry is being sought out as a legitimate enterprise. Blake notes that producers and directors were prosecuted for pimping and pandering during the Golden Age era of porn.

Court TV Host: We're going to be talking about a topic I'm sure LOTS of you are interested in... pornography. And we're going to be joined by a man with encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. His name is Legs MacNeil, and he's the producer of a three-hour documentary on the topic, The Secret History of the Other Hollywood that airs this Sunday night at 8pm ET/PT on Court TV. He's also writing a book about the history of pornography.

johnny_rockin: What is the history of porn? How did the industry start?

Legs McNeil: It was loops and stag films Until "Deep Throat" came out in 1972, which was one of the first feature-length pornographic films with a plot, and an original score, and was actually funny. "Deep Throat" launched the modern porn industry. It was made with a $22,000 investment by the Peraino family, a low-level mob crew, and it grossed $100 million, which made everyone in the Mafia sit up and take notice.

ctv_warhorse46: How do most of the porn workers end up in the porn industry?

Legs McNeil: Various reasons. For a lot of people, it's a step up. For a lot of people, it's just about money. Surprisingly enough, in the 90s it became about fame and having a career. It's also one of the few industries in America where women make 3 times the amount as the guys do, and the women get to call their own shots. For a lot of women it's actually not as bad as it seems, especially where they came from, and most of them get in for a very short period of time three, four or five years, and become porn stars so that they can go on the road and strip because if you're a feature dancer, you can actually make $10,000 in a week. So a lot of them, the smart ones, usually do well. The ones who aren't so smart become victims, and don't end up so well.

charasmatic_kind_of_sarcasm: Are snuff films for real?

Legs McNeil: No, they are not. They were invented by a B movie producer named Allen Shackleton, who heard about snuff rumors and decided to make some money off of them. He purchased an Argentinean biker movie made by a female film director named Roberta Finley. the biker movie was called, "The Slaughter." Shackleton purchased the movie for $30,000, re-shot the ending, where an actress was supposedly murdered on camera. Shackleton then hired some off-duty policemen in New York City to plant stories in the New York Post and the New York Daily News, claiming that these snuff films were emerging in the culture. Just when the rumors were catching on, he released "The Slaughter" under its new name with advertisements that read: "The film that could only be made in South America where life is cheap." Snuff got the desired reaction, and Women Against Pornography was formed to specifically protest the film Snuff. Originally, it was called "Women Against Violence in Pornography and the Media," and it was later shortened to just "Women Against Pornography." No one remembers the movie Snuff, because it was that bad of a film, but the snuff rumors lived on, and became urban legends. The adult film industry has an outstanding offer Of, I believe, about $100,000 at this point, to anyone who can prove the existence of an actual snuff movie. Al Goldstein has an outstanding offer of $1 million, to anyone who can produce one.

Court TV Host: There must be limitations on that...hasn't someone, somewhere in the world filmed a murder in progress?

Legs McNeil: But that's not a snuff film. A snuff film was a pornographic film where somebody had sex and the sex act culminated with the actress being murdered on camera. The movies were supposed to have been made for rich clients who specifically wanted and enjoyed these films. People who kill people and videotape it on a camcorder are doing it for their own amusement. Snuff films were supposed to have been made specifically to be sold as entertainment, not as documentaries of serial killers' crimes. There's a difference.

johnny_rockin: Legs, I really enjoyed your book about Dee Dee Ramone. It was great. I am just wondering when will your book about the history of porn be out? What's it called?

Legs McNeil: It's called "Size Matters": The Uncensored Oral History of Pornography and the American Dream.

happytrac14: Why should we care about the history of porn, and what is the conclusion of your book?

Legs McNeil: It's just the story of porn. I don't give a f**k if you care about it or not. Don't buy it. Go back to reading Jewel's book of poetry. I don't care what you do with your life. I'm interested because it's about America, and the story has never been told, and it's fascinating.

therose_4: What inspired you to write about the history of pornography or what was your reason?

Legs McNeil: It's kind of the true story of the Sopranos. I like desperation, and I like imperfection, and I think if Charles Dickens were alive now he'd be writing about the porn industry. I think it's just fascinating and extremely compelling. I was also interested in the question of what happens to people who have sex on camera for a living. That was a really interesting question to me.

charasmatic_kind_of_sarcasm: Do women get paid more for having anal sex?

Legs McNeil: Yes, they do. Considerably more. Everybody who's an adult film actor or actress has a list that they provide every producer or director of what sex acts they will and won't perform on camera. The price varies, but if you're gonna be doing anal sex you'll be getting paid about three times more.

policier83732: Do you know about the guy who was convicted for writing his sex fantasies about children?

Legs McNeil: There's been a couple of those cases. Most of those, I believe, are on the Internet, and I have a file on them. I'm still interviewing porn stars, so i haven't gotten to the 90s yet, but there was a great book, i can't remember the name of it. It was about this guy, his role-playing, his fantasy, and it turns out the guy he was having the fantasy with was an FBI agent, but it was never proven that he actually wanted to kill anybody. I think what a lot of people talk about in bed they don't actually want to do, and it brings up the whole question of what is fantasy and what is reality, but since we don't really have a very adult approach to sex in this country, we don't really get into those discussions too much, and I think one of the reasons why the porn industry is so big is because we seem to have a endlessly adolescent approach to sex. I think that's also one of the reasons why pornography for the most part is not really that "sexy."

jpresident: How can you audition to get into the porn industry, and what do you do for the audition?

Legs McNeil: Usually you go to an agent like Jim South, at World Modeling, and you bring him pictures and head shots, and you tell him what kind of things you will and you won't do, and what kind of work you're interested in. A lot of people come into the business through their partner, their girlfriend who's already working or a guy who suggests a new girl. It's actually harder to get into the business than you'd think, because there are so many people who want to be in it these days, and I think a lot of people, and this goes for most of my friends in it, they always say that "we get to have sex in front of the camera, and not on the casting couch." They like the honesty of it. The people in the porn industry are thoroughly disgusted by Hollywood, by the traditional film industry, and they think that the traditional, mainstream Hollywood film industry is much more immoral and disgusting and evil. They all have horror stories about Hollywood. I think, without fail, they prefer the porn industry, or just the honesty. They're not big fans of Hollywood, probably because Hollywood is always coming around. They have a term for them. They're called 'Porno Marks' Those are straight people who are enamored with the porn world, and people in the porn world have nothing but loathing for them. They're not big fans of Hollywood. Hollywood is disgusting. The truth is that Julia Roberts is 100 times more shallow, venal, and disgusting than any porn actress could ever be.

smolka93033: How did you get the name Legs?

Legs McNeil: I was born with one leg longer than the other. I wore a lift on my shoe. I had a femural shortening when I was 14. They cut two inches off my femur. I couldn't walk for a year, and I always thought I wanted to get something out of that nightmare experience, and when we started "Punk" magazine in 1975, and John Holmstrom suggested that I be called "Legs," I thought it would be a great idea. I liked the name, plus I always thought I was deserving of a good gangster name, and back in the punk days, everybody had a cool name.

ctv_warhorse46: What is the average length of a porn star`s career?

johnny_rockin: What happens to most porn stars? When their careers end and they are too old, what becomes of them?

Legs McNeil: For men, you can have a lifelong career, especially now that Viagra has taken over the industry. Women have a shorter career span, I'd say probably the average is about 5 years, and what usually happens to them usually depends on how messed up they were when they came into the industry, or how together they were. Some women walk away millionaires; some women walk away heroin addicts and alcoholics, penniless. Some get married and have kids and live happily ever after. It really depends on the individual. I'd say it's about half bad and half good, like anything else.

pornorama48393: If you think most porn is not sexy, is there any that you think IS really sexy?

Legs McNeil: Yes, I think occasionally they capture some genuinely sexy moments. I think it's usually by accident. The problem with porn is that you're always cheating for the camera. It's visual stimuli; most of those positions are not very comfortable. Even the porn stars don't go home and have sex like they do on camera. Basically, they're sexual athletes, and they're performing, and pornography is also a lie and it's a great lie, and it's one that most guys wanna believe, and that lie is: "yes, I wanna have sex with you right now." Because when you have real relationships, and real sex, it's complicated. Lots of emotions come into play, and, you know, real life is not as easy, which is one of the reasons guys like watching pornography. You know, you're not listening to your wife or your girl talk about picking up the kids from soccer practice. Your wife's mom isn't calling on the telephone. It's a fantasy, and it's a nice fantasy. I mean, I don't think there's any better word in the English language than yes. Unfortunately, it's not really the way life works. I hope that answers your question. As for some sexy directors, I like the amateur videos, and the 'Dirty Debutante' series, where the girls are having sex on camera for the first time, and they're awkward and clumsy and nervous. I like sex real. I'm a cynic. What I think is sexy is reality, and I tend not to believe that that blonde who answers the door really truly wants to have sex with the scrawny pizza delivery guy. So my problem is I don't believe, so I find it hard to find pornography that actually excites me. Maybe that's the real reason I'm doing this book: I'm trying to find out, I'm actually trying to find some pornography that turns me on. But pornography is relative to your situation, you know. I'm sure if I, had just been released from prison and hadn't seen a woman in a couple of years, and I put on ANY porno tape, i'd be tremendously excited.

johnny_rockin: What role does organized crime play in pornography?

Legs McNeil: Organized crime controlled the porn industry from 1972 to the end of the 80s. It was basically controlled by the Bonanno crime family in New York, through Mickey Zaffrano. and the Gambino family, through Robert DiBernardo and through the Columbo family. But they all dealt with each other, and it was more disorganized crime than organized. Most of the people making and distributing pornography are not in the Mafia or, as law enforcement calls them, LCN which stands for La Cosa Nostra. There's very, very few made members of the Mafia. I think Tony Peraino was a made member. Nicky Zaffrano was a capo, which is Italian for captain, and Robert DiBernardo was a made member of the Gambino family. Other than that there weren't too many other made members of the mob, and a lot of the guys in the business were Jewish, and Jews are not allowed in the Mafia. They're what law enforcement calls "known associates" of organized crime.

Porn Websites Used To Sell Drugs

From StraitsTimes: SOME international drug gangs in the region are using sex to sell their drugs to addicts. They have set up pornographic Internet websites as channels for their customers to contact them, as this is more discreet than offering drugs for sale in drug-related websites.

The Straits Times learnt that most of these sex-and-drugs websites are hosted overseas, in countries where pornography is not an offence. By using the sex websites as fronts, the gangs can also avoid attracting the attention of the local police.

The trend apparently surfaced recently as a result of intensive multi-national operations launched by countries in the region. Only regular clients can access some of these websites, which require passwords. These clients can also contact the syndicates by e-mail, using the links provided on the sites. They are able to buy such drugs as Ecstasy, cannabis, heroin and cocaine on the sites with a credit card.

The drugs are sent to them in ordinary-looking envelopes, so they look like regular mail. It is understood that the syndicates which host these sites sometimes use the sites to strike deals with each other.

According to the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, sex and drugs are big business for many international crime gangs. For example, in Japan, the Yakuza are said to make billions of dollars annually by selling sex and drugs, both in cyberspace and on the streets.

Earlier this year, drug gangs in Bangkok were found to be using the Internet to sell their wares. In one of the cases which was busted with the help of the American Drug Enforcement Agency, the syndicate sold heroin using a pharmaceutical website as a front.

Sasha Gabor Update

Sasha Gabor writes: Hi Luke, Well, will we EVER meet. I am remaining in Norway where, as you might have heard, the Norwegian Broadcastin Corporation has done a documentary on my life, (from Prodigy to Pilot to Prnstar and to......Pimp???) and after initially being forbidden, (it unleashed a storm), it was aired half past midnight. I am insanely famous and soooo recognizable with my Sean Connery looks in this gorgeous country of 4.5 million Vikings, that I see no future in returning to the zoo of LA and to be forever doomed to do Bukkake and freak stuff for peanuts. I was checking into your site as I often do, but much to my chagrin, I notice there STILL aren't any bio on me. Shame on you, my dear fellow Jew!

After all, I was more recognizable as the B.R. lookalike in the 80's and 90's and today get the eye as Sean even from people who have never seen me in porn! What's up with giving me the cold shoulder? You must have read at Gene Ross' that I bedded the girl, Cathrine, who was kissed on the cheek by Bill Clinton when he was in Norway. I also took her to the magazine that I write for and had her pose Penthouse style in the buff. Unfortunately she was quite a druggie but I didn't want to push her into doing sex on camera with me for the money. I AM A MENSCH! She is now in a three to six months rehab in Sweden.

Luke Gets Mail

Sheldon Teitelbaum (sheli@earthlink.net) writes: Can you or any of your readers tell me, on or off the record, about Cookie Orgad, who will be in the clink for the next 15 years or so for being the country's largest ectasy dealer (according to US Customs). Orgad was overheard in Nick Broomfield's Hollywood Madame documentary about Heidi. Also interested in Yehuda Alszeh (pronounced Alsheihk, if that helps), his erstwhile partner in beeperdom, if not crime.

Robert Lombard of Creative Image Management and Casting reads "Variety" at breakfast and comes across this release. Jon Favreau ("Made") has signed on to rewrite---with a view to direct---"PORN STAR",for Imagine Entertainment and Universal Pictures. Romantic comedy is about a man who innocently falls in love with an adult film star. Imagine Entertainment's co-topper Brian Grazer will produce. Script was originally penned by Grazer's wife, the novelist and screenwriter Gigi Lavangie ("Stepmom") and his brother, Gavin Grazer. Paying an estimated $400,000 against $1 million.

Ian writes: Hi Luke, To question whether there is a Chaim Amalek is like questioning whether Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him. SOMEONE writes the pieces which are signed Chaim Amalek, and that's good enough for me. He's always complaining that he can't get young women into his bed. With that sense of humour? I don't believe it.

Hi Luke, Chaim says, in the context of a discussion as to whether you should branch out into television (I think): "Luke has a certain mediagenic appeal, but just does not have even one tenth the requisite drive, and there really is nothing that anyone can do about that." I believe just the opposite: that while you do have the drive (or the persistence) to develop into other media (after all, you've already put yourself about, on the back of your undoubted fame, or notoriety) you are not telegenic. I've seen you pontificate on English TV (on Channel 5's www.sex), and would have found it profoundly boring if I hadn't been fascinated to be seeing you on TV at all. You need to go on a media presentation course (I assume they exist - you'd probably get one free in exchange for an entree to a porno shoot), and then your wit and appealing oddness might come through to good effect. But, as it is, no.

Steve Neece writes: First off; if you are going to sneak around taking pics of me try and make them reasonably accurate.You managed to make me look like I was at the end of a week long booze binge. I think you have deliberately demeaned me by doing this.I resent it. Be that as it may, I have other more important observations to make.

Firstly, the director Pasolini (Salo) was killed by a rough trade hustler that he picked up that killed him in a robbery. I doubt he knew or cared who he was killing. Interestingly, a prominent porn director also uses the name Pasolini. I imagine Black(Zicari), Max Hardcore, Zupko, Rocco etc. would s--- themselves in ecstasy watching this. Another movie along these lines is The Night Porter. It eroticizes an s & m relationship between a Nazi official and a Jewish female prisoner. Currently a French film entitled Baise Moi is playing. It has some hardore sex scenes and has a prostitute and a porn star hooking up for a murder spree ala Thelma & Louise. In one scene they stick a revolver in the asshole of a brothel owner and pull the trigger. It is currently playing at the Monica 4 plex in Santa Monica. SEE IT.

European films will take on themes American films are still too chicken to touch. Probably not one person in a thousand caught the significance of a scene in Caligula where there the aged emperor Tiberius has a number of women with nursing infants around him. The old goat felt that infants had strong urges to suck on anything and when one of them got the urge Tiberius would take it and try and get it to suck his cock. The young boys in the pool were his "little fishies" and many did not survive his aquatic frolics when he tried to time his orgasm to their drowning. Max and Black are pretty tame in comparison. Roman women were just as depraved and went into uncontrollable frenzies watching Gladiators butcher one another, sometimes losing control of their bowels and bladder in their hysterical excitement and if they were able to they would rush into the Gladiators dressing rooms and throw themselves on the survivors, even those who were badly wounded. Mila is vanilla in comparison. Early Christian and Jewish writers described these antics in loving detail as proof of Roman depravity.

Porn Star Ruby

Ruben writes: Luke i hear that ruby is no longer with that boyfriend of ten years.I also hear that he hooked up with this sweet little latin chick that he met while Ruby was hard at work at the ranch.dont know if its true but its out there on the circuit .I also hear that the latin girl and Rubys X boyfriend have a brand new baby .The news tavels pritty fast.

Luke, I saw that article on Ruby. I met that boyfriend of hers in las vegas . He has another stoy other than the one you printed.First of all, I think that if you want to be in the public i you suffer no matter what so live with it.Here is my story and it came straight from the horses mouth.I met Terry at a place called the green door , swing club.We had a few drinks and i kinda interviewed him .He tells me that he has not had sex with Ruby in a long time because she works up at the ranch and he dosent feel safe as he put it you never know.He also told me that he is in love with a hostess that works there at the green door.I got to meet her she is a beautiful latin lady.I asked her if she knows Ruby and she told me that she had been to the apartment a couple of times.I asked Terry who he liked the most he said i tolerate Ruby bcause we have been together for so long ,but i just asked Bianca if she would be my wife.By this time i really want to know why he would want to trade Ruby for Bianca .He takes a deep breath and said, she listens to me and latin women make love white women just f---, i have been with thousands of women but this is the one.Another thing is that once Ruby became a pornstar she got a big head and all she ever talks about is herself and that gets old real fast.Well Luke that is my story this was last year. I recently bumped into Terry and Bianca they just had alittle girl last month.This is why i say not all that glitters is gold.After he told me that story i only date latin women now and porn stars dont fasinate me anymore.I think that Terry was right on the money about latin women.I have been with lots of women my self and id have to say that by far latin women are the best lovers.

Busty Amateurs Founder Abandons Porn

XXX writes: Jeff Neuman of Busty Amateurs is rumored to have found God and that is why the #1 amateur paysite in the world had the plug pulled on it, and a substantial amount of his life savings is rumored to have been donated to the church.

Joe Blow writes: First of all Busty Amateurs is nowhere near the top amateur paysite. Before he shut down his site he was getting around 40,000 uniques a day which could easily be seen on sextracker's counter. This makes it probably around the 40th largest amateur paysite. Jeff Newman shut his site down for other purposes. The real reason he pulled his site down is because of bad legal problems that forced him to pull it down.

Chatting With Rob, Helena Spallone

I talked to Rob and his wife Helena Spallone Sunday 5PM.

Rob: "My wife thinks I have a girlfriend."

Luke: "Why does she think that?"

Rob: "I don't know."

Helena: "Stop! Good. Put that on the site, 'My wife thinks I have a girlfriend.' They can have you.

"Luke, don't even listen to him. He likes himself too much. He flatters himself. You think if I thought he had a girlfriend, I'd be with him."

Rob: "Luke, she's jealous. Twenty years."

Helena: "I haven't been married to him that long. He lies. I'm not that old."

Luke: "Have you caught him doing anything?"

Helena: "No, and I plan on not. Because if I did, he'd be so gone. Because what's good for the goose, is good for the gander. You can put that on your site too.

"I want Cindi Loftus's email address. I thought she was very nice and I told her I would email her but of course I threw out the card. Because he has no regard for anybody.

"He's yelling at me. He doesn't like when I talk to you, Luke."

Rob: "Luke, she's crazy. She questions me about everything. When my beeper goes off, she's on top of me. When I'm on the computer, she's on top of me."

Helena: "He's lying."

Rob: "I'm shooting five girl-girl scenes Tuesday.

"Yesterday, I got a page from a girl I booked for Tuesday. Who I only met for two seconds. She called me up cursing at me. I have an agent and he read Luke F-rd and you said that I offered you $50 to blow you. I said, that was Jim DiGiorgio. So I'm now hoping she shows up Tuesday. She's a nice girl. So put an apology to Venus, the former Penthouse Pet.

"She said it to Jim because I was walking by the car.

"I'm shooting the pretty blonde from David Moore who is no longer with David but is with me. She's cute, about 5'4" with natural breasts.

"I get up every morning and read Luke F-rd. I'm on the computer every morning between 6:30 and 8:30. Then in the afternoon, I come home and put you on and Helena yells, 'What are you doing?' She reads it all day long."

Helena: "Just once a day."

Rob: "I think I want to get Helena new breasts. Come on honey, they're looking floppy over there."

Helena: "Floppy? Get a new penis and I'll get new breasts."

Rob: "Honey, I'm only kidding. That's nice talk. You didn't say that this morning when you woke me up twice. I woke her this morning and then she came back for more."

Helena: "I thought I was dreaming. Luke, I'm going to kill him."

Luke: "I can't believe the way he talks about you."

Helena: "He's a beast. See, he's going to put this on the site. That you talk very disrespectfully to your wife. But I wear the pants in the family.

"He loves himself Luke. I love when you write, Rob was selling Rob on what a good actor he is. When he gets dressed, he goes, 'How do I look babe? How does this look?' He loves himself. He loves me? Yeah. You don't know how to love. You love yourself."

Luke: "Rob, how does Helena feel about you being on boxcovers?"

Rob nervous: "Lukey. Lukey. Is that nice? Do you want to start a war here?"

Luke: "Can you just ask her for me?"

Rob: "No Luke, I can't."

Rob yells to Helena: "Luke wants to know how you like me being in the movies?"

Helena: "First of all, my name is spelled H-e-l-e-n-a. I would never put myself in those movies. I don't think it's right, especially when you have children. And you don't know that he's not having sex unless you watch the whole movie. So if we had Mr and Mrs Smith, our neighbors, and seen him. 'Oh my God, is that Mr. Spallone?' You'd have to watch the whole movie to know that he's not having sex."

Rob: "That's enough."

Luke: "How does she like the pictures of you and the girls?"

Rob: "She knows I'm a good husband and that I'd never fool around. It's part of my job to be nice to the girls. Would she prefer that I had a different profession?"

Helena: "Absolutely."

Rob: "What would that be, hon?"

Helena: "Brain surgeon."

Rob: "Imagine me cutting your head open. I've opened a few heads in my day. With a baseball bat. I'm a surgeon. That's how she met me. She saw me getting in a fight on the beach. She thought I was a surgeon the way I was operating."

Helena: "If he puts this on his site, you're gonna be in trouble."

Rob: "I'm not going to get no sex?"

Helena: "You're gonna be divorced."

Rob: "Divorced. I hear that word three times a week. She wants me to go to a therapist."

Helena: "Absolutely."

Luke: "How's your dad [Joe Spallone]?"

Rob: "He's coming over here to pick up the kids so that I can have a romantic night with my wife.

"I took the kids hiking today. I walked up one hill and told them, 'Let's go home.' We went to church last night.

"I went out Friday night and I didn't come home till late. That's why I had to go to church. I was punished for going out. I went to Hollywood bars with some industry girls. I can't tell you which ones. My wife thinks they're my girlfriends when she reads your site.

"Helena don't want nothing about her tits on your site. She'll kill me.

"We're going to World Federation wrestling next week. Jasmine St Clair got the kids tickets."

Luke: "I'm afraid that stuff encourages violence."

Rob: "I know. They jump around the house. Before, the kid threw the little one on top of me and all my teeth were bleeding. Then we got yelled at by the Mrs. For getting too rough house. Mrs H-e-l-e-n-a. I had to have it tattooed on my arm, I didn't know how to spell it. I'm going for another tattoo this week. She's mad. I want to get l-keford.com tattooed on my back."

Money Laundering In Budapest

XXX writes: "Most of the Italians shooting porno in Budapest, Hungary, are cleaning money when they shoot. Huge budgets. And that money is not being spent on talent and crew. Most of the money from the German peeps machines is channeled through Italian producers and a few of the larger German producers to make it clean."

I seek more information on these characters: Goldlight owner Claus Nussbaum, a German Jew from Hamburg, Spain's IFG International Film Group, Mario Salieri (very powerful, and rumoured to dangerous), Gian Franco Grimaldi and Ricardo Scatchi, two big Italian producer-directors shooting movies every month in Budapest for $200,000 plus.

"This Gian Franco Grimaldi is the Man about town here. He has all the clout, and brokers a lot of the big deals. When he came here in around 1992 he didn't have a pot to piss in," says a source. "Whenever these Italians shoot they make things difficult for smaller producers as they suck up so much of the best talent especially the wood for up to eight days at a time. They pay well to so guys like David Perry will flake on you even if you booked him first when the Italians are shooting.

"Yes Hungary is now on the list of countries, which are uncooperative in the fight against money laundering. Hungary is still a Cash community. Everything is still done with CASH. You can show up at the Airport with a suitcase full of money, Declare it and THEY will drive you to the bank. No questions asked.

"It's no wonder at all that this is the world's capital for the arrangement of the "Big budget" porn production. Nowhere else do so many big budget productins occur. America doesn't come close.

"American production companies have been caught sleeping over the opportunities Budapest can afford their moguls to clean their dirty or Black cash."

REUTERS 5/20/01: But director Nanni Moretti's success followed another triumph earlier in the week of fellow countryman and auteur Mario Salieri -- in the porn industry's annual Hot d'Or awards.

A veteran of the sector with some 100 titles to his credit as producer and 50 as writer-director, Salieri took the top award Thursday for ``Stavros,'' his erotic opus about a horny Greek tycoon who bears a more than passing resemblance to Aristotle Onassis.

Given the strict Italian laws regarding the production of pornographic material, Salieri, like most of his fellow directors in the thriving national erotica industry, now shoots primarily in France and Spain as well as Hungary and other parts of Central Europe.

Not one to shy away from ambitious, auteurial projects, Salieri is preparing to direct an X-rated version of the Faust legend.

GUCCI writes: Since over 10 years Salieri is a controversial director within the Italian porn industry. His movies are very misogynist but on the same time very intelligent and intellectual. In his movies he reflects the sources of todays cold, pornographic degradation of women and finds them within the structures of fascist and post-fascist Italian society. His movies are pornographic tragedies where every sexual action becomes a piece of the puzzle to reconstruct what�s wrong with society. And the excellent camera work is unseen in pornography: excellent lighting, no cam movements, rarely any close-ups � all in all: A very cold, analytical view of what�s going on.

His style is very influental: Not only his beautiful wife, Nicky Ranieri, is shooting her movies in the same style (and with the same, although not as "reflected�, misogynism) since ca. 10 years, also new directors such as Jenny Forte or Dino Toscani turn out to be true followers of his (in Italy and France) very successful style (also connecting pornography with topics such as catholicism and fascism). Even famous director Max Bellochio from time to time makes movies in typical Salieri-manner ("Guardare� being one of his latest). Nevertheless, most famous Italian porn actress of the Nineties, Selen, who was for years under exclusive contract with Salieri, dismissed her contract in ca. 1997, because she was tired of playing abused women all the time and without exception.

Salieri's budgets: Some of them are for sure very high. He�s got excellent lighting and he gets the best out of the acting abilities of porn actors and actresses. Sometimes his movies have more than 20 minutes of talking without interruption. More talking than f---ing. Plus: His movie "Inferno� (1999) for example must have cost quite a lot, because it involves over 40 famous European actresses (in a 90 min. movie) which all have their own scenes with practically no group scenes. One of his latest movies, "Divina� (2001), includes as many music pieces as f--- scenes, involves very well composed and produced music pieces sung by Zara Whites and a "nonsex� singer. The movie is said to have cost about $500,000 dollars (difficult for me to judge if there�s still a lot money for laundry). Plus, yeah: There�s always been rumours about Salieri having close connections to the Italian Mafia.

Alex DeRenzy's Funeral

Richard Pacheco writes about Alex DeRenzy's funeral in the July 2001 issue of Batteries Not Included:

The memorial service for Alex deRenzy was conducted Saturday, June 16, at his home in Novato which speaks volumes about the man to begin with...the land, the pool, the comfortable house and patio, and his absolutely splendid, splendid gardens... They say he loved his gardens the most. It was where he landed after a hard day to regenerate himself before the return to the family.

Family was huge in his world...he had three of them...nine kids by three wives...and, of course, Kathryn made yet a fourth wife. The memorial service marked the first time that all nine of his kids had gathered under one roof.

[According to Alex's younger brother:] Alex had a Ph.D. in zoology before becoming an Air Force pilot. After the military service, he purchased a US Navy warship, a minesweeper, and proceeded to sail around the world with a group of family and friends and himself as Captain...until Interpol (international police) intervened.

Porn star Heather Lyn Writes

"Dear Luke, I normally would not do this but I figured with so many people in the industry logging on daily to hear the latest scoop, this would be the quickest way to let everybody hear me.

"Lately, I've been hanging out with Summer Storm, even getting her jobs. Since my break up with Alec Metro, and most recently this week, she has been "hiding out" at his house. I just want everybody to know how much of a liar she is and that as of 2 days ago, I wish to no longer be associated with her. She is a compulsive liar who has now made it impossible for Alec and I to ever be friends, even after the cool down from the break up.

"It is the ultimate betrayal to have somebody whom you thought you MIGHT be able to trust to go and do the things she's doing now, ESPECIALLY after all the help I gave her.

"As for Alec, he claims I have no friends in this business and that nobody really likes me. To that I say, yeah, I know their are people out there that don't like me for one reason or another and that's fine because you can't like everybody, but I've never done anything wrong to anybody in this business and do not deserve the rumor spreading that some have begun. If you have a question about something you've heard, ask ME.

"One more note before I go...I NEVER cheated on Alec regardless of what he or Summer says. During the periods we were separated (and there were alot) we were free to do what we wanted and when we made up I told him everything I did while apart. I know some of you are saying you could really give a rat's ass about this. However, there are those of you out there who I really like and want you to know the truth."

Heather Lyn's ex-boyfriend Alec Metro left these messages on Luke's answer machine:

"I appreciate what you've said Heather and it's true. People in this business will stab you in the back and that's why you should never trust anybody. And because you trusted people, it was a habit for you. I've warned you before that they will dethrone you. Now as a director and a producer, I can tell you that people will stand in line to screw you over. But when you commit crimes, you commit crimes alone.

"This will not ruin our friendship in the future. It will teach you a valuable lesson that you can't trust anybody. And until you learn that and understand that, you will never have any friends in this industry. Because it's a bloodsucking industry and it eats people up.

"I don't feel Summer ruined our relationship. We had our own problems. I'm sure it's very difficult to date somebody in my situation. I wouldn't because I've never dated a porn director, a porn star, with women calling all hours of the night seeking work. I'm sure it's very difficult.

"But everyone knows that when I am loyal in this business, I am loyal and when I cheat, I cheat. It's a small industry and we can all guess what each other ate when we fart. And as long as you understand that people talk, that people love misery, you will soon learn that if you want something to work in this industry you keep your mouth shut about everything. And you don't volunteer information and you don't brag about things you've done. Because there's always somebody waiting to kick you. Nobody wants to see you succeed.

"I've been in this industry for eight years now. Everybody knows that I've had everybody from Houston to Raylene to Hustler magazine kicking me. And I stand still. I started in 1993 and I am still at the top of my game. I'm a loyal person. I have integrity. And I have fun. And that's why I am still standing.

"Until you learn this basic theory, you'll be pummelled like the rest of them. Because the women come and go and the men stay. And the men stay for one reason - because we don't brag about our feats.

"Don't trust anybody. As people know, I lost five years of my life to prison. Because a good friend of mine couldn't hold his bud [marijuana] and set me up with drug agents. I lost a lot more than just a friend. I lost a major family. Most people know that my dad's side of the family owns a multi-million dollar furniture chain in the South called Claibourne Interiors which I am no longer a part of. Anytime I call that store, they hang up on me.

"So I do adult video. I'm a survivor. My biggest mistake was, just like you, I was helping a friend go through college, when I was a drug dealer. We're all from a rich family and I became a drug dealer because I wanted quick money fast. And my other friend wanted quick money fast too. And he got popped and he didn't want to do time. And I did. And I lost a family fortune because of it. I will never see a dime of that money until my father dies. And chances are, in Louisiana, because of the way the laws are, I will never see it. That's a lesson well learn by myself.

"You possibly lost a friend. You still have my respect. I never cheated on you. And it's all true. Anytime Heather or I broke up, whatever occurred with other partners was because we had broken up.

"You can't trust anybody. I am the classic example of that. For some reason or another, people will screw you. It's within our nature. We want to survive and it's all about the survival of the fittest. That's why there's a food chain and it's important to stay on top of the food chain."

Heather Lyn responds: I appreciate your advice. I don't however like how condescending you are. You think men are the best thing in this business. Yes, it's true, women are a dime a dozen here, but we are primary to the success of this business. I may not have big tits but my energy more than makes up for it! It was difficult being your girlfriend but less from the girls calling for work and more from BOTH of our stubbornness and jealousies (YES you got jealous too).

I never said our break up was because of Summer. That's all on us. I only claimed her a liar and user who betrayed me. As to your not cheating, I laugh. I have the very letter in which you claim me to be a skank and how I'll never work in this industry again, then account each time you cheated on me and even how one of them looked. You even bought one of them a $300 ring, so you wrote. Well, I hope you enjoyed it.

As I know you have no conscience, this may not bother, but at least I can leave you saying I never cheated on you. I never used you. I never NEEDED you. I CHOSE you. Period. You claimed to not believe a word she says, yet now you do. Too bad. You say others have told you things different from what I told you (at Nakita Cash's) and say to you, it doesn't matter what I say because you have it set in your mind now. I do say to the people(girls) that for some reason want to ruin things for me, Karma is a bitch and will come back to haunt you!! If you want him that f***ing bad, help yourself, but quit screwing with MY happiness!

Luke says: I spoke to Alec Metro Sunday evening.

Alec: "End of game. Too much information. It's getting ugly."

Luke: "What else are you doing these days?"

Alec: "I'm doing Alec Metro's Sexcess for Vivid TV, now owned by Playboy. It's a series based on my life. If me and Dale Dabone owned a multi-million dollar porn company and its inner goings on. Since I know the chemistry of everybody, I write it with all of our quirks. I shoot it slick European-style on Betacam. Everybody's dressed to the hilt. All the locations are fancy and beautiful.

"And Sexcess is based upon a porn company. We get to shoot porn movies within the movie. I can make you think something's happening but you're actually on a porn set. The whole conversation you've just watched was only a porn scene. I use big things like Westerns to make it come across in big shots. One minute we're talking about a script, and then we're back in the boardroom.

"It is produced by New Century Cinema and Studio 5533. We're on our third edition. It stars Ava Vincent, Heather Lyn, Bella Donna, Shay Sights, Adajja, Anika, Sky Taylor, Steven St. Croix, Jason McCain, Shane Collins. Its got the feeling of Joe Hunt's 1980s Billionaire's Boys Club. I'm going down this dangerous road and these guys are following me. I go directly to the Mob for the giant budget for a movie. I'm unconcerned with everybody's safety and welfare.

"It has comedy. Heather plays my girlfriend who's always mad and comes storming into the boardroom.

"It's hard to be a porn director's girlfriend because I am very focused on my career. I've been waiting to be in this spot for a long time. I've been in this industry since 1993 and I've waited for the right deals. And they're in place now. And it's simply going to take time away from people. It took time away from Heather. Yes, I am selfish in some ways and now that I'm really focused on a directing career, I'm going to be really selfish. I don't think anybody should be with me. I never have. I don't think this is the business for a relationship of that intensity.

"As a male porn star, having to focus sexually on other people just takes it away from home. There are only a couple of us in this industry, and I'm not one of them, who can f--k all day at home and f--k all day on the set. I got into this industry to shorttail my producer - director career, to get hands on, instead of pounding Hollywood agents for it.

"I wanted to be an actor, in whatever medium I could be. I wanted my stuff laid down early in life so I could look back at myself, whether it was pornography or whatever... I usually shot highend pornography so that when I look back, at least it was somewhat of a movie. I didn't want to wait for Hollywood to finally figure me out. Maybe it never would've and I would've never put anything on film.

"This way I'm doing something that I've always wanted to do - look through the eye of the camera and create images for other people.

"As far as Summer Storm, that's a Billy Glyde situation in this house. A friend hanging out. I have no interest in the young lady. She has no interest in screwing anything up because that would just make me mad. This house has always been a place for people to hang out.

"My first porn star girlfriend was J.R. Carrington and then Jordan St. James, a really crazy girl. Then I got into a longterm relationship with Houston, followed less than a week later by Raylene and then Heather Lyn. I think that's a pretty good record even for normal people for three years.

"As far as dating another porn star, I'm crazy like that. I don't know. I just let life take me where it does. I'm essentially waiting to march in to Louisiana, get an attorney and freeze all the assets when my father dies. And that's one of the reasons why I do porn too. I'm just waiting for my father to pass away. He stole an inheritance from me and sunk it into a multi-million dollar furniture company. And I'm biding my time. I do want to be a movie maker.

"When he goes, I will be more of a huge producer. And I will own the store.

"I'm the easy money guy. I'll admit that. I thought that after high school, everything should be handed to me. I was wrong. I did scandalous things and made large drug deals to purchase cars and homes. And then after my stint with the big house [five years in prison], I came into porn after other work for a year.

"Penthouse was the first thing offered to me as a male dancer to do a boy-girl. And I fell in love with the concept of it. I'd been pounding the Hollywood streets for a year after prison and was getting nowhere. It's like trying to hit the lottery. I was at my optimum wait at age 25 and there were guys who intimidated me.

"When Penthouse came up, I said, hey, it's a form of media. I will be naked in this media. But I've been devious since I can remember. I started sex at age 12. We had homes in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico during the 1970s. I ended up with a lot of sophisticated older women from LA and Canada. I got a nice training. It was a time of free love, disco... I was raised amongst that with a disco dancing sister and a disco dancing mom and a crazy lifestyle.

"I'm following a crazy lifestyle. I never expected it. I'm just looking for things until my, I don't want to say scum-father, it's kinda rude... But thief, and he knows he is and I hope he reads this, but I'm just biding my time until I get that company. I'll probably liquidate it. Drug diversion videos are where I'm headed next. My next two videos after pornography, one will be a new drunken driving video for all counties to see. The next one will be an expose on Ecstasy. My brother-in-law in Oxnard, California, distributes drug distribution videos. I'm not even going to tell people how much these videos cost, but if they're bought by the government, you can understand how much they cost.

"Say you get caught and the judge sends you to anger management or whatever class, you'll have to watch one of these videos. And there hasn't been one recently done in a long time. A low end tape is worth $200. Some of the high end tapes, like my drunk driving tape, will cost $800 per tape, sold nationwide. Nobody knows about this. The market is such cornball, and they need new stuff, and my brother-in-law is president of a company out of Oxnard, and that's all they do. And my mother is the director for the council on alcohol abuse for all of Santa Barbara county. She's like a judge.

"So, we're well connected into the anti-drug era, which is funny for me. But my mom is a drug counselor now because at the age I am now, she was experimenting too.

"I don't volunteer information about myself. This is the first time I've spoken to this site in five years, aside from the Hustler thing. I missed the whole Raylene thing. I didn't want to deal with it. Raylene threw me in front of Hustler and I didn't retaliate to that. I never do. I don't know why people want to discuss my private life with everybody. Especially in full detail about a letter I wrote... Of course the letter is going to say angry things. It's called a break-up. I've never seen anybody get a love letter during a break-up. These letters intend to be hurtful. They're meant to remind people of the mistakes they did. They're meant to sever ties. And the only way to sever ties in a relationship is complete abstinence.

"No letters, no phone calls. Not letting 50 million people read your letter either. The less contact, the better.

"Every single one of these women is now a friend. To every woman, I made it extremely clear - I can't be controlled. I play a submissive game. But if you can't figure out that I am really not a submissive, then you are not bright enough. I am a dominant. And I am in career where I am not turning around. I am 35 years old and I don't want to go anywhere else. I'm just waiting for the jerk to pass away and then it is on from there."

Luke: "How long since you've spoken to your father?"

Alec: "Since I was 18. I'd asked for a business loan through my grandmother and he turned it down because he thought I was too young. So I tried fire fighting for a while. I was accustomed to the nice life. I grew up in a beautiful beach home in Puerto Vallarta and hung out with the Fondas. An Aries male will do whatever he needs to do to live a nice life. Fire fighting was rewarding in the hero aspect of it, but financially it wasn't reaching it for me. I had to work two years of overtime to get the lifestyle I wanted. Psychologically, fire fighting was bad too because of dead children. So I went into drug dealing.

"And I didn't go into the small drug dealing. I knew two major people. I hooked them up right in the middle. Back in the 1980s, a kilo of cocaine was $40,000. And I was getting it for $35,000 and selling further south for almost $44,000. I was making serious money and playing with serious players.

"By the way, Ronald Tomminelli, if you read this. Or if anyone who knows you reads this. Alec Metro is Brendon Claibourn. I don't care. I'm not going to be a senator and my parents can kiss my ass anyways, except for my mom. If you're out there, find me."

Luke: "Who is he?"

Alec: "He was my main guy, when I was a drug dealer. We were really good friends and he was a way cool dude. When I got popped, he gave me the choice of rolling over. And I chose not to. The man made me. He later got locked up but I got the most time.

"The Aries man is going to live good, no matter what. It's no secret that adult is the easy way out. It's easy for a man. I will focus on my career. I'm sorry ladies, but every woman makes the same mistake [doing porn]. It's all glamorous and cool and fun in the beginning, and everybody thinks they can handle it, and the bottom line is that it is hard to handle.

"I didn't get into the industry through a girl. I got in through Penthouse. I've always been the provider in the relationship, or at least met someone half way. Obviously big giants like Raylene, Houston and Jordan St. James, I couldn't match their incomes then. Yes, a lot of money was spent and money was thrown at me. These women would come home with large amounts of cash, and want to run to Mexico or buy guns or whatever...

"I offer three basic things - security, a home, and security in the business. And I've never threatened anybody that I'd stop their career. A lot of times, if somebody calls me for a role on a production that will also star an ex-girlfriend, they will ask me, I usually ask them to take the girl first. For some reason, she [Heather Lyn?] always thinks that I'm going to try to stop her career.

"This is the most I've talked about my relationships in my entire porn career.

"Everybody knows that I am not a mechanical star but I use my true things that get me off. And so women get upset with, what's in the bedroom and what's on the stage? Well, it's for everybody.

"Once women get to know me, they see that I am using my mental process to make myself horny on a set. And in the bedroom. Instead of being a mechanical performer with Viagra.

"When women get involved with you, they see the mental things you use on stage. And I guess it hurts their feelings. But I need to do that to give a good scene. And trust me, you don't want a boyfriend who can't get wood, because then you look really stupid. And a lot of women start getting hurt by the foot fetish thing. And the foot fetish thing saved my career. After the novelty of the new car wore off, I was getting bored of porn. Then I remembered my foot fetish and I implemented my foot fetish and that has saved wood problems.

"When women get attached to me, they ask me not to do the foot thing and I have to say, that's the most appalling thing you could tell me. Because that's what I've based my whole career on. You can't change somebody's sexual interests. You can't know what it takes to get a boner on stage if you don't have a dick. No girl will ever know.

"I have a lot more to offer a girl than just f--king. Obviously f--king means nothing to a person if they're in this business. It's money. I've yet to get a free scene from anybody. No girl has ever come up to me and said, 'Hey Alec, I want to do a scene for you. It's on the house. I'm horny.'

"As long as you're earning your income off sex, expect tired people. Girls are tired too. I've been turned down at home because she's tired. And I understand.

"The plumber doesn't go home and start fixing the sink. Heather, I wrote that letter fast because you were on your way over to pick up the mail. I wanted to end this relationship because it's not going anywhere. I'm stingy, I admit that.

"You always look like a chump when you air your dirty laundry and for some reason, you get back together. People like to see the drama and hurt in lives. It sells better than love. Misery loves company. When a sad person sees a happy person, they don't like that. In this business, unfortunately, we have some unhappy people. We've made choices that have made us unhappier and then they get on the drugs... With all the bipolar personalities in porn, and the ADDs (Attention Deficit Disorder), these people should take proper medication.

"If I were a woman, I would not be in pornography. It's hard for a woman. If you're smart, and invest your money right, you might walk away with something good.

"I'm in it [porn] for good until that furniture thing kicks in. I'll probably liquidate that and sink it into porn, because it is what I know.

"Girls get hurt and they start... I don't know. I can't think like a girl. But when they see you having sex with other people, it's a mental thing for them while it's nothing for our penises. Porn relationships are hard."

Thoughts On Playboy

XXX says: "You've had some amazingly accurate information on Playboy over the past few days."

Luke: "I don't think Christie Hefner's the man for the job."

XXX: "She would've liked to have run a literary magazine. She doesn't get much involved with the entertainment division. There was a lot of politics there last year. One minute Jim English was in charge, then Dick Rosetti was in charge. They suddenly let Tony Lynn go, who supposedly was the biggest boss. They have this other company Alta Loma which supposedly produces programming for the networks, though they haven't produced anything yet. It's where they send people with severance deals. If I was a VP at Playboy, and they wanted to get rid of me, rather than just can me and be sued for wrongful dismissal, they'd give me a development deal with Alta Loma. That's what Tony Lynn has now.

"The power's now shifted back to Jim English who's always pushed for harder stuff.

"Roughly five percent of the world views pornography as entertainment. Therefore, the Vivids, VCAs, Wickeds, Spice Networks are fighting over that five percent. The biggest chunk they should be after is the bigger chunk that gets HBO and Showtime.

"About 1993, Playboy, with the big show Real Sex, could've gone after that wider market. But when Jim English was hired, he decided to compete with the other pornographers. And if you're a softcore network trying to compete with a hardcore world, you're going to lose. And as you lose, you either go out of business or acquire your competition. They acquired their competition.

"Spice slashed its deal with cable operators to 15/85. Meaning, if you bought $10 of pay per view programming, Spice got $1.50. So Playboy had no choice but to buy Spice. Typical par per view, like HBO, is a 50-50 split.

"When Playboy bought Spice in 1998, they wanted everything but Spice Hot which they sold to Vivid, with a clause that they could buy it back within three years. Spice Hot proceeded to kick Playboy's ass. It took Jim about two years to convince Christie and the board to acquire the Hot network.

"Many people who work at Playboy are upset. Getting hired to work on softcore is different from working on hardcore.

"I've heard some awful stories about Playboy's centerfolds. I hope these stories are not true. I've heard this speculation from girls that you can't be Playmate of the Month unless you sleep with Hefner.

"If you watch Christie and her father Hef together, there's a weird dynamic.

"Playboy have been huge supporters of the Democratic Party over the years, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wonder if Democrats will still take their money now that Playboy is a hardcore company?"

Mordecai Richler Was Here

Sheldon Teitelbaum (sheli@earthlink.net) first published this piece in the April 19, 1990 Los Angeles Times:

Leaning on a cane, Canadian firebrand Mordecai Richler hobbled into the lobby of Montreal's posh Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The 59-year-old writer had taken a spill on the ice outside of his country home on Lac Memphremagog, a resort lake straddling the U.S. border in Quebec's Eastern Townships.

"These winters are punishing," acknowledged the bruised but otherwise unflappable Montreal native, whose first novel in a decade, "Solomon Gursky Was Here," was greeted last year by critics in his country as the most significant event in recent Canadian publishing.

By late February, the Canadian edition, published by Penguin Books of Canada, had sold 38,000 copies of a 40,000 print run. The novel was also offered as a Canadian Book of the Month Club selection, requiring the printing of an additional 20,000 copies. In a country of 25 million, a quarter of whom speak French, this was an impressive showing.

"Solomon Gursky" also spent a couple of months on the Toronto Globe and Mail best-seller list, earning Richler a cover review in the prestigious magazine Books in Canada, and frequent citations in the Canadian newsmagazine Macleans, in Saturday Night and in other premium Canadian periodicals.

Richler's books have rarely done this well, proportionately, in the United States. But they have always been well received critically.

Released this month in the United States by Knopf, "Solomon Gursky" is a 556-page family saga, replete with the usual Richler satire and savagery, about a boozy writer's lifelong obsession with the doings of a larger-than-life Jewish-Canadian patriarch and his offspring.

In some respects the protagonist is a Richler stand-in. And the family is a fictional model of the formerly bootlegging, now-legitimate Bronfman clan of Montreal, whose doings Canadians regard with almost the same fascination Americans have for Donald Trump.

Descendants of a prosperous Russian-Jewish immigrant, the Bronfman family owns and controls an enormous and diversified financial empire. In the United States, they are best known as the owners of Joseph E. Seagram and Sons.

"The Bronfmans were certainly the trigger," Richler acknowledged.

"Solomon Gurksy" ranges from Victorian London to the Canadian Arctic, from the Depression years on the Canadian Prairie to present-day New York. For Richler, who has been particular about setting his best books in the Quebec of his youth and, occasionally, in London, this has been a change.

In one of the plot's many little tricks, Richler depicts the fictionalized patriarch, Ephraim Gursky, as an escaped British convict who survives one of history's most inane attempts to locate the elusive Northwest Passage. Gursky subsequently converts the native Inuit to his own lusty brand of Orthodox Judaism. The more literal-minded of his adherents, however, are almost driven to extinction while trying to comply with the Jewish prohibition against eating or drinking until the sun goes down on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In the Arctic, it takes the sun takes half a year to set.

"Solomon Gursky Was Here" has had the added effect of thrusting the acerbic Richler himself back into the literary limelight just as critics had begun to suspect -- or in some cases hope -- that he might have mellowed.

Bronwyn Drainie, a columnist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, recently noted that for Canada's normally genteel literary community, this truly was "the winter of public discontent." Few could recall the eruption of so many flaps, spats and hissing matches.

"Why do so many of these controversies seem to center on Richler, especially when he doesn't go looking for them?" she asked. On his permafrost-ridden home turf, the prickly Richler is a caustic social critic who makes Southern California's curmudgeon, Harlan Ellison, seem like Mr. Rogers. If Richler inspires equal degrees of loathing in some circles, suggests Canadian chronicler John Robert Colombo, perhaps the country's ranking anthologist, it may be because he is too worldly, too openly Jewish, too urban and too outspoken to suit some super-patriots in Canada.

"Although very much engaged in Canadian life and politics," observed Colombo, "Richler has always been a thorn in the sides of nationalists in both English and French Canada. He is particularly adept at showing the world how absurdly both camps can behave."

Richler is, in fact, more outspokenly Canadian in outlook today than ever. But he maintains a distinctly Jewish ambivalence toward excessive patriotism -- even toward Israeli nationalism -- which he regards as narrow, insular and never terribly healthy for minorities. In a country such as Canada, which took 98 years to settle on a flag of its own, overt displays of nationalism are, Richler has observed, even slightly ridiculous.

If he wished to, Richler could spare himself the grueling Quebec winters by joining the million or so other snowbirds and Canadian expatriates in the Southern California sunshine.

During a 20-year self-imposed exile in London (with sojourns in France, Spain and Hollywood and frequent visits home), Richler had achieved a certain degree of success as a screenwriter and novelist. His screenplay for "Life at the Top," which starred Jean Simmons and the late Lawrence Harvey, was well received. He also worked on "Room at the Top." The script he adapted from his seminal novel, "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" a few years after returning to Montreal in 1972, was nominated for an Oscar.

Richler learned about the Oscar nomination while visiting Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories. In Yellowknife, the temperature outdoors was 42 below zero. But the reception awaiting him at his first Hollywood party was, he would discover, no less chilly.

"To mention the Arctic, where I had just come from," he recounted in "Home Sweet Home," a collection of essays published five years ago by Knopf, "was to watch eyes glaze over in boredom, until I finally learned to say not that I had just come down from Yellowknife, but that I had returned from location in Yellowknife."

" 'Oh really? What are they shooting there?'

" 'Caribou.' "

Despite his cheek, Richler was later called back to work on the film "Fun With Dick and Jane," a prospect he greeted with ambivalence.

"It was a day like this, lots of snow, and I said, 'OK, I'll come down. But I don't want to meet with any producers, I won't take meetings, and I want a first-class ticket for my wife.' They didn't balk at any of my requests, but they thought the last one was the funniest thing they ever heard -- this strange Canadian backwoodsman actually wanted his wife to come with him."

Richler returned permanently to his homeland in 1972 because he feared his literary vision could not survive the separation from his Canadian roots any longer.

"I couldn't write novels set in England because I wasn't brought up there," said Richler. "I, like (Trinidad-born novelist V. S.) Naipaul, don't know what an Englishman does when he goes home at night. I saw writers I knew and respected, like Doris Lessing and Dan Jacobson, setting novels in biblical and far-future times. I figured I'd better go home before that happened to me."

England's and Hollywood's loss has become Canada's gain. John Fraser, the editor of Saturday Night, Canada's preeminent magazine of politics, art and culture and a frequent publisher of Richler's journalism, has characterized "Solomon Gursky" as "vintage, mature Richler."

Most of Richler's previous novels have been rooted in the people and places of the Montreal Jewish ghetto of his youth. Richler was the child of Jewish immigrants from Russia who quickly steeled themselves against the frigid north winds as well as the equally frosty regard in which they were held by the province's French-speaking Catholic majority and its almost equally disapproving Anglophone minority.

Richler grew up in the St. Urbain Street Jewish ghetto warmly evoked in his novels, an impoverished, insular world that was not, however, without charm. Many of the places Richler popularized in his book -- the Bagel Factory, for instance, and the late Moe Wilensky's corner sandwich store, where a quarter once bought a "special" and a Cherry Coke -- have, because of Richler, become Montreal icons.

In books like "The Street," "St. Urbain's Horseman," "Joshua Then And Now" and "Duddy Kravitz," Richler has kept the period of his youth -- from the start of World War II through the early 1950s -- vibrantly alive.

"This was my time, my place," Richler has said, "and I have elected myself to get it right." According to one critic, he has brought "his native city of Montreal to life as no writer has been able to do before."

He has done so, however, often to the intense discomfort of his fellow Jews, who do not always appreciate being reminded -- or having Richler remind others -- of their humble origins. Indeed, Richler's relationship with other Montreal Jews has been prickliest of all. Many think Mordecai Richler's books and pronouncements inspire anti-Semitism.

Richler's readiness to expound irreverently on matters of grave national portent have won him few friends in government, federal or provincial. His slightest quips tend to make national headlines. Residents of Edmonton, Alberta, may never forgive him for saying theirs was a great town if they ever decided to uncrate it.

In "Solomon Gursky," a character describes Canada as "a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples."

Passages like this, acknowledges Richler, get cited in the Canadian press and have earned him most of his notoriety. But Richler's most deadly venom is saved for his native Quebec. He is particularly bitter over what he sees as the emasculation by Quebec of the province's English-speaking minority, which Richler characterizes -- Jew and Gentile alike -- as "gutless."

"For God's sake, they have grown men in the provincial bureaucracy running around with tape measures, trying to determine whether the few English-language signs permitted in public places use letters that are smaller than those in French.

"Future generations," Richler says, "will laugh at our obsessions. We are not living through tragedy but farce. If this country flies apart from such matters, at least foreigners will find some comic relief in Canada's plight."

Richler believes such comments have earned him the enduring enmity of Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, although Bourassa does not speak publicly about Richler. Richler has not only held Bourassa up to ridicule within Canada, but also has made his government a laughingstock in such prominent American forums as the New Yorker, Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly, for which Richler writes regularly.

Ironically, these positions have not earned Richler the love of English Canadians.

"Those guys hate Richler," said Colombo, "because he championed the free trade deal with the U.S., which most Canadians now regard as a blatant sellout of our sovereignty."

The agreement with the United States permits, for the first time in Canadian history, the relatively free flow of goods and services. Many Canadians believe that the protectionism had held Canada, despite its intense regional divisiveness, together as a national entity. Without it, Canadians fear the commercial and cultural tug of the American behemoth will prove greater than the bond among the provinces.

Richler has traditionally disparaged Canada's cultural and economic protectionism as "tiresome."

"No heritage is worth preserving," he has written, "unless it can survive the sun, the mixed marriage, or the foreign periodical."

This position may have been behind Canadian novelist Farley Mowat's savaging of Richler in a Toronto weekly this year in a manner some have characterized as anti-Semitic. A self-described "chauvinist-nationalist" (who achieved notoriety in the United States in 1985 after U.S. customs officials refused him entry because of his conservationist activities), Mowat called Richler a "non-Canadian" with a Jewish and neighborhood identity but "no sense of Canadian identity at all." By attacking Richler's alleged "cosmopolitanism," as one critic characterized the quality Mowat objects to, Mowat, wittingly or otherwise, used the historical language of anti-Semitism, propagating the canard of an innate Jewish incompatibility with patriotism.

But John Fraser, who once spent three weeks in the bush with the author of "Never Cry Wolf," does not believe Mowat was intentionally anti-Semitic.

Mowat, notes Fraser, "is a merely another small-town Protestant, who probably holds the usual small-town Protestant view of Jews." He is also, according to Colombo, a pastoralist who celebrates the virtues of the Canadian wilderness and has fantasized in his writing about staging a heroic last stand of loyal Canadians against encroaching American imperialists at James Bay. Richler, an avowed city slicker and alleged Yank-lover, had populated Mowat's beloved Arctic with talisman-sporting, Yiddish-singing Eskimos.

The acclaim given Richler's new book was also apparently too much for the three judges of Canada's prestigious Governor-General's Award for Literature. Despite its ample critical and commercial success, "Solomon Gursky" not only didn't win; it wasn't even nominated.

"That it didn't even make the list," said Fraser, "has more to do with politics and the motivations of the judges than it does with Richler or his book. I've had a look at the competitors, and to me this was madness."

Richler has declined to comment publicly either about the Mowat flap or the snubbing of his book. He is at work on another volume of essays and will soon begin a new novel. Mostly, though, he says he is content to sit by his fire on the frozen shores of Lac Memphremagog, reading quietly and talking with his wife, Florence. Montreal, a city he recognizes as sadly diminished in recent years as much of the money and talent fled west and south, is a place he now visits for a day each week.