"The best pornography is the porn you won't admit watching," says Ron Sullivan, former auteur turned head of production at LBO (since 7/96). He looked through the program for the World Pornography Conference, which starts Thursday 8/6, and runs through Sunday, and found it boring. He won't be there.

At age 59, he still has his health and a full head of dark hair. He still smokes and drinks most evenings. A little over a year ago, he married a 41-year old woman, his fifth wife.

Ron feels proud that his two boys Jason (Ralph Parfait) and Nate (Woodburn) have become succesful pornographers.

With management duties occupying his time, he has no plans to coordinate and direct a porn feature. Greg Steel now does that for LBO. Sullivan and LBO specialize in fetish.

Ron has not taken the time to learn the internet. He says companies are finding there is not as much money to be made on the web as they thought. LBO's site is a basic shopping catalogue.

Ron has articles in forthcoming editions of AVN.

Sullivan plans to attend the Free Speech Coalition's Night of the Stars Dinner - Dance on Friday, August 7, in the Grand Ballroom at the Sheraton Universal Hotel at 333 Universal Terace parkway in Universal City, Los Angeles.

Registration for the World Porn Conference begins at noon, Thursday at the Sheraton Universal. Annie Sprinkle, Candida Royalle and Linda Williams (professor) are the scheduled Mistresses of Ceremony for that evening's program.

Registration at the door for the WPC runs $200.

***

I talked to journalist and screenwriter Martin Brimmer at 1PM, 8/5/98. For the past few months, he's lived with his first love - a girl he dated seventeen years ago. An artist, she is not in porn.

Martin's writing a story for Hustler about Elegant Angel shooter Dion Giarrusso, a former drug dealer who reinvented himself as a pornographer.

"In the '70s, at the height of the cocaine era, Dione went to this club on Wilshire Blvd and La Cienega, Max 151. Dione made a deal with the owners to promote the club. After several years, the club goes into decline. He'd long been solicited by drug dealers to work for them. Finally he gives in. He makes a deal with Colombian drug dealers to run drugs. He became a major drug dealer, running thousands of kilos of cocaine and marijuana every day. He was the subject of six months of police surveillance. He became careless. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and served eight years.

"While in prison, he decided to change his life around. He started taking correspondence courses from AFI - the American Film Institute. He wanted to make independent movies. While in prison, he met this guy he used to know from a biker club, who's one of Patrick Collins' cameramen who persuaded him to do porn.

"When Dion got out, a week after parole, he was invited to a party at Patrick Collins' house in Encino. He started working for Elegant Angel filing model contracts. Then Patrick let him direct a scene for Sodomania 24… Dion's been directing for a year now."

Martin reviews videos for New Rave and Dirty magazines. He likes Jim Gunn's new video Lesbian Virgins.

Brimmer was amused by the reaction on RAME to his review of The Cellar 2 by Rob Black… The Mila scene, where she walks into a room and says, 'hey niggers, f--- me.'

Brimmer writes: "Mila succumbs to anal, vaginal, double anal, double vaginal penetration… Byron cums in Mila's ass. She screams, 'where's the bowl? Get the f---ing bowl.' Mila bends her semen saturated rectum over the bowl…her asshole turns inside out… and she squirts the cum into the bowl. No human being on the planet should watch videos like this. I've seen autopsy tapes that were less stomach turning. But wait, it gets worse. Once the sperm has been ejaculated into the bowl, two raw eggs and a dolop of malt liquor are added to the mix and Mila greedily swallows it all down… There's a fifth and concluding scene of The Cellar, but I couldn't tell you what it was… I was too busy thinking about how Mila had so willingly allowed herself to be anally violated in an XXX feature shot on April 14, 1998, not long after an industry meeting was held where it was announced that the latest HIV scare in the adult business was possibly the epidemic we'd been fearing for some time now."

Martin says: "What's interesting is that people loved that review, and it made people want to go out and rent the movie. I noticed someone in RAME posted about reading a review of her rectum turning inside out. And he wrote: 'I can't wait to rent this movie.'"

Luke: "We're in a business that appeals to the lower parts of the human being. It's almost comical to try to uplift pornography."

Martin has written several scripts for coming Wicked productions. Johnathan Morgan is directing this month Double Feature starring Serenity. Later we shoot Knockout. Pornogothic just came out. "I love it. A vampire thing set in a goth club scene. We did two different cuts. The version that goes to the stores is softer than the director's cut.

"I interviewed Catalina L'Amour a few weeks ago. She has a line of about 60 pro-am videos. She won a national stripping contest in the '80s in Vegas ($10,000) and she parlayed that into an interesting [hardcore] career. She has a huge fan base. She only does her husband and doesn't do girls, but the line is still popular."

Brimmer and Wesley Emerson are still in post-production on their definitive shot-on-video documentary on John Holmes. They hope to finish by September first. They are now down to a four hour cut. There are over 40 talking heads. It's a Leviathan of a documentary. The director [Emerson] wants to bring it in at 120 minutes and the editor and I at 100 minutes. There will be an unrated cut with graphic clips."

Luke and Martin agree that The Porn King, John Holmes' supposed autobiography, is horrible. "She's [Laurie Holmes] an interesting person. We interview her. She says John had a heart of gold. Well, he used to beat women, he was an implicated in one of the most gorey murders in the history of LA. He was a habitual thief."

Luke: "I read the whole book [Porn King]. I think there are nuggets of useful information in there, such as the description of John's first loop, which corresponds with Jim Talmag's [Uncle Roy's] description of discovering John."

Martin: "That story is apocryphal.

"We talked to Sharon Holmes who still lives in Southern California. When they first met, John was a forklift operator. They lived in Glendale. Sharon says he got sick from going in and out of the freezer. So while he was mending, he liked to go to card clubs in Gardena because he liked to gamble. His discovery was like the scene in Boogie Nights. He was at the urinal, and this man came up and said, 'I want to make you a star.'

"Sharon did not know much more. She did not like the porno business. She did not do drugs. She says she never saw John Holmes in a porno. It was a marriage of love. John sheltered her from the business. She's only seen one porn film. John took her to I AM CURIOUS YELLOW. She walked out halfway through. We did the interview in secret. We shot her in half-light.

"We interviewed Detectives Van Atter and Lang. They said that it was the most gruesome murder scene they have ever seen.

"Eddie Nash wasn't interested in talking to us. In his late '70s, he's retired. We interviewed prosecutor Ron Cohen who still believes John played a role in the murders.

"There have been so many myths about John Holmes perpetuated by the media. This particularly one was even in Tony Lovett's piece in Hustler a few years ago. An apocryphal story about John's bloody handprint on the wall [at the scene of the four murders at 8763 Wonderland Ave]. There was not a bloody handprint. It was just a palm print on the wall above the bed…not a bloody palm print. The print could've been placed there at any time because John was always in and out of that house.

"Much of Boogie Nights' recreation of '70s porn is a direct lift from the 1981 documentary Exhausted, and from Johhny Wadd. I had an attitude when I went into the interview with P.T. Anderson, that I was going to confront him on this. Little did I know that he did this on purpose. He said: 'I wanted to have these reference points. I wanted to shoot scenes that represented typical '70s low brow porn. But I didn't want to be accused of making bad filmmaking myself. So I lifted these scenes from Exhausted so that anyone said, 'God, this is horrible.' I could point to the original source material.

"On the laser disc version, you can run the original clip from Exhausted and play that against Boogie Nights. Sometimes all he did was change camera angle… But he shot some of these scenes verbatim, shot for shot, angle for angle.

"I feel the same way about the movie that you [Luke] do. I liked it but strictly as diversionary entertainment, not as scholarly text on the adult entertainment business."

Pat Riley writes on RAME:

Holliday strikes again! In his column in August AVN pg 102, Holliday, probably having nothing better to do, lashes out once more against Riley.

Jim's column is available at:

http://www.avn.com/html/avn/news/

nws/arch/news044.html

Holliday says:

"This is the part I relish. Attention, Holliday Bashers, particularly mistake a minute and one per review Riley and everyone's least favorite junkie and his fashion fairy sidekick who routinely confuses cashmere, linen and exotic cottons for polyester. I thrive on your contempt or jealousy or whatever, but could y'all answer a couple of questions?"

Riley replies:

Now just what does that mean? Is Holliday accusing me of being a junkie? Never touch the stuff, not even marijuana. Last time I took a puff on a joint was about 15 years ago (and I inhaled) and before that in 1972, I smoked a round (or whatever you call it--it's about the size of a silver dollar) of hashish. Those are my only experience with recreational drugs. Hardly a junkie.

Sidekick? I don't have anyone who could remotely be labeled a "sidekick".

For those who are not "hip" to Holliday's writing style--well, style is not the right word, "doodlings" would be better--I think what he's trying to do is link Riley and Mike Albo, the editor of Hustler Erotic Video Guide who regularly bashes Holliday for his attire and is alleged to have used quantities of illicit substances in the past. Now why these two should be linked in Holliday's mind is a question only he can answer but to any who think there might be something to it, Albo and I have communicated only once ever and that was a note from Albo thanking me for mentioning his magazine in my books. How Albo could possibly have any insight into the "questions" Holliday asks is beyond me.

As to Holliday's complaint about "the venomous spew and judgmental mysoginism toward women", that's called describing the girls. The most important quality a female brings to a porno movie is her looks. If they're good, I'll tell the reader; if they're bad, I'll tell that too. Live with it.

LESBIAN VIRGINS #1

GOOD

1998--Devil's Films

Producer/Director: Jim Gunn

Featuring: Courtney Luvcox, Sunshine (FL), Camille Sinclaire, Mika, Jade De-Luxxxor, Michelle, Kristina, Angel, Julia, Jessie James

"Your honor, I really didn't know these girls were only fourteen, honest! Anyway they only did some pussy licking...er, cunnilingus. That's not real sex. And the strap-ons, vibrators, and dildos...well, they weren't real penises." "Mr. Gunn, meet "Bruiser" Washington, your roommate for the next twenty years. He just loves young white boys."

Hopefully, Gunn has good ID for these girls and the above scenario won't come to pass but for the viewer who likes 'em young he has assembled a few here to excite the most jaded teenage lover. All of them are supposed to be nudie bar dancers in FL, so I would think they were over 18 to do that job. There must be some laws regulating the minimum age to be a stripper, no? The second thing about this collection of strippers is that 50% of them seem to have tiny, or (generously) small tits. Are they simply in waiting for their first boob job, or are guys in FL partial to small-titted women? Not being a fan of nudie bars I really don't know but I would have thought the majority of the girls were Nikki Sinn/Rebecca Wild types to conform to the hooting 'n' hollering Al Bundy/Howard Stern crowd. These girls would remind them too much of their daughters.

Each segment is preceded by a tiny interview in which we learn about the girl's previous experience or absence thereof with g/g sex but not much more. I suppose that's reasonable in a g/g tape.

Then we move into the sex with the usual licking, strap-on-ing, and dildoing ending with a "You loved that, didn't you?" type closer from behind-the-camera Gunn. Repeat four times for a total of five segments.

Courtney is pretty with very long straight blonde hair, small tits, lithe body, black eyebrows, vertical slash of pubic hair, not a particularly tight waist, and a slight belly when she's lying in the spoon position. She might be 18. Sunshine has a passable face, long blonde hair in a pigtail, small tits, lithe body, flat belly, black eyebrows, shaven pussy, and also not a particularly tight waist. She'll probably be a junior in high school this fall. Courtney says she's been with one woman before

and Sunshine's a g/g virgin. Well, I somehow doubt Courtney's contention--they both act like g/g virgins, with some quite visible pauses while they think what to do next. At the end Gunn asks them to kiss each other and they do with about as much enthusiasm as I did when I had to kiss my mother at age eight.

It's really quite sweet but would have been so much better with a male.

Camerawork here, and throughout the movie is lousy. Far too many close-ups of the girls' genitals and very little focus on their faces and the rest of their bodies. In some cases it's understandable (the foreigners) but these girls have near-perfect bodies.

Jade can be seen in {North Pole Series #2} but in this movie you see why she wore a body suit for that one. She has large tattoos on her right shoulder back, her right thigh, and her left hip, one of which looks like it's peeling. She's also quite ugly. Jessie who looks like she needs a double pump job--I think she's just putting on weight elsewhere--and Jade do a professional g/g with the usual fake moans.

Kristina has short blonde hair, tiny tits, lithe body, tight waist, nice butt, narrow hips, stubbly shaven pussy, belly button tattoo and another on her left ankle, and a pretty face. She also has slight stretch marks on her tits and on her belly indicating infant production however no C-section scar. Another (see {MDD#86}) proof that you don't need wide hips for vaginal delivery! She's very vivacious and tells how her first g/g was with an older women in the shower and how that older woman removed Kristina's tampon with her teeth...er, at that point I decided I didn't want to know more. Michelle has a young Tera Heart look, with shoulder length brown hair, passable face, small tits, lithe but heftier than Kristina body, tight waist, and a belly button tattoo. She says her first g/g was at age eight. Oh...Ed! They look and sound like they would have no problems doing you on the first date or screwing their boyfriends in a common bed. Kristina should be in the same year as Sunshine and Michelle will probably be a senior in the fall. They do a fairly enthusiastic g/g leading to the suspicion they've done each other before.

Angel and Julia are both foreign coming from Brazil and Hungary, I think. Their diction is poor and despite rewinding I couldn't really catch it. Angel has long blonde wavy hair, marginal face, medium/large droopy tits that look like they have a baseball in the end of each, and a hefty body. Julia has a passable face, short red hair, medium droopy tits (no baseball), and may have a lithe body. The camera keeps well away from their bodies and they both wear clothing for most of the time, Angel a shirt and Julia a cummerbund. They grunt and groan like pros.

Camille is pudgy with cantaloupes, marginal face, and shoulder length reddish hair. She could be 18 or even 22. Mika, who is not Mika/Lucy nor Mica, has a passable face, shoulder length blonde hair with tight curls or waves, small tits, lithe body, flat belly, tight waist, narrow hips, nice little butt, belly button jewel, and a birthmark on her left chest just below her breast.

Clean up her hair, get the gunk off her face, and put her in a white dress and she could be in Sunday school at your church. They do another virgin-like g/g. Oh, for a male...

No condoms were sighted. Date of production: 5/7/98.

***

From the Atlanta Journal and Constitution 8/2/98:

Jacksonville - It's lunch time on WVOJ-AM (Talk Radio 790), and the discussion is about a Duval County video store busted by police for selling XXX movies.

A caller named Jack labels the raid "an abuse of governmental authority" for a "victimless crime" and asks, "Where's the victim? Why doesn't the victim come forward?"

The radio host says quietly, "The victim has come forward. The victim is me."

Thus Tonya Flynt-Vega, daughter of infamous Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, launched into the first segment of her radio show on a favorite topic --- the dangers of pornography.

Flynt-Vega, 33, is new to the radio dial. WVOJ station manager Evelyn Holcombe Morrow invited her to try out for a show in May after reading a pre-publication copy of her new autobiography, "Hustled: My Journey From Fear to Faith" (Westminster John Knox Press, $20).

"Hustled," which hit bookstore shelves in June, shows why Flynt- Vega is pessimistic about the culture. It tells the story of a girl whose childhood in Ohio and Jacksonville was spent largely in poverty and neglect, living with a mother who worked as a cocktail waitress, then a hairdresser. Her lifestyle contrasted dramatically with that of Flynt, who built a men's magazine into an empire and lived in luxury with a young, glamorous fourth wife.

The book describes incidents of emotional abuse and sexual molestation by Flynt (which he has denied), a stepgrandfather and another relative of her mother's. And it exposes a young girl's conflicted emotions, longing for her father and his affluence, and hating the things he did.

"For me and my family there is no turning back," she wrote in the introduction to "Hustled." "Larry Flynt is my father, and his empire is the enemy."

She decided to tell her story after the 1996 movie "The People vs. Larry Flynt," which she says made a hero of her father and glamorized his industry. To not speak out, she says, "would be like being witness to the murder of someone, then not coming forward. My crusade is not against my father, but against an evil tearing the very fabric of society."

Today, she needs little preparation for the half-hour segment devoted to discussing pornography with James Lambert, author of "Porn in America," a 1997 book Flynt-Vega says is a "classic" on the subject. Lambert throws out statistics purported to show a relationship between the rate of sex-related crimes and the availability of pornography.

The Central Complaint Unit of the Medical Board of California has completed its initial investigation of the AIM (formerly referred to as PAW) testing facility located at 4523 Van Nuys Blvd #203, Sherman Oaks, CA. According to Ms. Margie Brazil, findings have been transferred to the supervisory division for revue. It is her belief that release of the results are imminent. Ms. Joan Dumont, originally assigned to this case, is on vacation until August 10, and was therefore not available for comment.

Porn Conference

.c The Associated Press

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. (AP) - Mountains of pornographic magazines. Stacks of triple-X videos. Movie stars who appear on film more often without clothes than with them.

It's all academic at the World Pornography Conference, a four-day porn extravaganza where hundreds of university scholars and legal scholars from around the world will rub shoulders with the stars, producers and distributors of pornography.

The location is the San Fernando Valley, the heart of the $8 billion-a-year pornography industry.

``The idea that we would sponsor a conference on say, serial killers, doesn't mean that we are endorsing serial killers. It means our job is to gain insight and understanding into the phenomena that affects human behavior,'' said Dr. James Elias, a sociology professor and director of the Center for Sex Research at California State University, Northridge.

Organizers are expecting upwards of 750 professors, researchers, First Amendment lawyers, adult film actors and producers to convene for the conference, ``Eroticism and the First Amendment,'' which began Thursday night.

They'll be mulling topics such as ``The Role of Fetishism'' and ``What Goes Into an Erotic Film: From Start to Finish.''

***

Hart Williams writes on RAME: "Rick Lutz ['70s porn stud] was hospitalized (as in long-term, as in probably permanently) for long-term alcohol abuse, and the official diagnosis was "pickled brain."

***

Jeff Marton from Evil Angel Video says Rocco laughs at recent rumors that the Italian stud is HIV positive.

Jeff says Rocco is winding down his performing career. In a few weeks, E.A. will release the most expensive Rocco produced movie yet - Rocco Never Dies.

Marton hopes that Rocco will make his money back, but he has his doubts. Jeff says the video will sell about 6000 units out the door like all new Evil Angel releases. "Distributors have to buy a minimum of 300 copies of everything to get the best price - $14 a copy."

***

On 7/17/98, MTV was scheduled to do an interview at Zane Entertainment in the late afternoon. Zane intended to put on a isn't-porn-glamorous show for them.

Kristen received a call from AIM's Sharon Mitchell requesting that she come down to talk about her test.

Kristen and Matt arrive. They are taken into the office next to the AIM office. MTV's Tabitha has just finished interviewing Sharon in the same office. She and her assistant(s) are gathering their belongings to leave. Before they exit the room, Sharon discloses the test results to Kristen and Matt. According to Matt, the MTV assistants couldn't get out of the room fast enough. According to Kristen, she asked for a retest and Mitchell told her it wouldn't make any difference.

Matt returns to Zane and MTV interview begins around 4 or 5 PM. All of the fun and games have been abandoned due to the distress of the news they've just received.

According to Matt, Tabitha asked him what he thought about Rob Black pushing the envelop between violence and sex; to which he replied, are you here to talk about Rob Black or about me (paraphrase). She also asked him if he thought porn was degrading to women. Then she told him that she had just been down at AIM and was there when it was reported to a girl that she had HIV and that it was a very disturbing experience. She asked him what he thought about the situation. Matt said that he told her that the girl in question is his girlfriend and that he didn't want to talk about it because it had not yet been confirmed and might not be true. Tabitha evidently had not recognized him as being there because his hair had been back in a pony tail. He pulled back his hair to demonstrate the difference in appearance.

According to Kristen, after she received a negative test she got a call from Margold which insinuated that he would clear the quarantine list if they would promise to say good things about PAW. Also, it is my understanding that in spite of two negative tests, she was told that they would not clear her until she tested at AIM.

Further tests revealed Kristen to be HIV negative and AIM dropped its quarantine of those who'd worked with her.

Bill Margold and Sharon Mitchell have a different version of events than the above. Both are preparing for this weekend's World Pornography Conference. I've heard that Mitchell has pulled an all-night editing session (8/6) to complete her documentary "Daddy, Make Me a Star." She plans to talk within hours to journalist DK Stanton.

Mitchelll told the 8/98 AVN: "Just because there's not a scare now, don't think you can't get by without a current PCR-DNA. Because a lot of people aren't accepting old ones. I know several starlets who've been on the set with 60- and 90-day old ones, just thinking that who they are and the factg that they don't work that much is going to get them by, and it doesn't. And remember that directors call this office every morning to see if people are up-to-date or not, and if you're not registered with us, I'm really sorry, but I can't tell them to hire you. I got three people work yesterday because some without up-to-date tests had to cancel, and people called up to see, 'Well, who has a current test?'

"I don't get cooperation from one of the clinics any more on monitoring [Dr. Bonura's North Hollywood Clinic refuses to turn over test results without signed releases], so it's up to the talent now to bring in their own tests. I understand that you don't want to do it; I understand you feel you're different and ifyou get HIV, you're going to off and disappear, but whether you're in my files or not, I will find you and I will find the people that you've exposed, so you might as well just bring your f---ing test in and get it over with."

However concerned, ethical and commonsensical this sounds, there are legitimate questions about whether the above violates the law. As I understand it, you cannot be required to present HIV negative status. Performers can voluntarily share their test results.

MTV intends to air its documentary on porn in late September.

From a source close to the Kristen false positive fiasco:

Luke, one could only hope that Sharon Mitchell and Bill Margold would be swallowed up by the earth itself in protest of their vile existence.

Bill Margold propagates the type of puritanical hypocracy and solipsisticly deranged meglomania, where denying the premise is somehow supposed to eliminate the signifier, that he claims to rail against.

Where the f--- did this wacko come from? My fear is that nothing will  come from the entire incident other than a series of benign apologies  and absurd reversals, which is what we are already seeing. Bill and Sharon are already denying incidents that occurred with multiple witnesses. With PAW I guess the company slogan is the flipside of the old adage " if only wishing made it so," and that would be, " if I truly believe it didn't happen then it didn't happen."

Surely accidents and mistakes happen in this world but the treatment of this crisis has shown us all alot about the nature of relationships, as well as the desire for monetary gain and status, in this industry. Trust no one.

Gklein97@aol.com writes:

My father's first wife (before he met my mom) was a porno star in the late 60's and early 70's. She worked in California and in New York. Her real name was Claudia Tedesco, and I know she made $50-$100 a scene back then. What makes this interesting is that her father was the producer of "The Price Is Right" at the time in Hollywood. His name was Anthony Tedesco.

One of the reasons I am trying to get information about this is that I have always had a sneaking suspicion that my father (John Klein) may have also done a little work himself. He was a pretty well known drug dealer, mostly large quantities of pot and some mesculin.

***

Vivid owner Steve Hirsch recently hired his dad Fred as a salesman.

***

Federalist79@hotmail.com writes on rec.arts.movies.erotica:

Reading Luke's posts is a matter of getting raw information. He reports what he sees and hears as he sees it and hears it and identifies it as such. You seem to want to read his posts as if they were polished product exiting a newsroom, as if he were presenting a conventional journalistic piece. He is not. Reading Luke's posts is more akin to standing in the newsroom than reading the final product: rumors pop up; a source comes forward; others deny; key figures are unavailable for comment; the story becomes messy and unreliable and the truth behind the story becomes hard to find; more sources come forward and the picture becomes clearer. Some people find this process exciting enough to make it their profession. Some find it interesting enough to read in its own right. If you have taken Ford's posts a Gospel, that's your problem. The rest of us are content to listen to claims and spin presented as claims and spin and recognize the seedy human quality under all of the conflicting accounts.

A famous novel (and film) seems to be on point here. At the end of "The Maltese Falcon," we have listened to a handful of fascinating personalities accuse, spin, explain and lie their way through an entire novel. We do not have any reliable explanation for how these people came to be chasing the falcon, where it is, if in fact it exists, or even who committed the several murders that have happened.

We have only the explanations of liars and the surmises of a quasi-disinterested investigator. In some respects, the truth is irrelevant to the story and its appeal; and in all respects, the truth proves to be unknowable.

Luke gets to verifiable truth a little more often than Sam Spade, but the appeal of his posts is the same as his less successful fictional counterpart. The fun comes in looking over his shoulder, not in the absolute dependability of what his source is saying. In some respects, the speakers' attempts to deceive are the most fascinating part of what he is writing (Ashley's and Wallice's attempts at self-serving interviews come to mind).

On a final note, I would like to point out an argument that has been reflexively presented by the porn industry probably for as long as there have been pornographers: If you don't like it, don't read it -- and leave your neighbors alone if they feel differently.