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Thursday, January 28, 1999

Luke F-rd on cover of LA's New Times Magazine

FSC President Gloria Leonard on the New Times cover story: "I wonder if their crappy grammar and absent punctuation is in some way, a twisted homage to you and your often illiterate style - or perhaps they, like you, are merely dictionary challenged [I think Leonard refers to Gilstrap's style of quoting people exactly and not cleaning up their grammar]. On the subject of your "book," I'm delighted to hear that your editor has the sense to carve out what sounds like a considerable amount of hearsay and bulls--- - this should reduce the number of actual readable pages to about twenty! A pamphlet, perhaps?"

: "Luke that is a damn nice piece dude! Well written and all. I feel like I know ya even better. Keep up the good work Luke, in this business full of f---ups and misfits your site gives me hope dude."

New Times cover story: "Good article. I can't believe you didn't plug Shooting Sex!! [Brand new video out from Sin City Ultra directed by DiGiorgio and starring Scoop Luke]. Luke... Luke...Luke... Oh, another thing, you and they were wrong about one thing that was mentioned a couple of times... Bodyguards.. You see Luke, you actually DID have bodyguards at CES [Luke's best buddies in porno - James DiGiorgio and talent agent Rob Spallone], whether you seriously understood that or not."

Observer: "It's [New Times cover story] interesting and hilarious--and you are a perverse man for being so misunderstood and being so controversial and loving it so much!"

Observer: "Luke: I loved it. I think Gloria Leonard came out funny. Your dad come off funny. Sort of Ben Sternish."

Observer: "That was probably the best article about the whole porn industry I've seen... Nobody gets dumbed down and everyone comes off looking just like businessmen."

New Times cover story by Peter Gilstrap. Peter was ethical, fair and perceptive. He got his facts right. I thought he was wrong about my book coming out in March. I thought it was not due until May, but it turns out that Peter was right and I was wrong. Prometheus plugs my book in the 1/18/99 edition of Publishers Weekly. "The Jan 18 issue is the Spring releases and every company advertises in alphabetical sequence," writes a source. "You're on a one page of Prometheus together with 9 other books. They show a photo of the front of the book (two people is a misty kissing scene) and it says 100 years of Sex in Film Luke F-rd 350pp (Photos) 678-7 Cloth $25.95 March."

I've been bogged down this week dealing with the editor's revisions. She keeps writing "gossipy" and deleting those juicy personal details. She's also said no to real names and lots of other stuff that I wanted to include. It's been a monotonous and dispiriting time dealing with her requested revisions.

I'm afraid my first published book, A HISTORY OF X, will come off as clumsy, but once again, where else are you going to get information on this subject? I'm not very good but at least my web site is very free, my book will be cheap, and what other sources of info are there about the porn industry that approach the exhaustive amount that I offer? Not many. Perhaps Peter Gilstrap will write my next book, turning my scoops into readable form?

www.asiacarrera.com reports that Jenna Jameson has bailed on her all-girl comeback movie later this week for Wicked. Asia's the thinking man's porn star. Reading her introspective, brutally honest columns reminds me of myself.

The place had been advertising her shows for a couple of months. According to them, she didn't as much as call to say she wasnt going to be there." (Down73 on RAME) She supposedly pulled the same stunt last summer when scheduled to appear at the Goldrush Showbar in Atlanta.

Brandy Alexandre has decided to write her own bio for Luke F-rd dot com. Are wedding bells tolling for Brandy and Luke? Will internecine internet warfare lead to marital bliss? Only if Brandy converts to Judaism and accepts Scoop as her lord and savior.

Linda Thoren writes to Luke from Sweden 1/26/99: "I was on your site today for the first time ever. I sat for four hours, couldn't stop reading, so much good info, fun, and inside gossip. I live in Sweden, and it isn't that easy for me to keep myself informed of what is happening in the biz over there. I get AVN, but I think it's to tame, to afraid to loose ads from the big companies. Anyway, I notice that my name wasn't in your index, so if you think I am qualified, you are free to put me up on the list. You can find info on my site: www.swelinda.com. I've attached some pictures, you are free to use them in any way you want. Pic1   Pic 2  Pic 3   Pic 4

Nothing but the best!
Linda Thoren (stage-name AND real name)

Chloe writes to me: "No VCA contract [yet]. The meeting [last Friday with Russ Hampshire] was to discuss the continuing of the Chloe line through VCA Xplicit. All the folks over there are great, and they treat me like I'm part of the family, so it'll probably happen. I'm just out of movie ideas at this time, but make sure you grab a copy of my first, "Chloe's What Makes You Cum?!!" as soon as it's out which is sometime in February I think. I'm going through one of my bouts of insomnia...usually a wretched two week ordeal... C-hole (its what my friends call me.)"

Porn fans are discussing on rec.arts.movies.erotica (RAME) newsgroup how to get bestiality videos from Europe. Dante writes: "I live in the Metro-Detroit area, and all overseas orders go thru a customs hub in Chicago...I've ordered SEVERAL bestiality video's from www.lasersex.nl, and all were shipped in their fully illustrated boxes. Each package was marked "Inspected by US Customs" and marked with tape saying it had been opened, looked over, and re-sealed, but I've never had anything confiscated."

Max Hardcore remembers: "Joe D'Amato was a friend of ours. His real name was Aristide Massaccesi, and he came from Italy.

"We’ve known him since 1992, when we had the pleasure of meeting
him and his friendly wife in Cannes. He was a funny kind of guy, and he seemed kind of lost. But at the same time he also seemed to know what was happening. He was looking for some girls, and had big ideas to make a "really sexy movie."

"He had a knack of inspiring those around him to do better, and do more.
We called him the "human tripod," because of the way he walked, and because he always kept his big old heavy Arriflex on the sticks. With a big old bic pen sticking out the side that controlled the zoom lever. Yeah, he always shot on film. And he always cared about what he was doing.

"I had the pleasure of working for him once, and so did my friend Barbie
Angel. There was nothing we wouldn’t do for him. He only had to ask in his special soft Italian way.

"Aristide Massaccesi shot at my villa for the last time on January 13, 1999. We’re going to miss you, Joe. Goodbye. You got the best camera angle of them all."

Bushmiller was disturbed by D'Amato's horror films: "Cannibal films. Perhaps he didn't have anything to do with the animal mutilations (2nd unit, I hope) but, honestly, it made watching his porn difficult for me. I kept waiting for someone's entrails to be pulled out. Hey, he could have had a future in Japan." (RAME)

You still have a reputation here as a hard-hitting, tough-question-asking editor who got stuffed into the garbage can by the football team and who investigated the XXX - XXX romance. (They are now married, by the way)."

By D.K. Stanton

CES had never seemed even a remote possibility. Yet there I was, winding my way upstairs to the press room; convincing each subsequent security post that my non-existent pre-registration had somehow gone awry. I did have the money, but using it for admission would mean carpooling home with total strangers who had been erroneously described to me as Bible Thumpers Extraordinaire. Turns out it would have been an enjoyable road trip; but at that particular moment, who knew?

For the first time ever I apologized for my choice of business cards—the
generic, red on white, name/phone number had seemed so expedient--not to mention unique and memorable. Unfortunately, I now needed something that disclosed writing as a profession.

"How about a byline?" the pleasant young woman suggested.

Yeah, right. I don't even carry around pictures of my kids.

I began listing every credit imaginable. Penthouse Variations did cause an
eyebrow to lift; but given their practice of editor assigned pseudonyms, Lord knows I could never have proven it was me. Besides, would fiction count?

"That’s it; except for some internet stuff." Oh well. I certainly had tried.

"You’re on the net?" she asked.

"A couple of sites have run some things." I shrugged my shoulders. Over the past few months I’ve become resigned to the prevalent attitude that good writing only counts if it’s sandwiched between a glossy newsstand price and the tawdry shimmer of phone sex ads.

"We can go online," she said, the brief skew of her shoulders as off-handed as my own.

"Try www.l-keford.com," I replied, offering the only actual web address I
could recall. Bookmarks are so handy, remembering how to get there is
generally unnecessary.

"You do it," she said, giving the mouse a welcoming nudge.

I hesitated a moment, hoping the extensive archives hadn't been demolished in the recent site crash.

Click:
News...
Males...
JD Ram...

There they were. The pieces I’d written in July, reprinted as a fleeting
memorial only a few short days after my friend’s unexpected October death.

The rest of the process was quick and gracious. Within moments I was a
properly documented participant in the Saturday afternoon throng--chatting with Margold; clawing through the testosterone haze toward first time encounters with newsgroup acquaintances such as Tina Tyler and Mike South.

I should probably write a story about my successful misadventure--CES PRESS REGISTRY RECOGNIZES l-keford.COM.

Hmmmm. Now there's a good idea...

Luke detects a harder edge to Talking Blue, who picture Luke as Cockzilla. John Douglas replies:

"Glad to hear you got a sense of humor. Although I hear the Cockzilla people are bringing a lawsuit against us for besmirching their products fine name by associating it with Luke F-rd.

"Us, hard-hitting journalism? Puh-lease! At this point we are striving to attain AVN Loose Lips quality of writing. Journalism is so far off on the horizon from what we do that we can't see it without squinting.

"I think we are still pretty industry friendly (as un-trendy as that is these days), we can certainly afford to be a little more caustic in our pieces since you yourself raised the bar as to what is acceptable to write about these days. As much as it pains me to do so, I guess we owe you a debt of gratitude for freeing up what we can write about."

What porn star has the ugliest boyfriend? Toohot07 writes on RAME: "Watching Jessica Darlin on Stern with her husband. What does she see in him? I'm moving to LA. It must be a slow track out there.

"Jeanna Fine's husband. What a mess."

"Misty Rain's husband."

Mike South: "Nena Whett has Johnny Toxic. Bonita has Ed Powers. Tina Tyler's ex is Tony Tedeschi. Janine has Ricky Rachman, don't ya know her parents are proud."

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A judge is expected to decide next week whether a federal law designed to keep online pornography away from children violates free speech guarantees or is a permissible way to keep tabs on potentially harmful material.