Archives - Sunday, June 20th, 1999

Marilyn Chambers is Still Insatiable

Pat Riley writes on RAME: Ah, hah, another opportunity to pound on the oldie-lovers, the guys with a mommy-fixation, and the touchie-feelies! This movie, Marilyn's comeback and hopefully swan song, will be released in July according to the accompanying publicity. For JC Lee and Two-Fisted: Marilyn smokes (a regular Marlboro type) just before her scene with Marcus and St. Jox.

The modified extended cummerbund effect is where the girl just exposes her crotch and pulls her tits half out of the slip/dress/corset she's wearing.

STILL INSATIABLE Alternate Name: MARILYN CHAMBERS IS...STILL INSATIABLE 1998--VCA Producer/Director: Chanze, Veronica Hart Featuring: Marilyn Chambers, Juli Ashton, Nikita Gross, Victoria Queen, Kylie Ireland, Staci Valentine, Chloe Nichole, Mr. Marcus, Steve Hatcher, Tice Bune, Julian St Jox, Jack Garfield, Julian Andretti, Gloria Leonard, Georgina Spelvin, Veronica Hart, Ron Jeremy, Mark Kernes

If for some weird reason best kept between you and your psychiatrist you have a fixation over old fat women or you drool nostalgically over (as the publicity says) "your old girlfriend" Marilyn do us both a favor and just go and buy or rent this movie. Marilyn does get screwed a couple of times, masturbates, takes it up the butt, does some minor g/g action, and is shared by two black guys. That's all you need to know and you won't like the rest of this review.

For the rest of the world you should consider this as an upscale {Older And Anal #34} with an upgrade of the guys to "reasonably handsome if a little poofy" and a slight plot. Marilyn, twenty-seven years after {Behind The Green Door} returns as US Senator Charlotte Bulworth (yeah, ~that's| original!) who's lecturing Republican (I suppose) women's groups in CA about the evils of pornography and why she's voting for a special anti-pornography task force to clean up the filth.

They actually rounded up some realistic-looking if ugly people such as Gloria Leonard, Georgina Spelvin, and Veronica Hart to hover around and regale us with their dialog skills. Fortunately none of them take off their clothes. Kernes (credits: Bobbie Neuwave), Scottie Schwartz, Sasha Gabor (doing his Burt Reynolds imitation), and many other old-timers also have non-sex stand-around roles.

Marilyn has been given a couple of porno tapes to watch purely for research purposes and as soon as she pops one in the VCR of her limo she's turned on and her hand immediately goes to her crotch for some masturbation while dreaming of herself lying on a bed masturbating. As any good church-going religious type will tell you masturbation is one step on the slippery slope and sure enough next thing you know she's asking her bodyguard Andretti (credits: just Julian) if she can suck on his dick. Since he just swallowed a dozen or so Viagra he can actually get it up for "mommy" (I hope he was paid big bucks) and he screws her.

Marilyn's entourage also includes Kylie (looking pretty facially but hefty with a big butt), Juli, and chauffeur Staci (looking as usual, plastic) and of course they're also rather promiscuous, Kylie screwing a reporter (Jack Garfield, I suppose--also reasonably handsome), and Juli finding that she really likes girls, in this instance, Staci. After Marilyn walks on the wild side and does a three way with Marcus and St. Jox (both uncredited--oh, they're black, I understand), Marilyn's handlers decide that to defuse possible criticism by the press of her affair with Andretti, they'll all have sex with him.

The tapes that Marilyn watches provide two sex scenes, one of Hatcher screwing Chloe (credits: just Chloe) while a bald pathetic loser watches and masturbates, and one of Tice, Nikita (credits: just Nikita), and Victoria (credits: Vicca) doing a stylized three way. None of this is worth watching.

Marilyn looks old and fat and tries to cover herself using the modified extended cummerbund method in all scenes but is unsuccessful in dispelling the idea that you might need a fork lift to turn her over. Chloe does her usual badly acted over the top performance, screaming and contorting her face in fake orgasm; the Russians are clinical; both Kylie and Juli act like and probably are in real life, hard businesswomen; and, Staci goes through the motions. The sound fades in and out and the cameraguy spends most of his time trying to avoid the nasties but doesn't succeed. At least there's no mist and no special effects.All scenes use condoms, Chloe even for the oral part but then I would too with Hatcher.

Sexwise: Hatcher screws Chloe including an anal ending in a belly cum shot; Marilyn masturbates; Staci masturbates; Andretti screws Marilyn; Juli and Staci do a g/g; Tice, Nikita, and Victoria do a three way including an anal of Nikita only ending in a tit cum shot; Garfield screws Kylie including an anal ending in a butt cum shot; Marcus and St. Jox share Marilyn including an anal (no DP) ending in a tit cum shot; and, Marilyn, Kylie, Juli, and Andretti do a four way with all females penetrated ending in a tit cum shot on Juli. Date of production: 12/98.

Porno Apocalypse 2

Oy writes: "The Clark/Kramer/Christ kerfuffle kicks ASS! I'll bet you didn't know that the NEW YORK MAGAZINE editor who rewrote Kramer's Psycho Solution story, Kurt Andersen--author of this season's "hot" novel, TURN OF THE CENTURY--was the SAME Harvard hots--- who edited "The Hippies That Time Forgot" in SPY years earlier. Also, Sarah Jewler, executive editor of NEW YORK at the time of the PsySol dust-up, was dating a guy, Jay Kennedy of the Universal Features comics syndicate, who was a witness to the Psychadelic Solution attack--is a longtime pot customer of "Jacaeber", pot and acid supplier to "The Hippies That Time Forgot" and a financial backer of the Joe Christ video SPEED FREAKS WITH GUNS. What a tangled web they weave... Must be smokin' some good s---!"

Gene Suicide writes Luke: I read your piece PORNO APOCALYPSE (great title) and immediately thereafter dialed up Mr. Kramer who suggested that you'd be interested in a taking a peak, or possibly including, a drunken interview that took place on the upper West Side last March. Although drinking heavily, we managed to blaze a hellish path through the lost arcana of Kramer's past work with Lech Kowalski. Kowalski's new film, KING OUTLAW is about Johnny Thunders and the skag casualties who made up the whole of the Max's/CB's set in the late 70's. The film also concentrates on his circumstantially unresolved death.

Your article was ridden with fascinatingly obscure asides which have direct ties to the coincidentally interpersonal contact webs of both SEX & GUTS MAGAZINE and DEAD ON CAMERA. Most of this madness began with my first calls to/from Mark Kramer, who seems to have been orchestrating some kind of resurgent wave of underground energy ever since. What I refer to here involves a combination of chance encounters, word of mouth, internet intrigue, and other low level rumblings which further indicate a violent info-storm brewing somewhere south of Krameria, pulsing steadily outward from his confines in Hell's Kitchen. Your article has directly broached this like no other.

As "Gene Suicide", I started publishing SEX & GUTS IN 1996, covering the works of Lech Kowalski, Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch et al. The second issue contained the article OUT FOR BLOOD, aka FEAR AND LOATHING IN JOE CHIRST'S PANTS. The article demystified the anomalous Joe Lindhart/Christ amputation affair, and instigated my awareness of a subterennean dimension obviously fecund for further franchisement. In the ensuing months, I had several conversations with people such as Eric Danville's insignificant other, Abby Ehman, scensters from Joe's home base of Lancaster, PA, and many others who have since become irrevocably shrouded in blackout and drug haze. Many of them were adamant about reinforcing Kramer's negative reputation, perpetuated through mouthpieces of contempt such as Christ and Dave Clark. Soon after, my pursuit of the story now known as DEAD ON CAMERA began. DOC is the chapter that Legs McNeil left out of PLEASE KILL ME, an alternate history to the myriad humdrum punk tomes we have seen carelessly dumped on the shelves of Tower Books in the last half decade.

I am currently at work on several other projects with Lech Kowalski, including an excavation of his 70's porno loops, and the cutting of the Thunders film trailer.

So, here is the interview with Kramer. I have tried above to specify a few of the passages in PORNO APOCALYPSE which I can provide further background detail on via my own research and coverage of several areas, namely in the form of this Mark kramer interview. Although he already sent you an unedited version, prone to frequent digressions I do not see fit for any publication, this is the final edit. The occasioanl notation is there to document background noise when it was relevant to the course of the interrogation.

MARK KRAMER interview 3.6.99 Mid-afternnon. Sports bar on 110th street.

MK: I don't want Lech to hear this. Lech had this relationship with Wendy Clarke, who was the daughter of Shirley Clarke, who was the director, one of the true doyennes of direct cinema...and Wendy Clarke was also a pioneer in video, and direct, confrontational video documentaries. Lech was...

G: So Wendy Clarke was an artist in her own right, she wasn't just Shirley Clarke's daughter.

M: Absolutely. And Wendy and Lech worked together for years.

G: How do you know about this?

M: I was there for the early video explorations, when they had a portopack, and they were trying to use the portopack as a means of...maybe...they were exploring early on the possibilities of the portopack, and the portopack as an alternative to 16mm, as a documentary tool...

G: So the portopack was being used for the porno films...that he was doing in 73 to 76...

M: But it wasn't exploitive...I don't think he was using the portopack as a means of heightening the prurience of his porno work...I think in a way he was using the portopack as a way of subverting the whole porno world then. He didn't want to be a mere panderer, he wanted to be somebody who was challenging as well as pandering.

G: And hence LOOPS OF VIOLENCE which was an art film cum porno flick.

M: Whenever we talked back then, the LOOPS OF VIOLENCE was gonna be the last or the first nail in the coffin of pornography. I remember that being talked up big time.

G: So where was LOOPS OF VIOLENCE being discussed and promoted...back then when there was no real market yet? Back when there was DEVIL IN MISS JONES and DEEP THROAT but still the beginnings of the hardcore porno formula.

M: Lech exploited this intersticial place between porno and documentary. Between porno and critique of porno.

G: He hadn't even made a documentary up until that point. I mean, SEX STAR was a result of his involvement with the porno scene. But he was known as a guy who was doing a very special kind of porno. A very self-questioning kind of porno. (later)

M: There was a guy making porno movies that were about more than mere arousal. This was Lech Kowalski. I knew he was trying to bring some irony and self-understanding to people that didn't exist. And towards that end he brought in a lot of sexually undefined personalities that were existing at the time in 1974. In and about Max's Kansas City, and Club 82 and the porno world as it was known.

G: So Lech drew people from the crowds at Club 82 and max's?

M: Yeah. mainly through the person of Mark Slater, the soundman. And they were drawing upon the scene unfolding at Max's and Club 82 as a source of I guess...as a source of...there was some kind of spiritual or aesthetic proto-punk affinity...in the era that was just prior to punk as we understand it today. Lech Kowalski was making these movies with a bunch of people who were drawing upon the punk scene...

G: Before there was a punk scene...

M: Yeah. Through their bodies and their willingness to participate in pornography.

G: You knew about this before anyone else did, and nobody really did to begin with. So how did you find out about it?

M: There was a world in which anybody was permitted and anybody could partake in...there were new resources that were suddenly available. Women's bodies, total license to do whatever you want. it was suddenly available to enterprising filmmakers like Lech Kowalski. You know why? Unrestrained possibility of the time. I don't think there was anybody like Lech Kowalski working with the available resources of the time, which was unlimited willingness of the mafia to pour money into pornographic enterprises. There was nobody like Lech who was willing to offer that alternative viewpoint, both within the conventions of pornography and questioning the conventions of pornography. And the case with something like THE LOOPS OF VIOLENCE...yeah, aggresively challenging pornography while at the same time enjoying the resources that pornography could offer that.

G: Have you seen LOOPS OF VIOLENCE?

M: I was in LOOPS OF VIOLENCE. LOOPS OF VIOLENCE was an attempt to address the primary impulses of pornography at a time when people weren't questioning it, but were merely consuming it.

G: At a time when the promary impulses couldn't even be properly identified within that scene, because they were so caught up in the idea of making money that there wasn't any aesthetic, there wasn't any artistic factor in doing it. M: Very well put. Only with the distance that we now have can we begin to examine what Lech was doing, what was happening in the marketplace, and what was happening, in a wider context, in America itself, as reflected in porno movies as they were attributed, and as porno culture was portrayed in magazines of the time.

G: What about porno magazines at that time?

M: Porno magazines at that time were really devoted to playing up any porno scenes that existed. You know, like going out to CBGB's and getting a bunch of f---in strippers to go in to do a f---in photo shoot...

G: So even at that point, the punk rock'n'roll scene was interconnected to some kind of porno milieau.

M: Well there was an overall impulse of anything goes, and porn people were really an embodiment of that ethos of anything going.

G: So, at some point, maybe not up until this time, a publically recognized point, the punk scenes and the porn scenes were interconnected.

M: Yeah. I think groupie-ism was a really accepted and acknowledged part of punkdom, and part of pornodom. I think a lot of the sexual favors and the whole environment of sexual permissiveness had to do with the connection between the porno personalities who were willing to offer up their assets and punk personalities to exploit it. The freedom already existed, and the porn scene, especially in regard to the Dead Boys and maybe the Dictators, found a convenient affirmational presence in punk. It was cool to be a gal who was offering herself up to whatever punk bands that were then happening.

G: There was no connection to the music in the films Lech was doing. LOOPS OF VIOLENCE , in that there was no punk soundtrack, there were no trendy Lower East Side looking people in the film.

M: Well, they were very much in the film but there was no music. Mark Slater was so much connected to Lech Kowalski and that started to bring in music, especially in regards to a band called LEATHER SECRETS, that Mark Slater, with respect to Lech Kowalski, was seeking to exploit for it's erotic possibilities. Especially, the connecton to club 82. And Club 82 in 73 and 74 was the place for glitter and punk rock. Especially Wayne County.

G: Anyone else, besides Wayne County?

M: The New York Dolls were kind of the dominant ethical, and aesthetic presence, the bass line by which everyone identified what was acceptable, what was possible. Yeah.

G: Do you think the New York Dolls had any effect on lech's logic, and sensibility in approaching porno films as a means of artistic expression?

M: Yeah, the New York Dolls mainstreamed the idea of bi-sexuality, and unlimited sexuality like no other NY band had ever done. The NY Dolls were about unrestrained pursuit of sensation and that the unrestrained pursuit of sensation would bring you to a higher level of cultural undrstanding. Yeah.

G: Did the Dolls' audiences comprehend that?

M: Completely. People were looking for a reason to make sense of all the pornography on the outside, and the music on the inside...and how did it all connect? And how did it all make sense. The New York Dolls were a nexus. The Heartbreakers were an essential nexus. They were a next step, an essential post Dolls next step...towards bringing all the slimy impulses then happening in the East Village with....I guess...the Heartbreakers were a breaking away from the institutionalized multi-sexuality of the Dolls into an exploration of other alternative sexualites.

G: Mainly heroin oriented sexuality. Heroin romanticism. M: Heroin romanticism, cafe romanticism, East Village romanticism...to tell you the truth, maybe it was the birth of a new romanticism in the bombed out precincts that were the East Village. The East Village was a distintly unappealing place in the 70's. People were drawn to a milieau that understood porn, that understood exploitation, that understood Russ Meyer, that understood thus far all the fring cultures that thus far had motivated people in the East Village to create punk. Yeah. So LOOPS was shot at 3 Jane street, and all those personalities from the world of mainstream porn at that time were present. Mark Stevens, Super Max...Darby Lloyd Rains, and some other people. They were all there, and they were all in the film.

G: So how did your apartment come to be used as the location for the shooting of that film?

M: The guy I lived with had worked with Lech on previous porno movies with Andrea True, who became a big personality at that time. She had a song called...Andrea True had a top 40 song because of her work with Lech.

G: What was your first encounter with Lech like?

M: I was living at 3 Jane Street, going to NYU film school...and my roommate had worked with Lech, and they said "we can rent your apartment out for a porno movie."

G: Who was your roommate?

M: A guy named Jeff Weinman. He had worked with Lech in a lot of pornos. That's probably how Lech broke into movies.

G: How was LOOPS OF VIOLENCE different? In what way did it signal a change for Lech as opposed to what he'd already done in porno?

M: I think Lech really thought that LOOPS was integrating all the current conventions of porn.

G: Which was basically like cocksucking, women on the bottom, 69, blowjobs...

M: I think Lech hoped to subvert and simultaneously affirm porn.

G: Why did he want to affirm it?

M: He wanted to affirm it because...it had been very generous to him, and trusting of him. He wanted to negate it because it was as disgusting as it was....ultimately, it consisted of man on the bottom, women on the top...ultimately affirm everything that was wrong with our culture. He was caught in the conflict within two cultures. It was good to him. Porn gave Lech everything it had to offer. It gave him money when he needed it. And that's it. Lech was like a pro. He knew how to take all these totally deviant forces and make them something that you could make money off of...theke them and create a budget out of them, in that work context. Lech said "you can f--- this girl" amd I said, "okay, fine." Her name was Terry, she was a known porno person, and I f---ed her. I was twenty years old, I woulda f---ed a woodpile if there was a snake in it. Gene, imagine the context if you were my age, age 20, he says f--- this girl, and okay. It went really well. Lech would say "lick her ass", and I'd lick her ass, and hear him laughing. Lech was laughing as he asked people to do these things. He was cackling. So I first saw it in an editing suite. It was down here [note: Lower East Side] and there was a Steenbeck, he put the film on and there was me with this girl. I said "fine". They cut it down, and there's me f---ing that girl. Then they showed it in a movie theatre, and there I was. [Lech] wasn't [in the editing suite]. Some guys who worked on it put it on, and it was no big deal. It was some stupid theatre, a bunch of porno people pull up in a limousine, they expect a reception that's not available, so this is the big premiere, and we see all the stupid s--- we did with Lech.

G: The premiere was a letdown.

M: Yeah.

G: How?

M: It was a premiere, we expected some big Hollywood premiere, and it was a bunch of guys in Passaic yelling out "Find new actors!". There was no dialogue, there was no action. It was a bunch of weird Lech Kowalski anti-sexuality being played out.

G: When there was no hardcore f---ing, and there was other interaction between the other girls, you, the guys, and the girls, what were you doing?

M: There were no scenes but hardcore f---ing. f---ing, haning people up by harnasses, f---ing them...there was no drama, it was just sick. It was an idea of using stupid sex as a- [GLASS SHATTERS LOUDLY.] [anonymous crowd responds with enthuisatic applause and laughter.] We got it covered. Transcribe this s---. Transcribe this, and we'll go to the next level. NOTE: up until this point, I have been barking at Kramer demandingly, slurring my words, and inexplicably drawing out the word "f---ing". "SO, YOU WERE FUHH-KINGGG THIS GURLLL. SO, YOU KNOW, LIKE....SO THEN, WERE YOU..." etc etc. I speak over his words and have been repeating the same 3 questions endlessly. Kramer is similarly blitzed, but reaches irregular periods of slow, easy eloquence. I sound like an enraged football hooligan; I am VERY drunk.

M: Far be it from me to presume what was the logic of 1974, and those who were hoping to cash in on what the impulse was then. I don't know. I did it because there was the incredible allure that was sex, at that time. Then there was a vision of utopianism...(long pause)

G: ...happening in cold water flats in New York.

M: Yeah.

G: The streets looked like s---, there was garbage everywhere, but you could reach that state just by indulgence.

M: Yeah, right. The whole world was in a f---ing shambles, but people were demanding sexuality on their own terms. And that was it. And Lech was an exponent of that. Lech was a manipulator. He was an exploiter.

G: How did you feel when you heard him laughing while you were naked in front of his cameras?

M: I felt like a jerk. I remember him saying "Lick her ass" and laughing. I thought, okay, I'm getting paid for the day, it's my apartment..I'll lick her ass. And I never licked anyone's ass! That was the first time I'd licked anybody's ass. And certainly, in public. Lech Kowalski took the idea of licking somebody's ass as the thing that people did it real time. And that was a first. I felt that I was doing something that was totally permitted by the parameters of the age.

[In the background, "Light My Fire" begins on the jukebox and the sound eerily seeps through the above sentence. The interview is over.]

NiceJewishGirl: "Of course in '74, you were 8 and I was 15. Weren't we just talking about that? Me and my mum liked the NY Dolls. This is VERY creative punk, and I think someone tried to drag me to that stuff, with Major S/M porno in it here at the art theatre. And if it's the same flick, I couldn't even watch the previews, with women screaming and being beaten. Normal porn wasn't doing this stuff, this was really weird stuff. I had nightmares about it for weeks afterwards. I left the theater but my bf at the time really liked it. He was really into studying the holocaust and spent days on end at the jewish library doing research. He also considered himself jewish through his association with me. Since then, he moved to Portland and knows some of those infamous white supremecists that are actually jews, that hate jews. All those people he mentioned, esp. Lydia Lunch, et al, were/are very famous in the underground. Lydia's gotten fat and is extremely p.c. now, but back in the day she was a terror. Same with Jennifer Blowdryer. There was a lot of heroin and speed going around and the dead bodies piled up. We were going to change the world, that was the idea anyways. We had no idea what to change it to (depravity?) and living really really poor and rejecting everything was important."

Jenna Jameson Attacks

Ramsey writes on RAME: I'm not still sure if I should call Jenna a whore or a slut? Well a worst porn-star for sure! She thinks she is some major star, well I hate her, always have always will!

>Have you ever met her, and have a real reason to hate her, or do you > just not like her performances?

I never met her but I hate her attitude every time I see her doing an interview, always claiming to be so good and being the biggest star in the industry. I saw her interview on a Dutch show and she claimed her name was removed at the Cannes-award (aka the corruption-award) for best American-star because otherwise she would win it again, she said this way the other stars would have a better chance of winning. So she got some lifetime-award (another bogus-award). Talk about misplaced arrogance, I mean I find her real ugly and that goes the same for her performances which I avoid (it's Wicked after all).

> What's wrong with a girl screwing around? It's fine for a bloke to > do it ...

Well man and woman are not the same.