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AVN Expo Highlights

Some quick hitters from the show:

* AVN's coverage of Saturday night's awards show.

* Penthouse wanted to create a major presence at this year's show but a legal struggle with someone who wanted to own the magazine and brand prevented them. Penthouse plans a huge booth at next year's AVN Expo.

* Gia Paloma denied to me that she had a drug overdose at the Circle Bar at the Venetian Friday night. She denied she was drunk. She said she just created a scene and was carried out on a stretcher to get attention. I don't believe her. Scott Fayner says he did not sell her drugs and has not seen her in about two months (rumors to the contrary).

* What a difference a year makes. Last year I flew in to Las Vegas, knowing that my new employer would reimburse me for the expense. This year I caught rides with friends. Last year I had my own suite at the Venetian for a week, paid for by my employer. This year I crashed with friends. Last year I ordered room service, knowing my employer wouldn't blink. This year, I brought a loaf of bread, peanut butter and peach jelly to eat.

* Tommy Sinoppoli met Rob Spallone on the show floor Friday and took him up to the room of Lenny Friedlander of New Beginnings. Over the next six hours, they reminisced about the history of the business. Lenny told amazing stories. They polished off a bottle of Chivas Regal. Rob returned to our room at the Bellagio at 8pm drunk. After Tommy, Rob and I ate dinner, we went down to the Circle Bar at the Venetian.

* Circle Bar. 11pm. Gia Paloma falls down. She tries to get up and falls down again. She crawls along the floor. Security rushes to her side. They call an EMT unit and an ambulance. Gia struggles to rise. A friend picks her up. Other porners rush to her side. More porners gather around to watch. She's off her head drunk or on drugs or something like that. Her eyes are rolling back in her head.

She's rolled out on a stretcher into the ambulance. She waves at the crowd as you would expect a porn chick to do. I just saw a clip of her in a documentary celebrating her entry into double anal.

* I heard stories about the scams Reb Sawitz (Pretty Girl International) would run on new talent promising them trips to exotic locals if only they would blow him (think of it as an audition, honey).

* I'm getting a videotape where a former Vivid girl talks about how she prefers having sex with dogs than people. She's dead serious.

Mike Albo writes: "Jeez. Where have you been for the last few years? The girl in question was Cheyenne Silver in her earlier incarnation as "Wildkat" (or some variation of such) for a single-girl performance in a Mike Hott amateur video. I think the segment was called "Wildkat and Dog" or something equally lame. Claims she plooked her Chihuahua. Didn't seem "dead serious" to mebut probably would be considered as such by believe-everything-that's-heard rubes...like you. Oh, and this "news" was covered by several publications way back when."

* Skeeter Kerkove tells me I should put more pictures of Rob Spallone on my site and put red hearts around them.

* Shawn Ricks tells me how much he loves his wife, an executive at Playboy. He just wants to have sex with her, because sex without love is meaningless.

* I spot David Sturman, Dennis Paradise, Michael Stefano, Brandon Iron and about 40 other porners around the Circle Bar.

* A dramatic increase in the technology in many booths at the AVN Expo. Many Internet players have moved into DVD production, led by Adult.com. Many of these players hired non-porn models to sign autographs for fans and to pose for pictures (Bangbus etc).

* Gene Simmons (of Kiss) created a media commotion Saturday afternoon at the Adam & Eve booth. Joey Silvera and others love the celebrities who come to the show.

* I spot a lot of Orthodox Jews wearing yarmulkes at the Circle Bar Friday night and around the CES convention during the day Saturday. There's no synagogue within walking distance of the strip.

* I spot Marc Bell, Russell Fry, Don McDonald and the Penthouse crew walking off Saturday to fly their private jet back home to Boca Raton.

* A lot of companies who used to take booths (XBiz, Video Team) do not have booths at the two AVN shows but they are at the show in person, walking around and doing business.

* I hear a lot of grousing (much of it by the old timers) about the tremendous success of Paul Fishbein and AVN.

* AVN has a stunning slim blonde handing out its stuff at its two shows. I went to take her picture and she put her hand up. She said it had gotten her into trouble before.

* I shook hands with Manuel Ferrara (French porn performer) Thursday. We had an internet feud about nine months ago.

* Saturday morning. Stop by the New Beginnings hospitality ballroom for breakfast. Chat with Christian Mann about moral dilemmas. Pay my respects to Lenny Friedlander, owner of New Beginnings. Maybe he will let me ghostwrite his autobiography. The guy has made about $20 million from porn.

Hang out with Rob Spallone, Tommy Sinnopoli, Joseph Abinanti, Michael Esposito, Teddy Rothstein (short guy with a thick head of white hair and tremendous vitality and confidence) and my other fans.

* It seems Joey Abinanti does not like me. Nor Teddy Rothstein. Nor Lenny Friedlander. He reproves Rob repeatedly for bringing me. Rob says he didn't bring me. That I showed up on my own. Lenny tells Rob to get rid of me. Rob tells me. I leave. Then I sneack back in, walk to the back of the room and hang out for a couple more hours.

* Lenny had his arm in a sling. He's had numerous physical ailments over the past few years. Rob served Saturday as his bodyguard.

I cruise show floor Saturday. Don't do any work. Just shmooze. Run into Tim Case, husband of Felicia Fox. We talk about talent who grouse about not getting comped AVN Award tickets for their boyfriends. I said that Paul was kind enough to give me a ticket this year. Paul said I'd been fair to him this past year.

At that moment, AVN president Paul Fishbein walks by. "I heard my name," he says. "It's like that scene in Annie Hall where that guy is going on about Marshall Mcluan and Woody Allen produces Marshall to show the guy that he was full of it. Life should be like that."

* I heard Tim and company at AVN got a good laugh about my publishing a rumor that his AVN contract won't be renewed.

* I run into a line of ex-JKP employees with bad things to say about the company.

JKP publicist Scott Hooper tells me that their contract girl Ashton Moore faxed in a letter of resignation from the company Thursday. I saw Ashton signing at the huge ClubJenna booth at the front of the show.

* Toni English made a string of documentaries for the Australian government channel SBS about health care, gun control and other topics. But she hasn't made a mainstream documentary for several years. She's shot four years (over 100 episodes) of a 30-minute TV show behind-the-scenes in porn for Europe and Australia. A porn version of Entertainment Tonight.

Toni is a leftist and a feminist. She's enjoyed shooting erotica for women over the past few months. She's enjoyed shooting sex more than ever the past couple of years and no longer prefers shooting features. Porn stars are rarely actors. Hiring a porn star for a feature is like hiring a plumber to fix your electricity.

*Brad Shaw writes about Steve Jones, the owner of Lightspeed: "I confronted the idiot, my guys caught it on tape. Pansy had nothing to say to me and ran off like a little wet rat."

* I ran into Steve Jones, who owns Lightspeed Cash, Wednesday at the Internext Show. He had on a football shirt. I smiled, extended my hand and started to introduce myself. He shook my hand and smiled. I said my name. He disengaged his hand, swore, and stalked off. He said he had almost gotten into a fight with Brad Shaw a few minutes before.

* Thursday. AVN Expo. I'm taking photos of Candida Royalle at the Adam & Eve booth. She's talking with Alexandra Silk and Bud Lee. She smiles for my camera. She grasps Alex, turns her around, and they both pose for me. But tells Candida my name. Her face turns to disgust. "He writes terrible things," she says. For the rest of the show, she avoids me.

* I was talking to Tony Montana, a veteran male performer who is HIV positive, at the AVN Expo Thursday. He said he didn't run the AIDS-fundraising marathon in Hawaii because he couldn't get any sponsorship from any of the porn companies except for Steve Orenstein at Wicked. Tony particularly complained about AVN. Tony spots Tim Connelly, AVN Editor and Publisher, walking towards us.

"When are you going to sponsor me?" Tony demands.

Tim responds quickly. "According to Luke, I've been fired."

"That's not what I said," I protested. "I wrote that your contract has not been extended."

About a dozen people at the show talked to me about the Connelly news. Some reminded me that they had told me such months ago, about six months ago in one case, but I had been asked to sit on the story until I had another source confirm it, which I did.

* I spoke Friday morning for 20-minutes to Phil Harvey, owner of the 300-employee Adam & Eve company.

* The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) busted (for a CANN Spam violation) a small porn company on the floor of the Internext show Wednesday. The company quickly hired attorney Greg Picconelli.

* I hear Vivid is taking over Club2K at the Venetian. It will be called Vivid something. It could be the first in a line of Vivid caberets in casinos.

* Chloe has been selected for the lead role in a new HBO-Cinemax 13-episode series about swinging. Most of the 82-major speaking parts are taken by porn people. Robert Lombard selected the talent to show to HBO who had the final word. Seven years ago, Chloe lost out in a big role for Showtime because the head of the particular show did not want someone widely known as an "anal queen."

Robert had to emphasize to the porn stars to come in with minimal make-up and not come in their AVN Expo mode looking like drag queens.

* Playboy and Penthouse have had about a dozen representatives at the two shows (as both magazines are now in the hardcore video-DVD business). Penthouse magazine's redesign will show up in the March issue. They're dramatically increasing their content production and their website staff. They selected one contract girl at the December 14th Woodland Hills auditions (Syvette of Exotic Star Models) but they haven't signed her yet. They promised her a contract within two days but the paperwork has taken longer than expected to come through. She's getting tired of waiting. She has also received offers from Playboy and other companies. A marathon runner with natural C-cup breasts, she's lived in Texas all her life (except for six months in Denver as an infant) until moving to Los Angeles a week ago. She's never been to any other other state, let alone any other country.

* Companies like XBiz and Video Team which previously had booths at these AVN shows do not this year but new companies have taken up the slack. Many players skip hosting booths and just work the floor to do business.

* John Stagliano is not sold on the High Definition craze sweeping porn. He says it will reveal all the flaws and diminish the erotic experience of the viewer.

* Aly from AVN is at her second AVN Expo. She's trying to explain to the video-DVD guys about the Internet. Why let your content sit around in dusty warehouses when you could be streaming it over the Net and selling it VOD (Video On Demand).

* Skeeter and Bridgette Kerkove took the 1PM flight Thursday from LA to Las Vegas. They brought their two infants with them, one only two months old.

Tim Connelly Out At AVN?

Word on the street is that AVN is not renewing Tim Connelly's contract to serve as editor and publisher of AVN. "Everybody knows but Tim," said one source. I have not had confirmation on this from anyone official.

Internext Update

Day one. Lines ran up to two hours to pick up a badge to get into the show. This included exhibitors.

My friend picked me up at 11pm Monday. We got lost on the 10 seeking the 15. We arrived in Las Vegas at 5am. I got to the show by 11am. I walked around feeling chippy. "I wonder why," I thought to myself. "I've been driving all night." Then I remembered that I had been sleeping all night and my friend had been driving.

War Declared On Hustler Editor Bruce David

Tiger Lilly writes:

Greetings. This is to announce that Hustler's 'Declaration of War' has been answered.

We are a group of women and men, both presently and formerly employed by Larry Flynt Publications, who can no longer tolerate the sick and violent direction that Bruce David has driven the magazine.

As Editorial Director of Larry Flynt Publications and Hustler magazine's self-styled resident tough guy, Bruce David used the February 2004 issue (apparently still on stands) to eviscerate a group of feminist critics of porn's violent edge. As Editorial Director, it is Bruce David who guides the magazine's direction, and he brags openly that he writes Larry Flynt's 'Publisher's Statement' in each issue since, according to Bruce David, "Liz Flynt keeps Larry too loaded on Lithium to write his own name."

Targeting Aura Bogado and Diana Russell in particular, Bruce David ordered a three-page pictorial of women tied to the bumpers of trucks and being dragged behind farm equipment. This is not surprising, as Bruce David's tenure at Hustler has been marked by an extreme fascination with violence against women in particular, which explains its plummeting circulation and loss of newsstands across the nation. A magazine that once celebrated women sexually in a healthy manner has been handed over to Bruce David, who feels women being dragged behind tractors with tools shoved into their mouths is "hot."

As alarming as his penchant for supporting the brutalization of women is, it pales compared to Bruce David's sick use of children in the magazine. Bruce David featured his own pre-teen boys in a Hustler Ad parody in the 2003 Holiday issue. This creep put his own children in a magazine that is loaded with pedophile-friendly ads that boast "My Parents Aren't Home, Give It To Me Quick" and "Is This Where You Put It?" and others that pander to freaks into children. Bruce David has vowed more children will be depicted in the magazine.

Consequently, we are providing Aura Bogado, Diana Russell and a cadre of young, motivated and highly sophisticated women with a full dossier on Bruce David, including pertinent background information, current data, photos and other relevant material.

Additionally, a public awareness and education campaign is being planned for residents in Bruce David's...neighborhood, who need to protect their own children.

Bruce David has declared war, and it is war that he shall have. His tough guy swagger may play well in the pages of Hustler, at home with his terrified family and among the Flynt employees who cower in the face of his thug bullying, but lets see how it plays in the face of public scrutiny.

This is just the beginning.

It is all for The Front! All for Victory!

Ira Levine Responds To Bill Margold

Ira Levine writes:

Hi Luke,

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

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

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

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

And then there's this:

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

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

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

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

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

Hart Williams Responds To Bill Margold

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

The Confabulation of Bill Margold

By Hart Williams

www.moyst.org

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

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

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

***

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

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

That might seem harsh, but it is accurate.

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

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

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

***

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

Compare with the shared root for 'fable.'

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

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

LUKE: "Did you talk to him?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LUKE: How did you guys fall out?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hart Williams has departed, but

O ur Publication “WILL” (sic) survive.

T o excitingly validate that sentiment. (sic)

T his issue features a unique selection of

I nsightful and intimate

M aterial, amusingly and arousingly

E xposing all facets of Adult Entertainment

S incerely Edited by (scribble)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But still Bill lies:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LUKE: "How did you guys fall out?"

MARGOLD: "I'm not sure."

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

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

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

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

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

Who do YOU think that he's actually describing?