June 6, 2007

Rodger aka Martin Brimmmer emails this open letter to the industry:

In a few days I will most likely be living on the streets. It's a daunting reality, tempered by the fact that in San Francisco, where I have been residing for the last nine months, many of the bars close at 2:00 AM and re-open at six in the morning, meaning I only have to brave the elements for four hours every night.

I already possess many of the requisite qualities for homelessness: I collect Social Security Disability (since 2002), I have multiple illnesses, including bi-polar disorder, a common ailment shared by many of those "crazy" people you see living on the cracked asphalt, and my ability to tread treacherous waters may have finally overtaken me. Maybe, then, this is a role I was tailor-made to play, perhaps a far better one than my fifteen-year career as a screenwriter and journalist for the adult entertainment industry.

Fifteen years is quite an investment of time and talent. I've written extensively for every major publication (Hustler, X Biz World, AVN, Swank, Adam Film World), wrote God-knows-how-much ad copy and box copy, and I penned hundreds of screenplays for almost all of the major studios, including some of Wicked's most critically applauded movies in 1999-01. Along the way I picked up two AVN awards for Best Screenplay and shared a Best Comedy Award with Jonathan Morgan...

Over time, there was a shift in the market for story-driven adult films and videos. The cable industry bent to market demand and began accepting more gonzo and wall-to-wall product. Gone was the need for well-crafted 30-40 page screenplays --- forgetting the maddeningly limited capacity of the performers to effectively carry off such  heavy scenarios, but that's another story we're all familiar with. At my peak in 2001, I was earning $1500 per screenplay. Today, when I'm able to work, I'm lucky to receive $200-350 for a fifteen-pager with all of the plot convolutions of a Bazooka Joe comic strip. And it's not like I'm writing ten of these a month.

So in late 2005 I went to work as a features writer for X Biz World, after a brief stint at AVN under Tim Connelly. I wrote 27 features for X Biz until I finally hit a wall, a worsening of my bi-polar disorder coupled with, well, let\'s not call it writer\'s block as I don\'t actually believe in that, but maybe I was just really, really burned out. Journalistically speaking, porn and the politics of porn can be a fairly limited subject, a canvas with definitely discernable borders.

By March of 2006, while writing a wet T-shirt show for a cable network, I caught myself self-medicating one morning before heading out to the shoot that I had no desire to supervise. It was 6:00 AM and I was doing a shot of rum and a hit off the joint before chasing it all down with my anti-anxiety drug of choice, Ativan. Before coffee. My manic depression, I then knew, was clearly out of hand.

Cut to the chase: The doctors put me on a series of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant meds and I became a zombie that used to know how to write. I was unable to scribble another word for X Biz. I simply had no will power and no enthusiasm. My other illnesses -- severe psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, and high blood pressure -- were worsening. In September I was on the verge of eviction from my apartment in Glendale. All I was earning was my $900.00 per month from Social Security. Not a livable wage.

I moved into a friend\'s residential hotel room in San Francisco\'s North Beach. And then that ball that was already rolling downhill took on devilish speed. My Social Security was accidentally cut off due to a clerical error and I was left peniless for five months until the malfunction was reversed. I still had a roof over my head due to my friend\'s full-time employment but eventually all of that went south as well.

And you know what\'s funny here? I\'ve only given you a thumbnail sketch of just how hellish, how deserving of a Heirnoymous Bosch painting, my life has been for the last year-and-half.

But it\'s more than the last eighteen months or so that's the problem. It's that aforementioned fifteen years I gave to the industry.

Fifteen years. I, and many, many more who have gone before me in this industry, have absolutely nothing to show for our creativity and effort and support. No car. No home. Savings account? Nope. Stocks and bonds? Get real. For many who work behind the cameras, the adult business pays a barely sustainable wage and 90% of the work force are treated as independent contractors and "residuals" is the name of a popular bar in Studio City. Sure, we have AIM and Bill Margold brewing their own brand of philanthropy whenever possible but we need a little more flavor in the punch. Where are the organizations or even the individuals to catch some of us industry veterans (Did I hear someone mention Al Goldstein?) when we fall?

I know, I know. I should have surveyed the landscape before getting into the business. That's the argument Luke Ford and the other cynics would make.

Fifteen years. As I write this, I am three weeks behind in my rent at the run-down residential hotel I live in. Inadequate heat, no cooking facilities, and the bathroom and shower is a community affair down the hall. They're asking me to leave. I have nowhere to go, no assets to liquidate, and no cash on hand. Some people call the adult industry a gutter. Well, in the next few days I may be able to give you a literal view of the gutter. I'll let you know how it stacks up to the business.

LUKE SAYS: Rodger's Pay Pal ID for any much appreciated donations is rdjacobs@concentric.net. His personal email addy is carversdog@excite.com.

Cindi Loftus Interviews Martin Brimmer
2003-01-03 09:01:46

Courtesy of Cindi Loftus (writercindi@aol.com)

This is an exclusive interview via e-mail with retiring porn script writer Rodger Jacobs aka Martin Brimmer.

Cindi: I'd love to talk to you about your retirement from porn. You are a well known personality and I am sure that people would like to know what you are up to.

Rodger: Thanks for your kind words. Very much appreciated. I would love to give you the exclusive "Martin Brimmer Retires" interview if you like. You know, standard stuff: what was the business like when you first got in? (That was '92. Boy, were things different) Favorite movies you've written? Worst movies (I used to write two a month for Coastline, direct to cable that were one-day shoots for less than $10,000. I was getting a meager $350 a script but, hey, the scripts were only 15 pages). Friendships you developed in the industry (very few, 'cept for Wesley Emerson, John Leslie, Rog Pipe, a handful of others), etc. Anyway, if you feel compelled to crank out some questions I'm up to reply ....... BTW, there's a partial list of my credits on Internet Movie Database (imdb.com).

I have an agent down in L.A. and I'm concentrating on the spec screenplay market again. As far as porn in concerned, I simply burned out after 10 years and 200-plus screenplays. Bear in mind that with the exception of the dreck I wrote at the beginning of my "career" as Martin Brimmer, I always strove to develop stories that were at the antithetical edge of what one would expect in an adult movie -- i.e., a story that was a STORY, damnit, and did not have to revolve around sex ... the challenge being to create 5 or 7 sex scenes that were organic to a screenplay that wasn't about the adventures of Fred, Super Stud Pizza Delivery Man and Pool Cleaner. In any event, I simply burned out because porn is the most limited genre in both literature and film ... there's only so much you can do, only so many ways you can stretch the rubber band before you find that point where it loses it's elasticity and snaps. Ok, I'm rambling now.

Cindi: How many porn movies have you written? What year did you start? What is your favorite one?

Rodger: I lost count of how many shows I wrote years ago, but the tally reaches beyond the 200 mark. Between 1994 and 1995 I was writing two to three shows a month for Coastline Pictures; really crappy, 15-page scripts for the direct-to-cable marketplace. The entire budget for one of those shows was around $10,000 and I was getting a meager $350 per script. The Coastline assignments were on top of the one to two features per month I was writing for director Wesley Emerson for VCA. The first feature I ever wrote, in fact, was for Wes and VCA in June of 1992. It was a romantic comedy about a girl (Ashlyn Gere) who inherits an adult book store called, appropriately, "Dirty Books." That movie also featured the XXX debut of Kelly O'Dell, who had just turned 18 days before the shoot. It's hard for me to select an individual title that I can call a favorite, but I've always been very proud of "Sex Lives of Clowns" (VCA) and, of course, the three movies that I won AVN awards for: "Looker" (Best Screenplay, Film, 1999), "Double Feature" (Best Screenplay, Video, 2000), and "M: Caught in the Act" (Best Sex Comedy, 2002).

Cindi: What is the funniest thing that ever happened to you in the porn world?

Rodger: There are so many stories, but the one that stands out in my mind primarily - the one I will never forget no matter how many years I roam this planet - is funny in a very dark vein. We were shooting a movie on The Stage in Chatsworth many years ago, and on this particular day there were a number of visitors to the set, people who had never witnessed a porn flick being shot. So, we're all huddled around the video monitor watching this boy/girl anal scene being shot and, at a certain point, the video technician points to the screen, indicating to the director that there's "a little brown" oozing out of the young lady's posterior during the anal scene. One of the visitors says, "Ewwww, that's gross!" And the video technician, without missing a beat, wryly said: "That's not gross. You wanna know what's gross? Just a few days ago I was working as a video tech right here on a gay movie and there was this new kid, probably just 18, doing his first scene. This kid has two cocks in his ass at the same time, another in his mouth, and one point he pulls that cock out of his mouth and, while being double f-cked by two guys, screams out 'Oh Daddy! Oh Daddy! Now, that's gross!" Needless to say, after that story, everyone fell silent for quite some time.

3. Have you ever had sex with a porno star? Wanna names names?

A: Nope. Never. First of all, I was married and quite faithful during my entire tenure in porn, and secondly, and most importantly, I learned early on that most porn performers, by their very nature, by the nature of their jobs, are quite naturally flirtatious. So, when a porn star begins flirting with you, chances are awfully good that it's not personal, not a come-on at all. The most flirtatious porn star I ever met and worked with - and a wonderful lady as well - was Jeanna Fine.

4. You are officially retiring from the adult industry due to ill health, but you are going to continue your mainstream career. What have you done in mainstream that we would have heard of? What do you have coming up? Do you write under a different name?

A: I've written and/or produced scores of feature-length documentaries for mainstream, including the award-winning "Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes". I was the co-producer on that film and the interviewer of the dozens of subjects who appeared in the film, but I walked from that movie during post-production after a dispute with the director and got busted down to an associate producer credit. I've written documentaries on women's history, historic weaponry, the military-industrial complex that emerged in the U.S. after World War II, and many more. They've all appeared on PBS affiliates at one time or another. Everything I've written outside of porn, including my mainstream magazine work, has been done under my real name, Rodger Jacobs. I've never met anyone in mainstream who had a problem with my porn work, except for a middle school teacher in Bakersfield, California (a very, very conservative area of the state) who wanted to use a previously published article I had written about novelist Jack London for her journalism class. Apparently, though, she did a run on my name in a search engine and discovered, to her apparent horror, that the self-proclaimed Jack London scholar whose essay she admired was also the author of "Anal Island". Needless to say, she recanted on her request to use my London article as a teaching tool for her class.

Right now, I'm writing several spec scripts for mainstream and I'm represented by a wonderful and very aggressive agency. Mainstream Hollywood is a tough racket, to be sure, and I've been down that road before. But I'm returning to the business wiser, more mature, and, I believe, a better writer than when I made my first stab at "real movies."

5. Why did you decide to leave porn but continue mainstream instead of vice versa?

A: The answer is two-fold: first of all, I've done everything I can do in porn. I've reached my limits as a writer for a very limited genre of entertainment. Secondly, mainstream is far more lucrative and I'm reaching an age where I sorely need and want the kind of financial solvency that mainstream can supply and porn simply cannot. This is a billion dollar industry that pays pennies on the dollar to the people who create the product.

6. What are the best and worst things about leaving adult?

A: I'm absolutely sick of this business after ten years. With the exception of directing, I've done everything: screen writing, obviously, producing, ad copy writing, editorial consultation, hundreds upon hundreds of video reviews and porn star profiles for magazines like Adam Film World, Swank, and others (as well as serving as editor-in-chief of New Rave and Dirty for one year), and then, finally, my nine-month stint as a columnist for l-keford.com. No "worst things" about leaving adult come to mind - it's like asking someone, to my way of thinking, and without any bitterness at all, "What's the best and worst things about removing your hand from that steaming pile of dog sh-t?"

7. What do you do for fun on a Saturday night? Do you have any famous people as close friends?

A: Saturday night is usually a video rental night for me and the missus. Sorry, it doesn't get any more exciting than that. As for famous folk, I have a number of friends with very recognizable names but I don't feel it appropriate to drop a lot of names in this forum. For many years, however, one my dearest and closest friends was actor Randy Quaid. We lost contact with each many years ago after he divorced his first wife, Ella, and married his present wife, Evi. Actress P.J. Soles ("Halloween", "Rock and Roll High School", etc.) was also a good friend for many years but we had a falling out over a mainstream film venture. As they say, never do business with friends. I count several high-profile film and television producers as friends but, sorry, no names.

8. How did you end up writing porn scripts?

A: I needed a quick infusion of cash after a mainstream production company I was working for, Marquis Pictures, went belly-up. Marquis was financing a direct-to-video documentary called "Guns of the Old West" that was directed by Cass Paley, aka Wesley Emerson. I simply said to Wes one day - who had been out of XXX for a few years at that point - "Let's make some hardcore movies. It sounds like fun and quick money." Wes and I ended up making well over 100 movies together.

9. Tell us about yourself, the good and the bad!

A: The good and the bad both fit into the same bottle: I'm a talented writer who, through no fault other than his own, wasted too much of that talent in porn.

10. Where can we learn more about you or see some of your work?

A: My documentaries pop up on PBS from time to time. Back issues of Eye Magazine, E Commerce Business News, and Hustler (to name a few) will yield feature articles I've written under my real name. I'm listed in the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) under both of my names, and there's a lengthy bio of me on l-keford.com.

Thanks Rodger. Good luck in the "real world" I hope to see your work on the big screen!