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In June 1999, "Linda Alexander" published (through www.pulpless.com) a biography of "Eric Edwards" entitled "Dorothy from Kansas Meets the Wizard of X." The book is largely based on her interviews with Eric and his friends during 1989-90. A sensitive only child, Everett grew up lonely and insecure, traits that remain with him. His father worked hard for a paper box manufacturing company and moved his family 13 times before Rob entered college. In 1989, Eric's mom told writer Linda Williams aka Linda Alexander (formerly Linda Janus-Napier), that Eric was quiet and shy as a child. He was musical, playing the drums in high school. A natural entertainer, he put on magic shows in the family garage. Still he had few friends. Eric's parents didn't think he'd live past 20, he had so many freak "accidents." Though now in his fifties, Edwards must still battle his powerful urges toward self destruction. As a boy, he once got locked in a refrigerator. Another time he got hit by a car and dragged fifty feet. He had a go-cart blow up on him. Another time he was unconscious in a high fever for three days. One little boy fed him asthma pills out of a trash can until blue foam bubbled out of Eric's mouth. Eric's mom told Williams that the family never forced religion on Eric. They weren't church people. Edwards, while still Rob Everett, studied drama at Baylor College in Waco Texas. Rob Everett entered a scholarship competition from ABC TV. Only 16 out of 24000 received two year rides through the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. For his audition, Rob played a part from The Taming of the Shrew, a role he's been unable to master in real life, and earned a scholarship to the Academy. "I was flabbergasted that I won." After graduating from the Academy in 1967 and receiving his diploma from the hand of actress Helen Hayes, Everett signed with the William Morris Talent Agency. He did "straight" acting over the next eight years, performing regularly on stage at summerstock programs around the country and appearing in commercials for Gillete, Coleco Toys, Close Up toothpaste and other products. He married Cathy, a woman he met at the Academy. They were sexually incompatible. In 1969, Rob picked up Screw magazine and answered an ad looking for sex performers. Over the next few months the unhappily married young man posed nude for several magazines, and eventually received a call from Linda's loop director Ted Snyder, who in 1991 was gunned down on his front lawn in a Mafia-style hit. "Do you think you can get it up?" Ted asked Rob. The tall blonde actor answered yes and he received directions to a loft on 42nd Street. Rob arrived to find Ted, the director and cameraman, Chuck Traynor, who couldn't get it up, Brandy, and Rob's partner for his debut porn performance - Linda. She found Rob adorable and their first shoot went smoothly. "There was no sound [recorded] and no lunch," remembers Rob. "Of course, she had to hold a gun to my head to make me do it!" He laughs. "Linda was nice. She enjoyed working with me. She loved sex. She and Chuck Traynor seemed like normal folks, laid back. They looked happy together. I never saw Linda with bruises or black eyes. No guns were held to her head to make her perform. She loved what she did. "Linda is the one person responsible for keeping me in porn because she constantly called me to perform with her," says Rob who later took on the porn name Eric Edwards. He's the only person to perform in four decades of X-rated shoots. Linda and Eric did about two dozen loops together. Eric made $40 and Linda $50 most times. "I thought that it was unfair that the guy got paid less than the girl seeing that he does all the work. I still think that's unfair. "After Deep Throat, the business simply passed Linda by. She wasn't particularly attractive nor could she act. If she'd told the truth about her life her book may not have sold as well as making up a story that claims she was forced to do these disgusting things." Eric lived in an unhappy marriage with Cathy - a woman he met while they both attended the American Academy of the Arts. Sexually incompatible, they became swingers. Pleasing women made Eric feel like a man. Eric and Cathy later divorced and she died painfully of cancer in her 40s (around 1990). Eric, Cathy and Linda frequently performed together, including in the epic "Piss Movie" for director Bob Wolf - fat, greasy and black-haired. The three swingers did every sex act imaginable before Linda and Eric drank several beers and urinated on Cathy. With such performances, Eric and Linda rose in the world of porn. "One day I was making photographs with ketchup smeared on my back," Linda remembers, "and three weeks later I was asked to play the lead in a porno blockbuster." Linda's costars were Eric Edwards and a "hagged hound" according to historian Jim Holliday. Most persons, including Linda, say it was a German Shepherd. Eric has anal sex with Linda and then leaves the scene. Unsatisfied, Linda looks around and sees the dog. She snaps her fingers and says "Ooooh." In came the dog with its owner, a young man in his twenties. "You sure this baby knows what to do?" Bob Wolf asked. "Oh, yeah, don't worry about old Norman," said the owner. "We tried him out last night and you don't have to worry about Norm. He knows the score." "You tried him out last night," Wolf said. "You're sure that was a smart thing to do?" "This old fellow can go all day and all night. Don't sweat it. Last night was just to remind him what to do. Him and my old lady got it on." "He got it on with your old lady?" asked Wolf. "Yeah, and he was fantastic. It's a good thing I'm not the jealous type." The dog's owner lied. From the ease with which the dog soon mounted Linda from behind and stuck his cock up her ass, it seems that the dog and the owner had been getting it on, instead of the dog and a mythical "old lady." Linda attacked the dog at the first opportunity, going down on Norman to suck his cock. "I was floored," says Eric. "After I finished doing Linda, I just sat back and watched. She was really into it. I was in awe. I had never seen a woman with a dog before, but it became the thing to do. "It was a strange period. There were no real laws then. The business was going any which way it could. There were stud dogs and there were losers. We'd have a strange dog come onto the set to do actress A and he wouldn't like her and he wouldn't get into it. So the actress would try placing a hot dog in her pussy and covering it with mayonnaise. "But this dog was a stud. He knew what to do. He mounted her from behind and did her doggie style. I don't know why they didn't bring any cute girl dogs for me," laughs Eric. He worked several sets where women had sex with dogs. On the shoot with Linda, the dog's owner earned twice as much as Eric. After the filming, Wolf said to Chuck Traynor, "It's too bad you couldn't bring that other broad. This f---in' dog is game for more. Look at him - we've got a real winner here. Hey, nice dog. Good dog." "He could've handled two easy," the dog's owner said. Linda claims that she was threatened with a gun and told to perform sex on the dog or die. Porn historian Jim Holliday: "I talked to the five people who made Dogarama. Eric Edwards, Chuck Traynor, the cameraman director [Bob Wolfe], the dog's owner, and the money man. Their story is the same. I'm going to take the word of a woman [Linda Lovelace] with an axe to grind over five persons who were there? Let the public think what they want. I'm telling you, she's full of it. These five guys to conspire and tell a story and remember it for many years, with all the drugs and alcohol and life experiences they've had, that would be a conspiracy that would make me want to have them installed as the directors of the Soviet Union or the CIA. "Linda Lovelace's story that she was victimized is as ludicrous as those yoyos who think that Neil Armstrong and the boys landed in Arkansas and that the whole moon landing was a hoax. If America doesn't want to believe the truth, I can't help them." "The owner of the dog says that Linda, a couple of days after, asked if the dog was still available. The owner was gay. If you study the loop, when the dog mounted Linda, he went straight in her butt. He knew what to do. That tells me the owner and the dog had something going on." Linda gained a reputation for her enthusiasm for f---ing dogs. She reportedly put on bestiality shows for Hugh Hefner and company at his Playboy mansion in West Los Angeles. Frequently, when Linda didn't want to do something, Chuck Traynor brought home a dog as a bribe. Sex with dogs and other animals remains popular with numerous porn performers. "Linda was easy to work with," says Eric. "She was friendly and seemed to enjoy what she was doing. I never saw her with black eyes or bruises. I never had any indication that she was unhappy with what she was doing. "Chuck and her seemed fine. They both seemed normal laid-back people. I didn't see any marital problems." Eric's commercial for Close Up toothpaste was taken off the air when the company found out about his other 'acting'. If Eric hadn't been away at Summerstock, he probably would've appeared in Deep Throat. After the success of that movie, a demand developed for persons who could both act and perform sex. Eric did his first sex movie for director Chuck Vincent in 1973 - the R-rated Blue Summer. Eric's first X movie was Slip Up, made shortly after Deep Throat when most porn features were burlesque sequences with explicit sex. "When they first started putting legal pressure on this industry," remembers Eric, "the public thought we were being run by the Mafia. But for the most part, this business has always been run by Jews. Just normal businessmen...smart guys who know how to make a buck. It's not how the general public thinks. It's not a bunch of people holding guns to heads. It's not a nasty dirty business, it's just a business." Edwards porn career failed to take off for years, he felt, because he wasn't Jewish. He tended to get roles that called for a softer touch, because there were numerous tough guys like Harry Reems and Jamie Gillis to play dominating characters. "I did a lot of movies for Robert McCallum. He was another favorite of mine, mainly because back in those days he'd have productions in San Francisco and it was such a joy to hop on a flight all paid for, have a drink, come down, have a limo waiting for you, and deliver you to your hotel suite, and get handed your script. Everything was so finely organized in those days. "Being an actor, I didn't know anything about the production end, but I knew we were trying to do something of quality. It was like regular movie making. Bring the talent in, put them in a hotel, take care of them, give them a food budget, bring them on to an organized set... Those were the good old days. I remember working on one movie in Sweden for 30 days." During Eric's heyday, he flew to Europe several times. He stayed in Sweden about six months because of two gorgeous blonde sisters, aged 18 and 21. "I was much too old for them but having a ball anyway. The Swedes are more advanced than us sexually. It was back in the free love days." Eric also lived with identical twins for a few days. "Everyone thinks, "What a fantasy! Identical twins." It was tough because of the competition between them. They competed for my favors." Rob Everett tried to keep his porn work a secret from his parents. "During the course of my summer stock days...I'd come back and find them [porn producers] in need of people who could act and get it up. "Gerry Damiano and I share a vision of making high quality big budget erotic films. I was impressed by his wanting to make a good product. My favorite movie of his was Memories Within Miss Aggie because it gave me the opportunity to act. "Back in the '70s and early '80s, they were all trying to make bigger and better products. They wanted to enhance the business by making more than a sex movie. But then the government put rules and regulations on us. We were in an uphill climb to make a good product. "We'd have gala openings. I printed my hands and feet in cement on Pussycat Theater in Santa Monica. There were Kleig lights, limos... Those were the glory days. Eric's first European movie was for Joe Sarno. In Butterflies he stars with Harry Reems and Maria Forsa. "I found it a great joy to be flown to Europe, put up in a hotel and get paid to have sex also. Those were softcore films though I couldn't help myself with Maria. I did it hard anyway. Maria and I had a fling. It was wonderful. She was just my style. Whenever I'd go back to Europe, we couldn't help ourselves. We screwed everywhere - out in the bushes, in the jacuzzi, anywhere we could, even in dangerous places where you could get caught such as in a public pool where people could walk in any time. We'd do it five or six times a day. Those were my good ol' days. "All those movies I did for Joe Sarno were treats. We'd go out to the Stockholm Archipelago, ferried out by boat, and stay in a cabin. I ate all those strange foods like krefta and that horrible smelling herring... I tried it all. I tasted every bit of life that I could." "During the glory days [the mid '70s to mid '80s], the most I ever made was $1000 a day," says Eric. "Average male prices then were $500 to $750 a day and we worked several days on a film. One day we might only say a line or two but we still got paid the same amount. You didn't have sex three times a day like now. Maybe I'd have one sex scene in the entire movie but I'd have five days of dialogue. "I blew a lot of money up my nose [cocaine]. I have no concept of how much I made. I remember when it was a problem to break $100 bills. You'd get off the set with a wad of money stuffed in your pocket and you wanted to go to a restaurant and you had to start thinking where you could break a $100." Pornographers like Eric fear discussing their earnings - which largely come in cash - because they don't want to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service. "One of the few times I had the pleasure of going abroad, I went in 1985 to Athens and Cairo to shoot a film [Jean Genie with Traci Lords]. In Cairo, I dressed like Lawrence of Arabia. We shot by the pyramids in the desert. We got there by camel. I have this crazy memory of the cameraman with the camera on the tripod and a towel over his head. We were in a blinding sandstorm. I'm a hundred yards away from the camera and I'm supposed to gallop this camel, jump off it and dig in the sand to find a genie bottle. I wear contact lenses. I was galloping towards this cameraman that I could barely see through the blinding sand, my eyes dripping with tears because of the sand, heading at full gallop towards this tiny camera growing bigger in my vision until finally I see the cameraman and I realize that I can't stop. He throws off the towel and runs for cover. And the camel comes to a halt and throws me on to the sand. I continued on with my action to dig through the sand and find this bottle. We smuggled the film out." Edwards says that Arcadia Lake "was the first person I thought I really loved." He met her in the late '70s and spent a year getting her off the Methadone program. Eric found her work in porn. "She got back into drugs and that destroyed me. I wanted to be where she was because I loved her so much. She left me when my money was gone for another "sugar daddy." The term for women like her is "coke whore."" Arcadia, who died in 1990 of a drug overdose, brought Eric into drugs and it took him a couple of years to kick the habit. "Down in the gutter, I struggled to stay alive. Whenever I'd done too much coke I realized it would be stupid to go in front of the camera. At least I had that awareness. Sometimes I'd refuse a role because I was so strung out from cocaine. I remember times I passed out and woke up thankful to still be alive. "Harry Reems and I were good buddies. We were both in bad shape with our individual problems. I used to be a healthy work-out person, muscular with a washboard stomach. After two close calls with death, I pulled myself out of drugs. "Harry would call me and say he was on a street corner someplace and he didn't know where he was. He wanted rescue. This awakened me too. When he was that low (1982-85), I'd already pulled myself out of drugs." Eric likes "long term relationships, ideally a lifetime." In 1983, he met Renee Summers on a set and fell in love immediately. He chased her but she didn't want a relationship with someone in the business. "We went to all the fanciest restaurants in New York. I showed her Manhattan. We had a ball. Then I came back out here [LA] and she came after me. I had her picked up by my favorite limousine service. She was impressed. I didn't want to be without her but I didn't want to move in together because I had a fear. We slowly felt it each other out and it evolved into a ten-year relationship." Edwards feared getting involved again. "It takes me a good year to get over a broken relationship whereas some persons can jump into the next bed. When I met her, I was still scared of a relationship even though I felt my heartstrings thumping. But it eventually happened and we did a lot together. It got to a point where I didn't want to do anything without her." Edwards became jealous when Renee worked with someone else. "And she felt the same thing if I worked with someone. It's a story I've heard many times in this business. "I thought I had a relationship that would last a lifetime. She was the first woman that I loved so deeply that I wanted to have children. She gave me promises of bringing me slippers when I was old and grey in my rocking chair. I bought it. "For two years Renee and I played across country, restaurants, Europe, Africa, Mexico, just having a ball with all the big bucks I made at that time. We married in 1986 when Renee was four months pregnant." Edwards and Summers produced several pornos including 1988's In A Crystal Fantasy. "Rene and Eric consistently combine good sex with good laughter, good acting and good dialog," writes Bob Rimmer. "It's a winning combination that makes their sexvids fun to watch." When Eric and Renee's first son was born, they both resolved to no longer perform in porn. But because of financial problems, five days after the birth of their first son, Eric resumed his sex work in front of the camera. In 1989, Rene told author Linda Alexander that porn was responsible for the break up of her marriage. If she had met Eric outside of the biz, they would still be together. "Yeah, right," mutters Eric sarcastically as I read him that quote from 1989. Eric in 5/31/96: "A great deal of her problem was jealousy. At that time I was a large star in the industry and she wasn't. "We tried to live normal lives but the business fought us. You can't live a normal life and f--- someone else. We'd each work and then come home and ask: Who did you work with today? I don't like him. You can't work with him anymore. Or, I don't like her. You can't work with her anymore. And the list got longer until the point when our relationship just didn't work. We separated for a year though we still saw each other." Eric: "I feel that I've learned my lesson. Somewhere along the line I've lost everything I gathered in life to the women I fell in love with. And here I am hanging pictures on the walls of my tiny apartment with the only love I have left - my boys. These women are left with houses and sets of dishes toasters, microwaves and an immediate line of would-be suitors gathering around their doors. "I love being in love and when I am, I give my mate my all. It's difficult to fall in love in this business, to find someone who can accept what I've been and what I do. I'm in a dilemma because I'm from the old school - I enjoy opening doors for women and throwing my coat over a mud puddle and that sort of thing. I've always been a monogamous type with just one relationship at a time." Hustler Porn Star Interviews 1991: "Renee Summers, the girl who hardly ever said no, is back in porn. It's good news to all the pud pullers who remember this nasty, little, round babe bouncing her big hooters in Erotic Radio WSEX; lactating for Herschel Savage in The Bride, taking two tandem tube steaks in The Erotic World of Renee Summers, or the award-winning lesbian scene in Pleasure Island." Born around 1965, Renee entered porn out of high school, a graduate of the class of 1983. The following year she started going steady with Edwards and from then on was in and out of the biz. After separating from Eric in 1988, she returned to video in Bondage Club 4, Smoke Screen, Backpackers, La Boomba, Doctor Ruthless, Bondage Zone, Pony Girls, Deep Obsession and Night Heat. "I've played around. When I entered this industry I said I'd try anything once. I thought, Here's a place where I can figure out what would be great fun and have the chance to do it. Why not? I've done it all. "I've done double penetrations, anals. I've had five men at one time. I've played little girls, dominants..." (Hustler) The first time Renee made love to her future husband was in a loop. "It was an anal. I had no idea who he was and he was upset about that." Eric pursued her until he captured her. After making her pregnant, he married her in 1986. They both promised not to work anymore in porn, but due to financial pressures, Eric returned to sex work five days after their first son was born. While off screen during her marriage, Renee stripped and did phone sex. "It's helped a lot of people. Guys get things off their chests that they can't tell other people." Renee and Eric moved back in together in 1990. Summers gave birth to another boy in 1992. Three years later, "Renee went off the deep end again," says Eric. "We're still legally married. I can't afford a divorce. I have no idea of her whereabouts. Renee took off in the summer of '95 with her drug-dealing boyfriend... They're on the run around the country. She calls every few weeks to talk to the children. "It has to do with female hormones. Once a woman has a child she goes into a strange different head. She doesn't get a third chance. She's already ruined the lives of three children. An illegitimate child was born addicted to methamphetamines. Her boyfriend impregnated her. That child lives in a foster home." During 1995 Eric lived in his own apartment with his two boys while Renee and her drug-dealing boyfriend binged on drugs in Eric's house. "The boyfriend was a friend of mine who weaseled his way into the business through me. During one of their binges, they set the house on fire. My boys and I were left with virtually nothing except three days of clothes. I had left everything there because I didn't want my sons to be traumatized by their dad taking everything with him. I thought that Renee and I would settle up later. "I was shooting on a set when Renee called about the fire. It was like a rape of your belongings. A lot of my [visual representations of] memories and things that I'd held for twenty odd years are gone. "The boys were staying with me. Through a year of courts and social workers, I gained sole custody of the kids. "Renee's out there somewhere with her boyfriend but I don't know where and I don't want to know. We don't care. The boys have accepted it. If mom calls, she calls. "My main concern is my kids. They're my best friends. It's a job enough to take care of them. I don't have any social time to myself. Everything I do is for them. "We took out the back seat of the van and used it as a sofa. We ate on the floor. We had three days worth of clothes and that was it. That was a terrible time in our lives. I've been in this business for 27 years. I've paid my dues and I should have people who will hire me and back me up, but I'm constantly having to seek work for myself. Even if it's just being a PA and sweeping the floor and cleaning up coffee cups. I don't care what it is as long as it puts food on the table for my kids. I'll do anything. It's tough being a single parent. I get up at four o'clock every morning, do some writing, get my boys up, wash them, clean them, dress them, feed them breakfast and take them off to school, clean house, wash dishes. I do everything. It's a tough job. "The trouble is I forgot to pull out. I was so good back in the old days, pulling out and coming all over the belly and face and stuff. I just forgot." Eric laughs. "Whether it's buying a new lamp or a new mop, we all get excited about it. "My sons will now be a part of a broken home. They'll be totally used to that you don't live with your wife the rest of your life. If you don't get along, break up. "I feel like a true romantic. I'm personally monogamous. Work was work, that's all. Because I've been burned, I'm reluctant to love again though in my dreams I wish for it. "One of the saddest aspects of this industry is the marriage situation. Everyone in it seems to want a long-term lasting relationship but the only people they come in contact with are people in the industry. And it's difficult for relationships to last because of the jealousy... especially if you're performing sex with other people. "Most of the girls in this industry have had incestual affairs with their father or stepfather or uncle. This problem surprised me with its prevalence. Most of the people have problems mentally or sexually. Otherwise, why would they be here? God knows the pay isn't that great. I wouldn't be here. I came in through a chain of events. The business filled a need for me at a time when my so-called legitimate career wasn't bringing in enough money. The only reason I'm still here is because I made a name for myself. Many people I knew killed themselves, dropped out or changed their sex, or become mothers or got married... "I virtually retired from performing in 1990 and was talked into doing an acting bit by Bill Margold to receive the first and only four decade award. I now had a family and I wanted to slide out of the public eye. "But in the last year, I've put myself in front of the camera in a couple of my productions including The Comeback. It's my script about a guy coming back into the business. I act every few months. I've done about 1000 features and I've been with several thousand women. "There are historians out there who know more about me than I do. "Of the approximately 50 movies I've directed, I'm most proud of Mirage and Soft Warm Rain. They were made back in the days when good scripts, good acting and good production values were important. "Given budget and time, I can create good erotic films. But these days, budget and time don't exist. I put a lot of fun time into writing X-rated scripts. I have fun with corny jokes and bizarre concepts." Eric doesn't sell his scripts. He waits until he gets money to turn his stories into films that he directs. "I work freelance as a cameraman, editor, producer, director. I do it all. "Reuben Sturman was the first person to ever give me money to do a movie. It was the first day I met him. He handed me $40,000 cash and told me to do a good job. He shook my hand. No contract. I made All The Right Places. He floored me with his trust in me. I made my first movie with my own money - Sailing Into Ecstasy. I spent $25K and barely made my money back. The business was slipping into smaller budgets at that time and I was still in the big budget mode. "I was known for my couples videos. Things that would appeal to women with plot, build and romance. "The industry has been good to me for 27 years until recently when I've had to struggle to survive. "This business has gone from thirty day shoots to one day shoots. It doesn't have the eroticism we were going for fifteen years ago. Now it's a dirty movie again. Eric doesn't generally like to speak ill of others behind their back. "Jerry Butler was one of the crazies. There's no description for a Ron Jeremy or a Jerry Butler. Creative individuals great for a laugh and fun to work with. "Being a sensitive romantic, I didn't enjoy working with Seka. She was the first girl I'd met in the industry who had a hooker hardness about her. I demanded more caring and attention while she was just a hard get-it-on f---. "Traci Lords was one of the cutest little things I've ever seen. Who in their right mind would want to be in this industry at age 15? "Ginger Lynn and I had a hot and heavy affair. People thought we lived together. I was one of the first persons to work with her. From day one we had an attraction to each other and saw each other on the side constantly if we weren't working. We had a six month relationship." Eric thought the movie Love You was going to be an ideal experience but it turned out to be a nightmare. "I thought, "Wow, I'm being paid to go to Hawaii." Helicopters dropped us off on this deserted beach. We were all going to camp out in tents and shoot for ten days and I thought it was going to be the experience of my life. It was exciting to have Bo Derek watch me have sex. "But John Derek was an egotistical self-made god who made the experience a hellacious one. I lost eight pounds on that shoot because I wasn't eating properly. We ate for breakfast instant oatmeal mixed with water. It turned out to be a beautiful film and I'm proud of some of the scenes with Annette Haven. But I don't think John knew what he was biting off. "We were going to shoot some night scenes by a campfire and he thought he could do it by the light of 12 Coleman lanterns. Of course that didn't work, so we had to fly in a generator. "I had photos of John writing "Help" in the sand in hopes of a helicopter would come by to rescue us because we had run out of food. "Jamie Gillis, Harry Reems and I were from the old school. Jamie was one of the craziest guys. He's a card and always fun to be around. We were friendly but we didn't have much to do with each other when we weren't working. "John Leslie is more down to earth. "My parents knew about my legit acting but they wondered where these other "movies" were. I'd always lie and say they were in drive-ins, those B-rated things that people see. They wondered about all the European trips I took and where these movies showed. Finally, I visited them for Christmas one year [in the '70s] and took them out for dinner. And the table next to us kept looking at me. I knew the recognition. I could feel they knew who I was. Eventually, someone at the other table got up the guts to come over and ask me for an autograph. I had enough drinks in me at that time where I spilled the beans to my folks. "You know all those B-rated movies I told you about with those crazy titles I told you about with titles like Dynamite Dan...Well, they're all X-rated." They looked at me and said, "We know. Your aunt and uncle have seen many of them." "I've always had a good relationship with my parents. They've always supported whatever I've done in my life. My father died [of cancer] on my wedding day to Renee Summers which should've given me a clue to my future with her. He was trying to tell me something. "Doing It was one of those movies done in those good days when we'd fly to San Francisco and have a ball. I played a rich husband with a wife and we decided to take off into the countryside on a motorcycle. We had helicopter shots and the whole nine yards. We went into the wine country... It was like a paid vacation. Incredible. They even bought me a black leather jacket which I used to have [until the fire]. All the places we would visit and the situations we would fall into." Edwards was Veronica Hart's first and last on-screen lover. "Both of us boast about that. She's a pro, an excellent actress and fun to work with. She had a burn scar that happened with a coffee urn several years before and we just worked around it and no one would notice it because she was so good." Eric: "Naturally, Linda's [Lovelace] autobiography is going to sell better if she says she was forced into it rather than if "I did it voluntarily and enjoyed it but my career didn't last long because I wasn't particularly attractive or an actress. "The business was so small and underground when I started that it wasn't as intimidating as it is now. I could not trust myself now to perform in front of the camera as a beginner. No way could I walk onto the set now for the first time. Hundreds of men have come up to me wanting to get into these films. I tell them "It's just a fantasy. To put yourself in front of a bunch of people under hot lights and the pressure to perform... Nine times out of ten it doesn't work at all. But because I eased into it, nowadays I just slip into the Eric Edwards mode of total professional. Back then it was a laid back… It was easy to erase the idea that you were being filmed. There was just one cameraman." As for Christians: "Do you know what it's like to step right out of a limousine into a crowd with placards shoved right into your face that say "You're going to hell". And hearing them yell and scream that I'm a sinner. It's frightening. "I'm not a Christian. I'm agnostic. "I was arrested once in New Jersey and put in jail along with John Holmes for five days in New Jersey. They put us with hardened criminals and murderers for five days. I got charged with fornication and cunnilingus. Initially they charged me with fellatio until they looked it up in the dictionary and changed the charge to cunnilingus." Eric made his best film in 1991 - Mirage. "Ashlyn Gere stars as a publishing house liaison to a reclusive author who is overdue with his next book. Edwards weaves one of his couples-oriented stories, and the cast does a wonderful job of fleshing out the plot and still serving up some sizzling hot sex. It's an interesting and well-thought out feature that will satisfy those who want a little movie with their sex scenes. Gere shines in the lead role, turning in a wondrous masturbation scene and getting nasty with over-the-hill stud Greg Rome… There's even an engaging twist of an ending that makes one yearn for more. One of the better Edwards features." (AFW 1996 Dir. p. 261) Mirage 2 is almost as good as the original. In All the Right Places - "A couples film with enough sex to please the most diehard of raincoaters. Similar to Behind Blue Eyes, the plot is designed as a series of fantasy sequences as imagined by two readers of a new erotic fiction book… At the time of its release, the feature was heralded as a major creative step in the video-making process." (AVN) In early 1997, Renee Summer returned to porn, pregnant and drugged. Eric avoided her. Paul Thomas told Linda Alexander about Eric the porn actor, "For X-rated stuff, Rob is very good... He's rarely surprising, ingenious, or incredibly original, but he's always professional... He's like a good television actor... He doesn't come from deep inside, doesn't come out with despairing and surprising revelations... "I think he's more sensitive than most people. He's not an edgy person. I'm a perverted, twisted human being." (Wizard of X, p. 23) The late director Chuck Vincent first used Eric in the 1973 softcore film Blue Summer. Vincent told Alexander that Eric "can do anything Robert Redford can do." Then why haven't adult actors moved into the mainstream? "They think they can't do any better in other mediums. And I think that's very, very wrong." (Wizard of X, p. 25) Around 1990, Eric's friend Jeremy Stone, editor of Adam Film World, told Alexander about Eric the director: "He hasn't yet been accepted. Example. One of his movies, Motel Sweets, went 28 minutes without a sex scene. I don't think people are turned on by romance as by gang bangs. Porno caters to the lowest common denominator... "It's unfortunate he turned to directing at a point when the industry doesn't demand the kind of attention he wants to input into the genre. Porn videos are basically a point-and-shoot operation." (Wizard of X, p. 26) Stone says that you don't need directors for such productions. X-rated videos are used to get people in the mood, but once they are horny, they turn them off. When X-rated movies played in theaters, men would attend with their wives and watch the full movie. They needed plot and production values to keep their attention. The eroticism built over time. Porn actress Kay Parker told Alexander that Eric Edwards "was one of a handful of gentlemen in the business who were human beings."
2/10/06 Eric Edwards - The Babe Ruth Of Porn Rodger Jacobs writes for XBiz:
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