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In poor health, Lenny's been working out of his home the past few years. He left behind three kids including Angelica who worked for Rob Spallone as a production manager. She has this infectious laugh. According to Mark Kernes's report for AVN July 18, a "family emergency" kept Lenny from attending the latest FSC meeting. Gene Ross posts this collection of posts from the nola.com forums (I can't find the thread): >Who killed himself today in Chateau Estates? Anyone know?
I get a call at noon, Aug. 7. Man: "What are you doing?" Luke: "What do you mean?" Man: "Are you looking to get yourself hurt?" Luke: "No." Man: "You're gonna. There's nothing that anyone can do to help you. You're gonna have a big problem. A lot bigger than you've ever had. "For what you put up there this morning, you will not go to any conventions without getting hurt. And I mean really hurt. You should've thought about that before you put that up there. You know you're out of the porn business. I'm dead serious. You're going to go to a convention or something and something's gonna happen." "This is somebody's life. He has family. There's a lot of people he knew. You put up that story, true or not, you should've thought about it. You're not talking about these little douchebags who shoot movies whose sets you go on. This is one of the biggest guys in the industry. He has a lot of friends. You are not safe." "This is a tragedy and that is something that should not be put up there." Veteran sales guy Howard Levine emails Aug. 9:
Why do pornographers invoke prayer? If there's a God, they're going to Hell. If there isn't a God, then prayer does no good. By the nature of their work, porners must ignore God 99% of the time (or drown their guilt in alcohol, drugs, gambling, senseless sex, etc). But when confronted by extreme suffering and death, most find secularism cold comfort and they start reaching for the divine. When I close my eyes and think of Lenny Friedlander, I see a guy with a big ol' gut. The last time I saw him was in Las Vegas in January 2005. He repeatedly kicked me out of his Saturday brunch. My most vivid interaction with Lenny was August 13, 1998. I wrote it up for my memoir: I talk Rob into schlepping me to Lenny Friedlander's barbeque. I claim Lenny's a friend, even though we've never met. Founder of the Free Speech Coalition, Lenny owns the huge porn distributor New Beginnings. Rob introduces me as "Donnie Brasco." The crowd consists of porners with intimate knowledge of the Mafia. I listen to them talk shop. Our host, sporting a gut and a back brace, takes Rob and I on a tour of his mansion. When he learns that I am a vegetarian, Lenny has his new wife, a stripper, prepare a salad for me. I take it undressed. At the end of the barbeque, Rob baits Lenny. "What do you think of Luke Ford?" "That sonofabitch," Lenny roars, his face turning red. "I'll kill him when I meet him. He wrote on the Internet that I was a mobster. I about died when someone showed it to me. I couldn't sleep all night. I was angry for days." Rob laughs and points to me: "That's Luke Ford." Lenny freaks. "You said he was Donnie Brasco?" People stream away from the barbeque and it appears, from the growing splotches of red on Lenny's face that I might end up at the bottom of his swimming pool. "How could you bring that guy to my house?" Lenny explodes. "My wife prepared a special salad for him. This guy's trying to destroy the Industry. He says I'm a mobster. That we're all Mafia." "Listen," says Rob. "Russ Hampshire," "Russ Hampshire?" Lenny interrupts. "I could get him here in ten minutes. I just have to pick up the phone." "Russ Hampshire told me not to talk to him. And what does Russ do? Talks to him every day. He's all over his site. All Luke does is write what people tell him. He's not a good journalist or nothing. He just writes what he's told. If you call him up and say that he's written something wrong, he'll fix it. He doesn't care." Lenny turns to me. "What do you have to say for yourself?" "If I have printed anything false, I will remove it and apologize. I believe I simply quoted a fellow journalist, Wally Wharton, who said Jewish guys like you want to sound Italian, to sound tough." "Do I sound Italian to you?" "Oh no." "I don't want to sound Italian. I don't want to sound tough. I'm a very respected businessman." Lenny loudly protests his legitimacy until calming down and calling his lawyer. "Jeffrey [Douglas], you'll never guess who I've got here. Luke Ford." "Get rid of him," says Jeffrey. Lenny motions with his thumb and I walk off the property. A few minutes later, Rob joins me at his car. "You get me in so much trouble," Rob complains. "I save your life again. How many times has it been now? You owe me." ...Here are my notes on Lenny: He entered the business in 1978 as a bill collector. "I was too good. I ran out of clients," Friedlander told AVN. In January of 1998 at the CES, he married a stripper. Friedlander founded the Free Speech Coalition, porn's trade group, in 1991. Lawyer Jeffrey Douglas serves as executive director of the FSC and as Lenny's personal lawyer. Bill Margold met Douglas in 1993. "He had a compendium of all legal cases [regarding pornography] in each state. Jeffrey had done his homework. He's a lonely person. Jeffrey Douglas is like an adult version of me. He's interested in money. "I remember in December of 1993, the Free Speech Coalition got tired of being the Free Speech Coalition. When the heads of states [leading company owners] fell on their swords [wanted off the FSC board]. I called Jeffrey and asked him to be a board member. At the same time, I brought in Ray Pistol, Flip Phil Berman, Mara Epstein. I wanted a cross-section of the industry. They replaced Braverman, Charlie Brickman (Cinderella), Lenny Friedlander, Bob Tremont, David Kastens, Al Bloom, Ron Sullivan, Hal Freeman's daughter Sherrie Freeman. "I was not elected in the rubber doll election of December 1992. Worried that some of their people would lose the election, X number of votes were bought by people like Chuck Zane, who gleefully admits it. And Brickman, so they could remain elected. I was not elected. Though I was invited to every single board meeting in 1993 and eventually offered a seat on the board. Then, in January of 1994, I recreated the board. "I remember in April of 1993, when there was an attempt to absorb the Adult Video Association into the Free Speech Coalition, I said, 'That's [the title Free Speech Coalition] amorphous. What does it mean?' Whereupon Lenny Friedlander scratched his empty head and said, 'Now I know two things. One, you don't like me and two, I don't know what amorphous means.' I said, 'You're right about one, and two, you're a product of a college education.' "Jeffrey Douglas has worked hard. He found his universe through the FSC. I brought him out of obscurity and gave him a chance to open up a pot of gold and fall face down into it. It's not my fault that he doesn't know the keys to the pot of gold. Perhaps he was too big a man at first, or his heart blinded his common sense, he did too much for too little in the beginning, working himself into financial disarray. By the time he got out of that, I had long lost my enchantment with him because of statement said to me in November of 1995. Lenny Friendlander said he owned Jeffrey, and that if he snapped his fingers, Jeffrey would quit the board. Which was like saying that Shoeless Joe Jackson had thrown the 1919 World Series. I was devastated. It ruined my weekend. I went to lunch with Jeffrey Monday at a smorgasboard, and I was so upset I could eat only one little plateful. I simply asked him if it was true, 'say it ain't so Joe?' And he said that he could not comment. Then I lost all faith. So, in effect, by not answering, he admitted that he was a side of beef branded LF - Lenny Friedlander. From then on, our relationship has been adversarial. Though we are aimed in the same direction - the preservation of the letter X in the entertainment alphabet." (Conversation 6/11/98)
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