February 3- 9, 2005

art

Oral Tradition

Hot and bothered: "The porn industry is counting on America to be sexually repressive," says Legs McNeil. "Look at our history. We wanted to get rid of alcohol. We always make the wrong move." Photo By: Alex Richmond

Legs McNeil says the pornification of America isn't coming. It came.

by Alex Richmond

The celebrity sex tapes stack up taller than Traci Lords, Tommy Lee and Paris Hilton piled on top of each other, and yet no one has really told the whole story. Porn was the biggest success story of the Internet in the 1990s boom, but all the ink is spilled on blogging. At last, the inclusive story of the porn industry has been pinned down like a squirming insect other journalists found unpalatable. Someone had to study it for the sake of education.

That someone is Legs McNeil.

Known to those in battered black leather jackets as the author of 1997's Please Kill Me, widely considered to be the definitive work on the history of punk rock, McNeil chose a similar structure for The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry (ReganBooks, 640 pp., $25.95). The book uses the participants' voices to tell their own stories. McNeil, along with Jennifer Osborne, has been gathering interviews for the last eight years. After spending time in Los Angeles, the heart of the porn industry, McNeil decided to move to Pennsylvania. He lives near Schwenksville, where he enjoys anonymity and makes weekly runs to the flea market paradise that is Zern's.

His first introduction to porn wasn't in the theater or in a rock club but behind the lens.

"I was the assistant director in 1974 for a porn film called Blow Dry," says McNeil. "I was working at the hippie film commune Total Impact, fell in love with one of the stars. Whenever I got into an argument at Punk magazine, I would run away to her house."

But love wasn't the main reason McNeil became a porn historian.

"The reason why I wanted to do this book was because people had gone to jail, and no one could say anything about it," he says. The Mondale Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 "gave tons of money for the feds to go after child porn. At the time, it was less than one tenth of one percent of what was being made, yet tens of millions of dollars were given out. They didn't fine any pornographers and kept the money, and day care workers went to jail and are serving time based on what the feds found. During the Meese Commission, every moron in the world testified that they looked at a nudie deck of cards and it made them rape someone. It's kind of dangerous not knowing about the porn industry."

Did McNeil know that porn would eventually become so mainstream?

"Yeah, of course. Anything that starts underground becomes homogenized milk 30 years later, like punk or anything else. The FBI was on it, but it just didn't matter, because the people want it."

McNeil says it's because America is so sexually repressive that porn thrives. "When they legalized porn in Denmark, it didn't take over the country. It found its niche. America can never do that, because it's so puritanical. The porn industry is counting on America to be sexually repressive. The Christian right is always ridiculous, where have you been? Look at our history. We wanted to get rid of alcohol. We always make the wrong move."

Though there are many revelatory details in The Other Hollywood — including a blow-by-blow of Linda Lovelace's act of love with a dog, lengthy FBI investigations, and how what was once known as GRID permanently halted the sexual revolution — it wasn't one tip that got McNeil started. "I knew some of these people from doing that film and wanted to see what had happened to them. I knew it was an interesting story."

McNeil has respect for his subjects, but not for the people who have failed to tell their stories authentically.

"They could have, but like punk, no one takes porn that seriously. Every writer came along and did a piece on the porn industry and they were all awful. I don't think it's a matter of respect, but I don't think anyone took it seriously."

Then there's the whole crime element, which hasn't gone away.

"Jen ran into some of the low-life mobsters at [the Adult Video News Awards] and gave them copies of the book. They were like, "What are we supposed to do with this?' She told them, "You can sell it on eBay,' and they were like, "Great!' They're always looking for the angle, but they're really great guys."