Read The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz Online
Authors: Ron Jeremy
Tags: #Autobiography, #Performing Arts, #Social Science, #Film & Video, #Entertainment & Performing Arts - General, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #General, #Pornography, #Personal Memoirs, #Pornographic films, #Motion picture actors and actresses, #Biography & Autobiography, #Biography, #Erotic films
* I’d like to stress that he was single at the time, so I’m not ratting on him.
** Many rock and rap stars have been impressed by my abilities on the piano and violin. I once serenaded Pam Anderson and Kid Rock backstage at a show and I played piano in the video
Cowboy
for MTV.
* In all fairness to Axl, he didn’t recall having slept with her, and I’ve known many women who were crazy about his abilities.
* When Heather told this story to Sam Kinison, he said, “I guess squeezing his butt helps him hit the high notes.”
* An Italian restaurant owned by my friend Ciro Orsini.
** I also invited six other friends, including Sally Marr, Lenny Bruce’s mother.
* This story is classic folklore that’s still told by Bill’s friends to this day. Supposedly, shortly after the incident, Jilly Rizzo and Frank Sinatra were woken up by the casino staff and told about Bill’s antics. As the story goes, they both just laughed and went back to sleep.
* In fact, he hates seeing me have sex on screen. He describes it with that famous quote from
Apocalypse Now
. “The horror…the horror…”
* They got back at me for that. I watched them shoot a music video at an L.A. nightclub, and in front of two thousand of their fans, they yelled out to me, “Hey, Ron, this is an amplifier. This is a microphone. This is a guitar. These are drumsticks.” (And I wound up doing a cameo in the video, in the part of a security guard.)
* I used to love talking to John about the Kennedys. He was a close friend of Robert Kennedy, and he was also the director of his campaign videos. Robert often stayed at John’s place in Malibu, and John was actually with Robert when he was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968. John told me that both of the Kennedy brothers had sexual appetites to match my own, and
one
of them had a larger penis than I do. He didn’t say which one, but it could’ve been just a rumor that he heard.
* Of course, I
did
take his advice. I was just teasing. Who wouldn’t?
* John had to defend his reasons for using nonunion actors to the Screen Actors Guild and the film’s producers. Even after he explained that porn actors were more comfortable with nudity, he was still fined by SAG.
* In this movie, I was cast as a diner owner who fired a waitress, who was originally to be played by Rose McGowan. But Salomé Breziner, the movie’s director and writer, beat me to it. She fired Rose and gave her part to Natasha Lyonne instead. So Salomé got to fire Rose before
I
did. Strange but true. Backstage at the House of Blues in Vegas when I told this story to Marilyn Manson, he laughed his ass off (Rose was his ex).
* Years later, I was backstage at the
Tonight Show with Jay Leno
and I bumped into Drew Barrymore (her boyfriend at the time, Tom Green, was a guest on the show). I asked her whether she or Burt knew that I was sleeping during Paul’s screening. “Of course we did,” she said, laughing. “We thought it was hysterical.”
* I’d taken her to a
Hustler
Christmas party before that, and she was always fun to hang out with.
* If you’re curious, here are my eleven favorite performers, in no particular order: Tabitha Stevens, Christy Canyon, Teri Weigel, Taylor Wayne, Shayla Le Veaux, Jeanna Fine, Nina Hartley, Shanna McCullough, Vanessa Del Rio, Marilyn Chambers, and Jacklyn Lick.
* The part was originally offered to John Leslie, but as he was already booked for another job, they gave it to me.
** I met Mickey in L.A., on the set of
City in Fear
(David Janssen’s last film). It was Mickey’s first break as an actor. I played a waiter. And just for the record, David Janssen, famous for the TV show
The Fugitive
, died shortly after this film.
* To show my appreciation, I presented Don with a bottle of Dom Perignon. But on the card, I called it “Don” Perignon. I’d met Don years earlier, on the set of Frankenheimer’s film
Dead Bank
, where I had a cameo as Biker Three. John was a little nervous about what Don would think and introduced me as “Ron Hyatt” (my real name). “C’mon, John, that’s Ron Jeremy,” Don said. “I saw him a few weeks ago on late-night TV.” We shook hands, and John and the rest of the crew broke out laughing.
* I went on to have a cameo in
George Wallace
, and I wasn’t cut from that one.
Time
called it “creative casting.” In any case, the film won an Emmy.
* Who went on to star in
Scooby-Doo
.
* The death scenes listed here (and a few others) were compiled into a ten-minute tape by Al Goldstein, which was screened at an AVN awards show in Las Vegas. When Al introduced the montage, he said, “Here’s Ron Jeremy as you can really enjoy seeing him.”
** I originally had a little more to do (like pressing the alarm to alert the police) that didn’t make it into the final edit. And I wrote a line that Roger used for one of the characters. I got a special kick out of that. I wrote a line of dialogue for a guy who got an Academy Award for screenwriting!
*** Quentin Tarantino was also a producer on
Killing Zoe
.
* It got picked up recently by 20th Century Fox, due to its cult status. And received nice comments on
Ebert & Roeper
.
* The star-studded after party was held at the Playboy Mansion, with live music provided by, believe it or not, Metallica.
** To protect his identity, “Alex” isn’t his real name.
* Either for himself or some of his executive friends, I’m not sure which.
* This was about six months before her sex tape was released.
** Being a true gentleman, I never confirmed or denied this story when it was reported in the
New York Post
. Later, at a party in Las Vegas, I overheard Paris loudly exclaiming to Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst that she had seen my penis. So now I feel comfortable telling the story and confirming it.
* As you may remember, Long Dong Silver was a favorite of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. During his confirmation hearings in 1991, Anita Hill claimed that while working for Thomas, he asked her to watch porn videos and look at the male actors. “Which actors?” Ted Kennedy asked. Every other porn actor—myself included—on the planet ran to our TVs and screamed, “Say my name! Say my name!” Who wouldn’t want that kind of free publicity? I was crushed when she said Long Dong Silver.
* But c’mon, hedgehogs
are
kinda cute. And since I’ve started body shaving before all of my sex scenes, my similarities to a hedgehog aren’t quite so obvious….
* Howard Stern had me on his radio show for almost a half hour talking about that scene. I defended myself by saying, “Didn’t Anna Nicole Smith mess around with a guy in his nineties?” “Yeah, Ron,” Howard shot back. “But not on
film
!”
** Depending on which porn historian you talk to.
* By the way, for you math nuts out there, here’s a true fact: the square root of 69 is…8 something. Get it? Ate something?
* La Toya Jackson’s husband.
* Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe played a bartender in this scene.
* We did do interviews off set, however.
* Okay, so maybe I made that part up. But I did use legendary Motorhead frontman Lemmy to play a bum in the park who sees the flying penis land at his feet, then checks himself to make sure it’s not his, then runs off.
** Or at least I believe it was. My memory is fuzzy.
* We shot the film in a gorgeous mansion (owned by the heirs to the car air-bag inventors) that was also used for the movie
Casino
.
* In an amazing coincidental turn of events, about a year later, Mark met with Heidi’s father, Dr. Paul Fleiss, at the exact same meeting spot, for totally different reasons. They were planning their trips to Cabo San Lucas, along with other doctors, to administer health care to the poor. Mark was providing his private plane. The Mexican people called them “Doctors of Charity.”
* In spite of an offer, for lots of money, Bret requested that Mark and I never release it, so we didn’t. It’s a shame, because it was a good tape, and so far it has never been released.
* I gave them the name.
** Larry Flynt occasionally joined us for brunches, but he thought we were giving him a bad name by calling ourselves the “Slime Pack.”
*** I did help him get a job at the Rainbow Bar & Grill. And to his credit, he has had a few parts in mainstream films.
* He always eventually invited me back.
* For the record, I can say with complete honesty that no sperm or even much sweat was
ever
left in the studio area.
* Brett later admitted that we were smart not to include it, as it would’ve been impossible to get licensing permission from the record labels, ASCAP, and BMI.
* It was a mostly hollow threat. I never would have released the movie.
** It means a lot to me that Cabbie and Brett understand that I never ratted them out until this book. And now it doesn’t matter. To this very day, I’ll never reveal which staffer let us into the building. Many have asked, and I’ve never answered. In addition, Brett tried to sell the film to Jill Kelly’s company for distribution. It didn’t work out, but he himself thereby revealed the existence of the tape, so he kind of ratted himself out.
* I was amazed at how many shoes were left on the floor. When the gunfire went off, people actually jumped out of their shoes to try to get away.
** With the help of my roommate Bobby Gallagher, and the head of Skunk Records.
* The video was introduced on MTV’s
Headbanger’s Ball
, and it had a decent rotation. (I also played the judge in this video.)
* One of Alanis Morissette’s band members
still
uses my name.
* An orgasmic noise.
* According to
Variety,
that season of
The Surreal Life
was the highest rated show for that time slot in the WB’s ten-year history.
** Tammy Faye said prayers for Cherry. As she told me, “Turtles have souls, too, Ron.” Cherry has been healthy ever since.
*** Formerly owned by Glenn Campbell.
* Yeah, but I wasn’t
hard,
for gosh sakes!
* He would’ve had more, but some of the girls (including Sunset Thomas) had delayed flights due to the fires in the Burbank hills. It was just dumb luck that it happened on that day.
* In
TV Guide
’s “100 Most Unexpected TV Moments” (December 5, 2005), the friendship between Tammy and me on
The Surreal Life
was listed at number 83. Why did Tammy and I get along so well? According to the
TV Guide
writers, “Only God knows.”
** Rick James’s funeral provided for an interesting afternoon at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Stevie Wonder sang and Louis Farrakhan made a speech. Jamie Foxx invited some of Rick’s family and friends to his home afterward, where the two of us talked about Tom Cruise. I asked Jamie about Cruise’s infamous stare—you know, the one where he kind of stares at you for a second before answering a question—and Jamie said that whenever he noticed Tom doing it, he’d give him a hard stare right back and think to himself, “Right back atcha, Tom.” Jamie told me, “I’m a Baptist boy! I was practically raised in a church. I don’t quite get that stuff.”
* Jessica made the suggestion, as she was concerned about Tammy’s health. Jessica and I had met years earlier through Sam Kinison, and we’d been friendly ever since. She knew that I knew Tammy, and so I became the liaison to a historical event.
* They eventually discussed the possibilities of a face-to-face meeting on Rita Cosby’s
Live & Direct
TV Show for MSNBC. But plans are on hold until Tammy’s health improves. As of this writing, they haven’t done it yet, so, therefore, there’s a chance that the only communication between these two ever presented to the public will be in this book.
** I’m happy to report that Tammy has survived cancer for the third time. I guess she has connections upstairs after all.
* For a TV show in Australia.
** I always advise them to see a doctor, just to be totally sure.
* As our friendship solidified, Dennis invited me to be a guest (during a party scene) on his reality series
Cathouse
for HBO (or, as Dennis calls it, “HB-Ho”). The show is in its fourth season and has great ratings.
* Since Michael Lahey is a recovered porn addict, I never sign a boob in front of him, and he’s always appreciated that.