The Other Hollywood (27 page)

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
As it turned out, Pat and Andre’s arrest may have helped us because it looked as if Bill Brown had been instrumental in getting the
case thrown out. Plus, the camaraderie of Pat and Andre having been arrested together.

BILL BROWN
:
It was celebration time. I mean, everybody’s slapping each other on the back and generally acting like we had just done something very important.

So we decided we were going to have a big celebration that night. We went to the Grove for one of those hideously expensive dinners. Pat and Bruce had called the FBI, and they flew two undercover female agents down from Detroit that day. They had to go to the airport and pick them up. I didn’t know the girls were agents, but I found out later.

JOEL STEINBERG
:
We were real bosom buddies because I won the case for them, and they were genuinely appreciative.

BILL BROWN
:
I had met a girl in the bar of the Omni Hotel and asked her to come to dinner with us. So Andre starts going after this girl, and she loves Andre: She thinks Andre is just the nicest thing going. Andre is her type of guy—the real macho, tough, bragging type. Like, “I’d fuck you all night.” But from Andre, you wouldn’t characterize it as dirty and gross, just supermacho tough bragging—and Andre could carry it off.

Andre didn’t say a lot—but he said enough.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
After dinner, we went to the Mutiny, a bar in Coconut Grove.

BILL BROWN
:
It was well past midnight when we get to the Mutiny, and we are all approaching the limit of our alcoholic intake. And it’s rolling now—girls, music—but Joel Steinberg is now going downhill rapidly, just really obnoxious. He’s abusing the women, and he’s screaming for cocaine, saying, “LET’S GET COCAINE! LET’S GET COCAINE!”

Just generally acting like a pig. Joel was very aggressive, very rude, and very drunk. I mean, just a bad guy. There was just something wrong with the guy. We all talked about it later.

You know, “This guy is sick. He’s a sick puppy.”

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
Joel Steinberg was kind of a sleazy guy. He thought he was smooth with the ladies, but he didn’t pay for anything. I just didn’t want to deal with him, you know?

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
Joel Steinberg—what a scumbag.

BILL BROWN
:
Even Andre was saying what an asshole this guy was. Joel had all these grandiose plans, and Andre picked up very quickly that it was all a bunch of horseshit. Joel was trying to figure out how he could justify a
five-thousand-dollar fee when all he did was introduce himself at court. And that was it—he didn’t do anything else.

And at the party, I think Andre’s thoughts were very similar to mine, “This guy doesn’t get out much, you know?”

JOEL STEINBERG
:
They brought in this absolutely beautiful woman—who I didn’t know at the time was an FBI agent—and she was trying to hit on Andre D’Apice.

BILL BROWN
:
The woman I brought from the Omni bar eventually lost favor with Andre—she was putting on airs or something, like she probably wouldn’t fuck him. So Andre started making a heavy move for the blond FBI agent.

In the meantime, I invited some girls I knew vaguely—one was a realtor—to come back to my house with us.

PAT LIVINGSTON
:
Andre was all over the female FBI agent, and he’s trying to drag her off. But she was supposed to be my date, so she grabbed my crotch and said to Andre, “I’ve got all I want right here, thank you very much.” It was absolutely the right thing to do at the right time—and that’s why she was there.

BILL BROWN
:
Then Joel got out of hand. He tried to bite the realtor’s breast—you know, leaning over, mouth open, drinks falling all over the place. She got up and said, “You pig!”

Then she left.

I had invited her back to my house, and she was game—but when Joel grabbed her and bit her on the tit, that was a little much. I said, “Let’s go. It’s time to go; let’s get out of here.”

So we went to my house. Some of the girls were there; Joel drove with one of the girls to the house, and he wouldn’t get out of the car. It was one of those drunken scenes—I’m dragging Joel out of the car, and he’s screaming, “WHERE’S THE FUCKING COKE? WHERE’S THE COKE? WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON? WHAT KIND OF GROUP IS THIS, NO COKE? COME ON, LET’S GET SOME COKE!”

And the girls were just disgusted. You know, “What a pair of assholes! Let’s get out of here!” So the girls left, and Pat must have taken Andre and the female FBI agent home.

So that ended that night.

NEW YORK CITY
1978–1979

SHARON MITCHELL
:
I went to Reuben Sturman to get the money for a couple of movies I directed. I’m not really an experienced filmmaker; it was just something I wanted to do. But I really didn’t get a sense of Reuben at all because by the time I really knew him I was at the height of my drug use.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Sharon Mitchell is my buddy, since she was eighteen—since she started. So Mitch called me up and told me she met this guy, and they were gonna do a movie. And she said, “But I don’t know enough about it, and I’d like you to work maybe as the production manager.”

SHARON MITCHELL
:
I worked with two partners in Brooklyn; we set up a corporation to sell shares of the film, so the money comes directly into the bank.

I spent some of the money—but I didn’t want to fuck with these people too much—because I knew where the money was coming from.

FRED LINCOLN
:
I go to the set, and I’m watching Vanessa Del Rio looking at the lighting and the cameras. And I say, “You know what? You ain’t got shit.” We’d been shooting for two days, and these guys ain’t got the faintest idea what they’re doing.

I said, “We’ve shot two thousand feet of film, and we’ve only done three scenes. That’s insane. You’re getting ripped off. I’ll tell you what—stop the shooting until we see the rushes.”

So we did that. Did they suck? Yes. Camera’s flying all over the place.

This guy, Ernie, did the movie only because of me and Mitch; now he’s thinking we ripped him off. But we never touched no money.

SHARON MITCHELL
:
Actually, I brought Fred in because I hadn’t spent
all
the money—but I had spent about half of it. So I relied on him to help me a lot.

FRED LINCOLN
:
So I said, “You know what, Ernie? Why don’t you let me get you a realistic budget, under fifty grand. Mitch and I will do it free until we sell it. We’ll go back to San Francisco and shoot it.”

Ernie’s hemmin’ and hawin’, “How do I know you’re not gonna rip me off?”

I said, “I’m trying to make this right. I can’t do anything else. I didn’t take no money.”

He said, “How do I know she didn’t give you some?”

I said, “Because I would’ve let us finish the movie. We woulda split it, and you woulda been fucked. Whatsa matter with you? I wouldn’t have stopped the movie if I had a part of it.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

SHARON MITCHELL
:
Fred had no idea where the money originally came from. We had to get other backers; it was a pretty intense situation.

So Fred and I coordinated to raise more money together.

BILL KELLY
:
Everybody kowtowed to Reuben Sturman. He used to come to these porn conventions and be treated like royalty. He would have an entourage following him around. Reuben actually looked like he was somebody important. And he was—if you don’t mind dealing in pornography.

ROY KARCH (PORNOGRAPHER)
:
I was standing at the CES [Consumer Electronics Show] in Vegas with my boss at Gourmet Video—Howie Wasserman—when a guy comes over with another guy—a mobster. The other guy’s got an attaché case handcuffed to his hand.

I’m facing front, and they’re talking behind me, and I hear, “Come on, I want to handle your stuff.”

Howie says, “I can’t do it. I want the stores myself.”

He says, “Let’s go up to my suite. You can have this briefcase.”

Howie says, “Why do I want that briefcase?”

The guy says, “Because there’s a million in cash in this briefcase.”

Now, at that point I had to stop myself from turning around. You know, this is none of my business—but when I heard a million in cash, I wanted to see who the fuck is talking. But I didn’t turn around; I watched them walk away. Then I asked, “Who was that?”

Howie says, “That was Reuben Sturman.”

I said, “Well, why don’t you want to do business?”

Howie says, “Don’t want to.”

I don’t think Reuben ever got Gourmet Video’s line. Howie really wanted to hold his product and distribute it himself. Howie’s very smart. He made a lot of money from direct distribution to stores—at forty dollars apiece, not twelve dollars like it is today.

FRED LINCOLN
:
We couldn’t get a man, and we couldn’t get Vanessa Del Rio back to do the film, and Mitch is totally freaking out.

So I said, “You know what? There’s this new girl everybody’s talking about. Her name’s Seka.”

That was the first time I met her—when I booked Seka for our film.

ROY KARCH
:
When we were doing
Dracula Sucks
out in Los Angeles with Annette Haven, John Holmes, Kay Parker, John Leslie, Paul Thomas—all the big names—we put an ad in
Variety
looking for other talent.

We got a letter back—with pictures—from this woman, Dorothy Yontz, who wrote, “I have a bookstore in Virginia with my husband, and we saw your ad in
Variety,
and I’d like to get into porn.”

Ken and Dotty were their names. We saw the photos, flew her out, and Bill Margold gave her the name Seka.

She was gorgeous.

SHARON MITCHELL
:
Seka’s real name was Dotty. She had little poodles; and I had to coach her on how to get rid of that horrible Southern accent. She was very sweet, but I didn’t have a crush on her. I thought she was a marketable commodity for my movie. She was very nice, very cool, and I just liked the way she liked to fuck. It was genuine.

GLORIA LEONARD
:
The first time I met Seka, I think she was shooting loops for
Swedish Erotica
with my husband, Bobby Hollander, somewhere in New York.

She was sort of a cheesy, cheap looking blond from the South with too much turquoise eye makeup and too many silver rings on.

But she was hot, you know?

FRED LINCOLN
:
So we shot the movie,
A Place Beyond Shame
. Ernie made his money back—including the original $60,000 that had been blown. He ended up making about forty or fifty thousand.

SHARON MITCHELL
:
A Place Beyond Shame
was Seka’s first movie. I probably made about $35,000 off of it. And then I sold some more shares when my heroin addiction really hit. I wish I still had those shares now because that film made a lot of money.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Before our movie, all Seka had done were a bunch of loops for Caballero. And she had this pimp husband, Ken—who thought he was Elvis—who had no idea what he was doing with her. And she was
sooo
good, this girl. So I called Freddie over at the Melody and said, “Boy, you gotta hire this girl. She’s gonna be really on top in our business.”

ROY KARCH
:
Dotty and Ken would call me up from the Sahara Hotel—three blocks from my house on La Brea—and say, “We’re in town—bring someone over.”

Because Ken was horny, and Seka liked the way I eat pussy. So I would always find a girl and say, “You wanna fuck Seka?”

“Yeeeaaah,” said the chick. But the real gig was that she had to fuck Ken.

SHARON MITCHELL
:
I think Seka’s husband wanted to be Chuck Traynor—the star maker, you know? He was cool and harmless but just sort of a suitcase pimp.

TIM CONNELLY
:
A suitcase pimp is a guy who is the boyfriend/manager/husband/sometimes-sex-partner-on-camera, and who ultimately holds the wallet. He’s a pimp—but he’s a suitcase pimp, which is a little more high-toned than just a pimp. He’s got one girl, and he’s working at promoting/managing her. And he always speaks in “we” rather than “I.”

“If
we’re
going to do this double penetration movie,
we
need to make a little more money if you’re going to put that dick up
her
ass….”

They always break at that point.

VERONICA HART (PORN STAR)
:
Chuck Vincent, who I loved, told me never to work for this Lenny Kurtman guy. But I saw some of his stuff at the World Theater and it was good—people were actually acting.

So I go to work for Kurtman, and Seka’s in the movie, too. I’m working with this guy, Cole, who’s predominantly gay. The way they were shooting is when I got the guy hard, they’d be shooting the soft shots—you know, facial reactions. Then when we’d go to shoot the hard shots he’d be soft again, so I’d have to work him up again. This went on for a while.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Seka finally saw what an asshole her husband really was. He was fucking every girl at the Melody.

I mean, she’d work, and he’d take the money—and then get her more work. Ken got her to work for Lenny Kurtman; she did ten movies in a week. That’s what this fucking moron was doing to her—instead of making her a high-end girl.

VERONICA HART
:
So Lenny Kurtman takes me to the side and says, “Honey, aren’t you a little tired? Don’t you want this to be over?”

I’m going, “Well, okay,” because I just want everyone to be happy, right?

And he goes, “We’ll get this over with right away.”

So I assume the doggy style position, and Lenny whips his dick out, pumps three or four strokes in my ass, then comes all over my butt. I didn’t know much about the business, but I knew that wasn’t right.

I felt like a piece of shit. I cried on the way home.

GLORIA LEONARD
:
Leonard Kurtman was the kind of guy that, if another male was having a problem, he would jump in and just get shot from the waist down. You could always tell it was his little fat, stupid dick when you saw it on the screen—and I hated that.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Ken sold Seka too cheap. If you get overexposed in theaters, it fucks you up terrible. Seka knew it. So she finally broke up with Ken. And he was brokenhearted. That’s when Seka decided to stay in New York.

VERONICA HART
:
I came back to the shoot the next day and told Seka that Lenny Kurtman made me feel cheap. He had no idea he had done anything wrong. He asked me to go to the Bahamas with him. He was completely clueless that the way he acted was out of line.

I told Seka, and she was just really great. She said, “Oh, that’s bullshit. You didn’t have to do that, darling. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. These people are lucky to have you here.” Seka was just great.

JAMIE GILLIS
:
I loved Seka. She was my little boy fantasy, like, “Wow! I’d like to fuck her.” She was porn, but a little bit above it—sort of a white-trash queen in a way that I found really erotic.

So I said to her, “It’s nice for me to have someone in the business I can look up to.” I didn’t think of her as one of the girls I was going to fuck no matter how much I wanted to. She was
desirable
.

FRED LINCOLN
:
The girls used to tell me that Ken’s whole apartment was a shrine to Seka. All the walls had posters of Seka—pictures of her every place—and he’d be looking at them when girls were giving him head.

He managed some more girls and tried to get over her, but—yeah, he was brokenhearted.

JAMIE GILLIS
:
Seka and I went to Show World. I still had the run of the place at that time, so I just took her back where the girls were dancing behind the peep show machines and said, “Come inside.” Then I started fucking her in the peep-show booth.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Seka didn’t care who she worked with. You know how some girls have a list? She and Ken had been swingers in Virginia, so Seka didn’t give a fuck—“Just bring ’em in, and I’ll fuck ’em!”

Did I fuck her? Oh, yeah. We were good friends.

JAMIE GILLIS
:
The peep-show girls are usually upstairs dancing; the guys looking through the windows sorta go up to the theater to watch the show. But while I’m fucking Seka, I’m hearing people go, “HEY! HE’S FUCKING SEKA IN THE BOOTH!” And she was like a major celebrity in the business, so everybody in the place knew it was happening.

It was funny because all these windows started flying up—these guys couldn’t put the quarters in fast enough. It was
fun!

GLORIA LEONARD
:
Seka was the platinum princess, and she was there at the right place at the right time. Seka’s very smart when it comes to how to manipulate men. You know, I’m a Jewish girl from the Bronx, and unfortunately when I was born you had to get in line for different things. There was a line for “cash,” but I thought they said “hash,” so I got on the wrong line. So I never had any of that “buy me-get me-take me-bring me” thing going—which is unusual for my cultural background.

But Seka was good at it. Still is.

VERONICA HART
:
Seka was the first woman I ever did on screen. I felt kind of a sisterhood with her. I just loved her—as long as I have a face, Seka will always have a place to sit.