The Other Hollywood (45 page)

CHRISTY CANYON
:
Then one day I arrived at work, and there were video cameras everywhere. I called Jim South to find out what the hell was going on. He said, “Darlin’, I told you it was a video shoot….”

There was no way I would have ever done it had I known. But he pressured me, and I thought to myself, “Five hundred dollars! Gosh, I can pay this off and that off….”

I hated it! Everything on the set was dirty. And afterwards I felt real dirty. The scene was with Ron Jeremy. Yuck! It was really tough. I had just turned eighteen, and I had only been with a few guys in my personal life.

HUMPHRY KNIPE
:
I directed two movies with Traci. One was called
Lovebites,
and the other was a piece of rubbish called
Miss Passion
—
which was a cheap video, but she did a scene with Ginger Lynn. Traci did her best work with Greg Dark. Traci did a lot of stuff—I don’t know how many hundreds of feet of film.

GINGER LYNN
:
Back then it was such a small industry that we were all pretty tight—everybody hung out with everybody. But Traci was never in the group. She would go off with a person one-on-one, but she never fit into “the gang.”

TRACI LORDS (JANUARY 14, 1985)
:
I don’t have a problem with any of the other girls. I like a lot of them a lot. I don’t have any jealousies at all. I receive vibes—bad ones—from them. I get twinges of jealousy from other girls because, you know, they’re like, “Why should Traci make so much money?”

CHRISTY CANYON
:
After the shoot I called Jim South and told him that it had been the worst experience of my entire life. Jim said, real calmly, “You know, darlin’, you’re already booked to do a scene tomorrow. After that, if you don’t like it, I won’t get you any more work.”

I thought, “Okay, I’ll do one more, and that’s it.”

I got there, and it was like 180 degrees different. It was for Paradise Visuals, and the producer was a guy that I ended up having a relationship with. All the really good people were there—Traci, Ginger, Peter North, Tom Byron. I really found myself getting into it.

TRACI LORDS (JANUARY 14, 1985)
:
I like boy/girl a lot better than I like girl/girl. I like girls a lot—but there’s very few in the business that I wanna be with. I like Ricki Blake. And I like Ginger Lynn. That’s about it on girls.

GINGER LYNN
:
I worked with Traci in five or six scenes, and the scenes were wonderful because my dislike for her was so extreme that on camera it came across as chemistry.

TOM BYRON
:
I’d walk into a restaurant with Traci feeling like the king of the world. Everyone would be looking at her like, “What the fuck is she doing with that dork?”

It made me feel good, but I think I was more in love with the idea of being in love with her. I mean, we hung out, we did drugs, we fucked, and I said, “I love you, Krissy.”

She said, “I love you, too, Tommy,” but I don’t know if you’d really call it love. But at that time, I definitely thought it was.

TRACI LORDS (JANUARY 14, 1985)
:
How many men have I slept with? I’d say about five hundred. Women? About two hundred. Had I gotten together with women prior to going into the business? Yeah. Have I ever been in love with a woman? No.

GINGER LYNN
:
You know how you can look at some people and kind of see through them? Traci had this look in her eyes—or rather a void—that scared me.

CHRISTY CANYON
:
Traci and Ginger hated each other.

TOM BYRON
:
There was something about Traci that was very distant. She would start talking and cut herself off in the middle of a sentence because obviously she had a lot of things that she couldn’t talk about.

GINGER LYNN
:
Traci made me nervous. She could be extremely cruel. I didn’t find her attractive. I instinctually had a bad feeling about her.

HUMPHRY KNIPE
:
Traci wasn’t any less forthcoming than anybody else. It was all irrelevant. She came from somewhere, you know? She didn’t discuss her past. We just did movies with her.

TRACI LORDS (JANUARY 14, 1985)
:
There’s a part of me—the “Traci Lords” part—that’s rude, spoiled, and bitchy. But I have to protect myself. Like if I say, at 3:30 in the morning, “I’m leaving after this scene, whether you like it or not,” everyone may think, “What a bitch!” But they’d like to do the same thing—only they can’t get away with it.

There are maybe two girls in the past three or four years who get what I get paid: Ginger Lynn and Raven. No one else.

GINGER LYNN
:
On
The Grafenburg Spot
we had a motor home that would take us from location to location, and Traci fucked the entire crew in between filming. And I never once—and back in those days I did drugs—saw her do a drug. I never saw her do anything that she was forced into doing. She seemed to enjoy herself.

TOM BYRON
:
I mean, we did drugs together, but she was always on the set on time, you know? She was very professional and always knew her lines. As a matter of fact, on that movie
What Gets Me Hot
she had to read a page-long monologue, and she did it in one take, okay? I can’t see how anybody that’s whacked out on drugs is gonna be able to do that. She was a consummate professional, which is why she was paid as well as she was and worked as often as she did.

I mean, she had to ask for days off because everybody wanted her. She could have worked every single day.

RUBY GOTTESMAN
:
Traci Lords—a strange thing. I got to meet her, and I took her to Texas, and we became good friends. She came to see me all the time.

Matter of fact, one day I was takin’ lunch—and Traci comes over to the office, and someone on the intercom says, “Your wife is waitin,’” and
Traci gets all undressed—like naked. Just kiddin’ around, that’s the way Traci was.

Traci was on drugs, but she knew what she was doing. Absolutely.

RON JEREMY
:
Traci was getting a thousand dollars a day before anybody else. And then she went to a few thousand a day.

TRACI LORDS (JANUARY 14, 1985)
:
Christy Canyon raised her rate to a thousand dollars a day, and no one used her so she had to go back down to seven-fifty. But I’m way beyond that now. I make a thousand for a video, and fifteen hundred for film. How far do I want to go? I want to keep on going until I drop to number two—and then I quit.

HUMPHRY KNIPE
:
Traci would’ve been very happy to be a movie star, but to be an actress you have to have the voice. Without it, you’re dead. Traci’s got the nasty, bratty look down cold. But not the voice.

CHRISTY CANYON
:
People would always say to me, “You’re right up there with Ginger and Traci,” like it was supposed to be a big thing. But I didn’t think of it like that. I just thought, “I’m having a good time. It’s fun, and I’m making the same money as them.” I guess I was young and naive.

TRACI LORDS (JANUARY 14, 1985)
:
What am I doing with the money? Investing. I’m buying a condo in Palos Verdes. I already own a house in Redondo Beach. And I have a Corvette and a Trans Am.

What’s the wildest thing I’ve ever done sexually? I’d say fuck my boyfriend on the hood of my Corvette—at night, in public—on the Pacific Coast Highway, overlooking all of L.A.

It was offscreen, and it was my boyfriend. He was a really good lay.

TOM BYRON
:
She was living in Redondo Beach with a guy named Tommy—this surfer dude, this little, pretty boy. When Traci and I were on the set of
Sister Dearest
—you know, one of those incest things—it was real late at night, and we were just kind of like commiserating, when all of a sudden she goes, “Tommy’s spending all my money. He treats me like shit; he just dented my car. I gotta get away from this guy.”

I said, “Well, what’s the problem? Come stay with me.”

She says, “I can’t.”

I go, “What do you mean you can’t? I’ll pick you up. I’m not scared of this guy. I’ll wipe the floor with him. You come stay with me.”

She goes, “I can’t. He knows too much about me. He’s holding something over my head.”

I was just like, “Well, whatever. You got my number. You know where I live. You got a place if you need it.”

1984
–
1987

NEW YORK CITY/LOS ANGELES
1984

TOM BYRON
:
Teddy Snyder was a guy I worked for doing loops. He owned a company called VCX—had a partner named Bobby Genova. He was always a nice enough guy to me.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Christ, I couldn’t tell you how many films I did for Teddy Snyder. When I was working for him, Ted would shoot, and Bobby Genova was his tote guy. Teddy and I were best buddies.

TOM BYRON
:
The very first time I worked with Traci Lords on film was for Teddy Snyder. It was called
Tracie Lords
—before, you know, the “official” spelling. It was a collection of loops.

Did Teddy direct it?
Direct
. No. You know, Teddy paid for it, and he was on the set. But Jason Russell filmed the thing—he was the cinematographer with his little sixteen-millimeter camera. Ted was just there.

SHARON MITCHELL
:
Very few of the connected guys were chick-fuckers. Usually they’d only get a porn girl to come out if it was a setup for information—a business thing, you know? “Let’s put pussy in front of him, and we’ll get what we want. After all these girls work for us.” And any favor that was asked of us was complied with instantly.

I was asked to do a favor once or twice.

TIM CONNELLY
:
Teddy Snyder was about six foot two, wore cowboy hats and cowboy boots and a lot of gold. Weighed about 225. Big guy with a big gut—but hard fat, you know, not sloppy fat. Looked like he could kill you with a snap of his wrist. And he was like a cocaine cowboy.
Pouring sweat all the time. Real tough guy. And he liked to fuck the girls.

SHARON MITCHELL
:
One night Teddy Snyder knocked on my bedroom window, asked me to come down the fire escape, get into a car, and make a movie in the middle of the night as entertainment for certain people. I went, “Sure.” I knew who these people were. I was getting paid. As far as I was concerned, it was just a movie.

FRED LINCOLN
:
When I first came out to Los Angeles, I wasn’t getting any work, so Teddy gave me a contract to do a music video for Ginger Lynn. He paid me five hundred bucks and gave me a Porsche. And they never asked me to do a thing—except to plan this video.

ERIC EDWARDS
:
Teddy was the first guy I worked for. He was cool back then: My only complaint was—when he wanted a girl to do an anal, for example, he would say, “Hey, I’ll give you another ten dollars.”

Teddy had all this gold dripping off his neck; he bragged about crashing his airplane and then buying a new one. So I would go up to him and say, “Ted, come on, give her some more money, for Pete’s sake!”

FRED LINCOLN
:
Teddy Snyder and Bobby Genova spent, like, a million dollars on Ginger’s music video. It was supposed to be a legitimate thing—like what Andrea True did—but it never even came close because they didn’t like the way Ginger sang. So they got somebody else, and they wanted her to sing while Ginger mouthed the words.

I said, “Wait a minute, guys. Let’s say it’s a success? The real singer’s not gonna be quiet! She’s gonna say, ‘Hey! That’s me singing!’ And then we’re gonna look like fuckin’ idiots!” That’s when I backed out.

TOM BYRON
:
Teddy got a kick outta me. I mean, a lot of those connected guys did. You know, “Ah, look at this fucking kid. He did a cum shot, hit the fuckin’ wall, this fuckin’ guy. Look at the big, fuckin’ prick on this fuckin’ kid ova hea’.”

That’s why I got to hang out at all their parties—I was nonthreatening. The girls who were there were for those guys. I didn’t move on any of the girls. I just sat there.

I was just like, “Mr. Sabatoni, how you doin’? Oh, is that coke? Sure, I’ll do a line. Thanks.”

And they’d bust my balls. I was kinda like fucking Spider from
Goodfellas
. “Spider, go get me the fuckin’ drink, Spider!” But I’d never tell them to go fuck themselves—so I never got shot in the foot.

All that coke that we used to snort over at fucking Bobby’s—I heard it came from Henry Hill. Yeah, it was
Goodfellas
coke.

BOBBY GENOVA
:
Henry Hill was a good friend of mine.

TOM BYRON
:
I’m a big fan of the
Godfather
movies and all that other shit. I mean, I’m half-Italian, you know what I’m saying? I’m
one
of those guys. I admire that “code of honor” kind of thing. I mean, sometimes the line gets distorted or whatever, but when it comes to keeping a secret, I believe in that. I admire that. But Teddy, ahhh…

FRED LINCOLN
:
Teddy Snyder and Bobby Genova were makin’ money. They had a plane. Were they fucking in the plane? No, Bobby just wanted to learn how to fly, ha, ha, ha. Bobby was a strange guy, still is.

TIM CONNELLY
:
You’d drive out to some industrial park in the middle of nowhere, and these high-level guys—Teddy and Bobby—are in a fucking Quonset hut running their little empire, doing blow, and fucking skanky little girls from San Bernardino.

TOM BYRON
:
Teddy used to have these little coke orgies or whatever—because I think he liked to videotape guys fucking his wife, Sharon.

Sharon had red hair—wasn’t that long. White skin, pretty face. She was skinny because she did a lot of coke. That’s about it. She was pretty friendly, but she didn’t come on that strong to me. Marc Wallice was fucking her. Probably Paul Thomas. I don’t know anyone else.

FRED LINCOLN
:
When Teddy first met Sharon, she was a member of the “horse set.” She could’ve went to the moon! But she went along with Teddy’s degenerate ways—so she gave up her career, thinking Teddy was going to take care of her.

PHIL VANNATTER (LAPD DETECTIVE)
:
Sharon Snyder was sort of the outcast of her family. They were not happy with her lifestyle.

TOM BYRON
:
I woulda fucked her. I dunno, Sharon Snyder was a very sexual person. I mean, that might have been because she was full of coke—but she came on to a lot of people.

She probably made a couple of flirtatious passes at me, but I didn’t really pick up on it. I mean, she was the wife of the guy who was paying my bills, so I wasn’t gonna go there.

And Teddy definitely had a violent streak. I knew he was connected, but I wasn’t scared of that; back then everybody was connected. But I’d heard stories about Teddy, you know? Paul Thomas told me that Teddy once fucking put a gun in his mouth and threatened to blow his fucking head off—and I think Marc Wallice said the same thing. You know what I’m saying? I’d heard Ted had done, like, scary things.

Plus, he did a lotta coke. So, you know, guns and coke…I kept a respectful distance.

PHIL VANNATTER
:
I saw a videotape of Sharon—several months pregnant—having oral sex with another man. This is the kind of people they were. Anybody who would film his pregnant wife having sex with somebody else has got to be a sick puppy.