The Other Hollywood (56 page)

LOS ANGELES
1990–1992

MICHAEL ALAGO (FORMER VICE PRESIDENT, ELEKTRA RECORDS)
:
I had already signed Metallica to Elektra, and around 1990 I signed White Zombie to Geffen. I was hiring tons of escorts, and since I’m gay, all of the escorts were men from the porn industry. But I was with a buddy of mine at the Sunset Marquee, and we were all coked up, and somebody gave me Savannah’s number. It was like a dare, almost. He said, “You’re not gonna fucking call her and get her to do this?”

I said, “Man, I do this all the time with men. Let’s just fuckin’ do it.”

So at midnight, we were all fucked up, and I called her, told her who I was, and this is what I did. I knew she was escorting, so could she come by?

BILL MARGOLD
:
Savannah was a somewhat attractive little blond marshmallow who came into the business in the early 1990s.

SAVANNAH
:
I started my career as a nude model. I’ve shot for a lot of magazines,
Hustler
and
Penthouse
, and most of the others. At first, I didn’t know if I’d be taking my clothes off for a photographer, but after I did it, I thought it was really hot. It’s kind of a sexual thing between the model and photographer; you make love to the camera. You know, the long lenses and the clicking, and I’m there moving around in different positions, showing him my pussy and tits, trying to turn him on.

Have I ever fucked a photographer after a session? I’m not saying.

MARC CARRIERE
:
With Savannah, I think we felt she was going to be big. I knew Savannah very well. I knew a lot about her problems; I knew her lifestyle. She was a pretty wild one.

MICHAEL ALAGO
:
I wish I could remember who I was with, but he was eating Savannah out while we were fucking her. You know, we just both took turns. We were surprised and amazed that we could get it up—because we were so coked up and drunk.

And, you know, I never fuck women. But Savannah was just fucking
genius,
you know? We bowed down to her, the way you bow down to certain people in life.

TOM BYRON
:
Savannah—
Savannahhhh!
Savannah was a very, very pretty girl—enjoyed cocaine immensely. People said she was a cold fuck. I didn’t agree. I was one of the few people she would work with because I don’t buy into that whole cold fish thing. To me it was a challenge to get some real emotion out of her. We played this game—I’d be fuckin’ her, and I’d say, “Oh, that feels good.”

And she’d say “No, it doesn’t.” Ha, ha, ha!

SAVANNAH
:
It’s been said that when I’m having sex on camera, sometimes I look detached, almost as if I don’t want to be there. That’s just the way I am. I’m not a screamer or someone who likes to bounce and jump around a lot. I like to relax and feel it.

VERONICA HART
:
Savannah was gorgeous, but I don’t think anybody would say that her sexual scenes were the hottest, or you know, she was the most into it.

SAVANNAH
:
I’m not into women. Yeah, I enjoy sucking cock, but it doesn’t get me off or anything. Do I like guys coming on my face? YUCK! I don’t see what’s so hot about that—getting all that gooky stuff all over me. I don’t mind so much on my tits or my stomach or my ass, but on the face, it makes me feel like I just blew my nose all over myself. That’s not sexy. For me, anyway.

HENRI PACHARD
:
I suspected most of the women were in the business because they were really more frigid than they would let on. They weren’t really capable of having an orgasm, and what better way to hide that than to become a porno star? You know, to act like you’re really turned on and hot? I think the reason they don’t have a good sex life is because they were abused as children, psychologically or sexually—probably sexually.

SAVANNAH
:
My boob job was a business decision. My manager at the time thought that I would be worth more money, and he paid for them, so why not? I think guys out there have this thing for big tits. It really helps. I almost doubled my daily fee after the operation. I like the attention. I like the way men flaunt all over me. I’m a natural show-off.

RON JEREMY
:
Savannah would laugh at girls less pretty than she was and make girls feel really bad. Then it occurred to me what I learned at school—that if you don’t really love yourself, you’re not gonna love other people, either. You have a hard time understanding emotion when your parents screwed you from ground zero.

But Savannah’s dad was a lot smarter. He didn’t try to blame the porn business because there was supposedly some abuse in the family before she got into porn.

MIKE WILSEY (SAVANNAH’S FATHER)
:
When she was two years old, or less than two, her mom and I would play music on the stereo, and she’d just start dancing, you know, doing this cute little Indian dance. We’d just play our song over and over, just to watch her dance.

RON JEREMY
:
She never told me, but I know Savannah had a lot of problems with her father because it came out from friends of hers I knew. Her best friend and agent was Nancy Pera.

NANCY PERA
:
Savannah was signed as a contract girl about six months after I started working at Vivid. I directed her in quite a few movies—most of them were for Video Exclusives, Leisure Time—but the first ones I directed her in were for Vivid Video. Savannah and I got along; I was sort of her babysitter.

And anything that Savannah would do, [Vivid Video founder] Steve Hirsch would yell at me for. I always got in trouble because I was always with Savannah when anything was happening. And a lot of things happened.

PAM LONGORIA (SAVANNAH’S MOTHER)
:
Everything I’m reading so far is just destroying me because there’s so many lies being printed about her. In the
Los Angeles Times
it said she had an unhappy childhood and that she was molested as a child, which is not true. I always told her I loved her no matter what she was doing for a living. We never shunned her or nothing because of what she was—I mean, what her occupation was. I mean, we loved her unconditionally. And she knew it.

MIKE WILSEY
:
Me and her original mother had a lot of serious problems. I had a lot of remorse because of that—being angry with her mother—and Savannah suffered the consequences of my own selfishness. A man should love a child no matter what. I did, but reservedly. I wasn’t here for her during most of her young years. I left her alone, and I think she grew up with a hole in her heart.

SAVANNAH [LETTER TO HER FATHER]
:
“You do not care about me and you never have. If you’re ‘there for me’ then where were you 23 years ago? Where were you when I bounced from ‘relative’ to ‘relative’ because NO
ONE WANTED ME? Where were you when I was 17, going out with Gregg [Allman], a 42-year-old man? (Looking for the father I never had.) You are so fake and I will NEVER FORGIVE YOU.

“YOU THINK ‘God’ has—but if there is a God he sees the torture & pain I have been through since I was born and couldn’t possibly forgive you! You will die knowing that YOUR 1ST BORN CHILD HOPES YOU ROT IN HELL WITH ALL THE PAIN I HAVE INSIDE—BECAUSE OF YOU!”

NANCY PERA
:
Savannah was in Texas visiting her family, and she had an autograph party scheduled in New Jersey at IBD—Frank Koretsky’s store. I was going there to babysit her and make sure she showed up.

I met Savannah at the airport, and she came out and said, “I’m really sick.”

I was motherly. “We’ll get you some chicken soup. You’re probably coming down with the flu or something.”

Savannah said, “No, it’s not that. It’s drugs.”

I asked, “What kind of drugs?” And finally she told me it was heroin.

BILL MARGOLD
:
I think a lot of Savannah’s problems had nothing to do with the X-rated industry—they were more economically driven. Her childhood was not all that stable. And Savannah came to the industry with an awful lot of baggage, but for a while we gave her first-class trunks.

NANCY PERA
:
What are you going to do with an addict? You can’t make them quit until they’re ready to.

I liked Savannah, and here she is, sicker than a dog, and I’m thinking,
How are we going to make it to Frank Koretsky’s open house tomorrow?
She’s begging me, and I’m a sucker. So I finally agreed to go cop for her; then we got into a lot of trouble because we were a few minutes late.

BUD LEE
:
Savannah was a bitch, but the boss let her get away with a lotta shit.

Who was the boss? Steve Hirsch, who signed her to an exclusive Vivid Video contract in April 1991. She had arrived in the big time.

Steve actually said to me, “When I was in high school, I was the state wrestling champ in my class, but I was in the hundred-and-twenty-five-pound class, so the girls never even looked twice at me.”

And then he goes, “Now I fuck all the cheerleaders.”

NANCY PERA
:
When I got back to L.A., Steven Hirsch was livid. He said we took too long in the bathroom at lunch. I said, “She was putting on some makeup.
Jesus Christ
.” Anything we did, I got in trouble for.

When Savannah came in, I said, “We’re in the doghouse, boy,” because Steven had wanted to see her. And Savannah came out smiling. She said, “Well, he just gave me five grand.”

He didn’t say anything about it. But I would get reamed.

BILL MARGOLD
:
The only meeting I ever had with Savannah was at Jim South’s office—she came in, called him a bunch of names, and then left. I said to him, “If she spoke to me like that, I’d throw her out.”

And Jim said, “I can’t do anything with her because she makes me money.”

NANCY PERA
:
Steven Hirsch knew Savannah was doing drugs. He never said to me, “I know she’s doing heroin,” but he told me that he had put her through rehab in the beginning.

I asked Savannah about that later on, and she said that that was the biggest crock of shit, that he never sent her to any rehab.

JEANNA FINE
:
It was an XRCO show where I saw Savannah for the first time. Somebody pointed her out. She was in this red sequined biker jacket and her white hair and everything—and I thought, “God, she’s just gorgeous.”

Apparently she tried to talk to me—but I was kind of swamped at that point, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.

NANCY PERA
:
Savannah never said, “I started having sex with Steven.”
I
didn’t even know if they were having sex because they had promoted this whole plot that Paul Thomas was having an affair with Savannah. So it wasn’t until our first CES show in January, when I was sitting between Savannah and Steven, and Steven sort of tried to hold my hand accidentally—because he was reaching for Savannah’s hand—that I started to suspect they were having an affair. And Jenny, Steven’s girlfriend of fifteen years, was sitting right across the table from us.

BUD LEE
:
Savannah? I mean, your snot-nosed little fucking kid. She was eighteen, and somebody needed to turn her over on their fucking knee and spank her. Childish—ugh.

So I went the opposite route: I killed her with kindness. Found out what her favorite food was—deviled eggs—and had it for her on the set all the time.

NANCY PERA
:
A lot of people criticized Savannah for being spoiled and demanding. But Steven Hirsch let her get away with murder and then Savannah would get the blame.

JEANNA FINE
:
I honestly don’t how we started being together. I just know that one day we were suddenly together, and then we were together constantly after that. It was probably one of my first real love affairs. Which was hard because I was also in a relationship with a man at that point, and they were both very demanding of my time—and jealous of each other.

I tried to bring the three of us together to live happily ever after. They looked beautiful together—and we had some great sex in the beginning—but it just didn’t work. They were both children, basically.

TOM BYRON
:
I actually respected the fact that Savannah stood up for herself. People would say, “Oh, she’s a bitch,” and I’d just be like, “No, man, she just wants what she wants.” I kinda went, “Oh, girl, man. You go!”

BUD LEE
:
Even though Steve Hirsch catered to rock stars, he’d rather hang out with the A&R people and people like that. He’d get all these guys from Sony and Columbia and Virgin and Mercury coming in to watch people film their scenes.

RON JEREMY
:
Did Savannah fuck a lot of rock stars? Yes. Was I there? Once, with Vince Neil. I wasn’t there for Slash. I know
People
magazine reported that Savannah and Slash were messing around. They did it publicly, at a bar. I think she was giving him head. That’s how I learned what
People
calls head—the “full tilt whoopie.” So if you ever see “full tilt whoopie” in
People
, that’s head.

SLASH
:
Was I arrested for having sex in public with Savannah? I wasn’t actually arrested—it was the security people. But it wasn’t my fault. She always used to like to be in a public place—that’s when she got the horniest.