The Other Hollywood (62 page)

LAS VEGAS/LOS ANGELES
1993

RON JEREMY
:
Wet and Wild is a big giant water slide area in Las Vegas, and every year
Playboy
has a party there. So John Wayne Bobbitt’s at this party, and so is LaToya Jackson, and it turns out that LaToya’s husband is also managing John Bobbitt—Jack Gordon, with his son Aaron.

I had put a lot of celebrities in my movies. I had used Vince Neil in a girl/girl movie; I used Edie Williams in her first hard-core film; I had a football player do his first porno film for me. So I thought it would be fun for John Bobbitt to do a dialogue scene in my next girl/girl film.

LARRY FURST
:
Ron Jeremy was quick to say that it would be a tasteful, fully clothed, nonsex speaking role for John. Bobbitt, who had been languishing through his latest attempt at cashing in on his penis through stand-up comedy, saw this as a great opportunity to prove to the world and Lorena that he still had his manhood.

Aaron Gordon saw it as a way to cash in big-time on Bobbitt’s severed penis. After all, the photos of John’s bloody dickhead helped
Penthouse
magazine’s lagging sales. Why not have it pay off again?

RON JEREMY
:
John Bobbitt knew who I was; he was a fan. He wanted to meet me, and he’s saying, “What’s it like fucking all those chicks?”

He was cute. He was all fast, and he was talking with these Vivid girls, and they were turning him down. He was trying to chase Janine Lindemulder all over the pool.

Was John smart? No. He has an attention span disorder, so he didn’t come across as bright at all. But he’s a sweet guy, very friendly. How can you not like a guy who’s a big fan of yours?

JOHN WAYNE BOBBITT
:
Actually, the doctors told me to have sex as often as I can as part of my rehabilitation.

RON JEREMY
:
John had done nothing with his career up until that point. It would have been a year—he’d just turned down the Howard Stern show, showing his dick for fourteen thousand dollars or whatever.

So Cecil Watkins and I approached him about doing dialogue in an adult movie, and he goes, “Yeah, I’d like to do that.” So we exchanged phone numbers.

Then Aaron Gordon showed up and says, “Yeah, it sounds good. We’ll do it. We also heard that you do this show in Indiana.”

Every year I host the Miss Nude Galaxy Pageant in Indiana. I’ve taken Malika Kinison, the Nelson Twins, Grandpa Munster (Al Lewis), Micky Kinison all there to cohost the show with me. Before me, Tim Allen from
Home Improvement
had done it.

JOHN WAYNE BOBBITT
:
After I got out of the marines I felt I was slated for something special. I’d done really well and had gone through advanced leadership training. I felt prepared to face anything that came my way in life. I mean, I was a marine. They taught us how to overcome anything.

RON JEREMY
:
So they said to me, “Tell you what, you pay John a thousand bucks to do the movie dialogue and then give him a thousand dollars to do the show. John wants to start doing some comedy.”

I’m going, “He can barely talk in complete sentences. How’s he gonna do comedy?”

When John tells people that he wants to do comedy, they laugh hysterically. “See, your comedy is working. But that’s the biggest laugh you’re ever gonna get.” So he’s gonna do comedy.

So I said, “Fine, he’ll come host the show with me.”

JOHN WAYNE BOBBITT
:
Comedy is harder than acting. Acting, you get chances to do it over again. But I’m not going to make a career doing dick jokes. One of the things I say is, “My name is John Wayne Bobbitt. Most of you know who I am. For those of you that don’t, I’m the one that drove O. J. to the airport!” Ha, ha, ha.

I’m still getting the hang of it.

RON JEREMY
:
I get a call the next day from both Jack and Aaron Gordon saying, “We’ve changed our minds.”

I ask, “Oh, can’t do it?”

They say, “No—if he’s gonna do porno, we want to do the whole thing—the whole nine yards.”

I ask, “
What?
”

They say, “Everything. Fuck, the works.”

I ask, “Are you sure he can do it?”

They go, “We know he can do it. He’s been having sex with girls already.”

I say, “Wow!”

JOHN WAYNE BOBBITT
:
I watched a lot of hard-core films because when I lived in Virginia, I owned a house and had a satellite dish and used to watch the Spice Channel. Lorena would always get upset when she discovered me watching those movies. She’d tell me she could dance for me if that’s what I wanted or do the things those girls did.

RON JEREMY
:
Lipstik Video was mostly girl/girl and gay stuff; they don’t really handle guy/girl stuff, and besides, it was way above what they could afford. So I hooked up the other company I’m very close to, Marc Carriere of Leisure Time. At that time, it was called Video Exclusives.

Marc’s filthy rich and a very good friend of mine—covered my legal expenses when I was in jail. He’s a stand-up guy, and so am I.

So I told Marc that John Bobbitt wants to do this thing. He goes, “Sounds great.” So we got on Marc’s plane and flew to Las Vegas to meet up with John Bobbitt, Aaron Gordon, and Jack Gordon at a restaurant at Caesar’s Palace.

MARC CARRIERE
:
The reason Ron Jeremy brought that deal to me is that he has a strong sense of integrity. He could have gone to someone else with that deal, and he got a lot of shit for that. But he knows that by coming here, he could follow through with what he promised.

RON JEREMY
:
I was so excited to see John Wayne Bobbitt again—we got a picture, each of us holding a knife against our own crotches. He holds a knife on mine, I hold a knife on his. The waiters are going, “Oh, my God. Doesn’t he hate jokes like that?” But John was a good sport. All the dick jokes, he didn’t mind them at all.

And then they made a deal. Fifty thousand up front, thirty thousand upon completion of the movie. Then a big percentage—I think maybe fifty percent—after Marc Carriere recouped his money.

LARRY FURST
:
Leisure Time had just arranged to sell the Tonya Harding wedding night self-made porn tape through their giant mail-order division, and were eager to get Bobbitt on tape doing hard-core. The Gordons also reportedly dangled the carrot of perhaps getting LaToya to take some dick on-screen in the future.

RON JEREMY
:
So I got my day as a director. Other companies are pissed at me, including Arrow. Joe Garfinkel, my distant cousin, asked, “Why didn’t you give the project to us, you scumbag bastard?” I said, “Look, Marc and I go back many, many years. Any other company would have simply thrown me a bone. Here’s a finder’s fee—get lost.”

LARRY FURST
:
The production came together almost overnight. The crew was already calling him Forrest Gump behind his back and suffered through the first shots of the production, when John exhibited all the range of an air rifle. It didn’t help that they picked a park in the flight line of Van Nuys airport to shoot exteriors during the busiest time of the day.

RON JEREMY
:
The shooting was very difficult.

LARRY FURST
:
Ron Jeremy instructed John Bobbitt in the famed “Hedgehog Pinch”—the technique Ron and other aging and/or failing fuck studs use to overstate their semi-erections. You grip the penis at the base and squeeze enough blood to stiffen the prick for the camera. Bobbitt followed instructions, almost hiding his dick between two fingers, Jasmine Aloha’s two digits, and her ample lips.

JOHN WAYNE BOBBITT
:
How many cum shots did I do? It was four. It was something working with those three girls; I had never done anything like that before.

Some of this stuff was really hard to do—some guy with a camera is always right there, and there’s the guys with the lights and the little thirty-five-millimeter cameras, too. I was melting from all the sweat.

Ron Jeremy really helped me; he’s got a lot of experience. The producers, camera crew, and all the people were really professional, and we had a lot of fun.

RON JEREMY
:
I never admitted this before, but I might as well admit it now: We did use some medication at first.

John only got hard for one scene, where he worked with the same girl that was with the Heidi Fleiss documentary—Jordan St. James. She was the only girl he actually did a real hard-core scene with. With the other girls he needed a shot of Prostoglandin, which is an enzyme that gives you an automatic hard-on.

Did it work? Very well.

JOHN WAYNE BOBBITT
:
The nerves hadn’t fully healed yet, so everything still felt different. Sometimes it’s actually more intense, which makes it hard to do. But for the scenes I did in the movie it was pretty much under control.

CRYSTAL GOLD (PORN STAR)
:
Let me go on record as saying that John Wayne Bobbitt can get his cock up very well. His cock is very useful, just like a normal man’s dick. He gets very hard, and he came all over my tummy.

JOHN WAYNE BOBBITT
:
I’m not afraid of anything. Not after what I’ve been through. And I was fortunate enough to work with Jasmine Aloha. She got me comfortable, and it made it easy for me to lose my virginity in this area to her. She has a real Florence Nightingale complex, which I think is great. It really helped me a lot. I had this sort of posttraumatic stress disorder reaction to sex. But she and the other girls sure helped me through that situation.

JASMINE ALOHA (PORN STAR)
:
I was dancing in Florida and had been in touch with Leisure Time about working for them. They called me up and wanted me to come in for this very special scene. I had no idea who the guy was at the time. They offered me good money, and I figured this would be good publicity for me so I decided to do it.

It took a really long time, but it was worth it in the end. John worked very hard the whole time and didn’t quit for even a minute. John’s also a nice guy. He amazed me with his abilities considering his situation. I have to give him a lot of credit.

RON JEREMY
:
John Wayne Bobbitt: Uncut
would have been a really good fucking film, but the editor just screwed me royal. Never even looked at the editing notes. Did his own movie. Fucked me because I really did a good film. We got Lemmy from Motorhead to be the guy that discovers the dick in the park—lands on his foot. Motorhead—legendary band. And we had Vince Neil playing a bartender. And we reenacted Lorena Bobbitt with the knife.

JOHN WAYNE BOBBITT
:
Thinking of having it cut again was scary. You know, I never thought Lorena would do something like that. I certainly had some scary thoughts when I started doing my scene with Veronica Brazil. She asked me to stick my tongue in her mouth, and all I could think to say was, “Are you going to bite it off?”

VERONICA BRAZIL (PORN STAR)
:
I played Lorena in the movie. I got the role because I’m a Latina and I’m very lucky and Marc Carriere likes me.

When I started to do the scene with John, I could tell he was very nervous. I told him that I wanted him to be passionate with me, and it was scaring him because I was showing him too much love. Even though I have to make like I’m cutting his penis off, you can’t show that in an adult film. For me, the whole emotion is that I don’t want him to ever be with
anybody else again. I knew that if I killed him I would go to jail, but if I cut his dick off, I would probably get off. I think every woman can relate to that feeling.

And for me, I’m very jealous and possessive. I was shaking; my stomach felt very weird. I had the knife in my hand, and I wondered whether I would actually cut it off.

JOHN WAYNE BOBBITT
:
I’m pretty sure Lorena is upset. Veronica Brazil is from South America and so is Lorena. I think that is going to have an impact on her.

RON JEREMY
:
John Wayne Bobbitt: Uncut
sold eighty thousand tapes worldwide. Biggest-selling film since
Deep Throat
. Marc Carriere actually got it screened at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and we gave the money toward Children of the Night, a benefit. We even had the party, I think, in the Steven Spielberg wing.

In fact, Eric Roberts came to the show, thinking it was a screening of
The Shawshank Redemption
. He sees it’s a porn film and goes, “Oh my God.” Starts walking out, but one of the photographers starts taking pictures of him, and Eric Roberts got so pissed that he punched one of the photographers. That was videotaped by
Hard Copy
—it shows the guy being a sore sport.

I had a lot of celebrities in that audience with me that night bigger than Eric Roberts. So Eric Roberts was being a big pussy.

LOS ANGELES
1993–1994

BILL MARGOLD
:
Savannah was another overage juvenile delinquent that got caught up in the whirlpool of X. The performers need to be nurtured and worked with; they need to be taken and molded very slowly—like Seka or Marilyn Chambers—because fame is a barbed-wire treadmill. It’s a very dangerous and vicious circle, and once you start feeling uneasy and fall off the center, you get chewed up anyway.

SAVANNAH
:
When I first got into the business, I was definitely a lot more bitchy than I am right now. And I’m glad I was because I’ve always gotten what I wanted, you know, as far as this business goes. I’m nice if you’re nice to me.

JEANNA FINE
:
Me and Savannah had a falling out about a year before. You know, I’ve lost a lot of sleep over this, and I’ve had to come to some kind of peaceful place about it. She and I stopped talking, and I’d rather not go into why. She made an attempt to talk to me one time after that—at an award show—and I blew her off.

NANCY PERA
:
Jeanna and Savannah had broken up just after Savannah started at Vivid. Savannah would never talk about it, and I couldn’t mention Jeanna to her. But Savannah finally said something about Jeanna having some drugs in Palm Springs, and they were doing heroin together, and Jeanna had the last of the heroin, and she wouldn’t let Savannah have any. So Savannah left, and they never talked again. Of course, they tell a different story everywhere else.

RON JEREMY
:
Savannah was so unprofessional. She thought she had the whole world: “No one will ever fire me. I’m selling tapes.” But she was
too difficult to work with. She was the first girl in the history of the porn business to be fired from a company while she was still selling for them. That’s unheard of. I mean, you could take a dump on the set, and we’d put up with it—as long as you were making money. But Vivid actually fired her. Paul Thomas couldn’t stand it anymore.

NANCY PERA
:
Savannah got fired from Vivid right after she stopped being seen going out with Steve Hirsch. She said she just got bored with it and was sorry she started it in the beginning. Paul Thomas was sick of her. And one of the photographers called Steven and said he would never work with Savannah again because she’d walked out of a shoot.

Steven let her get away with murder; all the complaints would just roll off his back. Then, about a month after Savannah cut him off, he terminated Savannah’s contract.

TOM BYRON
:
Savannah would be a little princess, you know? And she alienated people; she burned a lot of bridges. See, I didn’t have to deal with her from a director’s standpoint. I was just an actor. All I had to do was fuck her.

NANCY PERA
:
I became Savannah’s “manager” after she left Vivid. Vivid would not give out Savannah’s phone number to anyone, which stands to reason, so they started giving everyone my number. I started taking the messages, and I’d call her—and she was still on heroin, so if it was before noon she’d hang up on me. But eventually I’d get her, and we’d discuss it. She’d tell me what she wanted, what she’d do and how much she’d do it for, and I’d call them back. It just became a routine. I felt kind of motherly toward Savannah anyway.

RON JEREMY
:
After Vivid, she was able to tone down her bad behavior a little bit. Marc Carriere used her for a couple of jobs. John T. Bone used her for a
Starbanger
series—said she was a total angel. Very cooperative. I guess she wanted to prove a point—that Vivid should never have let her go.

JEANNA FINE
:
I ran for my life out of Hollywood. I had to get out. I moved down to San Diego. I got married and had a son, but I was still hearing things about Savannah. One night I said to my husband, “I’m going up to Hollywood next week, and I’m gonna find Shannon. I want to bring her here.”

BUD LEE
:
Savannah had no respect for anybody. If she decided she’d rather not get out of bed this morning, she’d stay in bed—even if everyone on the set was waiting for her. The crews
hated
her.

And a lot of it was drugs—speed, heroin, cocaine. You know, whatever she could get.

RON JEREMY
:
Savannah would walk off the set in the middle of a shoot if there was a rock concert in town. She was doing a gig in Vegas right near the end—and this I heard right from the owner’s mouth, Sam Ross, nice guy. She left the gig a few days early just because David Lee Roth was in town. She didn’t even do the weekend crowd, which is the biggest one.

NANCY PERA
:
She met some asshole at the Paradise Club, and they kind of dated. He was married, and he was also seeing this older dancer with big tits—Venus Delight. Whenever Savannah danced at the club, they played footsie a little.

So Savannah and this guy were having dinner, and he said, “I got you tickets to see David Lee Roth Friday night.” Savannah was all excited, but later on, when he was saying something about his wife, Savannah just said, “Why don’t you just tell the bitch to shut up?” Well, he went apes-hit—said he wanted the tickets back. But Savannah went to the concert anyway.

The next day, Saturday, she went in to dance for the early show, and all her signs were down—she’d been replaced by Venus Delight. So Savannah got pissed off and drove back to Los Angeles.

For a while, it was just one thing after the other for Savannah. She’d call me in hysterics or come by my house every day.

RON JEREMY
:
Savannah totally screwed this club over, so naturally they held back her pay entirely. They were so mad, they just told her to get lost, get out, good-bye. The club owner said that out of the goodness of his heart he would have eventually mailed her a check for the work she did do because she had danced there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. But she destroyed him with his crowd when she skipped the weekend. I mean, they
advertise
.

NINA HARTLEY
:
Someone who knew Savannah very well said that she aspired to be a groupie. I mean, if you’re looking for your sense of validation from people who cannot possibly provide it…. Hollywood just does not have a poor, young starlet’s best interests at heart! Don’t hold porn to a different standard from Hollywood.
Puh-leeze!

VINCE NEIL
:
Savannah asked me to be her date to the
Adult Video News
awards. I told her I’d go with her but at the last minute blew her off for another girl.

NANCY PERA
:
I went out of town for a couple of days, and when I got back Savannah came over and said, “You told me you’d call me as soon as you got home!” I said, “I’ve only been home an hour or two. Geez.” She’d just
gotten a copy of the House of Pain video she was in. She played it for me twice; she was all jazzed. She was real cute. Then she said, “Well, I gotta run. I’ll talk to you later.” I saw she had a bottle of wine. I said, “Be careful, and put that in the trunk.”

And she said, “Yeah, Mom. Sure.” You know, that kind of attitude. The next time I heard from her was when she had the accident.

JEANNA FINE
:
I really feel that she just needed to hold a baby and change some diapers and be with regular people.

NANCY PERA
:
So I’m driving up to Savannah’s house, and as I’m turning up off of Cahuenga, I see the paramedics at the bottom of the street. Then I see the fence she hit, and I said, “Oh, my God. This is serious.” Everything kind of went into slo-mo. I pulled into her long driveway, and the housesitter is standing there—the guy who walked the dog. He had his white T-shirt pulled up into his mouth, chewing it.

He asked, “Who are you?”

I said, “I’m Nancy.”

He said, “Oh, thank God you’re here. Savannah just shot herself.”

I said, “Oh, my God.”

He said, “I just called 911.”

And so I said, “They’re down at the bottom of the hill—that’s gotta be the fire truck—I’ll go get them. They can’t find the place.”

BILL MARGOLD
:
Savannah committed suicide on July 11, 1994. Supposedly, the morning she died, she’d run into a fence and hurt herself a little bit and that was enough to push her over the brink.

VINCE NEIL
:
She disfigured herself in a car crash, went home, pulled out a Beretta, and shot herself in the head.

She had a lot of other problems in her life then, and I knew the reason wasn’t because I stood her up—but I still felt terrible.

NANCY PERA
:
He said Savannah was still alive, so I just whipped the car around and went back down the hill to get the cops. The truck was coming up and the police car was behind it, and I said, “Follow me up.” The cop wouldn’t let me leave until I gave him my driver’s license, which I threw at him. I turned around and led them up.

I hopped out before they had gotten parked or anything. I went running in, and the kid said, “She’s over there.” I looked, and I kept staring because he said, “nine-one-one said to put a blanket on her, and I couldn’t find any, so I put towels.” So here’s this pile of towels, with this huge lake of blood around them. And I just lost it.

JEANNA FINE
:
My friend Chi Chi Larue called me crying and told me what happened. I just kind of instantly knew the second I heard his voice—he didn’t even have to tell me.

NANCY PERA
:
I followed the gurney as they put Savannah into the ambulance. I tried to crawl in with her, but they wouldn’t let me. Savannah gurgled something—they said she was trying to say something to me—but I just kept yelling, “Stay with us, Shannon!”

So they detained me. I mean, forty cops had already interviewed me, and by this time it was about three in the morning. Every time this one detective came through, I kept asking about Savannah, and he said, “She’s stable. There’s no news.”

Finally he came back in. I said, “Well?” and he said, “She’s passed away.” This was, like, four or five in the morning. At six-thirty, they finally let me go. I thought she was dead.

TOM BYRON
:
Henri Pachard called me and said, “Hear about Savannah? She just shot herself.”

I was like, “Awww, that sucks.” I felt bad, but I was nothing more than a casual acquaintance. I fuckin’ dunno, man—if you have a gun, and you’re in the right frame of mind at the right time, you know what I’m saying? I mean, I think we’ve all been there.

NANCY PERA
:
About one o’clock on Monday afternoon, a reporter called me and said, “Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

I said, “What do you mean? She’s dead.”

He said, “No, she’s still alive.” So I hung up on him and called the hospital. I thought she was going to be okay.

But when I talked to her dad, he wouldn’t let me come down. I didn’t know it, but they were just authorizing the hospital to pull the plug.

BILL MARGOLD
:
I was called at nine in the morning and told she was dead, when in fact she didn’t die until eleven-thirty. And people—to be honest with you—were already celebrating her death. You know, “Hail, hail, the witch is dead.”

Savannah was not loved—and she went out of her way not to be loved—by this business.

JEANNA FINE
:
She had broken her nose. The car was wrecked, and I know what was going through her mind. “Oh shit! How am I gonna get out of this? I have no money; I can’t go make the money. The car is wrecked. They’re gonna be pissed. I have to cancel the show. There’s no way out.”

But I really feel that when she pulled that trigger—she must have
thought, right that second, “Oops,” you know? Because Savannah could be so impulsively destructive, and then afterward she’d be like, “Hello! Why did I do that?”

HENRI PACHARD
:
Savannah blows herself away because she probably woke up and said to herself, “What’s the big deal?”

And that’s too bad. I mean, she never gave herself a chance, you know? Because she felt lonely and unloved? Fuck, man, I’ve felt lonely and unloved lots of times. But the last thing I’d do is off myself, you know? If you live to be over a hundred, you’re gonna feel lonely and unloved because who the fuck loves anybody over a hundred? Nobody, ha, ha, ha.

BRYN BRIDENTHAL (PUBLICIST)
:
I mean, Slash’s reaction was sort of, “Savannah offed herself? That’s too bad.”

HENRI PACHARD
:
I never saw that much to her in the first place. Everyone’s going crazy about this girl, Savannah. Big fucking deal; she looked to me like an old junkie—you know, with store-bought tits and long, straight, white hair. What’s the big deal?

RON JEREMY
:
She just had a bloody nose, right? Well, put that together with drugs, being penniless, getting fired from a job. See, this I did learn in school—that when everything hits you at once, you start to feel like you have nowhere to go.

Savannah had a very bad social life. I mean, she had a friend at the time—a roadie for that band House of Pain—but the fact of the matter was, she had no money, and she must have known she’d fucked up.

So she’s pissed off, gets into a car accident, and now her face is marked. Interesting, huh? Now she looks like all those girls she used to make fun of.

NANCY PERA
:
I mean, the postscript on this is horrible. Savannah’s dad—whom she hated—ended up getting all of her stuff, and her mom tried to sue Gregg Allman for wrongful death because they wanted money.