The Other Hollywood (70 page)

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
I didn’t meet Krysti Lynn until I was shooting her in San Diego. But I arranged to talk to her on the phone before that, through John Leslie, who had shot her in
Dog Walker
and
The Voyeur I.

I told her I had seen her in some scenes, and I really wanted to shoot her. Yeah, I had a crush on her—yeah, sure.

BROCKTON O’TOOLE (PORN STAR)
:
John was pretty serious about Krysti. He moved into the nicest place in Malibu, and she moved in with him. They shared a bedroom—the master bedroom.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
I managed to make a date with Krysti the next time she came up from San Diego. We went out a few times, and she moved in with me about a month later.

We had a brief period where we were both really in love. Then it got difficult for me because she had a lot of emotional mood swings and stuff. So after about four months we continued to live together—but we weren’t as intimate as we had been.

BROCKTON O’TOOLE
:
Krysti really wanted to have a family with him. And John was dragging his feet.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
Krysti had been in treatment when she was younger; she had a lot of trouble as an adolescent—with her family and drugs and stuff like that. She just had a lot of energy, you know, and expected a lot out of life—and when she didn’t get it, she’d get upset.

So she continued to live with me for another year without us being actual lovers.

BROCKTON O’TOOLE
:
They reached the point where John was going to underwrite a record contract for Krysti because she was a talented violinist and a very fine singer, and she wanted to see if she could make it as a pop singer. So they got some people out from Chicago, and, lo and behold, it turns out they want to work with her.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
Krysti was supposedly going to meet Marky Mark, alias Mark Wahlberg, at some restaurant. She was at my house because we were supposed to look at a location the next morning for her music video. Krysti had recorded a song, which had been written by Prince and was produced by Ed Strickland, who had been working for Madonna’s company. So we were producing a music video to go along with the song.

Krysti was all dressed up, and she was playing hard to get, and then Marky Mark’s people didn’t call back, so it was a memorable afternoon.

Krysti left, and she was going a hundred miles an hour on Los Virgines Road and lost control of the car and went off into a gully.

She died.

I never had anybody I was close to die before, so it was a little bit difficult.

BROCKTON O’TOOLE
:
John and I were out there when they found the vehicle. I went out there, and the highway patrol had already removed Krysti from the wreck and taken her away.

Krysti was found under the steering wheel. It was very sad. John was pretty torn up about it. So I have a feeling that the business down in Brazil would not have happened, if it hadn’t been for this. I think he was punishing himself.

TRICIA DEVERAUX
:
Krysti had a friend in the car with her when they were both killed, and I think John felt responsible somehow.

BROCKTON O’TOOLE
:
John was torn up pretty badly. It was tough, but Krysti was driving, and she was at fault, no question about it. And there was this young girl, a secretary, who was also killed. Krysti was driving John’s second car, so her family said to John, “What are you going to do about this?”

John had a meeting with the other girl’s family, and he says “Let me talk to your lawyer.”

The family went into another room. John said to the lawyer, “Well, what do you think?” The lawyer says, “Well, I think if you want to settle it right now, I think the family would agree to $250,000.”

John said, “I’ll write you a check. But I have to give it to the family myself. I want to tell them I’m sorry.”

And he did—and told them not to worry about the funeral.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
On the first anniversary of Krysti’s death, I was feeling kind of bad about myself. The girlfriend I was with, I felt, didn’t really love me; she didn’t show affection, and I was not feeling good, a little bit bitter.

So I go down to Brazil.

TIM CONNELLY
:
John ended up on a suicide mission in South America, seeking out a Brazilian transvestite street hooker to violently fuck him up the ass without a condom, hoping to drown all his sorrows and guilt.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
I’d been drinking a little bit, kind of enjoying being unhappy. Next thing I know I’m picking up this street “girl” and demand
ing to be fucked up the ass, so lost in my self-pity I don’t care what happens.

I gamble, and I lose.

TRICIA DEVERAUX
:
John went down to Brazil, and he got HIV.

He knew right away that he’d done something he shouldn’t have—the non-condom part for sure. So he started getting HIV tests.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
I was real careful the next couple of months, getting tested all the time. I didn’t think I’d gotten it because I really didn’t think he’d taken the rubber off before he fucked me. But for six months I was worried, thinking I had to change my life.

And then I started thinking, “Man, I wish I could do it again. I’m not going to do it again. But I want to.”

TIM CONNELLY
:
John, after being diagnosed HIV-positive, confessed his disease to a more-than-not ragingly homophobic industry, knowing full well the details of his infection would give his jealous detractors and business enemies poisoned fodder for the gossip market.

And with his courage he proved himself yet again to be of the rarest quality in the smut biz: an honest man.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
You know, I am a little bisexual. I had sucked some guys’ dicks in quarter peep shows and stuff like that, as a variety thing. But primarily, I guess, I’m heterosexual. I just personally don’t worry so much what people think about me.

But, you know, admitting that I really wanted to get fucked in the ass, and might really like it, is not necessarily a socially acceptable thing for a straight man.

TRICIA DEVERAUX
:
I met John Stagliano because he called me—he had gotten HIV a year before I did. He said, “Well, you need to have someone to talk to who kind of understands a little bit about what it’s like to have HIV. I could talk to you a little bit.”

I said, “You know, that would be really nice.” So we went out for a drink at a Mexican restaurant near my apartment. We hit it off immediately, as friends.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
I really enjoyed shooting Tricia when she was working. The people in the business today are so much more sophisticated than they were, I think, ten years ago. So I just starting talking to Tricia after she got infected, and several months later we wound up getting together.

TRICIA DEVERAUX
:
John and I became really good friends, and then he had
to go back down to Brazil to shoot a video. And he called me a couple times from Brazil, even though he barely knew me. I said, “This is costing you a fortune.” He said, “Ah, don’t worry about it.”

Another time, he called me after he’d been drinking a little bit. I told him, “You know what? I think I just have to leave L.A. because everybody just thinks I’m this horrible drug user who was trying to infect them.”

And John said, “Well, I know things are hard for you. But if you stay, maybe you could, you know—maybe it would be nice to have you around.”

I just chalked it up to him being kind of drunk; I didn’t think twice about it, and about a month later I went back to the Midwest, for a year and a half.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
I grew up in Chicago; I have reason to go back to Chicago. So off and on for the next year I went back three or four times and saw Tricia there. Then she came back.

Yeah, we fell in love.

TRICIA DEVERAUX
:
We realized we liked a lot of the same things. We’re both from the Chicago area—and our personalities are very similar, which was what really drew me to him right away because I’d bombed out on two relationships by going for two different extremes.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
Tricia and I have a lot in common. We’re both pretty much type-A personalities; we like the same music, rock and roll; and sexually we’re very compatible.

TRICIA DEVERAUX
:
What do we tell critics who say we’re only together because we both have HIV? I think that’s why we started to get interested in each other. But if that was all there was, I think we would have broken up. We’re both too strong-minded to stay with someone for that reason alone.

We’ve had a couple of hard times in our relationship because now that I’m out of porn as a performer I’ve always wanted my relationships off-camera to be monogamous.

John loves going to strip clubs; he loves hiring strippers to do private strip shows and things like that. And I was like, “Why do you need that?” John was always a very sexual person, so having HIV probably hit him a lot harder than it hit me. Because John was having casual sex, and he had to stop doing that.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
I have girls dance for me sometimes—strippers—and when I’ve got their butts in my face I just play with them forever. I really get into focus, and I think, “Oh my God, what I had!”

In the last couple of months I’ve thought about how fucking incredible Krysti Lynn’s butt was. I mean, I loved fucking Krysti from behind—it was the most incredible experience I ever had. I really enjoyed it, but I never appreciated it—not in the same way I appreciate the little things now.

TRICIA DEVERAUX
:
The decision to try to have a baby was difficult for John and me because of HIV. We didn’t even know if it was even possible. Then we read a couple of articles about HIV-positive moms giving birth and the babies not having HIV. So we started talking to our doctors about it.

I asked the doctor, “Is all this just really good luck?” She said it was a protocol of several different things. The mom has to take HIV medication during pregnancy; I wasn’t taking medicine yet, but I started when I was two months pregnant and took it all the way through the labor.

The doctor also said the baby would have to take HIV medicine for the first month after she was born. And I’d have to have a C-section because that would allow the doctors to control what would happen with the blood. She said, “If we do all those things, we’ll have less than a 1 percent chance that your baby will have HIV.”

Even then, we were worried:
What happens if she does?
But now it’s clear that she still could have lived a normal life—and even if she didn’t, there are worse things in life.

So we decided to try it.

The baby, Isabelle, is negative. And she’s a really good thing for both of us.

JOHN STAGLIANO
:
I was getting fucked-up the other night watching porno movies. And I thought, this is how you write a movie: You set up this whole scenario where some guy’s doing drugs, he’s about to go too far and OD, and just before he does, he looks at the camera and says,
“Fuck you, people!
You live by a whole different standard than I do! I have this life in front of me that
inspires
me. Every one of you has done something at some point to fuck up your life—get a little too drunk, do too much cocaine. That’s life, right? And you’re judging
me
?”

I used to judge these people, and I never knew what was going on inside them.

You know, they’re experiencing life in a certain way that I don’t know about, but I need to know about. We want to push ourselves to experience life and to enjoy it: to be a race car driver, or do drugs, or get fucked in the ass and risk getting HIV—it’s all the same fucking thing. Pushing yourself to experience life to its fullest necessarily involves risk. And if you sit in your room and never do anything—like my mother wanted me to do
because she was worried that if I left the house I’d get hit by a car—you’ll never know what life is like.

Maybe it’s genetically programmed, like women holding back sex. We’re genetically programmed to say, “Wait a second—
oh,
it feels good to go around that curve really fast, but I’m gonna crash.”

You know, like Krysti Lynn did.

All quotes are from interviews with the authors, except for the following material quoted from other sources:

Prologue:
Roger Ebert:
“Russ Meyer: King of the Nudies,”
Film Comment,
January–February 1973.
Ann Perry:
From interviews by Cass Paley.
Doris Wishman:
From Christopher J. Jarmick,
Senses of Cinema, Great Directors—a critical database,
September 2002.
Russ Meyer:
From interview by Roger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times,
February 16, 1969; from Russ Meyer as told to Adolph Albion Schwartz,
A Clean Breast
(Hollywood: Hauck Publishing Co., 2000).

PART ONE: THE SWORD SWALLOWER

1. The Turkey Raffle:
Linda Lovelace:
Some material from Linda Lovelace with Mike McGrady,
Ordeal
(New York: Citadel, 1980; Berkley, 1981), and interview with Eric Danville, © 2001.
Harry Reems:
From Harry Reems,
Here Comes Harry Reems
(New York: Pinnacle, 1975).

2. If You Can Make It There, You Can Make It Anywhere:
Linda Lovelace:
Some material from Linda Lovelace as told to Carl Wallin,
The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace
(New York: Pinnacle, 1974), and from
Ordeal. Harry Reems:
From
Here Comes Harry Reems.

3. Vickie Killed the Nudie-Cuties:
All original.

4. Rent:
Harry Reems:
From
Here Comes Harry Reems. Tina Russell:
From Tina Russell,
Porn Star: The Autobiography of Today’s Most Exotic X-rated Actress
(New York: Lancer Books, 1973).

5. Doggie Style:
Linda Lovelace:
Some material from
Ordeal.

6. Mary Had a Little Lamb:
Butchie Peraino:
From Nora Ephron,
Esquire,
February 1973.
Harry Reems:
From
Here Comes Harry Reems. Gerard Damiano:
From Al Goldstein, “Gerry Damiano Remembers Linda Lovelace: From Head to Eternity,”
SCREW,
April 5, 1974.
Linda
Lovelace:
From
Ordeal
and Linda Lovelace,
Inside Linda Lovelace
(New York: Pinnacle, 1973).

7. “Do You Mind If I Smoke While You Eat?”:
Harry Reems:
From
Here Comes Harry Reems
and Al Goldstein, “An Interview with Harry Reems: Superstud of the Silver Screen,”
SCREW,
May 20, 1974.
Linda Lovelace:
From
Ordeal. Gerard Damiano:
From Al Goldstein, “Gerry Damiano Remembers Linda Lovelace,” and “A Throat Is Born,”
High Society,
undated article.
Carol Conners:
From interview with Earl Anthony,
Adam
Magazine.

8.
SCREW-ed
:
Chuck Traynor:
From
SCREW. Butchie Peraino:
From interview with Nora Ephron,
Esquire. Linda Lovelace:
from
Ordeal
and interview by Eric Danville.
Gerard Damiano:
From James Martin, “Gerard Damiano Interview,”
Hustler,
March 1975.
Nora Ephron:
From Nora Ephron,
Esquire,
February 1973.
Harry Reems:
From
Here Comes Harry Reems. Fred Biersdorf:
From Ellen Farley and William K. Knoedelseder Jr., “Family Business”
Calendar/Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine,
June 13, 1982.
Al Goldstein:
From “Al Goldstein: The
Playboy
Interview,
Playboy,
October 1974.
Sammy Davis Jr.:
From Sammy Davis Jr, with Jane Boyar and Burt Boyar,
Why Me?
(New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1989).

9. Don’t Count the Money, Weigh It:
Fred Biersdorf:
From Ellen Farley and William K. Knoedelseder Jr., “Family Business,”
Calendar/Los Angeles Sunday Times Magazine. Chuck Bernstene:
From FBI wiretap. “Organized Crime Reaps Huge Profits from Dealing in Pornographic Films,”
New York Times,
October 12, 1975.

PART TWO: PORNO CHIC

10. To Bowl or Not to Bowl?:
Jim and Artie Mitchell:
From Tony Crawley, “The Mitchell Brothers,”
Game,
July 1976; William Rotsler,
Contemporary Erotic Cinema,
© 1973 by William Rotsler; Interview,
Club,
February 1976; Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen, “The People Behind the Green Door,”
The Sex People
(Chicago: Playboy Press, 1975); and videotape interview, School of Erotology.

11. Size Matters:
Al Goldstein, Bill Amerson, Bob Chin, Bob Vosse, Sharon Holmes, Bunny Bleu, Annette Haven:
From interviews by Cass Paley.

12. Ebony and Ivory Snow:
Jim Mitchell:
From Interview,
Club,
February 1976.
Artie Mitchell:
From Tony Crawley, “The Mitchell Brothers,”
Game,
July 1976.

13. Hair of the Dog:
Linda Lovelace:
From
Ordeal
and
The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace. Al Goldstein:
From “Al Goldstein: The
Playboy
Interview.”
Nick Tosches:
From Nick Tosches, “Arf? Arf, Arf, Arf! (Maybe),” “Openers,”
Oui,
October 1973.

14. Automated Vending:
Reuben Sturman:
from Eric Schlosser,
Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003).

15. Trading Up:
Linda Lovelace:
From
Inside Linda Lovelace
and
The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace.
“Linda Lovelace Tries to Shed ‘Deep Throat’ Image for Miami Café Break-In”:
Variety,
August 29, 1973.
Al Goldstein:
From
Playboy,
October 1974. “Roger Horrified as Porn Star Tries to Take Over Ann-Margret’s Act”:
Movie World,
May 1974. “Vegas Drug Bust”:
People,
March 1974. “Milestones”:
Time,
March 4, 1974.

16. The Devil in Miss Steinberg:
Harry Reems:
From
Here Comes Harry Reems. Gerard Damiano:
From Ken Gaul, “The Devil and Mr. Damiano,”
Genesis,
September 1980; James Martin, “Gerard Damiano Interview,”
Hustler,
March 1975; Kenneth Turan and Stephen F. Zito,
Sinema: American Pornographic Films and the People Who Make Them
(Praeger Publishers, 1974).
Linda Lovelace:
From
The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace
and
Inside Linda Lovelace. Annie Sprinkle:
From Annie Sprinkle,
Annie Sprinkle: Post-Porn Modernist
(San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1998).

17. Holmes v. Wadd:
Sharon Holmes, Bob Chinn, Bill Amerson, Bob Vosse, Dawn Schiller, Tom Blake:
From interviews by Cass Paley.

PART THREE: SHOW WORLD

18. Boxed Lunch:
Vanessa Del Rio, Annie Sprinkle:
Grady T. Turner with Vanessa Del Rio, Legs McNeil, and Annie Sprinkle, “Conversation Four: Porn,” in
NYC Sex: How New York City Transformed Sex in America
(New York: Scala Publishers, 2002).
Serena:
Al Goldstein, “Daddy’s Dirty Darling,”
SCREW,
June 5, 1978.

19. The Ballad of Jason and Tina:
All original.

20. Turnover:
Tiffany Clark:
Tiffany Clark, “Tiffany Clark’s Lust at First Sight: True Confessions,”
Partner,
undated article.

21. Plato’s Retreat:
Al Goldstein, Patrice Trudeau, Josh Alan Friedman:
From Josh Alan Friedman,
Tales of Times Square
(New York: Delacorte Press, 1986; Feral House, 1993).

PART FOUR: FAMILY AFFAIRS

22. This Thing of Ours:
Operation Amore Report: Organized Crime and its Involvement in Pornography and Prostitution in the South Florida
Area,
Dade County Public Safety Department, Organized Crime Bureau, Vice Investigation Section, June 1977.

Coroner’s Report, Clark County, Nevada.

23. Memphis Backlash Blues:
“Pornography on Trial,”
New York Times Sunday Magazine,
March 6, 1977;
Harry Reems:
From
Here Comes Harry Reems;
“Eight Men Sentenced in Deep Throat Case,”
New York Times,
May 1, 1977.

24. Deep Cover:
Pat Livingston, Bruce Ellavsky, Betty Jo:
Some material from interviews by Ron LaBrecque.

25: Nobody Does It Better:
Pat Livingston, Bruce Ellavsky, Dick Phinney:
Some material from interviews by Ron LaBrecque.

26. Looks Like We Made It:
Robert DiBernardo:
FBI wiretap. Operation Amore Report.

PART FIVE: PORN GOES BETTER WITH COKE

27. Down the Drain:
Al Goldstein, Patrice Trudeau:
From Josh Alan Friedman,
Tales of Times Square

28. “Blow”:
All original.

29. Stayin’ Alive:
Bruce Ellavsky:
From FBI wiretap (where indicated).
Al Bonanni, Bruce Ellavsky:
From interviews with Ron LaBrecque.

30. Seka to the Rescue:
All original.

31. Johnny on the Pipe:
Annette Haven, Don Fernando, Richard Pacheco, Bob Vosse, Joel Sussman, Bill Amerson, Sheri St. Clair, Reb, Bob Chin, Bobby Hollander:
From interviews by Cass Paley.

32. Beauty and the Beast:
Lorene Smith’s Sanity Evaluation:
Ohio Department of Mental Health, Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital, Columbus, OH, November 1, 1989.

33. Falling Out:
Marty Bernbeck:
From FBI wiretap, 1979.
Pam Ellavsky:
From interviews by Ron LaBrecque.

34. St. Valentine’s Day Massacre:
Fred Schwartz, Vickie Livingston:
From interviews by Ron LaBrecque. “55 Persons Indicted in Piracy of Films and in Pornography—FBI Investigation Called Biggest Attack Against Activities,”
New York Times,
February 15, 1980. “Miami-Based FBI Investigation Breaks Up Porn Film Network,”
Miami Herald,
February 15, 1980.
Artie Mitchell:
From videotaped interview, School of Erotology.

35. “
Ordeal
”:
“Mrs. Marciano Calls Herself ‘A Typical Housewife’; The World Knew Her as Linda Lovelace,”
People,
January 28, 1980.
Linda Lovelace:
From
Ordeal
and Linda Lovelace,
Out of Bondage
(New York: Berkley, 1987). “Now Here’s A Switch Dept.”: New York
Daily
News,
May 30, 1980. “A Strange Bedfellow for the War on Pornography”: New York
Daily News,
June 8, 1980.

PART SIX: WONDERLAND AVENUE

36. The Godfather of Hollywood:
David Lind, Tracy McCourt:
From
The People of the State of California v. John Curtis Holmes, No. A374106. Jeanna Nash:
From divorce deposition.
John Holmes:
From Barbara Wilkins, “John Holmes: Murder, Sex, Drugs & Jail,”
Hustler,
June 1983.

37. “It’s Not Like You Said It Was Gonna Be”:
David Lind, Tracy McCourt:
From
California v. Holmes. John Holmes:
From Barbara Wilkins, “John Holmes: Murder, Sex, Drugs & Jail,”
Hustler,
June 1983.

38. Nobody Waved Hello:
John Holmes:
From Barbara Wilkins, “John Holmes: Murder, Sex, Drugs & Jail,”
Hustler,
June 1983.
Susan Launius:
From
California v. Holmes. Frank Tomlinson:
From interviews by Cass Paley.

39. “Think This Will Fuck Up My Fourth of July Weekend?”:
Tom Lange, Tom Blake:
From interviews by Cass Paley.
Linda Mitchell:
From
California v. Holmes.

PART SEVEN: GETTING OUT

40. Method Acting:
Vickie Livingston, Michael Griffin, Fred Schwartz, Hope Johnson, Larry Powell:
From interviews by Ron LaBrecque.

41. On the Lam:
Dawn Schiller, Sharon Holmes, Tom Lange:
From interviews by Cass Paley.

42. Don’t Embarrass the Bureau:
Vickie Livingston, Pat Livingston, Fred Schwartz, Nancy Livingston, Bill Brown:
Some material from Ron LaBrecque. “FBI Agent’s Arrest May Hurt Porn Cases”:
Miami Herald,
February 20, 1982. “FBI Boots Out MIPORN Undercover Agent”:
Miami Herald,
May 15, 1982.

43. Grave’s End:
“Death of Mob’s Porno King Takes Wraps off Gunmen”:
Miami Herald,
February 27, 1980.
Bob Hanson:
Name changed (original interview). “2 Die, 1 Hurt by Shotgun,” New York
Daily News,
January 5, 1982. “Two Slain and One Hurt in Mob-Style Shooting”:
New York Times,
January 5, 1982.
Jay Dolton:
From confidential NYPD report.
Michael Croissant:
Farley and Knoedelseder, “Family Business,”
Calendar/Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine,
June 13, 1982. “Bystander Killed in Mob Shooting Was a Social Worker and Ex-Nun”:
New York Times,
January 6, 1982.

44. The Trial:
“Actor Arrested”: Reuters International News, December 7, 1981.
Frank Tomlinson:
From interview by Cass Paley. “Holmes Ordered to Stand Trial”: United Press International, February 2, 1982. “Holmes Found Innocent,” United Press International, June 25, 1982. “Judge Ordered Holmes Released”: Reuters International News, November 22, 1982.
Al Goldstein:
From “Al Goldstein: The
Playboy
Interview.”