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‘Think of it as a public service,' or: My life as a pornographer
My life as a pornographer: A memoir
Bob Levin
An investigative journalist at gawker.com has revealed that the film that recently set Islamist critiques de cinema burning down large swatches of the Middle East was the work of "a schlock soft-core porn director named Alan Roberts."
Hmmm, I thought when I read that. That name sounds familiar.
It had been early 1970 when Dirty Dan told me he'd satisfied my need for a pseudonym by massaging my first and middle names (Robert Allen), as he'd done with his own (Daniel William). In our new pornographic venture, he would become Dana Williamson; I would be Allen Roberts.
You remember 1970. Americans had already welcomed Lolita, Naked Lunch and Sexus to our bookshelves. We had accustomed ourselves to bare breasts (in The Pawnbroker, 1965), pubic hair (Blow Up, 1966) and full frontal nudity (I am Curious [Yellow], 1967) within our first-run movie theaters. And leveraged by the Supreme Court's ruling in Roth v. United States that a work was not obscene unless "utterly without redeeming social value" we had made room for "adult" bookstores, where explicit sex in books and magazines and on film loops could be acquired for private contemplation.
When a Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography issued a ten-volume report calling for the lifting of all restrictions where adults were concerned, it appeared the game was over; the battle had been won. (One enterprising publisher, a fellow named William Hamling, celebrated the occasion by releasing an edition of the report that was itself "Photo Illustrated.")
Booted from Antioch
OK, our generation hadn't established peace in Southeast Asia. We hadn't achieved equality for our citizens at home. We hadn't freed workers from their chains or even legalized pot. But we had cleared the way to watch the old in-and-out.
In the '50s Danny had been the neighborhood's King of E.C. Comics, back when their masterful blend of sex and violence had reduced all competition for any discerning 11-year-old's dimes. Later, Danny had steered me into an aspiring hipster's appreciations of the artistry of Sugar Hart, Chet Baker and Lord Buckley.
After Antioch booted him"“ for trying to start a fraternity, as Danny told it"“ he moved into a shithole apartment in North Philadelphia and took up communication at Temple. He slept through his classes and stayed up nights, writing a novel that began with a woman jumping off a bridge. But when he heard James Baldwin had written a novel that began with a woman jumping off a bridge, he locked his in a trunk and never looked at it again.
"It's all crap anyway," Danny rationalized.
Mongols and nuns
While I attended law school in order to stay out of the army, Danny was finishing a B.A., playing the trotters at Brandywine Racetrack and seeing a classical pianist of some renown. The year I moved to Berkeley, he moved to L.A.
I hoped to write fiction, so I found part-time work as a lawyer while taking creative writing courses at San Francisco State. Danny's goal was movies, but, while his screenplays awaited greenlighting, he free-lanced as a stringer for the Morning Telegraph, covering racetracks from Hollywood Park to Santa Anita to Del Mar. And he wrote porn"“ The Mongols and the Nuns, Cherry Hill Honey, Bedroom Tips for Every Man (not their actual titles"“ my memory fails me"“ but you get the idea).
When he got overcommitted, Danny asked me for a hand.
He had sold an outline for $1,500"“ chapters on adultery, fornication, oral sex, anal sex, abortion, masturbation, homosexuality, an introduction and a conclusion. Of that amount, he said, I could have $1,200 for 90,000 words of "College term paper level" prose that the publisher would split into two volumes and spice with 150 full-page photos.
When Danny showed me sample illustrations, I held them at arm's length like I might catch a disease.
What's fellatio?
Danny urged me to become part of the solution, not the problem— to put away my weary inhibitions and prove myself, once and for all, a swinging dude.
"Think of it, like you're performing a public service," he advised. "Like, suppose John Q. Public is traveling cross-country and finds himself in a Des Moines motel with a friendly lady. He needs to know if he can stick his whoozits in her wherever without running afoul of the fuzz. Luckily, he's got our dingus in his suitcase to rely on. And if the putz isn't sure which one's fellatio and which is cunnilingus, he's got pictures to remind him."
I had 60 days, which meant 1,500 words a day. I figured out how to supply them: history; sociology; appellate court decisions; statutes, state-by-state (I hired a law student, later a judge in Riverside, to compile them); quotes from secondary sources; case studies (usually made up); interviews with experts (usually opinions of friends with assumed names and degrees).
I camped out at a carrel in U.C. Berkeley's law library. I varied the mix so my chapters wouldn't seem formulaic.
As soon as I'd written 9,000 words, I turned that chapter over to a typist in the Mission District and moved on to the next. I felt like a pro.
Voltaire vs. Mae West
My check cleared. The book came out. There were no parties or promotion or reviews. (I once ventured into an "adult" store and saw my oeuvre on a spinning rack.)
Sales must have been acceptable, for the publisher asked Danny"“ and Danny asked me"“ for a follow-up volume. This presented a moral dilemma: Which ethicist was I to follow— Voltaire ("Once a philosopher; twice a pervert") or Mae West ("I'll do anything once. Twice if I like it. Three times to make sure")?
"OK," I said.
But Richard Nixon, on whose desk that presidential commission's report had landed, was not about to let that particular buck stop there. So Attorney General John Mitchell, a man not known for a Rabelaisian sense of humor, had gone after Hamling for his photo-illustrated desecration of the commission report. A San Diego jury convicted Hamling of distributing obscene material through the mail, and a federal judge sentenced him to four years in prison.
(After the Supreme Court upheld Hamling's conviction, 5 to 4, he served the minimum three months and one day.)
Closing Last Tango
Then the court decided Miller v. California and rid the nation of the horrors that the concept of "redeeming social merit" had loosed upon the land. Now a work, judged by its entirety, needed to possess "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific merit" to escape public flogging. And this judgment would no longer be measured by a national yardstick. Each locality was empowered to apply its own standard, no matter how uptight.
Movie theaters dropped Last Tango in Paris. Public librarians thought twice before restocking Jacqueline Susann. Schools drew the line at anything racier than Silas Marner. And I gave up my contribution to the Cultural Revolution for a more respectable career as a lawyer.
I know what you're thinking. You can keep it to yourself.
Hmmm, I thought when I read that. That name sounds familiar.
It had been early 1970 when Dirty Dan told me he'd satisfied my need for a pseudonym by massaging my first and middle names (Robert Allen), as he'd done with his own (Daniel William). In our new pornographic venture, he would become Dana Williamson; I would be Allen Roberts.
You remember 1970. Americans had already welcomed Lolita, Naked Lunch and Sexus to our bookshelves. We had accustomed ourselves to bare breasts (in The Pawnbroker, 1965), pubic hair (Blow Up, 1966) and full frontal nudity (I am Curious [Yellow], 1967) within our first-run movie theaters. And leveraged by the Supreme Court's ruling in Roth v. United States that a work was not obscene unless "utterly without redeeming social value" we had made room for "adult" bookstores, where explicit sex in books and magazines and on film loops could be acquired for private contemplation.
When a Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography issued a ten-volume report calling for the lifting of all restrictions where adults were concerned, it appeared the game was over; the battle had been won. (One enterprising publisher, a fellow named William Hamling, celebrated the occasion by releasing an edition of the report that was itself "Photo Illustrated.")
Booted from Antioch
OK, our generation hadn't established peace in Southeast Asia. We hadn't achieved equality for our citizens at home. We hadn't freed workers from their chains or even legalized pot. But we had cleared the way to watch the old in-and-out.
In the '50s Danny had been the neighborhood's King of E.C. Comics, back when their masterful blend of sex and violence had reduced all competition for any discerning 11-year-old's dimes. Later, Danny had steered me into an aspiring hipster's appreciations of the artistry of Sugar Hart, Chet Baker and Lord Buckley.
After Antioch booted him"“ for trying to start a fraternity, as Danny told it"“ he moved into a shithole apartment in North Philadelphia and took up communication at Temple. He slept through his classes and stayed up nights, writing a novel that began with a woman jumping off a bridge. But when he heard James Baldwin had written a novel that began with a woman jumping off a bridge, he locked his in a trunk and never looked at it again.
"It's all crap anyway," Danny rationalized.
Mongols and nuns
While I attended law school in order to stay out of the army, Danny was finishing a B.A., playing the trotters at Brandywine Racetrack and seeing a classical pianist of some renown. The year I moved to Berkeley, he moved to L.A.
I hoped to write fiction, so I found part-time work as a lawyer while taking creative writing courses at San Francisco State. Danny's goal was movies, but, while his screenplays awaited greenlighting, he free-lanced as a stringer for the Morning Telegraph, covering racetracks from Hollywood Park to Santa Anita to Del Mar. And he wrote porn"“ The Mongols and the Nuns, Cherry Hill Honey, Bedroom Tips for Every Man (not their actual titles"“ my memory fails me"“ but you get the idea).
When he got overcommitted, Danny asked me for a hand.
He had sold an outline for $1,500"“ chapters on adultery, fornication, oral sex, anal sex, abortion, masturbation, homosexuality, an introduction and a conclusion. Of that amount, he said, I could have $1,200 for 90,000 words of "College term paper level" prose that the publisher would split into two volumes and spice with 150 full-page photos.
When Danny showed me sample illustrations, I held them at arm's length like I might catch a disease.
What's fellatio?
Danny urged me to become part of the solution, not the problem— to put away my weary inhibitions and prove myself, once and for all, a swinging dude.
"Think of it, like you're performing a public service," he advised. "Like, suppose John Q. Public is traveling cross-country and finds himself in a Des Moines motel with a friendly lady. He needs to know if he can stick his whoozits in her wherever without running afoul of the fuzz. Luckily, he's got our dingus in his suitcase to rely on. And if the putz isn't sure which one's fellatio and which is cunnilingus, he's got pictures to remind him."
I had 60 days, which meant 1,500 words a day. I figured out how to supply them: history; sociology; appellate court decisions; statutes, state-by-state (I hired a law student, later a judge in Riverside, to compile them); quotes from secondary sources; case studies (usually made up); interviews with experts (usually opinions of friends with assumed names and degrees).
I camped out at a carrel in U.C. Berkeley's law library. I varied the mix so my chapters wouldn't seem formulaic.
As soon as I'd written 9,000 words, I turned that chapter over to a typist in the Mission District and moved on to the next. I felt like a pro.
Voltaire vs. Mae West
My check cleared. The book came out. There were no parties or promotion or reviews. (I once ventured into an "adult" store and saw my oeuvre on a spinning rack.)
Sales must have been acceptable, for the publisher asked Danny"“ and Danny asked me"“ for a follow-up volume. This presented a moral dilemma: Which ethicist was I to follow— Voltaire ("Once a philosopher; twice a pervert") or Mae West ("I'll do anything once. Twice if I like it. Three times to make sure")?
"OK," I said.
But Richard Nixon, on whose desk that presidential commission's report had landed, was not about to let that particular buck stop there. So Attorney General John Mitchell, a man not known for a Rabelaisian sense of humor, had gone after Hamling for his photo-illustrated desecration of the commission report. A San Diego jury convicted Hamling of distributing obscene material through the mail, and a federal judge sentenced him to four years in prison.
(After the Supreme Court upheld Hamling's conviction, 5 to 4, he served the minimum three months and one day.)
Closing Last Tango
Then the court decided Miller v. California and rid the nation of the horrors that the concept of "redeeming social merit" had loosed upon the land. Now a work, judged by its entirety, needed to possess "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific merit" to escape public flogging. And this judgment would no longer be measured by a national yardstick. Each locality was empowered to apply its own standard, no matter how uptight.
Movie theaters dropped Last Tango in Paris. Public librarians thought twice before restocking Jacqueline Susann. Schools drew the line at anything racier than Silas Marner. And I gave up my contribution to the Cultural Revolution for a more respectable career as a lawyer.
I know what you're thinking. You can keep it to yourself.
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