The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz

by Ron Jeremy

The next morning, Mark and I devised a way to get me released without the $70,000 collateral. I called in a favor with Ralph “Papa” Thorson, an old friend and world-famous bounty hunter. He was legendary in Los Angeles. Steve McQueen had played him in a 1980 movie called The Hunter. His word was enough to get me a free pass. Papa talked to the two bondsmen assigned to me, Dan Majors and Mark Herman, and assured them that I wouldn’t be a problem.

  “Don’t worry about Ron,” he said. “If he runs, I’ll catch him.”

  As soon as I was out, I found a pay phone and called the sergeant at the San Diego Police Department. I wasn’t about to leave town without my driver’s license and passport. And if my address book was gathering dust in some police locker, I wanted that, too.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Aren’t you still in jail?”

  “Sorry, no,” I told him.

  “You posted bail?”

  I paused. “Something like that.”

  I wish I could’ve been there to see the expression on Detective Hardman’s face. He probably thought that he’d have me in lockdown for at least a week, where it would’ve been easier to get me to rat on Mark. But his plan didn’t work.

  On the ride back to Los Angeles, my lawyer told me about an article he’d just read in the San Diego Tribune. I forget the exact wording, but it was something to the effect of: “After the recent arrest of porn star Ron Jeremy, police are confident that the crime rate in San Diego will drop considerably.”

  “Yeah,” I joked with my lawyer, “it’s a good thing I’m leaving town, because if I stayed even one more day, I might knock over another gas station.”

  “To say nothing of all those carjackings.” My lawyer laughed.

  It was by no means over for me. With the two counts of pandering in Los Angeles and the ten counts against me in San Diego, I had a long legal road ahead. But for the moment, it was enough just to be free and miles away from the nearest vice cop.

  Back in L.A., I met with Mark Herman (one of my bondsmen) at Canter’s Deli on Fairfax, just to show my face and thank him again for bonding me out on Papa’s word. As soon as I walked into the door, he jumped up and hugged me.

  “Oh, thank God!” he said.

  It seems that Papa, knowing that I’m always late for my appointments, and, he being somewhat of a practical joker, had called Mark and told him (as a joke) that I’d just purchased a one-way ticket to Brazil. Mark assumed that I was already on my way to the LAX airport and he’d never see me again. My bail would have cost him $63,000. So when he saw me smiling back at him, he was so happy that he offered to pay for lunch.

  When a bondsman is paying you, you know that everything is going to be okay.

  Sam Kinison and me at the Comedy Store.

  chapter 9

  HOW TO TALK DIRTY AND MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in giving a warm welcome to Ron Hyatt the Maniac!”

  I threw open the curtains and came bounding out onto the small stage at the Good Times Nightclub.* I was dressed in my usual stand-up uniform, an oversize tuxedo jacket that fit me like a potato sack. Without waiting for the applause to die down, I grabbed the microphone and launched into my routine.

  “Hello, everybody, I’m Ron. And I am living proof that anybody can get laid.”

  I wasn’t exactly the evening’s headline attraction. But then again, during the comedy boom of the 1980s, you didn’t need to be. Most of New York’s hottest comedy clubs hosted open-mike nights, where any hopeful could get onstage and take his shot at comedy stardom.

  “I used to be so lonely, I wouldn’t get dick let alone pussy. Unlike you guys, I’ve seen my ass on a wide screen. I could go to the West Village and the gay guys would look at me and say, ‘Sorry, we’re not that gay.’”

  Okay, so maybe my act still needed some work. But even if I didn’t always get the biggest laughs, it was still a thrill to be on an actual stage, holding a microphone rather than my penis, having an audience pay attention to what I was saying rather than fast-forwarding to the pop shot.

  At first, I used my real name, Ron Hyatt, because I didn’t want to be automatically associated with my more famous alter ego. But a year or two later, I decided to start using Ron Jeremy. It was a bigger draw, and, let’s face it, a comic without an audience is nothing.

  “I have a tattoo on my dick of a bigger dick. My dick is so big, my dick has its own dick. And my dick’s dick is still bigger than your dick.”

  Well, as the old aphorism goes, “Write what you know.” If dick jokes worked for Richard Pryor and Robin Williams, they’d work for me.

  I walked over to a piano that sat next to the stage. “You’ve all heard of ‘Moon Over Miami’?” I asked the crowd. “Well, here’s a little ditty I call ‘My Moon Over the Keys’.” I squatted over the piano’s keyboard and lowered my ass onto it, pounding out a few off-key notes.

  The audience always laughed at that bit. Whether they were laughing because they found it genuinely funny or because they couldn’t believe what I was doing, I never really knew.

  It didn’t matter to me. As long as they were laughing.

  I know my brand of comedy hasn’t always gotten me accolades. If you saw my documentary, The Legend of Ron Jeremy, you probably remember Al “Grampa Munster” Lewis’s rant about my stand-up ambitions. I’m not sure if he was kidding, but he certainly slammed my comic skills.

  I don’t think my act is quite as bad as that, but I do admit to having a fondness for cornball groaners and one-liners. I’m more likely to make jokes about backstage blow jobs and gigantic prop condoms than world politics and literature.

  My tastes in comedy shouldn’t come as a surprise, especially given my upbringing. Remember, I came of age in the Catskills during the late 1960s and early ’70s, in the last heady days of the Borscht Belt comedy renaissance. There were more than two hundred hotels in the Catskills, and every last one of them had nightly entertainment, often featuring some of the best up-and-coming and established comedians in the business. When I wasn’t waiting tables (or, as the case may be, trying to get laid), I was sneaking into shows, watching comics like Henny Young-man, Buddy Hackett, and Shecky Greene ply their trade.

  These were comics who invented the word shtick. They didn’t shy away from a mother-in-law joke, or an ethnic gag, or even pulling out a seltzer bottle if the mood struck them. They wore big bow ties and plaid jackets, used lines like “Take my wife, please,” and frequently employed a well-timed cymbal crash to announce a gag’s payoff. They told puns that wouldn’t just make you groan, they’d give you a stomach cramp. It was corny, it was campy, and, sure, it was a little bit stupid. But I loved it.

  For a smart-ass kid like myself, who had spent his entire formative years as the “class clown,” being in this environment put stars in my eyes. I saw the Catskills as a possible launching pad to the big time. It wasn’t such a far-fetched dream. Sid Caesar had waited tables at the Catskills before getting his break. If it could happen to him, it could happen to me.

  So I took any stand-up gig I could get. I performed and emceed at open mikes all over town, from the Stag-and-Doe Restaurant to Bum and Kel’s Bar to the Paramount Hotel. But when I left the comforts of the Catskills for the big, bad city of Manhattan, my timing couldn’t have been less perfect. The broad, goofy shtick that I had watched and studied and tried to emulate in the Catskills was being eschewed in favor of a rougher, more urban style of humor. It was no longer enough to come out and crack wise about mothers-in-law and Jews. Your act had to have substance. You had to rail against the status quo and hypocrisy. You had to be wry and ironic and subtle. You had to be the coolest person in the room, not just the funniest.

  It didn’t fare well for a kid whose signature gag involved impersonating water fountains.

  I became a tireless performer, never missing a chance to do an open mike, whether it was the Comic Strip or the Improv, Good Times or Catch a Rising Star. Because porn producers were paying for my airfare
, I was appearing at clubs and on cruise ships from coast to coast. I was also introducing rock stars, raves, and spring-break festivities. By the mid-1980s, I was one of the busiest stage performers around, even if my name never appeared on the marquee.

  I didn’t always need stage time as an excuse to visit the clubs. When I was in Los Angeles, the Comedy Store was like a second home to me. During some weeks, I’d be there every night, just to check out the shows and watch the pros in action.

  I occasionally joined a small clique of comics that included Freddy Asparagus, Carl LaBove, Andrew Dice Clay, and Jim Carrey. After Comedy Store shows, we’d get together at a twenty-four-hour diner on the Sunset Strip called Ben Franks. I’d often pick up the tab, as I was the only one at the time with a regular paycheck. We’d squeeze into our favorite booth and make jokes all night, sometimes not stumbling out until the next morning.

  Jim Carrey was one of my favorites. He was probably the most successful of the group, having starred in a short-lived TV series in 1984 called Duck Factory,* but he was still a relative unknown in the world of comedy. He was a master of impersonations, and during our late-night dinners, we’d pimp him out to perform some of his best characters. We’d each give him a situation, like “Jack Nicholson at the DMV” or “Elvis Presley after a nuclear war,” and he would launch into an inspired routine, nailing the impersonation perfectly.

  But when it came time for me to offer up a suggestion, for example: “So what would John Wayne do if he was audited by the IRS?” Jim’s face would turn suddenly sour, and he’d stare at me with mock contempt. “He wouldn’t do much of anything,” he’d say. “He’d probably just collect his receipts and bring them to his accountant. Jesus, Ron, why would you ask something like that?”

  Jim would perform his impersonations for anybody at the slightest provocation, but the moment I piped in with an idea, he would look at me like I’d just suggested a comedic dead end. “Ronnie, you know damn well he wouldn’t say anything.” His deadpan reaction was priceless, and sometimes funnier than the impersonations themselves.

  We spent most of our time laughing over little inside jokes like this. Another popular bit involved Freddy Asparagus and something we called “The Ferret.” We once overheard him hitting on a girl at the Comedy Store, who was regaling him with tales of her pet ferrets. Freddy was, as you might imagine, bored out of his mind, but he pretended to be captivated. He even asked her about the color of its cage and what kinds of food she would feed it. We were amazed that he was able to keep the façade going for so long, and none of us believed that he’d be able to hold out long enough to get into her pants. But after listening to her rattle on about ferrets for most of the night, she finally ran out of steam and invited him back to her place, I think.

  From that point on, we began to refer to any extremely boring conversation with a woman for the sake of getting lucky later as “Ferrets.” It didn’t necessarily need to involve a ferret, naturally. It could be any kind of dialogue where you just pretended to care about what a woman was saying. She could be showing you baby pictures or recalling her high school experiences, and you would have to respond as if you were fascinated by every word. “Wow, you really lived in Toledo? That’s incredible. Tell me more.” If you didn’t seem interested, she’d talk to someone else, and if the lucky bastard was patient enough, he might actually get lucky.

  When we’d see a hot girl at the Comedy Store, or even while sitting at Ben Franks, we’d try to determine just how many Ferrets were required to get lucky.

  “I’m guessing she’s a one-hour Ferret. What do you think?”

  “Are you kidding me? She’s wearing granny glasses. A brainy chick like that is a three-hour Ferret minimum.” (By the way, in all fairness, I’m sure many women put up with boring man dialogue on a regular basis. They’d probably call it football dialogue, or car mechanics dialogue.)

  Robin Williams would occasionally join us at Ben Franks, although he was already a huge star and would attract large crowds wherever he went. Though every comic wanted to be his best buddy, he genuinely seemed to get a kick out of me. When he was interviewed by Ed Bradley at the Comedy Store for a 60 Minutes segment, he went out of his way to introduce me. “This is my friend Ron Jeremy,” he said, posing with me for the cameras. “We call him the Human Tripod.” I was later cut out of the 60 Minutes piece, but it was enough that Robin didn’t think twice about the plug.

  We would often tease each other about our respective careers. When he appeared in a movie called Moscow on the Hudson, I accused him of stealing my Russian accent from the porno Olympic Fever. Robin never denied it.

  “You got me, Ron,” he said. “Thank God you did that movie. I never could have learned how to speak Russian without it.”*

  Though I was always popular in comedy circles, there was one comic who went out of his way to befriend me. When he walked up to me at a comedy club’s bar and introduced himself, he was just another stand-up, trying to make his name on the Comedy Store stage.

  “You must be Ron Jeremy,” he said with a giddy smile.

  “That’s me,” I said, giving him the once-over. “And you would be?”

  “The name’s Sam Kinison,”** he said, grabbing my hand and shaking it. “I have the funny feeling that you and I are gonna become friends.”

  I feel bad for those of you who never got to see Sam Kinison perform. His records and CDs are still around to give you some idea of what you missed, but none of it compares with the live show. It’s difficult to describe to the uninitiated. It was like watching a volcano erupt, drenching an unsuspecting town in hot lava. It happened that slowly, often without warning. Sam would begin his act by just pacing across the stage, clutching his microphone but saying nothing, until the audience began to grow restless. And then, out of nowhere, came that decibel-splitting, eardrum-shattering scream.

  His screams were equal parts fury and pain, outrage and heartache. Unlike many of the shock comics of his era, who lashed out at anyone and everyone with a sense of smug superiority, Sam never came across (at least to me) like a bully. If he was angry, it was because he was sincerely hurt that the world wasn’t a better place. His screams were not born out of arrogance but frustration. While a comic like Andrew Dice Clay might make sexual jokes about women in general, Kinison saved his venom specifically for the women who had broken his heart. And he did it in a way that made you feel a part of the experience, like he was a pastor leading his congregation, helping you banish those dark demons that could be exorcized only with a good, long, primal scream.

  Sam and I had some great conversations over the years. In particular, he enjoyed discussing my porn career.

  “Do you remember that film A Girl’s Best Friend?” he asked me once. “There was the scene where you’re balling the maid in the kitchen while eating chicken legs.”

  “Yeah, I remember it,” I said, a little embarrassed.

  “You start listing off your favorite foods while you’re fucking her. You’re muttering, ‘Apples, plums, olives, flour.’ And then when you cum, you’re screaming, ‘Foood! Fooood!’ Oh man, Ronnie, I laughed so hard, I forgot to jerk off.

  “And who could forget your timeless role as Sheriff Slater in Bad Girls II?” he snickered. “You’re fucking those three girls in the jail cell. Come to think of it, you were eating chicken in that scene, too. Y’know, Ronnie, it’s starting to make sense why you’ve gained so much weight. Have you ever done a sex scene that didn’t involve food?”

  I once brought Jamie Gillis to Sam’s Fourth of July barbecue. Sam enjoyed asking him questions and, as he did so often with me, repeating back his favorite lines from Jamie’s films.

  It was impossible to resist Sam’s enthusiasm for all things porno. When he asked to visit the sets, I couldn’t very well tell him no. In some cases, I even concocted a reason for him to be there, such as when I was cast in a movie called Stiff Competition, billed as “The Super Bowl of Suck-Offs.” The movie’s grand finale featured a blow-job contes
t in a wrestling ring, and hundreds of extras were needed for the crowd scenes. Sam brought a few of his comic friends, and during breaks in the shoot, they were easily coaxed into doing impromptu stand-up for the exhausted extras, to help the morale of the crowd. Though Sam’s face never appeared on-screen in the edited film, you could clearly see the back of his head, which delighted Sam to no end.

  While Sam was renting Robin Williams’s house in the Hollywood Hills, he let me borrow his temporary digs to shoot a film. Though we tried to be inconspicuous, we learned later that we might’ve given Robin’s neighbor an unexpected gift. One of my actresses was given the wrong address, and after driving around the neighborhood for hours, she took a wild guess and walked up to the house next door. Now, I won’t swear to this, but I’m pretty sure that when she knocked at the door, she was greeted by a very surprised David Hasselhoff (long before his Baywatch days).*

  “Is this where the porno is being shot?” she asked.

  Hasselhoff looked at the drop-dead gorgeous woman standing before him, thought about it, and then said, “Well, I guess it is now.”

  Sam was always a loyal friend. When he skyrocketed to fame, he would bring me along during his concert tours, paying for my hotel rooms and giving me backstage access to all of his shows. Nothing really changed between us, other than that it was now Sam who was buying dinners and attracting hordes of autograph seekers. I also became friends with his brother Bill, his “Outlaws of Comedy,” his various girlfriends at the time, and Rick Jones, his bodyguard.

  Sam would occasionally share the spotlight with me. I made a cameo in his music video for Under My Thumb.* And when the Fox Network asked him to host a New Year’s Eve special, he promised me a small part. In return, I provided ten female porn stars for the show. I arrived for the pretaping and waited around all day, watching as Sam filmed segment after segment. I was worried that he might forget me entirely. But at long last, Sam finally called me to the stage for our prescripted routine.