by Ron Jeremy
Except me.
As the closing credits began to roll, the hair stood up on my forearms. I watched the actors’ names scroll by, and then the production crew, the cinematographer, the costume designer, the music supervisor. Just be patient, I told myself. The credits listed the extras, the set decorator, the first assistant editor, the boom operator, the chief lighting electrician.
The audience was getting to their feet, filing toward the exit. I held firmly to Fairuza’s hand. “We’re almost there,” I whispered.
Set decorating buyer. The seamstress. The first assistant accountant. The office staff assistant.
Almost there.
The supervising sound editor. Special effects. Unit publicity.
Almost there.
Caterers, drivers, security, scoring mixers.
Where the hell was I?
And then I saw it: CONSULTANT: RON JEREMY. It was one of the last credits, just a few lines above the Panavision logo and copyright notice. I could have taken a walk, jogged around the block, had dinner, come back, and still not missed it.
Behind me, a few New Line executives were snickering. “Hey, Ron,” they yelled. “There’s your credit!” I was annoyed, but it was New Line, after all.
Part Three
Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.
—Woody Allen
(Courtesy Porn Star Clothing)
chapter 13
GOIN’ MAINSTREAM
I’ve been asked a lot of strange questions over the years. Everything from “What do breast implants really feel like?” to “Who is your favorite sex partner?” My answer to this second question is always the same: your mom. After getting punched in the face, I’ll explain that I’m only kidding, and then I’ll ask if their mother still has that little birthmark on the back of her arm. After getting punched in the face yet again, I’ll tell them the truth.*
But the question I’m asked most often is this: “Why do you care so much about becoming a mainstream actor? Isn’t being a porn star enough?”
There really isn’t an easy answer to that. A lot of people make fun of me because of my mainstream ambitions. They just don’t understand why I can’t leave well enough alone and be happy with what I’ve got. But the thing is, I’ve never thought of myself as a porn actor chasing after a mainstream career. I’m just an actor who happened to get into porn. When I was a kid and decided that acting was what I wanted to do with my life, I didn’t think, Wow, this’ll be my chance to show my schmeckel to the world! I always wanted a straight acting career. Porn was just the first opportunity that came along, but it was never supposed to be a permanent thing. I had dreams of breaking into big-budget Hollywood movies when I was a starving actor in New York, and just because I started doing porn doesn’t mean that those dreams went away.
So why did I stay in porn for so long? If I was so damn determined to make it as a legitimate actor, why didn’t I just quit porno once and for all and devote myself full time to pursuing mainstream acting jobs?
The answer is, I’ve learned to like porn. I may never quit, but at the same time I’ll never stop sending out my résumé and checking the mainstream casting listings, just in case other things come along.
And over the years, they have.
When you’re a porno actor looking for his shot at the mainstream, you have to try a little harder than everybody else. You can’t just assume that because you have a little bit of fame, you’re going to get every audition that comes along. It’s unlikely, if not improbable, that a producer will call you and say, “Hey, Ronnie, I just saw you in Big Boobs in Buttsville. You were great! We’re putting together a buddy-cop picture with Al Pacino, and we think you’d be great for the lead.” If you want to talk to producers, you’re the one who has to call them. And even then, you’ll probably get a response like, “Who is this? How did you get this number? No, I never saw Big Boobs in Buttsville. If you ever call here again, I’ll be notifying the police.”
Porn may be enough to get your foot in the door, but it won’t get you inside the white walls of Hollywood. If you want to break in, you sometimes have to be sneaky about it. You have to find a back door. (No, I’m not talking about anal sex. Didn’t we cover that in the last chapter?)
I’ve been lucky enough to be approached by filmmakers who wanted my services in a capacity other than acting. Once I’ve developed a relationship with the director, I’ll hit him up for a role. It almost worked for me on Boogie Nights. And it almost worked for me on my first consulting gig, on Adrian Lyne’s 1986 erotic thriller 9½ Weeks.
The movie, which starred Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, followed a steamy affair between an art-gallery dealer and a Wall Street executive. Adrian hired me to consult on the Show World scene, when Mickey and Kim visit the infamous Times Square sex club. I provided him with several porn actors to simulate sex during the scene. In return, he offered me a small, nonspeaking part as a swinger who kisses Kim Basinger.*
On the day of the shoot, Adrian took me aside and told me that Kim had requested another actor. She wanted somebody a little taller and somebody she knew better. I was certainly upset. I told Adrian that I’d wear platform shoes. But the role had already been given to David Everard, Mickey Rourke’s personal assistant and somebody with whom Kim felt more comfortable. I was still in the scene as a silent bit player, but my face never made it into the final cut.
Mickey knew that I was depressed about losing the part, and he tried to console me. During a break in filming, we took a walk through Times Square to look at the sights. Mickey was not yet a major star. He had achieved some fame with Diner, but The Pope of Greenwich Village hadn’t yet been released, and he was not yet a big player in Hollywood.** So he wasn’t being recognized by the crowds out on the New York streets.
But I was.
Remember, this was Times Square during the mid-1980s, when it was still the porn capital of the world. To the smut peddlers who called Forty-second Street home, I was a bona fide celebrity. We couldn’t walk a few feet without somebody stopping us and asking for my autograph. Men would come running over with copies of my latest movie on VHS, and women would ask me to sign their boobs. But when they looked at Mickey, their expressions were blank.
“Why do you even care about losing the Basinger scene?” he said with a laugh. “You don’t need it. You’re already famous. These people think you’re a god.”
Finally, one of my fans—a hunched-over old man who looked like he had spent the night sleeping in a cardboard box—was curious enough to ask about Mickey’s identity. “So who is this guy?” he said, eyeing Mickey suspiciously.
“Don’t bother,” Mickey whispered to me. “It’s not important.”
“Oh, him?” I said, nodding toward Mickey. “This, my friend, is none other than John Holmes.”
The old man nearly did a cartwheel. He grabbed back his pen and paper and threw it at Mickey. “Can I have your autograph?” he asked, his voice trembling with glee.
Mickey signed it, all the while muttering, “Ronnie, you’re an asshole.” The irony was not lost on either of us. Here was an actor who made millions signing an autograph for an actor who made thousands.
I glanced at the autograph, and Mickey had indeed signed John’s name. The old man thanked him, mumbled something about John’s (or Mickey’s) remarkable penis, and slithered away.
“So how does it feel to be John Holmes?” I asked him. “I bet you grew a couple inches down there, huh?”
He just smiled. “I shrank,” he said.
And for the record, if anyone ever finds this autograph, it’ll probably be worth lots on eBay.
Like anyone looking to break into Hollywood, it helps to have friends in high places.
I’ve been fortunate enough to know many directors and actors who believed in me and even fought to include me in their movies when everyone in the business thought they were crazy. Mickey Rourke helped me get parts in Spun and
Domino. Don Johnson used his clout at CBS to get me a small role on his show Nash Bridges.* And John Frankenheimer was probably one of my most devoted allies. Even after the Laurel Canyon fiasco, he always tried to find parts for me in his movies. He put me in 52 Pick-Up, and then again in Dead Bang, and then again in the TV miniseries George Wallace. When he was casting Ronin, he gave me a small role as a fishmonger and flew me to France for the shoot. He didn’t care that I was a porn actor. As he told me once, “You’re much more talented than people give you credit for. If I could help your career, I’d work for scale.”
But his loyalty to me sometimes came at a price. He once came under fire in the media because of our friendship. At a press screening for Dead Bang, a reporter confronted him about it. “Why do you feel the need to use porn stars in your movies?” the reporter asked with a knowing smirk.
John was irked and a little embarrassed by the question. “I assume you’re referring to Ron Jeremy,” he responded. “I’m not sure why you think I put porn stars in my movies. I haven’t. I’ve used Ron Jeremy in a few, but not because he’s in porn. I use him because I think he’s a good actor.”
Even John’s producing partner at United Artists, Frank Mancuso, was befuddled by John’s insistence that I be treated like a real actor and not just a porn oddity. During a test screening for Ronin, the audience cheered when my face appeared on-screen. One might assume that this was a good thing—a cheering audience is a happy audience—but Mancuso was just annoyed by it. When he met with John later to discuss edits, Mancuso argued that I should be cut from the film entirely. He felt that the chase scene, in which I made an appearance, slowed down the movie because of my recognizable face, but John knew what he really meant.
“It’s because of porn, isn’t it?” I asked John when he told me the news.
John just sighed. “I can’t be sure, Ron. I think it was. I’m so sorry.”
Well, at least he was honest. And I did receive an acting screen credit and residual payments.*
Director Adam Rifkin often sparred with producers who wanted to keep me out of his films. He used me in his 1994 feature The Chase and was asked by the studio, 20th Century Fox, to cut my scene. Adam fought for me, and my cameo remained in the final cut.
A few years later, he created a children’s horror series for ABC called Bone Chillers. He wanted to offer me a role, but because the show was being produced by the family-friendly Disney Corporation and Hyperion, he knew that it wasn’t even worth proposing. But that didn’t stop him from hiring me anyway.
For one episode, Adam cast me as Blisterface, a pimply-faced monster who attacks the young stars. I was a little hesitant when he gave me the script. It was a show for kids, after all, and if Disney should find out that a porn star was on their payroll, it could mean trouble. But Adam told me not to worry. My character was a monster, he reminded me, and it required an extensive amount of makeup. My face would be covered with pockmarks and open wounds, rendering me utterly unrecognizable. Aside from the makeup artist, who had already been sworn to secrecy, the entire cast and crew wouldn’t be the wiser.
And somehow we pulled it off. I arrived to the set hours before call time, and when the rest of the cast and crew showed up, I was already in full makeup. Nobody had any clue who I really was, and when asked, Adam just referred to me by my real name, Ron Hyatt. For my scene, I lunged after the teen star Linda Cardellini* and threw her over my shoulder. And you’ll be happy to know that I was nothing but polite and courteous. I even pulled down Linda’s dress when it started to ride up her legs.
“Oh my,” Linda remarked when she noticed this, “what a gentleman.”
I could hear Adam on the sidelines, snickering to himself. “He certainly is, isn’t he? What a nice monster. What a lovely, kindhearted, upstanding monster.”
“Shut up, Adam.” I’d scowl at him.
“What’s the matter, monster? Don’t you like teenage girls, monster?”
“Shut up, Adam!”
Our on-set joking might’ve been a little too conspicuous, because somehow a Hyperion executive did find out about our ruse.
“This better not be leaked to the press,” he told Adam.
The media never did find out, and Bone Chillers had a successful run on ABC. My lovable monster was seen by delighted kids across the country, and parents had no idea that the man entertaining their sons and daughters had, just weeks previously, starred in a film called Backdoor Babysitters.
But porn didn’t always hurt my chances of being cast in a mainstream movie. In some cases, it’s even helped.
When Adam directed Detroit Rock City, he gave me a small but funny part as an emcee at a strip club. At the test screening—just as with Ronin—the audience cheered whenever my face appeared on-screen. Mike De Luca, the head of New Line Entertainment, was watching from the back of the theater, and he admitted to Adam that he was surprised by the reaction.
“Those kids really like Ron Jeremy, don’t they?” he remarked.
“Yes, they do,” Adam said.
Mike thought about it for a minute, and then said, “Keep him in.” He also allowed my cartoon likeness to remain on the poster.
It wasn’t just the mainstream Hollywood studios that were discovering my appeal among younger college audiences. Indie filmmakers were seeking me out specifically because of my porn-star status. I starred in a slew of B movies during the late 1990s, from trash-horror classics like They Bite and Hell’s Highway to Troma cult favorites like Tales from the Crapper, Terror Firmer, Class of Nuke ’Em High III and Toxic Avenger IV.
I was happy to be working in movies so regularly, but I started noticing a disturbing trend among the roles I was getting. In many of the films, I was murdered in some horrible, violent way. I was shot, stabbed, decapitated, bludgeoned, burned alive, strangled, run over by cars, drowned, poisoned, and smashed into walls. It didn’t matter if it was a B film or a major Hollywood feature, the director always found some excuse to kill me in the most unpleasant manner possible (which of course means I can’t be in the sequel). And here, for you film buffs, is an introduction to some of my best on-screen fatalities:
Ron Jeremy’s Top Five Death Scenes*
1. KILLING ZOE (1994) In Roger Avary’s cult hit of ultraviolence, I played a bank security guard who was shot in the chest during a robbery. I was on-screen for less than a few seconds. The robber kicks open the door, points a gun at me, and blows me away. I didn’t even get to utter a single line before my chest exploded in blood.** But come on, can you blame me for wanting to do it? This is Roger Avary we’re talking about, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Pulp Fiction.*** Getting riddled with bullets in a Roger Avary film is an honor. When a director like Avary puts you in a film, you don’t haggle over dialogue. You say, “Which way do you want me to fall?”
2. THE BOONDOCK SAINTS (1999) I had a pretty decent part in this one before the guns came out. I played Vincenzo Lipazzi, a mafia boss and strip club owner. The film starred Willem Dafoe, and the first thing I said to him on the set was, “I heard a rumor that you were well hung. Is that true?” He almost did a double take. He couldn’t believe that I had the balls to ask him a question like that after just meeting him. But he didn’t deny it. He just told me, “Not a bad rumor to have, is it?” Anyway, in this one, my character was gunned down in a peep-show booth, which I guess is the most poetic way for a porn star to die. Boondock Saints was dropped by Miramax, but according to Variety, it was the number-one “straight-to-video” film in Blockbuster’s history. Whenever I do public appearances, there’ll always be a few fans asking me to sign their VHS and DVD copies.*
3. CITIZEN TOXIE: THE TOXIC AVENGER IV (2000) A classic horror film and hands down my most bloody death. I played Mayor Goldberg, a religious zealot who assembles a team of superheroes to battle the evil Noxious Offender. I’m killed with a metal crucifix, which is slammed into my mouth like I was a human shish kebab. There was blood everywhere, spurting out of my head like a lawn sprinkler. Some of th
e crew asked me, “Hey, aren’t you Jewish? Maybe we should use a Star of David instead.” “Hell, no!” I said. “It has too many sharp edges.”
4. WITCH’S SABBATH (2004) It wasn’t the first time I’ve been beheaded in a movie, but it’s definitely the most controversial. I play a Bible salesman named Craven Moorehead who has his head chopped off by a coven of witches. That alone wouldn’t make this movie death worthy of note. But things got a little messy when some of the producers were inundated with angry letters and phone calls, decrying their supposed mockery of the recent Taliban executions. We explained that it was just a joke and we had shot the scenes long before those horrible Taliban beheadings.
5. ORGAZMO (1997) This is probably my most famous death scene. My head literally explodes after I’m kicked in the face by Trey Parker. It just shatters into a million pieces like an old ceramic pot. This is one of the few times that I’ve ever challenged a director. I knew it was supposed to be a comedy, but it just seemed a little too illogical and unrealistic.
With Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
From the moment Trey Parker asked me to be in Orgazmo, I was dubious. It sounded like a cute concept—a Mormon gets lured into making adult films—but I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to pull it off. This was before he and Matt Stone started doing the South Park cartoon on Comedy Central, so they were not yet the poster children of shock comedy.
I was cast as a porn actor/henchman named Clark, who used the porn stage name Jizz Master Zero. The script was funny, but Trey was doing things that just made no sense to me. He had actual female porn stars in the cast, like Chasey Lain and Juli Ashton, but he never let them show their bodies. During a sex scene, the girls would begin to lower their bras, but just as they were about to expose their boobies, some naked guy would step into the frame and block them with his big, hairy ass. It was confusing to me. Trey had specifically hired porno actresses, and yet he wasn’t allowing any of them to be naked on-screen.