by Ron Jeremy
Aaron Gordon, our public relations director, had his hands full keeping the media juggernaut at bay. Our production was under tight security, so nobody—much less a reporter—was allowed on the set during the shoot.* But right under our noses, our so-called “closed set” was infiltrated by a spy.
We caught the little bugger red-handed. He was an extra, hired for a boat party scene during the production’s final days. He’d hidden a tiny camera in his sleeve and was taking photos all day before a crew member nabbed him. His name was Steve Duran, and he admitted to working for Current Affair and gladly gave up the name of his accomplice: my friend and roommate porn star Devon Shire. I confronted her and tried to play the stern disciplinarian, but I was too impressed with her ruse to give her any grief.
“Please tell me you got paid for sneaking him onto my set,” I said.
“Of course,” Devon said with a smug smile. “You think I’d sell you out for free?”
“I can’t believe you pulled that off,” I chuckled. “Well done.”
We agreed to let the rogue photographer keep his pictures, and even shoot some B-roll video, but only on the condition that he give Hard Copy (to which Aaron had given an exclusive) a two-day lead. And because I’m such a good sport, I even paid him his full wage as an extra. So he got a $30 check and a scoop on the Bobbitt set. Not bad for a day’s work.
The real challenge came after the shoot was finished and I had to edit the mountain of footage into an actual movie. I had put a lot of effort into writing the script, basing much of it on the court transcripts and witness testimony. One of my favorite gags happened in the film’s opening minutes. According to police accounts, when Lorena threw Bobbitt’s penis out of her car it hit the window of a passing vehicle before falling into a nearby grassy field. I just had to re-create that scenario for the movie.
Two women are driving at night. A dismembered penis smacks into their windshield and then just as quickly disappears.
WOMAN 1
Was that a fly?
WOMAN 2
If it was, it had the biggest penis I’ve ever seen.*
But as much as I wanted to fill the movie with dick jokes and a dense “ripped from the headlines” story line, I had to remember that I was, in the end, making a porno. You don’t want your audience to start wondering, “When the hell are people going to shut up and start fucking?” So I cut out huge chunks of dialogue and concocted a flashback to explain much of the backstory.
All of my frustration disappeared when I saw the final cut on the big screen. It was probably one of the best films I’d ever directed. The story was butchered, but still…it had a story. It felt like a return to the old days of adult films, when plot (such that it was) carried an equal weight to sex. It couldn’t compete with classics like Insatiable and Behind the Green Door, but I was proud to have my name on it.
Mark pulled out all the stops for the world premiere. We screened Uncut in Beverly Hills, at the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Science. And the after-party was held at the Steven Spielberg Pavilion.** It had all the glitz and glamour of a real Hollywood premiere. We even had a few unintentional celebrity guests. There were rumors that actor Eric Roberts arrived at the theater, mistakenly thinking it was a screening of Shawshank Redemption. When he found out that he was actually at a premiere for a porn film, he got a little upset and even pushed a photographer while trying to make a hasty retreat. That was what I heard.
When Uncut hit video stores, it sold better than we could have hoped. The average porn release moves between two and three thousand copies. But Uncut sold more than eighty thousand tapes in the first few weeks. The porn world wasn’t sure whether to shun us or shower us with praise. Uncut received a rave review in The Adult Video News, but the X-Rated Critics Association awarded Uncut the dubious honor of “Worst Film of the Year.” I attended the XRCO award ceremony at the Belage Hotel in L.A. and cheerfully accepted the trophy—a bronze roll of toilet paper—on behalf of the entire cast and crew.
“It’s an honor to win Worst Film of the Year,” I said during my acceptance speech. “Especially considering that Uncut outsold every other adult film out there. We had bigger sales than all of you combined. If that’s what it means to be the worst film, I couldn’t be happier.”
There’s a time and place to get bad news. And live TV is not one of them.
I was asked to appear on Geraldo Rivera’s daytime talk show to discuss Uncut. I was joined by Tiffany Lords, a buxom, blonde porn actress and one of Bobbitt’s costars. Tiffany and I were seated onstage, fielding questions from Geraldo. Out of nowhere, she had started mumbling about skeletons in her closet, alluding to secrets that she had been hiding for too long.
“I’m not going to tell him about this,” Tiffany said, more to herself than anybody else.
When Geraldo asked her to elaborate, she looked surprised, as if she hadn’t meant to say any of it out loud.
“I really shouldn’t say anything,” she told him.
“Come on, Tiffany,” Geraldo persisted, “you obviously want to get it off your chest.”
I narrowed my eyes at Tiffany. I was as confused as anyone in the studio audience. I had no idea what she was talking about.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
What?
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. This was a bombshell. And I was caught completely by surprise. I could see Geraldo smiling underneath his massive mustache.
“And you have reason to believe that Bobbitt is the father?” he asked.
“He is,” Tiffany declared. “He’s the only one I’ve had sex with in the last three months. I’m sure it happened on the set. We fooled around a few times off camera, in the shower between scenes.”
I knew that Tiffany and Bobbitt had taken a liking to each other. His scene with Tiffany was the only time he was able to perform without the needle. But as for these off-screen encounters, it was news to me.
Geraldo turned to me for a comment. I swallowed hard and tried to think of the most diplomatic response. “This doesn’t usually happen,” I said, my voice wavering. “We don’t…I’m not sure how…”
It was, for me, especially embarrassing. I had just finished ranting about sexual diseases and HIV. I insisted that we practiced fairly safe sex on porn sets. There were no condoms, but the ejaculations were all external, which lessens the chances of pregnancy. And now I was being outed on national TV, unprepared to defend myself.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I muttered angrily to Tiffany, not caring that the entire world was watching. “You should have said something before now. This isn’t the most appropriate place to bring this up.”
“Sorry, Ron,” she said, her eyes welling with tears.
During a commercial, I stormed backstage to find Eric Barzoom, Leisure Time’s marketing director. He was standing with Bobbitt’s manager, and they were both smiling broadly, as if they couldn’t have been happier with Tiffany’s shocking announcement.
“Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on out there?” I hissed.
Eric peered over my shoulder, making sure there weren’t any nosy stagehands nearby, and pulled me closer. “Ron,” he whispered, “she’s not really pregnant.”
“She’s not?”
Eric put a finger to my lips. “This is just between you and me, okay?”
“Well, why would she say that? Do you realize how this is going to play in the media? They’re going to have a field day with this. Tomorrow morning, it’s going to be in every newspaper and news show and tabloid in the…in the…”
I was starting to catch on.
“And that’s exactly what you want, isn’t it?”
“Bingo,” Eric said, tapping his nose.
I just shook my head. “That is disgusting and devious and dishonest, and I’m annoyed that I didn’t think of it first.”
Geraldo ate it up. He even aired a second “special edition” show later that night, recounting the scandal for his prime-time
audience. Well, I’d like to personally apologize to Geraldo. Yes, you were duped. Bobbitt did not get anyone pregnant on my set. They were just trying to generate a little extra hype, and you just happened to be the best media outlet. But it wasn’t my idea, I swear.
As long as I’m making amends, I should probably also apologize to Jerry Springer.
A few weeks after the Geraldo fiasco, the cast flew to Chicago to appear on Jerry Springer’s talk show. With no prior warning, Bobbitt told Jerry that he had “a very special announcement.” I had no idea what he was talking about—once again, I had been kept in the dark—but I expected the worst. Bobbitt kneeled in front of Tiffany, kissed her hand, and said, “I want to keep the baby.”
The crowd jumped to their feet and gave Bobbitt a round of applause. I couldn’t believe they were buying it.
“John, do you really feel this way?” Jerry asked.
“Yes,” Bobbitt said, cozying up to Tiffany on the couch. “We’re in love with each other, and I want to do the right thing.”
It was one of the few times that Bobbitt gave a decent delivery. He’s a terrible actor, but he was so sincere and doe-eyed that I almost believed it myself. Never mind that the baby didn’t exist. The audience wanted this soap opera to have a happy ending.
The next day, the announcement made national headlines yet again. From New York to Los Angeles, Bobbitt’s imminent fatherhood was treated like hard news. And with all the free advertising, Uncut continued to fly off the shelves.
Months passed, and the story moved to the back pages. Nobody noticed when Tiffany didn’t bloat with pregnancy. Neither Springer nor Geraldo followed up when the make-believe baby never materialized. It was just another forgotten scandal, one that could have easily been debunked if anybody had bothered to pay attention.
I should feel bad about all this.
I don’t like deceiving the media or using them as pawns in the porn promotional machine. I know Springer and Geraldo personally, and I like them both. The last thing I want is to con a friend, but come on, guys, had you been in my shoes…
There was a sequel, of course. With the kind of money involved, why wouldn’t there be?
But we needed to do something different. Nobody was going to buy another video just to see Bobbitt’s mutilated cock in action yet again. It was just our good fortune that Bobbitt came up with a reason on his own. He decided to get a penis enlargement, and he allowed us to film the entire operation for the movie. The surgery involved removing fatty tissue from his ass and inserting it into his penis, stretching the ligaments nearly to the breaking point.
Bobbitt not only fully recovered, but his penis actually looked bigger. A little misshapen, maybe, but definitely bigger. It looked like a snail that had gorged on something a bit too large for its digestive tract. It was skinny on top, wider in the middle, and then skinny again at the bottom. It was less a penis than a haggis-filled tamale.
We had everything we needed for a sequel. And we called it, of course, Frankenpenis.*
I played the title role of Dr. Frankenpenis, the power-crazed doctor who operates on Bobbitt and gives him his remarkable penile extensions. The story followed Bobbitt as he travels to Las Vegas to recuperate and have sex with naughty nurses and health-care professionals. Bobbitt was able to do all of his sex scenes unassisted, which came as a great disappointment to Adam.
“I’ve got some bad news for you,” I told him. “We don’t need you to hold Bobbitt’s cock and jerk it off this time. He doesn’t need the shots anymore.”
“I don’t jerk it!” Adam screamed. “I’ve never jerked it! Why do you keep telling people that?”
Frankenpenis did not do as well as the original, but it still did better than most films, and it featured a cameo by famed rapper Ice-T. The Bobbitt well was clearly running dry, and I met with Mark Carriere to discuss our next move.
“Nobody wants to see Bobbitt anymore,” Mark told me. “I’m cutting him loose.”
“It’s a shame.” I sighed. “I really thought we were on to something.”
Mark’s eyes lit up. “What makes you think we aren’t?”
“What do you mean?”
Mark slapped an open fist against a newspaper on his desk. “The world is filled with B-list celebrities looking to cash in on their fifteen minutes of fame. And we’re just the guys to help them do it.”
That’s what I loved about Mark. It wasn’t enough for him to spot a trend. He had to create his own trends.
With Laurie Holmes, John Holmes’s widow. (Courtesy “Dirty Bob” Krotts)
chapter 16
VERTICAL REALITY
“Divine, honey, where are you going?”
Divine Brown had toweled herself off and slipped back into her clothes so quickly that nobody in the crew had noticed. She’d just finished her first sex scene for the day, and apparently she thought that nothing else was required of her. I had to chase her before she finally stopped.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There seems to be some misunderstanding here. You’re not done.”
Divine looked at me with a blank expression. “Whaddayamean?” She pointed with her head toward her naked costar, who was lying on the bed and watching his erection disappear like the Eiffel Tower being demolished in slow motion. “He came, didn’t he?”
“Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean we’re finished.”
Divine paused, contemplating what I meant by this. I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes as she replayed the events of the last five minutes and tried to determine if there was some step she’d missed. It was like she was trying to do the math in a complicated physics problem.
“I don’t get it,” she finally said.
“We still have to shoot the soft-core footage. And we need to get some reaction shots and different angles. There’s still a lot more to do.”
Still nothing. I might as well have been speaking in Yiddish. I gently took her arm and led her back toward the set. “Just one more hour, and we’ll be finished,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through everything.”
I should have seen this coming. I just assumed that Divine would know the difference between an adult movie and her regular line of work, prostitution. For her, a job ended when the guy popped. She just collected her money and stumbled out of the car. But porn was a bit more complicated. Sure, it was still essentially about having sex. But I’d hoped that the crew, the cameras, the lights, and, well, the fact that she was having sex indoors would clue her in that this wasn’t the same ol’ “wham-bam, thank-you-sir.”
Her most infamous trick, Hugh Grant, was also an actor. But I suppose that just blowing an actor doesn’t automatically instill a person with a working knowledge of film production. It’s a shame, really, because if she’d had any idea of what that blow job would lead to, she would’ve asked Hugh for a few acting tips rather than her usual cash compensation.
Mark happened to be on the prowl for our Bobbitt follow-up when the scandal broke, and Aaron Gordon and a fellow named David Hanz Schmidt approached Divine about starring in her own adult movie. The three of us quickly threw together a script, which we called Sunset & Divine: A Doc-HUGH-Drama. As with Uncut, I based much of the story on actual events. I included the infamous blow job in the front seat of Hugh Grant’s car, of course. But that alone wouldn’t have been enough to substantiate a full movie, even a plot-deficient adult movie. So I added some filler to flesh it out to a full two hours. A lesbian threeway in a prison here, a sexual rendezvous with a randy lawyer there, and voilà! We had a porno.
I found a British actor named Mark Davis to play Hugh Grant. Aside from the obvious similarities in their accents, Mark also bore a slight physical resemblance to Hugh. Well, except for the uncircumcised penis. As far as that went, we were just guessing.
I took over the role of Divine’s lawyer. The actor I originally hired failed to show up for the shoot, and, with no time to recast, it was down to either me or the on-set caterer.
As for Divi
ne, once she stopped fumbling for a door handle the moment she finished a scene, she was actually quite good. She had an innate sense of how to perform on film. She knew to tilt her legs to the side so that the camera had a better shot of the insertion. She knew to pull back her hair during a blow job, how far to arch her ass while doing doggy, and even how to aim a guy’s cock for the most photogenic pop shot. All in all, she was a pro, and I’d happily hire her again if given the chance.
Mark rushed Sunset & Divine into video stores, and it did a modest business. It didn’t do Bobbitt numbers, but with roughly forty thousand copies sold, it still performed well above the industry norm.
With Uncut and Sunset & Divine, Mark and I were two for two. We’d made porn superstars (however temporary) out of an ex-Marine who’d lost his penis and a street hooker. In our self-made genre of quasi-reality, semicelebrity, scandal porn, we were (at the time) the uncontested leaders. It seemed like nothing could stop us from churning out an endless string of hit adult titles.
Assuming, of course, that we could find another willing participant.
I’ve been very fortunate when it’s come to casting star talent in adult films. When celebrities have wanted to try their hand at porn, more often than not they’ve come to me. I’ve directed everyone from football players (a former Miami Dolphin) to horror scream queens (Linnea Quigley) to cult-film actresses (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls star Edy Williams). Some did soft core, some did hard core.
But for every legitimate star who has wanted to appear in my films, there’ve been a few who came close but ultimately changed their mind. Here’s a short list of my most heartbreaking near-misses and almost-rans in celebrity porn.
1. Heidi Fleiss
In 1997, the Hollywood Madam was busted for operating one of the biggest prostitution rings in Los Angeles. Soon after the arrest, her ex-boyfriend and business partner, Ivan Nagy, showed us a sex tape that featured him and Heidi in action.