The Other Hollywood

by Legs McNeil

  Then I get a knock on the door. I was very friendly with the Ventura Police Department at that time; the local cops liked me because I was a porn star. I gave ’em porn movies, and I was fun to talk to.

  But this cop says, “You know, you’re going away for a while. You better bring a toothbrush.” I’m still loaded, so I’m thinking, “What the fuck do I need a toothbrush for?”

  FRED LINCOLN: I had to have a sit-down with DiBe—Robert DiBernardo. He believed me. Of course he did—I’m from the old school. I don’t fuck with nobody. I make a deal; I do it. I mean, that’s the way I was brought up.

  Anyway, Patty and I ended up getting married.

  SHARON MITCHELL: They brought me to Ventura County and told me there’s a warrant out for my arrest because I didn’t appear in a court case. I acted like I’d conveniently forgotten, but really I’d just put it in a pile. I was loaded; I had more important things to do.

  FRED LINCOLN: Just pandering—that’s all these cops did. They went everywhere; they went to San Francisco, and they got Paul Thomas in Oakland. But they didn’t bust P.T. They busted Patty, my wife, because she had the money. She was paying everybody, so they assumed she was the producer. And P.T. didn’t say nothin’, ha, ha, ha. Thanks, P.T.

  I was in Florida. Patty called me up—she was in a complete panic, man—and Joey Perpara bailed her out. If it was Frisco Vice that busted them, or Oakland Vice, I would say okay. But it was these same two guys from L.A.—Conte and the other guy.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, MAY 20, 1985: HARD-CORE SEX FILMS: DOES CASTING CONSTITUTE PANDERING?: “‘We tell them that they are part of an investigation involving pandering and prostitution,’ Lieutenant Conte said. ‘We make them fully aware they are a suspect in a prostitution case and tell them we’re trying to identify the main serious offenders—the producers and still photographers.’”

  FRED LINCOLN: It was bad, man. These guys would follow you—that’s how I know there was a rat involved. Patty and I used to shoot at this ranch in Valermo, up by San Francisco. I mean, you rode twenty miles on the guy’s property before you even got to the house. So it’s not like somebody saw us and reported us, you know? And these cops came right to the door!

  SHARON MITCHELL: They arrested everyone on that shoot, Backside to the Future, and scared them. I mean, these are young kids. They’re saying, “We’re going to take away your birthday presents if you don’t say that you got paid money! FOR SEX!!” So these kids are saying, “Oh! He did pay me!!!” so they can go. Me, I knew this was harassment. I knew that this had something to do with obscenity. I was going to stand my ground and make a statement; that’s just where I come from. So I knew I was going to be doing time for a while.

  FRED LINCOLN: These cops were busting everybody everywhere. Scaring the shit out of people. Telling the girls they’re going to jail for twenty years to get them to testify. These cops, Conte and the other one, were following people everywhere. People were ratting us out. I don’t know who, but I’ve heard rumors—John Holmes, Jim South….

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, MAY 20, 1985: HARD-CORE SEX FILMS: DOES CASTING CONSTITUTE PANDERING?: “‘These young ladies who appear in these pictures normally come through modeling agencies,’ said Dave Friedman, head of Entertainment Ventures, which he described as the ‘oldest exploitation film company in the United States.’

  “‘Contrary to the beliefs of our enemies, such as Citizens for Decency and Morality in Media, we do not coerce or kidnap these ladies for appearances in our movies. We use tried and true performers.’”

  SHARON MITCHELL: They brought the investigator up to interview me there. The cop that headed the investigations wasn’t a bad guy; he was reasonable because he had so much background on you that you kind of had to respect him. But this was another guy, who they’d hired to do sort of a bad-movie version of an interrogation with, with the lightbulb swinging overhead, you know: “And where were you on the night of…”

  FRED LINCOLN: I mean, how the fuck could two LAPD vice cops be busting people outside of Los Angeles? What are they doing in Oakland? It’s not even their jurisdiction.

  I don’t know how they got away with that shit because we used to go to San Francisco because San Francisco did not bother us. San Francisco would give us a permit.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, MAY 20, 1985: “Beverly Hills attorney Richard Chier is defending Marc and Tina Marie Carriere, an Indiana couple accused of pandering for hiring actresses to appear in an adult film they produced.

  “Chier said one 21-year-old woman was followed by vice officers to her Huntington Beach home after performing in a film in Coldwater Canyon.

  “‘She’s married and has a child,’ Chier said, noting that the husband knew nothing of his wife’s participation in such a film. ‘She was not a hooker. She was a happily married woman who did this as a vocation. They (police) then went into her house when she wasn’t home, knowing she wasn’t home. Can you imagine if you were home and police said they were the vice squad and wanted to talk to your wife? She came home, and they said they were going to expose her unless she cooperated and signed a statement. They put words in her mouth.’”

  FRED LINCOLN: There was one girl—I forget her name, but she was a really pretty girl, blond—that everybody said was a rat. That was when I first came out here. About 1984 or 1985. She told me that these cops told her they were going to put her away for twenty years, and she didn’t know what to do.

  Come on, you take a nineteen-year-old girl, stick her in a holding pen with hookers, and then tell her she’s going to be there until she’s forty—that’s pretty powerful shit.

  These girls aren’t street girls. A lot of people think they are, but they’re not. You know, a lot of them are just kind of like oversexed girls who like to be seen.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, MAY 20, 1985: “‘They told me if I didn’t cooperate they would arrest me for prostitution,’ said Susan Hart, a Canoga Park adult-film actress whose family does not know she appears in hard-core films. They said, ‘You don’t want a record, do you?’”

  SHARON MITCHELL: This cop was asking me, “What are you going to do when it all runs out?” He’s popping his Ps, spitting in my face. “How do you like not being a manicured porn star? Huh?! And you’ve just been here for a day and a half! Who’s paying you? Who directed that movie? And how much money did you get?”

  I wasn’t feeling very good, but I was still a smart-ass. I said, “You know, I make so many movies, I forget. But a bottle of champagne and a dozen roses would be extraordinarily helpful in helping me remember!”

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, MAY 20, 1985: “‘I was really scared,’ Hart said. ‘I didn’t want to go to jail. We went to a Burger King, and they asked me questions about others in the business, when they were going to shoot and where they lived.’”

  SHARON MITCHELL: I just made the cop fucking crazy. Suze Randall sent big bouquets of flowers, like, “Don’t give in, Mitch!!” to the Ventura County Women’s Pig Farm, where they had me stashed for three days. Then they moved me to an L.A. County facility.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, MAY 20, 1985: “Susan Hart, the name she goes by in the films, said in an interview that she was asked by Lieutenant Conte to sign a blank victim’s report against one producer, which detectives later filled in.

  “Lieutenant Conte denied Hart’s allegation and said that she was shown the report after it was filled out and that she concurred in its statements.”

  FRED LINCOLN: I sat down and asked this lawyer, “How could it be pandering?”

  He said, “Because they’re actually fucking.”

  I said, “Well, I used to be a stuntman. I blew up buildings. Was I guilty of arson?”

  “Whoa,” he said. “That’s different. That’s a movie.”

  I said, “What the fuck do ya think we’re doin’? We’re making movies, too, you idiot!” I used to get so frustrated.

  The lawyer said, “Well, you don’t understand the law.”

  I said, “You know what? I’ll tell ya wha
t I do understand. You guys have gotten yachts with the money you’ve made from us. You don’t want any of us to win because if we did, you’d have to go get a fuckin’ job!”

  SHARON MITCHELL: I think I ended up in the holding tank of Sybil Brand Women’s Prison for a couple days. I was there for a while, and I guess it became clear that I wasn’t going to say anything. And they needed everyone on the cast to say they’d been paid in order to prove their case. And Randy West and myself were the only two—probably the oldest—that didn’t sell out. We just said, “No, no. I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, MAY 23, 1985: “In a controversial test case, a Van Nuys jury found Harold Freeman, an Encino producer of hard-core sex films, guilty of pandering Wednesday, making him the first filmmaker convicted in California under a law that mandates a three-year prison sentence for hiring people to perform sex acts.”

  SHARON MITCHELL: I was kicking dope. I think they even offered me some balloons filled with heroin at one point. I said no because I was already three or four days into it. I figured I’d stick it out.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, MAY 23, 1985: “Prosecutors contended that women hired to perform in a 90-minute movie, ‘Caught From Behind, Part II,’ are prostitutes because they were paid to perform sex acts. Filmmaker Harold Freeman said throughout the six-day trial that the women were actresses.

  “‘We concluded that the acting was secondary and that the sex was primary,’ jury foreman Joan Keller said after the verdict. ‘The girls were hired for sex.’”

  FRED LINCOLN: It was bullshit. People get seven years for murder and they’re givin’ us twenty years for pandering! If they did that to pimps, nobody would be a fuckin’ pimp. Who’s gonna be a pimp if you’re gonna go away for twenty years?! Jesus!

  Hal Freeman was the only one who fought this pandering thing.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, MAY 23, 1985: “‘I will appeal and appeal and appeal until we get to the Supreme Court,’ Freeman said.

  “Freeman, 49, was arrested in October 1983, and charged with five counts of violating the state’s 1982 ‘anti-pimp’ law, under which anyone who procures another person to engage in sex is guilty of pandering.

  “Freeman estimated that he has produced more than 100 full-length sex films since 1968.”

  SHARON MITCHELL: In court they wanted the director’s real name, but they really wanted Zane’s real family name. Their real family name was very long, and it ended with a vowel. I know from growing up in New York that you don’t tell names like that.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX (FORMER PORN STAR): Were the Zanes the same as the Zacari Family? Yeah.

  FRED LINCOLN: Hal Freeman just pled not guilty, that was it. And he just kept appealing and appealing and appealing. Nobody supported anybody then.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, JULY 16, 1985: JUDGE GIVES LIGHT PENALTY TO PORNO FILM PRODUCER: “A judge Monday refused to impose a minimum three-year prison sentence on Harold Freeman, a producer of hard-core sex films who was convicted in May of pandering, and instead ordered the Encino man to spend 90 days in jail and pay $10,000.”

  PAUL FISHBEIN: I know people gave Hal money. Russ Hampshire gave him a bunch of money, but he didn’t want anyone to know. It’s not that Russ was afraid; he just didn’t want people to think he was doing it for any other reason than to help Hal. Russ is one of those guys that came to everybody’s aid. He wasn’t looking for the kudos.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, JULY 16, 1985: JUDGE GIVES LIGHT PENALTY TO PORNO FILM PRODUCER: “Calling the minimum prison term required by law ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ Van Nuys Superior Court Judge James Albracht also postponed imposition of the jail term and fine for Harold Freeman, pending appeal of the conviction.

  “‘This is a victory for me and other adult filmmakers,’ a jubilant Freeman said as he left court.”

  FRED LINCOLN: Everybody was so afraid of this pimping and pandering law. I mean, it was one frightened industry.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, JUNE 29, 1985: POLICE RAID DISTRIBUTORS OF SEXUALLY EXPLICIT FILMS: “‘Los Angeles police have conducted a series of raids this week at distributors of sexually explicit films,’ said police and film company executives.

  “Captain James Doherty, commander of the police department’s administrative vice division, said the raids were part of an investigation that would start over the weekend. He would not say how many businesses would be searched. He said the results of the raids will be announced next week by Chief Daryl F. Gates.”

  Who Dropped the Dime on Traci?

  LOS ANGELES

  1986–1987

  TIM CONNELLY: On New Year’s Eve 1985, Traci Lords was launching her own company, TLC [Traci Lords Company]. So I ended up in the women’s bathroom of some shithole club on Cahuenga with Traci and some other porn stars—and we were all doing cocaine. I can’t remember the details of the conversation—but basically Traci really wanted to be in the Directory of Adult Films.

  JIM SOUTH: Traci had started dating Stewart Dell, who’d been in the business, sort of as a producer, maybe a small-time director. He had more stories than Scheherazade.

  TIM CONNELLY: Stewart and Traci had a lot of stuff in the works. They were about to go to France to shoot Traci, I Love You. Stewart was really smooth: about six feet, very thin, long hair, very Hollywood good-looking. He could have been a rock manager. He hitched his wagon to Traci Lords.

  Stewart came from outside the business, and, he was going to take her beyond porn. He was into PR—the ultimate fast-talking huckster. And Traci was just this coked-up seventeen-or eighteen-year-old—who now decides she’s gonna do Vivid Video one better.

  TRACI LORDS: I’ve been thinking about going into makeup. And maybe producing my own films. A little of both. I want to do that in time—produce and direct my own movies.

  I get a lot of jerks as directors. You get on set. They tell you how to fuck. They tell you when to scream. And I don’t think that’s right. I think for the best results, you should just be able to go with what you feel and act how you want to act.

  What do I like most about the business? Getting paid for things I enjoy doing.

  TIM CONNELLY: All of a sudden, Traci Lords went from being this petulant child/drug addict/porn star into someone who wants to take control of her own destiny. It seemed like a half-ditch attempt to mirror what Ginger Lynn was doing, except that—as Traci would be the first to point out to you—she was going to do it BETTER!

  GINGER LYNN: I was talking to a friend I know. She liked Traci, but I kept telling her, “There’s something I don’t trust about her. Be careful.”

  TIM CONNELLY: Traci was going to be the contract star of her own company. Not only that—she was going to be the company president. Her grand scheme was to have the biggest, best porno company—all based on her. It was as if someone had told her, If you make your own Barbie doll, you’ll become a millionaire, you know?

  TOM BYRON: Traci told me, “I’m gonna be a legitimate Hollywood actress, and none of this porno shit’s ever gonna matter.” I was like, “Oh, sure, whatever, just let me rub your ass….”

  Then, literally days after her eighteenth birthday, the story broke.

  HUMPHRY KNIPE: I came across Traci’s story in the Los Angeles Times. There it was: She was underage. The breakfast I had, I threw up.

  I’ve never felt so sick in my life because I knew what they could do to me. We were expecting the Feds to knock on the door any minute.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES, JULY 18, 1986: SEX FILMS PULLED, STAR ALLEGEDLY TOO YOUNG. “Video shops and adult movie stores and theaters nationwide were pulling products featuring sex film star Traci Lords from their shelves Thursday because of an investigation by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office into allegations that she was underage when she made most of her movies.

  “Los Angeles police say that Lords, considered one of the top adult film actresses in the country, made 75 sexually explicit movies and videos before she turned 18 last May, and adult film industry officials are being advised to
stop selling and showing her movies to avoid criminal prosecution.”

  HUMPHRY KNIPE: The story Traci told us was that she was in bed with her boyfriend when the Feds burst through the door and beat him up—whatever, roughed him up—and then dragged them both to jail. She said she had no idea who dropped the dime.

  TRACI LORDS [FROM UNDERNEATH IT ALL, 2003]: “I tried to focus my eyes. The dim light from the aquarium cast a blue glow over the surreal creatures, lighting up the yellow FBI letters across their backs.

  “‘FBI!’ I gasped, wondering if it was a hallucination. Had I died and gone to hell? I spoke to the blue men and demanded to know if this was a dream. Scott was dragged roughly to the floor and slammed facedown into the carpet when reality finally hit me.

  “‘Stop it!’ I screamed as the armed men surrounded me and aimed their guns in my direction. I closed my eyes and waited for bullets to tear into my flesh. I felt sweat roll down my body.

  “‘GET THE FUCK OUT OF BED NOW!’ I was ordered. My legs trembled as I tried to obey. My eyes darted around the room and took in their smirking faces as I was tightly handcuffed and led down the hallway and out the front door.”