“So I’m at this party and hanging and schmoozing up the girls and there across the room is Russ Hampshire and Russ catches my like eye if you know what I’m saying and and goes, like, you know, ‘Hey kid, c’mere’ and so I do I go over I mean this is Russ fucking Hampshire you know what I’m saying here and I do I like go on over to where Russ is at and Russ comes over to me and goes, ‘Scotty, I been watching you. I like your style. I’m a good judge of people, and Scotty, you’re good people. I never heard one person say one bad thing about you.’ [Keep in mind that this is Scotty telling this story. Note how verbatim he gets Hampshire’s dialogue. Note the altered timbre and perfectly timed delivery. Note the way it never even occurs to Schwartz that a normal US citizen might be bored or repelled by Scotty’s lengthy recitation of someone else’s praise of him. Schwartz knows only that this interchange occurred and that it signifies that a big fish approves of him and that it redounds to Scotty’s credit and that he wants it widely, widely known.] ‘Kid, I just want you to know you’re fucking OK in my book, and if there’s anything I can do to, you know, help you, anything at all, I just want you to say the word.’”
…End of vignette, and now Scotty — like Max, like Jasmin, like Jenna and Randy and Tom and Caressa — looks around the table, examining his auditors’ faces for the admiration that cannot possibly fail to appear. What is the socially appropriate response to an anecdote like this — a contextless anecdote, apropos nothing, with its smugly unsubtle (and yet not unmoving, finally, in its naked insecurity) agenda of getting you to admire the teller? The few seconds after, with the vignette hanging there and Scotty’s eyes on your correspondents’ faces like fingers, were the first of countless such moments over the AAVNA’s weekend. How is one expected to respond? It was very uncomfortable. One of yr. corresps. opted for “Gosh. Wow.” The other pretended to have had a brussels sprout go down the wrong way. (back to text)
30 (Apparent pun accidental… although one of your corresps., on receiving Filth’s overall review in the fleeing taxi, responded that surely we had penetrated as far into the core of Max as any sentient organism could ever want to penetrate. Filth’s subsequent rebuttal, which consisted mainly of a long string of unsubstantiatable Max Hardcore stories, is, for basic legal reasons, here omitted.) (back to text)
31 Mr. Tom Byron, by the way, who broke into the industry in the mid-’80s as a young man whose adolescent skinniness and Howdy-Doodyish mien were as compelling and distinctive as his penis, is now having the same weird thing happen to his face that Christopher Walken seemed to have happen to his face sometime after The Dead Zone. It’s not just that Byron’s freckles are now gone or that his eyes have taken on a dead menace — the actual skin of his face has become shiny and sort of plasticized-looking, overtaut in the way a death mask is overtaut. For anyone who remembers what Byron looked like as a kid fresh out of the University of Houston, his face now after thirteen years at the top of his trade is a chilling contradiction of the industry’s claim that it’s all about pleasure and unfettered play. (back to text)
32 (physical location of this Hall, if any, is unknown) (back to text)
33 [Laughter, cheers.] (back to text)
34 Let us note that the slick, full-color 15th AAVNA Official Program is itself an advertiser-sponsored document, its lists of categories and nominees scattered among full-page production-company ads hyping the nominated films themselves. This doesn’t seem beyond the pale — certainly Variety does the same sort of thing at Oscartime. Other ads in the AAVNA Program are for things like Wet Platinum — brand lubricant —
STAYS SLICK EVEN UNDER
WATER… NEVER DRIES… WILL NOT HARM LATEX!
— plus several from California Exotic Novelties Corp., maker of the RAMROD Penile Pump, of Doc Joc’s Incredible Jack-Off Device, and of the “Anne Malle Facsimile Fullsize KNEELING DOLL”:
• KNEELING POSITION — READY TO BE TAKEN
• EXCITING ANAL PENETRATION
• RIPE LUSCIOUS SQUEEZABLE BREASTS
• VIBRATING ACTION
• BEAUTIFUL BLACK HAIR
BEND OVER and TAKE ME NOW!!!
Whether these ads are niche-directed at industry Insiders (doubtful, although they’re pretty much the only ones who are going to see the Programs), at retailers, or at plain old mooks is unclear. (back to text)
35 There are 45 official voters listed in the Awards Program. Here are some of their names: Avie Chute, Rich C. Leather, Marlon Brandeis, Roland Tuggonit, Stroker Palmer, S. Andrew Roberts & Slave Girl (so actually there are either 45 or 44 official voters, depending on whether Slave Girl gets her own vote or is just along to rubber-stamp S. Andrew Roberts’s vote). Oddly, Ms. Ellen Thompson appears on the list both as Ida Slapter and as Ellen Thompson, so one sort of wonders just how many ontologically distinct voters there actually are. Nor does an independent Big 6 accounting firm tally the ballots in secret under armed guard or any of that Oscar-type security. According to Slapter/Thompson, the Awards voting is “secret,” but the completed ballots are all turned in to Paul Fishbein and Gene Ross, who are the Publisher and VP (and Fishbein a co-owner) of Adult Video News, and who thus have an obvious interest in happy sponsors and healthy ad revenues. The whole thing inspires something less than rock-solid confidence. (back to text)
36 What many of the top woodmen resemble most are gymnasts. They’re compact and muscular and move with the liquid economy of athletes, as if equipped with internal gyroscopes. Little of their physical grace is ever visible on tape. (back to text)
37 We are not kidding — the Oscars are brisk and minimalist compared to the AVNAs. (back to text)
38 (e.g. Debbie Does Dallas, Behind the Green Door, something ill-lit with John Holmes in it, The Devil in Miss Jones, etc. — nothing identifiable from Deep Throat, though, and definitely nothing involving the statutorily infamous Traci Lords…) (back to text)