Has anybody else read "The Other Hollywood" by Legs McNeil?

[Crankie Avalon]

Helluva read: Mobsters, drugs, money, greed, fame (or infamy), murder, betrayal...oh, and sex, too, by the way.

What a history. What stories. Forget the movie "Boogie Nights," this was the real (non-fiction) thing.

Anyway, read it last weekend, but don't know anyone else who has yet.

Anybody?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060096594/qid=1111584236/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-2271037-4949434

[whistle]

1. How much involvement in the underground porno industry....

...is there by the religious right? Does the book expose that in any way? I have heard that there if far more involvement that we might believe and most certainly far more NYSE companies reap huge profits from porn than meets the eye.

<snip>

T h e__M a t t__D r u d g e__o f__X
A TORTURED CONSERVATIVE JEW
DISHES A GOSSIPY HISTORY OF PORN.

By Michelle Goldberg

July 13, 1999 | Luke Ford spends most of his time around porn stars, but he has a crush on Wendy Shalit, the neocon ingenue author of "A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue." Last time we talked, he had passed the afternoon skinny-dipping with X-rated actresses Kendra Jade and Shelle Pearson, but he was still mooning over a recent encounter with the poster girl for virtue and virginity. "Published in Commentary at only 19," he said dreamily. "I was really curious to see what she looked like, so I went to her reading. She's a little cutie, I kind of fancied her. I think we'd make a good couple -- Miss Modesty and Mr. Pornography."

He's not kidding. Ford, one of the most controversial figures in the porn universe, is a man torn between twin obsessions -- hardcore sex and conservative Judaism. He has elevated moral and spiritual schizophrenia to surreal proportions, and the split is most obvious in the two Web sites that he spends his life running. On Lukeford.com, he operates as the Matt Drudge of the triple-X industry, tirelessly reporting scandals, news, gossip, innuendo and minutia, earning $42,000 a year in ad revenue and the loathing of most of porn's major players. In his spare time, though, the sex industry's most notorious muckraker -- and the son, bizarrely, of a Seventh Day Adventist evangelical preacher -- maintains dennisprager.net, a site devoted to conservative writer, Jewish theologian and right-wing radio host Dennis Prager.

<more>
<link> http://www.salon.com/books/feature/1999/07/13/ford/index.html

[Crankie Avalon]

2. No, the book didn't talk about that.

It covered the period from the pin-ups and old "nudie-cutie" loops of the 50s to the AIDS outbreak in the industry of '97-'98.

The entire book is composed of quotes by people in the industry, as well as those who tried policing them, edited together to tell the story. Performers, directors, producers, distributors, FBI agents, vice cops, etc. They all speak in their own words with no omniscient narration judging them. You get to decide for yourself about everyone's point of view.

Maybe the religious right wasn't directly involved in the manufacture of porn yet during the era/time that the book covers? Maybe that's a more recent phenomenon of just the past few years. The book covers the Meese Commission of the early 80s, though.