filed under Interview | trackback link
Legs McNeil
Interview by Peter Landau
Legs McNeil is fast becoming the historian of the hysterical. From his definitive oral history on the burgeoning punk scene in ’70s New York City, Please Kill Me, to his just-published oral history of the adult film industry, The Other Hollywood (Regan Books), McNeil takes his subjects seriously and provides a you-are-there intimacy unheard of, certainly in the world of hardcore pornography.
With a colorful cast of characters and a story line that begins almost innocently before detouring to the dark side of mob murder, drug addiction, and suicide, The Other Hollywood reads like a soap opera where the camera doesn’t fade out in the boudoir. But what’s most remarkable for a tale in which sex is doled out freely, is that the stories are what keep the reader riveted. The suck and fuck is just the vehicle driving it all forward.
McNeil is a man obsessed, and he explains the trials and tribulations of his eight-year ordeal in writing The Other Hollywood, half of which was spent trying to convince a publisher on the marketability of the tome. Times have changed, but McNeil hasn’t. He’s still nonjudgmental of an industry that has only recently begun to be treated with respect in the mainstream media. But then that’s the kiss of death for selling fantasy.
Is it true that you were so obsessed by this project that you gave up a rent-controlled New York City apartment to pursue the book?
Yes, but it was like $1,500 anyway. It was a studio. It had a fireplace and a big terrace, but it was too small.
What motivated you to devote so much time and effort to a history of the adult film industry?
It was a story that had never been told before, and I kept reading these porn books and they were all theory, no one ever said what it was. And also it was excellent for doing an oral history because it had thirty core people who’d been involved intimately with one another for thirty years. That’s kind of a prerequisite for an oral history, like Please Kill Me.
That’s true; there was enough of a cast of characters to give it a narrative arc. It starts off almost innocently with horny hippies, and then things get very dark quickly. But doing an oral history, you’re dealing with people’s subjective points of view. When personal recollections don’t jibe, like with the Linda Lovelace dog-video narrative, do you have a sense for what the real story is?
Linda was a liar. She lied to me. You know what, she wasn’t that smart. I hate to say that. If you recount her story she’s a victim of Chuck Traynor, then she’s a victim of her second husband, then she’s a victim of Women Against Pornography. She’s always a victim. Once you find that, you say, “OK, something’s wrong here.”
So you edited the book to allow Linda to speak her mind, but do you discredit her in a sense?
I wasn’t discrediting her; I was just asking other people about her. She’s written Ordeal and that had become what everyone thought the porn industry was and I knew it was wrong.
What were some of the biggest stumbling blocks you encountered over the seven-year toil?
Well, there were so many murders [laughs]. I wasn’t really counting on that many murders. I was like, “Oh, great, we have to solve another murder.” At the time, the cops had an informant on the Eddie Nash case. They reopened the Eddie Nash case and they blamed it on me. They said that, because they had an informant they didn’t want to give her away. I had [the book] excerpted in Penthouse so it was not a great scene.
What about getting people to talk to you? Though you use some source material, it seems as if you had pretty good access.
Yeah, I just moved into the neighborhood, became friendly with people, Sharon Mitchell, Jane Hamilton, people like that.
Jenna Jameson isn’t in the book--she’s such a big name right now--though you do stop the story before that period, but were there people who wouldn’t talk to you?
The story just could have gone on forever. There were a lot of people I did talk to that didn’t make it into the book. At a certain point their stories became, I’m not going to say redundant, because that’s not fair to them. But it was just sort of like, “Where do we stop?”
Where did you stop and what did you leave out?
I left out a lot.
I understand the book could have been twice as long, and as is it’s over six hundred pages. Are you going to put them into the paperback edition?
No. I don’t think they’ll ever be published. There are lots of juicy parts, but you won’t see them from me.
Have the subjects of your book read it yet, any reactions?
No. I was just working on it and everyone kind of gave up when the book was coming out because it took eight years. “Well, the book’s coming out.” “Yeah, right, Legs.” Most of them gave up on it.
Reading the book I found that there were similarities between the porn stories and those of the punks in Please Kill Me.
That’s kind of why I did it. It was the ’70s, so of course drugs and the sex were the same. I felt familiar with it. I felt like I was the only guy who could actually do this. And that makes me sound like I’m an egomaniac, but I’m not saying it in that way. I’m saying it in the way that I had the time and the money and I wanted to take it seriously. Plus, I’m not a real moral kind of guy. I don’t really judge people. So I thought in that way I was prepared to do it.
That’s one of the great things about the book, it allows the participants to speak for themselves without any editorializing. I have to say, personally, reading the book I felt a mixture of attraction and repulsion at the same time.
I must say I did too; at times you think this is the greatest scene in the world and at times you think, “Ugh, this is disgusting!” But you probably think that about the punk scene too. Another good thing is that the porn stars really didn’t know who I was. I was kind of anonymous.
How did you gain their trust?
I was writing porn scripts. My friend Jane Hamilton, who is [porn star] Veronica Hart, read the book. She read Please Kill Me and she said, “Oh, God, I feel so clean.”
How did you end up writing porn scripts, such as the Marilyn Chambers comeback movie Still Insatiable?
Kelly Holland, who directs under some guy’s name. But she never showed me any of the ones I wrote for her. I thought, “Hey, this would be fun.” Who doesn’t want to write a porn script? I wish she sent me the movies though. I think they had to change them. They certainly changed the Marilyn Chambers one.
With your book, Jenna Jameson’s bio, and the big-studio documentary Inside Deep Throat, what’s your take on the mainstreaming of pornography?
There wasn’t any eight years ago when I started the book. I realized there wasn’t any more rock and roll eight years ago and I realized they were going to be pulling stuff from porn, and the more they pulled stuff from porn the more it was going to be mainstream.
When I was there [porn] was kind of going through its last dying stages from the mob handing it over. It’s sort of like with the bootleggers started Seagram’s. Most of the porn studios are pretty legitimate nowadays. And porn is kind of boring now.
When you get it on your computer all the time it’s not so illicit. I think it was more exciting when it was more illicit, didn’t you? I wanted to tell that story. The modern porn industry is kind of boring.
Plus, Jenna Jameson wrote a book, so why do I need to tell her story? She’s great. I think Jenna’s wonderful, God bless her, but I’m more a historian.
Do you see the future of pornography online?
It’s already online. It seems to me, definitely.
What’s your personal history with pornography?
I was the assistant director on a porn film in 1974 called Blow Dry that wasn’t very good, but I was eighteen years old, the year before we did Punk magazine, and I fell in love with one of the porn stars. I kind of did it then and forgot about it. I realized, “Gosh, I was there at the beginning of the porn industry, you know?”
The modern porn industry was two years old, if you judge it from Deep Throat, which I do. And I wondered, “Wow, I wonder what happened to those people?” That got me thinking about it.
What’s your take on the perception that the porn industry is a colony of damaged goods?
That’s like saying punk was a colony of damaged goods. Everything is. Until it becomes slick and accepted by mainstream America everything is damaged goods. You could say that about the San Francisco rock scene. They were all damaged goods. Janis Joplin died, blah, blah, blah. Come on.
I hear you’re pitching a book with John Holmstrom. Is that the next project?
I have to finish the Joey Ramone bio with Mickie Leigh. That’s what I’m doing now. Then I’m doing the John Holmstrom book after that. It’s called Watch Out, Punk Is Coming. It’s the making and unmaking of Punk magazine.
Am I leaving out anything?
I don’t have the slightest idea [laughs]. You get out of it what you get out of it. I don’t even know if it’s any good. After eight years I’m like, “I should have put in this, I should have put in that.” I’m having kind of buyer’s remorse.
What do you feel remorseful about?
I don’t really want to talk about it because I don’t really know. I think I did a pretty good job. I don’t know if I concentrated too much on the mob. But that interested me.
Do you stay in touch with the people in the book?
Oh yeah. I just talked to Jane [Hamilton] the other night. And Sharon Mitchell called me, but I think she’s in Europe now. I’ve been working on getting [the book] to the printer. It just came out. I moved from L.A. in August, and then I’ve been working on the book ever since then, so I really haven’t had a break.
Are you back in New York?
No, I’m in Pennsylvania, in my new house.
Were you happy to get out of Los Angeles?
Yeah, very, I don’t know anyone who isn’t happy to get out of L.A.
| 
