According to the Houston Chronicle, A Republican candidate for state representative apparently wrote and appeared in a soft-core adult film featuring women jogging naked.
Harold Gunn, locked in a primary race against District 135 Rep. Gary Elkins, R-Houston, said his movie, The Great Texas Showoff, is "just no big deal."
"It was a blast, something I did 20 years ago," Gunn said. "My God, I have been around forever. It's just no big deal, it shows I am a communicator and that's all."
Gunn, who received writing and producing credit for the film, appears in it as a sportscaster and a comedian in a topless club. He also has an unbilled cameo as a masked jogger. Elkins, who has served in the House since 1995, was not amused.
"As the father of three daughters, I find it disgusting and deplorable," Elkins said, "and I feel his actions clearly speak for themselves."
Gunn, who has been endorsed by several Republican elected officials and organizations, said he is unconcerned about what voters will think.
"There is nothing questionable about my past, I am probably the most open person in this city," Gunn said. "They can do whatever they want to me because I don't care. Get mad at me and get mad at every actor who ever appeared in a turkey or anything more than G-rated."
The Great Texas Showoff is not rated, Gunn said, because it was produced for the cable market but never sold. The movie is not available to the public but a copy was obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
The movie, most of which takes place inside a topless club, features nude women dancing, jogging through neighborhood streets and lathering themselves with motor oil. Gunn said the movie is not pornography.
"There is no sex and no dirty language," Gunn said. "It's as tasteful as it can get with naked women in it. But they are all pretty." Currently host of a syndicated outdoor radio show heard locally on the conservative KPRC-Radio, Gunn is a longtime fixture in Houston media and advertising markets. He is the former host of Captain Harold's Theater of the Sky, which was canceled by KPRC-TV in 1991, and for 20 years hosted the KUHT-TV auction.
Gunn said the fact that his adult film, made around 1983, resurfaced during his first campaign for public office shows how low politics has sunk.
"I thought I had seen it all in advertising and entertainment," Gunn said. "Never in my life have I walked through such crap. No wonder people don't run for office anymore."
Gunn and Elkins, who is a businessman and consultant, are vying for representation of the largely Republican northwest Houston district that includes some of the Memorial villages. There is no Democrat in the race.
