HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—It's not as if Dustin Diamond is a name that's been all over the news of late. Sure, he's done a few movies and "reality" shows, and was even the voice of one of the dogs in Marilyn Chambers' last movie Porndogs: The Adventures of Sadie, but it doesn't look as if anyone's beating down his door offering huge dramatic (or even comedic) roles. Trouble is, what most people remember about him was that he spent more than a decade starring in the pre-teen comedy series Saved By The Bell and its spinoffs.
Indeed; Diamond was so intent on distancing himself from his earlier "beloved nerd" persona that he decided to become a "bad boy" for a while—but now, according to an article on Daily Beast, he's decided to try to reform his image, and apparently that means copping out to a few blunders he's made and lies he's told in the past—like the claim that he didn't perform sex in the "celebrity sex tape" he sold to Red Light District seven years ago, Screeched.
When asked by Daily Beast interviewer Kevin Fallon whether Screeched was part of Diamond's "bad boy" phase, Diamond said that not only had he used a stunt cock in Screeched, but that he had scripted lines in the VH1 "reality" series Celebrity Fit Club, where he appeared for eight episodes in the 2007-'08 season.
"That was all scripted. None of that was real," Diamond admitted. "I had to gain weight to even be on the show. I had to keep it between me and producers. I couldn’t tell the other cast members about it."
And what about the sex tape?
"Yeah, that was all designed by me," he said. "What I didn’t foresee was that it would backfire in the way that people would think, 'Oh, he's a jerk. He's hard to deal with. He's an ass.' ... But it [Celebrity Fit Club] was directed reality, scripted reality. It wasn’t real. But after doing that I faked the porn, and that was an ordeal."
But when Fallon agrees that "doing porn was an ordeal, yeah," Diamond recalled the era, saying, "At the time everyone was doing a sex tape. I thought that it was crazy, because when you grow up in front of the camera you know better... and then Paris Hilton came out with one. My buddy and I were sitting on the couch and her video came on the news, and they were saying that it was confirmed that she had business relations with this video and was making money off of each one sold. They said it was rumored she made $14 million in revenue from that. So my friend said, 'Damn, buddy! A Screech video's gotta be worth at least a million!' I was like, 'You know, you might be right!'"
He wasn't. And it appears that Diamond didn't even have sex in the movie—or at least, so he now claims.
"I put the thing together," Diamond told Fallon. "I got a stunt wang. I'm not an idiot. I'm not going to really put myself out there. So I got a stunt person to come in. And I thought, what if this thing makes $3 million? That's nothing to scoff at. But after that, people looked at me dirty, like, 'He does porn.' No, I don't! I faked that one at a chance for millions. I'm an opportunist, really. Needless to say, it did not make millions. But I had to take the shot. I don’t know anyone who wouldn't."
Robert Plarski of Pulse Distribution, which now owns the Red Light District catalog, told AVN that sales of the title, which came out in 2007, "probably peaked in about 2010," and that he's now got about 100 unsold copies in his warehouse.
"I just took a look at the disk, and there's nothing with his face and his weiner in it at the same time because it's POV," Plarski reported. "It's him and two girls in a hotel room, and unless he's got a body double—because there's a couple of points where he'll aim the camera at the mirror and talk into the mirror when he's holding the camcorder, so unless there's literally someone else to, like, cut and put their weiner in there—but there's nothing of his face and his body in one shot. I suppose it's possible that it's somehow him, but there's nobody left around here to confirm or deny it one way or the other."
So: Is he or isn't he? If anyone would like to buy a copy of Screeched, to which AVN gave a 4A rating, to check it out—or even the one that did make money, 1 Night In Paris—email Robert here.
And if Diamond actually does know any Hollywood personalities who'd actually "take the shot," he can direct them here.
