Paul Cambria to Debate Luke Ford Saturday Night
Though Luke Ford had been self-touting a debate between himself and Vivid attorney Paul Cambria, radio host Ed Powers said it was news to him that any such event had been earmarked for his show. Nevertheless, Powers made some quick calls and set the confab for Saturday night. Ford will tackle such weighty issues as whether Cambria has mafioso connections or not.
Cambria got into the Ford picture when Ford began making bizarre fashion attacks on Vivid head Steve Hirsch, those being the least of a series of libelous accusations against the company, including HIV charges against the Vivid girls. Vivid first threatened to sue Ford then opted, instead, to have Cambria debate Ford.
[By the way, see the director's cut of the Unforgiven where Clint Eastwood, instead of gunning down Gene Hackman, debates him.]
"We're going to have him [Ford] on the hot seat," Powers said. "We're going to do it right this time. We have four hours. I think it will be a great forum. We will invite all the people out there who want to have something to say to Luke, to call. I think it will be a great show also for Detroit callers.
Powers' show airs on KLSX, 97.1 FM in Los Angeles. The show starts 11 pm.
AVN Upgrading Website to CNN Proportions
Scott Batson has been brought on board at AVN as editor to handle news flow at avn.com The aim is to give AVN's website news punch on par with mainstream media sites. Look for news coverage and updates consistently throughout the day.
Ford Libels Goalie's Eddie Wedelstedt on Radio Show; Says Industry Would Espouse Child Pornography If It Could Get Away With It
Behaving like a pair of Leonarto August's on Exxxtasy, radio show hosts Conway & Steckler did everything but suck Luke Ford's cock in what can best be described as a particularly shameless radio love-in aimed at sniffers. The sniffers being the radio show hosts. Failing to check Ford's credentials at the door, C&S readily embraced Ford as an expert on matters of porn, describing him as an author of a "comprehesive overview" of the business. Comprehensive being a very maligned word, even Ford had to admit on at least one occasion, that there were other people in the industry who knew more about the adult business than he did.
Observing that "Luke Ford is a great actor's name," Conway asked him if a Ford was his car of choice. Ford wouldn't say what kind of car he drove "There's probably so many gunmen out there dying to shoot it up," Ford said. Ford talked about his book and said that "death threats have been a way of life for me over the past four years."
Ford: "The latest issue of Rolling Stone, the August 19 issue, has an article on me, including a death threat from one of the leading pornographers, Eddie Wedelstedt, who, at the Adult Video News Conference in Cancun, Mexico this springtime, along with many of the other leaders in the pornography industry, said Luke Ford is a threat to society but people should not worry about him because he's going to end up as a spot on the pavement."
[Gene interjects: "The Rolling Stone piece never mentioned Wedelstedt by name. No matter, the alleged incident is fevered, fictional workmanship attributable to Ford. Ask yourself this question, why did Ford wait until an August cover date issue to report on something that happened in May? He would have been up on his own site with it, the day it happened."]
"Wow, that's wild," said Conway. "Do you take those seriously? You must."
"Somewhat seriously," said Ford. "I've talked about them at times with police. I was assaulted at the AVN Expo, the Video Software Dealers' Association meeting a few weeks ago. The brother of Hollywood producer Darren Star came over and demanded that I stop writing about his brother. When I said I can't do that, he reached back and slugged me...he took me by surprise...it was a sucker punch...he punched me in the stomach. Security came, the LAPD came.
[Gene interjects: "There is a full scale police investigation under way."]
Ford: "This is not an industry that's used to being legal. This is not an industry where you typically say I'm going to sue you, buddy, it's usually, 'I'm going to break your legs, buddy.' This is an industry that's been underground for a long time, and so it attracts an underground element. Nice people, generally speaking, do not enter the pornography industry."
"Actually, most people I've met in the porno business are awfully nice chaps," Conway observed..."the guys who are producing and directing, and the women seem very nice as well. Maybe that's just a front."
Steckler brought up the book, The Bottom Feeders written about the Mitchell Brothers and the adult industry.
"I think that's the best book ever written about the adult industry," Ford said. "It's far better written than my book. [John] Hubner did a superb job in talking to people. These two [the Mitchell Brothers] pioneers in pornography ended up using drugs and abusing people, and, finally, one of them up murdered the other. He got it away with it with a clever lawyer and served about three years in jail. He said he was deluded at the time. What a joke. This guy Jim Mitchell gets away with murder, and he's one of our leaders in the sex industry."
[Gene interjects: "Note Ford's use of the word "our".]
Ford:" Getting away with murder is a fairly common thing in the leaders of the American and worldwide pornography industries." Ford went on to describe his book as 252 pages of information and "much of what the porn industry would not want you to know."
Steckler offered this particularly lucid comment: "Isn't the religious right and the long history of Puritanism in this country, the Judaeo-Christian attitudes toward sex...this country is way, way behind Scandinavian countries, way behind Europe, we get hysterical if a little bit of skin is shown to a young person, accidentally, but then if someone gets stabbed a thousand times in a movie it's perfectly acceptable. I blame a lot of the criminalization of this activity on the religious right."
Ford: "I don't at all. I take the opposite view. I have sympathy for what you're saying, and it feels good. I don't look to Europe for moral guidance. This is the continent that's brought us Communism and Nazism. This is a decadent society. They have torture shows in Amsterdam. I mean that's not a place that...for decency. People making pornography are not members of the religious right. Members of the religious right raise families, I'm not a right winger though I'm fairly religious, a religious Jew. The people who make pornography are secular, they're criminals, they usually come from drug-dealing backgrounds. I respect the American puritan heritage. I respect the view that sex should be kept in the marital bottle. I don't up to that but I respect that."
Steckler said he thought people like Pat Robertson and [Jerry] Falwell are "devils". "They preach much more hate than love. They have no business representing religion on any level."
Ford: "I like Falwell and Robertson."
Conway: "You like Robertson? What did you think about his comment that Florida is going to burn unless they get all the gays out of there?"
[Gene interjects: "Now watch Ford sidestep."]
Ford: "I think he goes over the line. I like Falwell more just as a human being even though he will say some wacky things."
Conway: "He did say some pretty bizarre things. One of them was tinky, winky..."
Ford: "I don't see that as bizarre. I mean there have been gay figures in costume, and the entertainment industry does have a disproportionate number of homosexuals, and to simply point that out is fine by me."
Steckler: "There should be a quota?"
Ford: "The entertainment industry is a secular, hedonistic industry filled with sexual perversion and other forms of sin." When asked, Ford said that he thought homosexuality was a perversion. "I believe that a human being has a propensity for doing perverse things," said Ford, "be it heterosexual or homosexual. I believe thast human beings should sexually control themselves. I believe that's the ideal even though I don't always live up to it."
Conway brought up the Charlie Sheen story and asked about the girls involved.
Ford: "They are porn stars, Teri Starr and Charlese L'Amour. They are well known to regular connoisseurs of this genre. Teri Starr grew up the child of parents who are just really into pornography. As soon as she turned 18, she was out there stripping. She's done over 200 videos. Charlese L'Amour's been in the industry for about two years. She was married and is married to a porn star, at the moment, Rick Masters, though, at the moment, they're separated. They're well known. They both admit they're alcoholics. They both had quite a few problems with alcohol. Teri Starr has passed out many times on sets. She's passed out many times with a man's penis in her anus."
Conway: "That gets my attention. You're absolutely ruight, there's no reason to pass out when you're getting f'd in the a."
Ford: "She's on something called GHB. She's done that a lot and just totally passed out in the middle of sex scenes. She's had a lot of problems. It's really heart-breaking to be around this industry that much and see how it draws people with problems. It's not just that this industry wrecks people. Frequently it's the beginning of the road up for them. It attracts a lot of lost souls."
Steckler: "I want to know why somebody who's ostensibly revulsed and thinks pornography's a very bad deal why he continually wants to get close to the fire."
Ford: "I'm a mixed human being like many of us are. I have impulses that are totally contradictory. I have impulses whereby I want to get close to God and lead a pure and holy life. I have impulses where I want to get close to Ginger Lynn and do things that are decidedly unholy. Ginger Lynn has had her fling with drugs. She had her fling with Charlie Sheen. Charlie Sheen has done so many porn girls. He's a running joke in the porn industry. It's like if you need somebody's phone number, oh, call Charlie Sheen, he'll have her phone number."
Ford readily admitted that he's not heard from either Starr or L'Amour about the Sheen incident. "Oh, but I've talked to people," Ford said. "At least one of the girls was drunk. She jumped the wall. Once you start throwing a bunch of surprises at people like jumping walls...he [Zippy] came out and whacked her which is disgusting, but you don't go around drunk and jumping into peoples' private property. Then her friend Teri Starr came to help her and the guy apparently whacked her, too. Then he whacked on the taxi driver, as well. We're talking about a lot of troubled people whacking each other. Charlie's had all these notorious problems with drugs whacking women. He's on probation with whacking his previous porn star girlfriend about two years ago. It's like a conflagration of badness."
Steckler brought up a tidbit from the book that 1978 was a good year for porn. Conway said that he didn't like the old porn films. "The one's on film never show anything. The one's now on video, those are worth a lot more..the A-cam."
In referring to a question on Traci Lords, Ford said this:. "Let's be honest, the industry would love to use 15 year-old girls if they could get away with it. Many people in this industry would love to use 12 year-old girls," Ford added. "Max Hardcore says he'd be happy to use 12, 13, 14 year-old girls if he could get away with it...the only reason that the industry doesn't make child porn today is because it can no longer get away with it. When it could get away with it, in the early 70's, there was child porn."
Conway: "There was kiddie porn in video stores?"
[Gene interjects: "There were no video stores, in the early 70's Conway, much less kiddie porn]
Ford: "In video stores, in sex shops. There wasn't that much. It was mainly in New York and San Francisco, but there really was a child porn industry. Then there was a big furor about it. The sex industry started pushing the envelope. Deep Throat came around in 1972 and within weeks, you had girls doing dogs in live shows on Melrose here in Los Angeles. People in the sex industry will push every button they can. As far as they can get away with it. There was child pornography. There was all sorts of wild and wacky stuff. The mainstream people got upset, so in 1977, Congress passed very strict laws against child pornography and there have been about five major Congressional bills since then. There has been no child pornography in the industry since 1977, at least until the rise of the Internet. There was naughty stuff done with 9 year-old girls."
Conway: "Congress, sometimes, is a party-killer. Not when it comes to the kids. Bestiality, that's illegal?"
Ford: "You can get it in New York."
Steckler: "I don't know anyone who's into it at any level....donkeys, any of that crap."
Ford: "Some American porn stars have gone to Europe and done animals on videos. Where do you go after you've done 50 men in an afternoon? What's next? Chessie Moore did a famous video with a dog. The most famous porn star for doing animals committed suicide 'cause she said she was being hounded by the media too much."
When asked Ford said Jenna Jameson was the biggest star currently. "When I was at the AVN Expo, she drew the longest lines. Dozens of people were lining up to get her autograph. She's on the E! Channel all the time."
Conway: "Thank God somebody over at the E! Channel woke up."
Ford: "I think the entertainment industry, in general, has more in common with the porn industry than it soes with mainstream America."
Conway: "Basically we're all whores. I always wanted to be one."
Ford: "Traci Lords was really a phenomenon. She was 15, she had fake ID that said she was 21. The industry just opened up its arms and legs to her. She used it for three years. She made hundreds of thousands of dollars. She made over 70 videos, she was calculating, she was smart, she was not abusing drugs. She was in control of what she was doing. And, then, shortly after she turnd 18, she got arrested. No one is really sure who tipped off the FBI, but it may very well have been Traci Lords herself, because she was able to sell the one videotape she made at age 18 to Caballero for $100,000 or more. She sold it after she had been arrested. Now she claims she had been on drugs the whole time and didn't know what she was doing. That's baloney. It's like the Linda Lovelave Syndrome. 'I was abused at the point of a gun.' That is nonsense."
Conway: "This is the greatest business in the world. Luke, you've captured another aspect of this business. I love this business. I love the porno business. It never lets you down....did anyone go to jail for that [the Lords' case]."
Ford: "A couple of producers had to fight court cases for years. It cost Jim South tens of thousands of dollars. There's this one producer, who, a year or so later, knowing it was illegal to sell these Traci Lords tapes, was selling them on the side. An LAPD officer came and got him... Ruben Gottesman, he was selling them on the side. His office manager was Steve Orenstein who now heads Wicked..these are collectors' items. It's illegal to sell them, but they're sold in New York. They're sold in Europe which has a different age of consent. Ruben Gottesman got busted for selling child porn.
Conway: "How could the guys know? She said she was 21. She had a California driver's license that said she was 21. This is not a business that does a lot of background checks on actresses:"
Ford: "This is not a business that attracts a lot of morally-sensitive people, too, that are really concerned."
Steckler: "It's also not a business that's particularly good on your looks. What's the equation? A year in porno is like five years on Devil's Island. Take a look at Linda Lovelave, the intervening years. She looks scary as hell."
Conway: "In order to do five strange guys in one day you have to be on something. You can't be sober walking in this business. I bet most of the chicks in the business are on drugs and are going for it."
Ford: "Human beings are very complex. Some people absolutely thrive in this industry. Nina Hartley thrives..she's glowing, she's respectful towards people, she's intelligent. Juli Ashton...there's some really friendly people who seem to have their act together, and the industry just loves to trot them out there for the media. For most people, this is an industry that will grind them down. Most women who perform sex in front of a camera, this will something that will haunt them for the rest of their life. This is like the center..."
Conway: "Hey, hey, hey, don't talk women out of doing this. What's wrong with you?"
Steckler: "There was always the tale that Joan Crawford had done some porn-stuff. Is there anyone on TV that has something buried?"
Ford said there was but he wasn't as up on his gay porn as some of the Conway & Steckler Show's producers.
Ford: "There have been a lot of directors who have worked in pornography such as Gregory Dark. His real name is Greg Brown and he's worked under the name Gregory Hippolyte. He's a director of heterosexual pornography, and now he's been making music videos to great success the last two years. He's been negotiating to shoot a real movie for like $40 million. There are quite a few directors like Gary Graver who works in porn under the name Robert McCallum. Roberta Findlay was a pornographer in the 1970's and 80's who's made a lot of B-grade films; Fred Lincoln has made some B-grade films; Jerome Tanner..Hal Freeman."
Conway: "Know Stephanie Swift? She's terrific. What is she like?"
Ford: "She's quiet, she's softspoken. Most people like her. Her story is similar to many in the industry in that she did have a marriage that busted up. Funny that with your wife...a bunch of other guys."
Conway: "The husbands need to be more understanding. If your chick is going to go out there and make 100, 200 thousand dollars a year, she's got to bang a few guys to bring home the bacon, guys have to just understand that.
Steckler: "I think you're absolutely the perfect person to be telling us about this because, your objectivity is probably unique."
Ford: "It's very hard to write about anything or to socialize with any group and to oppose it. Only someone with a particularly twisted psychology as a Luke Ford would do that. It's not easy for me to go into a room full of pornographers and know that they all, absolutely hate me. For some reason, in my personality, and I got it from my father, I thrive on adversarial journalism."
A caller asked about Max Hardcore breaking away from Zane.
Ford: "Max Hardcore has changed pornography more than any other person in this decade. He's the most influential pornographer of the 1990's. And he touches on something...excitement and sexual passion thrive on aggression, on people being nasty to each other. Max Harrcore has become known as the nastiest pornographer for just abusing women in front of the camera and for just treating them really rough. It's this nasty element which drives pornography. Pornography is driven by the breaking of taboos and doing things which everyone thinks are wrong. Hardcore has perfected this and one of the ways he did this was a series called Cherry Poppers where he would take 18 to 25 year-old women that he dressed up as 12 and 13 year-olds. Max Hardcore is the pioneer of that. He started out in Zane in the early 1990's along with John Bowen. Zane intitially made the most nauseating pornography of women throwing up, or they're drunk, etc.
"I do want limits somewhere. I'm not sure exactly where, but unless you put limits there is no low that pornographers will not descend to. I think society needs to put up some sort boundaries or limits. Anyway, Hardcore split from Zane. They had a big fight for years. This industry is filled with rebellious people who don't like to take orders. And there's always these eruptions of anger and they finally decided to settle things.
Conway kept encouraging callers-in. "Luke knows more than anybody."
"He's one of the most articulate spokespersons with a critical tone that I've listened to," Steckler added. "Usually from the religious right or whatever, you're getting a lot more emotional arguments than the condemnations of satan and God."
One caller-in said that he worked on the Annette Haven film Anna Obsessed and noted that Haven had a scar on her foot and would not let her foot be photographed.
Conway chastised his screener for letting that call get through.
Ford: "Annette Haven was very picky, probably one of the five most beautiful brunettes..." Ford then got bleeped on a reference.
A caller-in asked about Ron Jeremy.
Ford: "Ron Jeremy is the tightest person in the history of porn with his money. Normally people in the porn industry just spend wildly, but Ron is very careful with his money. He's also among the most intelligent people in the industry. He's a great interview, and he's also the most recognizable person in the industry. More preople will recognize Ron Jeremy than will recognize Jenna Jameson or Janine or any of the other porn stars. I'm just as cheap as Ron."
Another caller-in asked about an upcoming Mitchell Brothers film which will star Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez.
Ford: "Jim and Artie Mitchell were pioneers in San Francisco pornography in the late 1960's. They started up a stripper joint, the O'Farrell which is very famous. They made Behind the Green Door in 1972 with Marilyn Chambers. It was one of the three highest grossing porn films of all-time."
A call from Bryn Prior, managing editor of AVN, prompted the following exchange:
Bryn: "Hey, Luke, it's Bryn."
Ford: "Hey buddy."
Conway: "A friend of yours, Luke?"
Bryn: "I wouldn't go so far as to say friend. We work in the same industry."
Ford: "You're a writer, right, for AVN?"
Bryn: "Yeah. I'm the managing editor of the trade magazine for the industry."
Ford: "Right, Bryn's been in the industry for about six years. He used to do magazines for Western Visuals..now he's at Adult Video News. The porn industry has one trade magazine. It's Adult Video News. It's very, very influential. It's referred to as the bible of the industry, and Bryn is the managing editor and has been for about two years."
Steckler: "This is as good a time as any. Bryn, can I please have some free porn videos?"
Bryn: "Well, if you guys had taken the job I offered to you as reviewers, you would have gotten some."
Conway: "Why didn't we take that job?"
Bryn: "Because you never called me back. Because you're a bunch of lazy bastards."
Conway: "Did it pay anything?"
Bryn: "Yeah. A whopping $15 a review."
Conway: "I knew there's a reason we didn't take it. Imagine sitting around watching porno and review it? That takes the fun out of it."
Bryn: "And you have to watch it. That's the worst part....I just wanted to throw out there, Luke, take a minute and tell these guys how well respected you are by the industry."
Ford: "I'm absolutely hated by the industry. Considering that I'm usually called the most hated person in the industry, my competition is people like Marc Wallice who's widely regarding as giving HIV to up to five or six actresses. The industry absolutely hates me. They loathe me. They wish I was dead."
Bryn: "Now is there any reason why."
Ford: "Yes, because I'm very critical of the industry. I bring out things that the industry does not like to face..."
Bryn: "You don't think it also might have something to do with the fact that you frequently have many of your facts wrong which you yourself will freely admit.."
Ford: "Yes. I will freely admit. When you hate someone, you will usually come up with something which may or may not be the truth. Even if I'd been 100% perfect, the industry would still hate me. I've made mistakes. At times I'm obnoxious. I'm a flawed human being. I have psychological faults and flaws."
Conway: "You were depressed for a long time, weren't you?"
Ford: "I had chronic fatigue syndrome for years. There are many people in the industry who know far more than I do. The real underlying reason is that I provide a perspective on the industry which the industry resents. We have very two different perspectives on the industry, and they loathe mine."
Conway: "Bryn, you probably have to agree with us, though, that even though the business may not love this Luke Ford, ultimately it's probably good for this business because he does point out the interesting facts behind the business that generates more business for porno."
Bryn: "The only problem that I personally have with Luke, I think his stuff is entertaining when I get a chance to read it. I don't read it as regularly as a lot of people including some people in my office do. There are people who can't stand Luke, who can't wait to read his site everyday."
Conway: "That actually generates more interest for the business."
Bryn: "Sure, and I think his stuff is very entertaining, and I think for what it is, that's fine. What worries me is when people start considering Luke to be a legitimate source of hard news. He himself will admit, when pressed, that he's very bad at that. He's a very bad journalist. As dumb as that sounds, at the magazine I work at, that is our job. We're the only people who treat it like a real industry and real news. That's the only thing that bothers me. For entertainment purposes, or if it's just to sit around and BS and have fun, I think Luke's stuff is great. I don't have a problem with him personally."
Steckler: "Of all the visual art forms, yours is driven by mostly men's libidos which really don't give a rat's ass what Luke has to say. When I want to get off, I'm not going to ask what did Luke say...I don't really think you guys should be so sensitive to Luke."
A follow-up called brought up the Marc Wallice issue wondering how many actresses were still alive.
Ford: "On April 21st, 1998, I wrote on my website that Marc Wallice is widely believed by many of his peers to have HIV. I created a huge stir in the industry. I remember a reporter from Adult Video News e-mailed and said, 'This is full of baloney, if Marc Wallice is HIV, we here at Adult Video News would know about it.' Enough of Marc's friends got on his case and forced him to come down and take a proper HIV test which revealed that he was HIV positive. My reporting on him probably saved lives and forced him to stop performing sex, at least on camera, and whether this can be proven, he's widely believed to have been the cause of transmission of up to seven actresses in the industry. None of them have died...it's what people have always been expecting, and it really started hitting just last year when five actresses tested HIV positive. It's devastated homosexual porn. Well over 100 performers in homosexual porn have died of AIDS...the homosexual porn pusiness is about 5 to 10% of the hetersexual industry. It's played a significant role in homosexual history. Until recently, it's been the only place where homosexuals can see homosexuals being homosexual. Homosexuality has generally been verboten in mainstream television and films."
Steckler: "I don't think it was the only place. I think the Pacific Design Center would be the other place you could go.."
Ford: "Pornography has been a way to showcase sexual possibilities or if you want to say perversions. It's a way of making what most people in middle America think is deviant, okay. Gay porn has served to make homosexuals and others to think that male-to-male sex is okay."
A caller asked about the Houston 500, that she actually only did 261 guys.
Ford: "It may be closer to 80 guys. I know that this is going to come as a great shock, but scrupulousness, accuracy and truth-telling is not one of the strong points of the pornography industry. The gangbangs will run the guys through, they bring up five on the stage and she may be penetrated by one while looking at one other. Because they got five guys up on the stage they'll count it as five. And after sixty seconds have gone by, they move those five on by. 'Let's move the tote board, guys.'
Conway: "Nobody thinks that Houston did 600 guys."
Ford: "She might have done 80 guys."
Conway: "80 is a lot of humping."
A Ford sympathizer named Jeff called in.
Jeff: "His website is one of a very, very few doing any kind of documentary journalism about this field."
Steckler: "I didn't know we were judging his harshly."
Jeff: "The guy from AVN did....he won't send you any videos, so what kind of man is he? But I read his site. I don't even watch that much porno. But I read his site because the personalities behind it are pretty fascinating."
Conway: "Trust me. Luke Ford, if he really hurt the industry, probably wouldn't be sitting right here."
Jeff got off the best line in closing when he said he "jacks off like a weasel."
