Hollywood—1969 to 1970
From Hippie to Movie Mogul
After the unqualified success of The History of Pornography, bolstered by the fact that even an obviously sham-documentary like Sexus in Paradise didn’t get “busted,” I had a sudden epiphany and decided to shoot a hardcore boy-girl loop and incorporate it into The Rise and Fall of Ricky Shuter, the feature that I had shot before undertaking the two documentaries and had put off finishing.
At this point I realized that I had to make some real money because, while I had received salaries for the two “documentaries,” Ed owned them lock, stock, and barrel, and I would see absolutely nothing from them in the way of future royalties.
Bear in mind that in the chronology of things, this is all happening in the final months of 1969 and early 1970, when all of the theaters and mini-theaters across the country were still playing only softcore fare—with the exception of the so-called “documentaries.” It was a bold move to do something like this in a film that wasn’t really a documentary at all, but I was sure that it would end up paying off—that is, if I didn’t end up in jail.
When I showed the finished film to Ed DePriest, he was a little hesitant about releasing it. I told him that I would retitle it The Rise and Fall of Ricky Shuter or How to Make a Stag Movie. That would make it seem sort of like a how-to film. He gave me a cold look that told me that he wasn’t buying that idea, so then I told him that the hardcore scene could always be cut out of the print if a theater was hesitant about taking the risk and the resulting film would still have enough running time to qualify as a feature.
He eventually ended up distributing the movie. You really have to give Ed credit for having some balls in this respect. Hardcore films were still illegal and there was a stiff federal penalty for shipping them across state lines. Since he was the one shipping the film interstate, he would have been the person to take the heat if the film was ever busted. Fortunately, it wasn’t.
While the film was not the huge success I had expected it to be, it did end up making some money. Later, when I asked Art why the film didn’t end up doing as well as I thought it would, he gave me a very simple two-word answer: “The title.” He was absolutely right. The Rise and Fall of Ricky Shuter or How to Make a Stag Movie was way too long for a theater marquee. It was another valuable lesson learned. From then on I tried to keep the titles of my movies to two or three words.
It was at the offices of Canyon Films that I first met Alain Patrick. Alain was a talented young actor from France who had appeared in a number of small parts in several mainstream features and television episodes, as well as a few somewhat larger roles in softcore adult feature films. His experience as an actor also occasionally got him work as a director for adult films, and at that particular time he was working as a director for Ed DePriest.
I began working with Alain on a few 16mm softcore “one-day wonders” that he was shooting for Ed. We would shoot the films for $750 and Ed would pay $1,500 for them. That meant that we doubled our money for one day of work. It occurred to me that as quickly as we both worked and since the talent, camera equipment, and lights had already been hired for the day, we could easily turn out two of these feature films in just about the same amount of time that it took to make one, and I could sell this extra film to someone else and make even more money. The only additional expense would be the cost of some more film stock. So I would come up with a quick idea for a second film and after Alain shot his film we’d shoot our film with the same lighting setup.
Both films used the same actors and, of course, the same sets. This form of filmmaking became known as the “piggyback shoot.” Later it occurred to us that we could cheat a little bit and double-camera the sex scenes since the films would end up going to two separate markets. If we had enough film stock we could sometimes shoot some additional footage, which we would cobble together with footage from the next shoot and eventually end up with three feature films.
Alain would put up the money for the additional film stock for the extra film, and since Linda and I had credit at the lab, I would take care of the film developing, postproduction, and cost of the release prints. The trick was to have the film sold before thirty days, when the lab bill became due. Since the people at the lab were used to seeing me pick up and sign for the short beaver girl loops I had been shooting up to that time, everything was working out well.
After a shoot, Alain would edit one of the films and I would edit the other. He would deliver his finished film to Ed and in the beginning I would sell the other film outright to another distributor and, after taking out the production and lab costs, we would split the profit that was made on the second film.
The first such film was a software feature called The Girl from Denmark, which starred a tall blonde, Nordic-looking girl named Jane Tsentas who we billed as Jan Tims. Like many girls in the business, Jane was an aspiring actress whose career had gone nowhere so she had turned to modeling and acting in softcore sex pictures.
At that time, the office that Alain and I shared was right next-door to Canyon Films, and it was always a bustling hive of frantic activity. A steady flow of young, would-be actors and actresses constantly paraded through, looking for a quick job so they could eat and pay their rent.
Occasionally a tousled old wino dressed in a gaudy aloha shirt, baggy old suit pants, and slippers or sandals would show up trying to peddle his screenplays, but since we always wrote our own we didn’t need any. One day I was ushering the man out of the office as Art walked in and when Art greeted the guy, I asked, “You know him?”
“Sure,” Art replied. “He used to be a producer and director, you know.”
“Who is he?” I asked, curious now.
“His name is Ed Wood.”
I’d never heard of him, and according to Art he had made some of the worst films that had ever been made, which probably accounted for his present situation. Ed DePriest had made a softcore sex feature about cavemen from one of his screenplays with the catchy title of One Million AC/DC.
However, within a few months the production of softcore films had no longer become economically feasible. Emboldened by some recent court decisions, the mini-theaters had begun demanding more and more hardcore fare. Not wanting to be caught with our pants down and our dicks in our hands, we immediately switched gears and went full bore into hardcore feature film production.
Of course, it was still illegal to shoot hardcore pornography in California or any other state of the union, but since it was now showing relatively unmolested in a growing number of theaters across the country while the authorities were trying to define the obscenity laws, there was an ever-growing demand for product and those brave enough to take the chance to provide it would reap the rewards.
Since the Supreme Court had thrown the ball back to the states with regard to laws governing the exhibition of adult films, the states decided these laws were to be interpreted by individual community standards. This made things even more complicated. It would be impossible to make a film that adhered to all the different state laws and community standards. Of course there were the obvious no-nos that we would never even consider, such as underage sex and bestiality, so those didn’t pose a problem at all.
As the result of all this confusion, the Adult Film Association of America formed, and Linda and I became charter members. The AFAA brought together producers, exhibitors, and distributors and provided a forum that examined all of the legal problems that we faced, and its avowed purpose was to provide a united front toward solutions.
Linda and I attended the first AFAA Convention in Los Angeles. This gave us a chance to meet with some of the people that we had been doing business with across the country who had previously only been known to us as voices over the phone. In the course of the convention, we managed to meet some new contacts and make a number of film sales.
Since I hadn’t been in the business for all that long, there were a lot of people there that I didn’t know, so at some of the parties I was often alone in the corner nursing a drink by myself. This happened to be the case when I was suddenly startled by a big, somewhat ugly and quite scary-looking guy who came over and began to talk to me. I remembered that earlier I had seen him standing off to the side of the crowd by himself, and I had wondered, at that time, just who he was.
Surprisingly enough, he had a very shy manner and was a very soft-spoken man. He introduced himself as Norm Arno, and said that he heard I made good pictures. The adult film business was a small insular world at that time, and I was somewhat surprised by the fact that I had already gained a good reputation in it, so I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of this windfall whether it was deserved or not.
Norm Arno told me that he made pictures, too, and that at one time he used to be a baby photographer. I didn’t know if he was putting me on or not because he had such a scary face, but he had such a gentle manner that I put off making any kind of hasty rush to judgment about the matter.
In the course of the years that followed, I would run into Norm Arno many times. He was an interesting guy. Apparently he had some powerful connections in the business because he subsequently became the West Coast distributor for the Peraino family’s blockbuster film Deep Throat. In fact, Norm became so successful that when video came in, he opened one of the biggest distribution companies in the country, VCX, along with a partner named Tommy Sinopoli.
Although Norm Arno and I never directly did business with each other, whenever we happened to run into each other he would always come over and talk to me as if we were old friends. He would tell me about his health problems—he was addicted to drinking a quart-bottle of vodka a night and he feared that it was starting to really catch up with him. “So why don’t you just cut down on the drinking?” I asked him.
“Easier said than done,” he replied.
Still, he was making money hand over fist, but all this would do little good for him when his world came crashing down on him several years later. In 1986, Norm Arno was sentenced to five years in prison for interstate transportation of obscene material as the result of the Miporn trial. Only a few months later, his wife Lori killed their two boys on Christmas Eve. The tragedy left Norm completely devastated.
The AFAA Convention was meant to educate and inform us about the legal aspects and ramifications of the business that we were in. We quickly learned that to get by with exhibiting a film containing explicit sexual scenes between consenting adults, the film in question had to have “redeeming social significance.”
To us, that meant that at the end of our film we had to add a tagline of spoken narration that informed the audience that the characters in the movie were eventually punished by the law for their depraved acts, or had ended up divorcing their spouses for the wanton infidelity depicted in the film. This was easy to do and eased our minds somewhat, but it was still not a surefire guarantee that a film would not be busted. And this still did not solve the major problem that it was simply against the law to make these films here in this country. Hollywood had no desire to become known as the porn capital of the world, so the Los Angeles vice squad began actively enforcing the old “Blue Light” laws from the previous century that had banned prostitution, oral or anal intercourse, and the like. They were now grasping at straws, but the harassment that resulted ended up being a big headache for me and everyone else in the business.
Prostitution could be defined as someone receiving money to perform a sexual act. It was classified as a misdemeanor, but whoever paid that person was classified as a conspirator. What hung over all of our heads in the business was the dreaded felony charge: “Conspiracy to Commit Prostitution” as well as the other counts related to specific violations of the outdated Blue Light laws.
Naturally, none of us wanted to get arrested. The only way to prevent this was to be very careful and not get caught in the act of making a film. Was it worth taking the chance? Alain, Linda, and I thought that it was, so we decided to go for broke and quietly, cautiously, formed a little production company that we called Lucky 3 Productions.
For me it was all about the experience of making films and battling censorship. For Alain it was all about making money. He had an ex-wife and a beautiful young daughter to support. He was a talented but struggling young actor whose film and television roles, usually limited to bit parts and walk-ons, were too few and far between for him to make ends meet in spite of the fact that he had a high-powered agent in Paul Kohner. Alain and I would handle the production end of the business. Linda would be in charge of sales and distribution.
Lucky 3 Productions began churning out film after film to meet the demand of a seemingly insatiable market. It was an exciting time, and we were busy chronicling the new era of sexual freedom that had taken the country by surprise. The hardcore porn part of the business seemed to have sprung up overnight, and we were fortunate to have been there ready and waiting on the ground floor.
Since we were now making films for ourselves and retaining the negatives for distribution and sale, we made a deal with Alain, which stipulated that he would receive the initial monies that came in up to a certain amount as a buyout for his share, since he didn’t wanted to be encumbered with owning product that might be considered illegal.
After that, Linda and I would take over complete ownership of the film for further distribution and sale through Chinn-Adrain Productions. Naturally, over a period of time, we stood to make a lot more money than he did, but then again, by getting the receipts we initially got in from the first sales, his investment was guaranteed to show immediate profit. On the other hand, we were taking most of the risk in making all of the sales and consequently ended up owning the negatives. This was both good and bad, because while we could make money from any subsequent print sales, we could also have them confiscated at any time by the authorities.
We never knew who might be an informer. One of the girls in the cast might have been arrested for prostitution and to cut herself a sweeter deal with the police she might have agreed to let them know when and where there was going to be a porn shoot.
We were forced to take strict precautions. Naturally, in retrospect, all this intrigue was somewhat fun and exciting. We were like kids, knowingly doing something that we shouldn’t do while trying to get away with it.
We would have members of the cast meet on neutral ground—for example the parking lot of the Denny’s Coffee Shop. They would then pile into our cars and we would caravan to the location, taking a roundabout route so that we could check to see if we were being followed. We were constantly on the lookout for cars that might be following us. Sometimes we would even change cars along the way as extra added insurance.
Once we were safely at the location, as an added precaution, no one was allowed to use the telephone or leave the premises until the entire shoot was completed. Fortunately for us, this was the era before cellular phones, and we could readily keep an eye on all the landlines so people couldn’t call out to disclose our location.
Although the first hardcore porn loop I had shot was done in the living room of Linda’s apartment, we wisely decided that we should not continue shooting there. It was not only a little too close to home—it was home, and in Los Angeles, locations for this type of shoot were always available.
Linda lived in a spacious upper-floor two-bedroom apartment with high ceilings and wooden floors in an old building on Fourth Avenue that was probably built at the turn of the century. She used one bedroom for sleeping and the other as her commercial art studio, where she would do all the posters and advertising art work for our feature films. Her studio also served as our film distribution office, from which she would call the theater owners and sub-distributors to sell our product.
Living directly downstairs from us was a budding young Japanese-American actress named Momo Yashima and her young Filipino-American actor boyfriend Jesse Dizon. Both Momo and Jesse were nice people and great neighbors who were very friendly and easy to get along with. They were very broad-minded in their outlook and what we were doing for a living didn’t faze them in the least.
Momo Yashima’s brother Mako Iwamatsu was also an actor, one that had already made quite a name for himself in Hollywood by giving powerful performances in such films as The Sand Pebbles (for which he received a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination), Tom Gries’ excellent but highly underrated sequel to the epic film Hawaii titled The Hawaiians, and the Sam Peckinpah action film The Killer Elite. I thought it was ironic that in some of his best roles he played Chinese characters.
Mako was also one of the directors and driving forces of the East-West Theatre Group, which was composed of Asian-American actors and playwrights whose goal was to bring about better cultural understanding between the Orient and the Occident, and pave the way for better opportunities for the Asian-American artists and authors in the American entertainment industry.
He was intrigued by the fact that I directed porn films and told me that he had had some discussions with a friend of his, the renowned Japanese director Oshima Nagisa, who was planning to make a feature film that would probably be considered pornographic. Mako was, at the time, unsure as to whether he actually wanted to become involved with that project.
Mako told me that no major Japanese studio wanted to have anything to do with Oshima’s project because of the subject matter. The movie that Oshima eventually made in 1976 turned out to be the extremely controversial motion picture that was eventually released here under the title In the Realm of the Senses.
Meanwhile, the swinging sixties had rapidly given way to the still-swinging seventies, and business was going well for Chinn-Adrain Productions. We were churning films out on an almost assembly-line basis, and either selling them outright for around twice the production cost or distributing them ourselves to whatever contacts we had made.
Life was good, and I could only visualize that it would get better. It would not be long before two old friends from UCLA film school, Jim Bryan and Frank Millen, would walk into my office and call me a movie mogul. I had gone from a penniless hippie to a movie mogul in one fell swoop!
Most of the time, however, I was struggling to keep my head above water and remain solvent. There were profits, of course, but these had to be split with my partners. And then a new project had to be financed. When all was finally said and done, I was barely making a living—like just about anyone else working a straight nine-to-five job.