Los Angeles—Hawaii—1983 to 1987
Return to Paradise
Living in the paradise called Hawaii with my family, lazily watching my kids grow up, was all fine and good, but eventually we began to run short on money. I contemplated getting a job in the islands, but a strict nine-to-five schedule day after day didn’t appeal to me. It’s not that I was afraid of work, it’s just that I’d gotten spoiled after doing a month or so of concentrated labor to make enough money to take a few months off and enjoy life. It was time to go back to the mainland to scare up another film project.
I arrived back in Los Angeles to discover how much things had changed in a very short time. There was no film production going on at all. Everything seemed to have totally switched over to video. The old film companies I had worked for were no longer around, and dozens of video distributors—businessmen, not film people—had taken their place.
In the estimation of these new adult-video tycoons, it was the female stars that were responsible for the way a movie sold, not the director. The female stars were now making the big bucks and the directors were paid peanuts. In fact, many of the newer video distributors saw no need at all for directors since anyone could now go in their backyard with some willing models and turn on a video camera. Of course, much of the new product currently on the market reflected this marked downturn in quality, but these distributors countered by saying that their audience was interested in the sex and not the story. It was a sad situation to return to.
After meeting with Jack Remy, we decided to go to Las Vegas to attend the annual Consumer Electronics Show where all the latest innovations in video were being showcased. Remy had recently made the switch to videography and was anxious to see all the new equipment. He persuaded me to come along because virtually all the adult video distributors would also have booths there, so I’d have the opportunity to see if I could get myself some work. According to him, there were still a few distributors who wanted to turn out good product, but not many.
The 1985 Consumer Electronics show turned out to be a real circus in more ways than one. There was a special section that had been set aside for the adult entertainment vendors and entrepreneurs. When we got there, I noticed a few familiar faces and a whole lot of unfamiliar ones. Jack began introducing me to some of the distributors that he had worked for, telling them that I would be available to direct some features.
One of the distributors, a guy I had heard of but never met, appeared to be particularly interested. “So you’re Bob Chinn,” he asked, as if somehow I didn’t quite fit the image of myself that he had in his mind.
“I’m pretty sure that I was the last time I looked in the mirror.”
My attempt at dry humor seemed to have the effect of a lead balloon, because he simply ignored it by introducing himself before saying, “I make the best adult video features in the business. My product consistently records the highest sales figures of any company bar none.”
This was beginning to sound pretty good, so I nodded and tried to put a knowledgable expression on my face. I realized I would have to start learning a lot more about the video business.
“I’ve heard of you,” he went on. “I’ve heard a lot about you. You want to make video features for me, you just might have a deal, but if we make a deal I want to make sure that I have an exclusive.”
This took me aback and I muttered, “An exclusive?”
“Yeah, you’ll have to sign a contract,” he said as he clipped the tip of a cigar, rolled the cigar around in his hand, and lit it.
Working under contract exclusively for a single company wasn’t my style, but times were tough and if the money was right I felt that I might possibly be persuaded. This guy seemed serious, so things were beginning to go better than I’d expected. Apparently this big distributor had heard of me, and he figured that if he’d heard of me then a lot of other people probably had. The thought of using my name on some of his product must have appealed to him, because he left his booth and invited me out to the casino bar for a drink.
As we sat in the casino nursing our respective Scotch and sodas, I opened with, “I’ve got a couple of great scripts.”
“Don’t need great scripts,” he countered, relighting his cigar.
“I have some lousy ones too.”
“Don’t matter whether they’re good or lousy,” he informed me sagely, “Just so there’s not too much talking. Talking takes time away from the sex. That’s what the customers are paying for, the sex.”
“Of course,” I said in an attempt to placate him, “but there still has to be…”
Before I could finish he raised his hand and interrupted me with these words of wisdom: “Just put in enough story so we don’t have to worry about taking a bust for the sex and we have a deal.”
I was suddenly appalled. This was what we had been doing years ago back in the beginning days of porn: throwing in a bare thread of a story so our film could meet the redeeming social significance criteria. But in those days we were forced to do it that way because our budgets were too small. Now, with the emergence of the new adult video industry, we seemed to be going back to those no-budget days in more ways than one. Everything we adult filmmakers had worked for during all the past years toward improving the quality of adult entertainment seemed to have disappeared in one fell swoop.
I regained my composure and somewhat reluctantly returned to the business at hand. After clearing my throat noisily, I asked, “So what do you make one of your video features for?”
“Five grand,” he replied.
I looked at him in pure disbelief. “Five grand,” I decided to inform him, “will only cover my salary!”
“You got to be kidding.”
“I’m not,” I said with positive finality as I finished my Scotch. “I suppose that’ll be a deal-breaker, then.”
I’d never directed an entire feature film for someone for less than $5,000, but I soon realized that if I was going to get any work, I was going to have to modify my expectations. Since I wouldn’t compromise what I felt that my services were worth, I put forth a plan.
At that time, videos of these adult film features retailed for something like seventy-five dollars, but the wholesale price for them was only a fraction of that. I proposed that I would take the remainder of my salary out in product at the wholesale price, which I would end up flogging on the Hawaiian market. Since the videos cost the companies less than a buck apiece to make, and since Hawaii was not a particularly big market for them anyway, this ended up being something that was acceptable to them.
Since I had to fly in from Hawaii, I tried to set up mostly back-to-back shoots to make it more worth my while. That way, I’d be collecting two salaries each trip I made, and by piggybacking the shows I could also bring in the features on these miniscule budgets, which seemed pretty agreeable to those concerned.
I made deals with Fred Hirsch’s Adult Video Corporation (AVC) and Danny Mamane, a quick-talking New York producer and Israeli gentleman who owned several companies, one of which was Tara Video. Fortunately, Danny wanted his projects shot on film, which appealed to me. As I continued walking along the aisles, I saw a familiar face: none other than Jim Talmadge, my old school buddy from Santa Monica City College, manning the booth for Cinderella Distributors, Incorporated (CDI).
After a brief reunion, Jim introduced me to his boss Charlie Brickman, and we worked out a deal for me to direct some films for them. We would be shooting the Cinderella projects on 16mm film because Charlie said that there were still some theaters in Europe playing film. Here in the United States, these features would be released direct to video because American theaters were no longer booking triple-x adult fare.
The first shoot that came up was a back-to-back film shoot on 16mm for Danny Mamane’s Tara Video. We used a couple of fairly decent scripts Deborah had pounded out while seated at the kitchen table after the kids went to sleep.
The first film, Blondie, starred Gina Carrera and a bunch of other attractive young girls I’d never worked with before. It seemed as if in only one year’s absence a whole new crop of talent had suddenly popped up out of nowhere.
The story was set in the Bahamas, which we quickly recreated at a large mansion with an expansive tropical garden back yard in the Hollywood Hills. One important prop that the production manager was having difficulty with was a colorful old Bahamian taxicab, but I noticed that one of the crewmembers had a dilapidated old car he didn’t mind us garishly painting and decorating, so we pressed it into service.
The next picture, retitled Nice ’n Tight for its video release, was far more complex even though most of the action basically took place during the course of a long day and night in a seedy Las Vegas motel.
Elliot Lewis had moved to Los Angeles, where he was now working in the mainstream film industry. I had been out of the loop for a couple of years now and I needed a production manager to give me a hand with these new films. Because he was between jobs, and also for old times’ sake, I suppose, he reluctantly agreed to help me.
I enjoyed working with everyone in the cast, and there were no problems at all during the shoot. A lot of this was due to the hard work of a very capable and industrious production assistant who wore many other hats during the course of production named Alida Gutter.
The film critic Michael Copner described Nice ’n Tight as, and I quote, “an epic project turned out on a shoestring budget. Naturally, some things had to suffer. Chinn’s direction of the acting was rushed, but he manages to maintain his accustomed quality of eroticism throughout. All of the sex scenes are carefully and tastefully shot, even the double-penetration scene with Janey Robbins, Nick Niter, and Dan T. Mann. The Bunny Bleu-Herschel Savage scene is a little comedy gem. The scene between Kay Parker and her ‘nephew’ is a standout, as is the scene between Colleen Brennan playing the prostitute and Greg Derek as the cowboy.”
I’m glad that someone enjoyed this film because I sure enjoyed making it, even though I didn’t have a lot of time to shoot. The bottom line is, the film got done. It didn’t get done right and I had to live with some pretty unsatisfying takes but hey, that’s just par for the course. It was great working with old friends like Kay Parker, Paul Thomas, and Charley St. Elmo once again, and it was wonderful working with all the new talent in the adult film industry.
I’d been back in Hawaii about a week or so when I received a phone call from Fred Hirsch at AVC. “You ready to make a video for me?” he asked.
“Sure,” I answered.
“I’ve signed Traci Lord for a project and I want you to direct it.”
“Who’s Traci Lord?” I asked.
“She only the hottest star in the business right now,” he told me.
“Oh.”
“So do you have a script ready to go?”
“Sure do,” I lied.
“What’s the name of it?”
I looked over at the the images of Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, and William Holden flickering across the screen of the muted television set I had been watching and said without any hesitation whatsoever, “Country Girl.”
“Good title,” he said.
That night, after she put the kids to sleep, Deborah grumbled a little before she sat down at the kitchen table with a pen and two pads of paper and a few hours later she handed me the finished script for Country Girl.
I wasn’t thrilled to be shooting video, mainly because I didn’t much care for the picture quality which didn’t take well to any kind of creative or low-key lighting. The entire video was to be shot at a house somewhere up in the Hollywood Hills, and everyone was a little uneasy because a few hardcore shoots had been busted recently in the city. To try and keep on top of things, the production assistant was to drive off with each completed tape that we shot in order to get any incriminating evidence off the set.
Traci Lord showed up driving a flashy Stingray sportscar. She was, as promised, gorgeous, and she had a terrific body to boot. Fortunately, she was a smart girl and a quick study. I handed her the script after we were introduced and she had it all down by the time the cameras rolled. With Traci we managed to get everything on the first take, as we did with Colleen Brennan, who is the consummate professional.
It was only a short time after I returned home to Hawaii that I got a call from Jim Talmadge at CDI telling me to fly back over and make a couple of films for them. Deborah had penned a script about the wild goings-on at a dinner party set in suburban USA, which I thought might make an interesting feature film. For the second feature of this back-to-back shoot, I was to direct a screenplay that Jim had written: a light comedy called Fantasies Unlimited.
We found a pretty young British girl named Josephine Carrington to play the lead in both of them. Her cute British accent inspired me to do a quick and simple rewrite on Debroah’s script and change the location from America’s suburbia to a much more exotic locale—Bombay, India, retitling the thing A Passage to Ecstasy in the process. The only other change we made was transforming the character of the doctor, who would be played by Herschel Savage, from a WASP to a Hindu.
Josephine Carrington had been in the Women’s Royal Air Force. In fact, she had only recently been mustered out after having been stationed in places like Aden and Egypt, which she said was “pretty bloody hot and dusty—a lot like India, I imagine.” She was also a good deal of fun to be around, and she ended up doing a pretty good job in both of the films, even though she was nervous because she had never done any acting before.
For A Passage to Ecstasy, we recreated the exotic steamy, atmosphere and the intense tropical heat of Bombay in an air-conditioned mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Josephine played Julia, a beautiful young woman confronting a crumbling marriage to an unfaithful older man only ever seen in a framed photograph. It’s actually a photograph of the film’s producer, Jim Talmadge.
Fantasies Unlimited had a cute little story about a sexual phone-in service that used a giant computer to match their customer’s mutual sexual fantasies. All the customer had to do was to dial the number of the service, enter their secret code and credit card number, and as soon as their charge was approved they could order their ultimate sexual fantasies over the phone. As far-fetched as this might seem, for the customers in this film it really works.
I returned to Hawaii loaded down with huge boxes full of Beta and VHS videotapes from the extensive libraries of AVC and CDI, with more boxes to follow soon by UPS. To diversify my product line, I also made a deal with Matthew Tse of Ocean Shores, a Taiwanese video company, to rep their line of kung-fu titles as well as with Bruce Venezia at Hollywood Home Theatre to sell their line of classic international cinema titles.
Hawaii was one place where the sale of Betamax tapes was still going strong because most of the people on the islands had bought Betamax machines. Video stores had to stock both formats, which was great for me, business-wise. The video distributors on the mainland were glad to be rid of the Beta tapes, since VHS had pretty much taken over on the mainland, so they cut me a great deal on them. I immediately began hitting all the electronics stores and video rental places on Oahu to unload the product.
The adult product accounted for a great deal of their business, and I was surprised to find that a lot of the video and electronic owners and clerks recognized me from seeing my old films. Of course, this was long before the huge video chains like Blockbuster sprang up and invaded their turf, putting nearly all of them out of business.
I soon decided to expand my business by taking inter-island flights to Maui and Kauai and driving around the islands to each of the stores. Every month, I would show up with whatever new product I had, take orders for old titles and new releases, and exchange any defective tapes. As soon as any films I had directed for the video companies were ready, they would ship me a batch of them and I’d take them around the islands and sell them. It was having to do double the work to earn my money, but I was enjoying it.
Then one day I got a frantic call from Tony Marino, one of the head salesmen of the wholesale division at AVC. In his raspy, New York-accented voice he said, “You know those tapes for Country Girl?”
“Yeah, they came in a couple of weeks ago.”
“Well, don’t sell them.”
The Country Girl tapes were already long gone and sitting on the shelves of the video stores throughout the islands. “This is coming a little late, isn’t it?” I responded, thinking perhaps they had shipped me a defective batch of tapes.
“We only just now found out about the problem,” Tony responded.
“What’s the problem?” I asked warily.
“There may be some kind of thing about Traci.”
“What kind of thing?”
There was a slight pause. And then he said, “Like her age.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “Like her age! Didn’t she have a California driver’s license that said she was over eighteen? And didn’t she also have a passport?”
“She did,” he said. “That girl certainly knew what she was doing and she left everybody in the business holding the bag.”
“Oh.” I was not thrilled to hear this. In fact, I was downright angry. I had never, ever, had anyone in any of my films that was underage. I’ve always made it a point to be certain that everything was in order in this regard. But then again, this had been a project that had already been cast and set to go before I even arrived. The more I thought about it, the more furious I became. How on Earth could something like this be allowed to happen?
But I didn’t have time to stew about this situation for very long, because I got another call from AVC to come to Los Angeles and shoot another video for them, perhaps as a direct result of the Country Girl debacle. As if to remind them even more about it, I had my wife write a script we aptly titled Age of Consent.
We did the shooting of the entire video feature on location in the picturesque mountains and woods around the beautiful resort area just three hours or so away from Los Angeles known as Big Bear. It would be a two-day shoot, and Elliot secured the cabins required to house the cast and crew.
In their November 1985 issue, the reviewer for Adult Video News wrote: “If the sex during Age of Consent was any hotter, this review would disintegrate off the page… Unfortunately the plot, a bit on the silly side, doesn’t make the settings seem realistic. And the acting is average at best. Yet, newcomers Kari Foxx and sensuous brunette Angel West are stunning, superb sexual performers. Very nice scenery, decent camera work and utterly erotic sex makes this tape a must for anyone over the age of consent.”
The shoot went off without a hitch. Since we weren’t shooting in Los Angeles County, we didn’t have to worry about an unwanted and unexpected visit from the LA vice squad. We also kept the shoot very low-key so as not to attract any attention from the local constabulary, although we saw no evidence at all of their presence during the entire time that we were there.
It was good to get back to Hawaii to spend some time with my family once again. After all, that was the main reason we had moved to Hawaii: so I could watch my children grow up and be able to spend a lot of quality time with them. However, that was just not to be for the immediate future. Another phone call came from Jim Talmadge telling me to hop back on the plane and return to Los Angeles tomorrow to shoot another film for Cinderella Distributors.
“I’ve got to leave for LA tomorrow to do another feature film,” I told my wife, “and honey, I need a screenplay. Can you write one for me?”
Deborah was understandably pissed. “Of course I can,” she replied sarcastically. “The question is, will I write one for you.”
“Please,” I said sincerely. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“The kids were looking forward to your being home for a while.”
“I’ll make it up to them, too. This’ll be the last project I take on this year.”
“The year’s almost over, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I really hadn’t. All this flying back and forth to the mainland and then all this flying around in the islands, driving from place to place to sell the videos. I’ve been feeling sort of out of it.”
That night, after she roasted a leg of New Zealand lamb for dinner, served it with a salad and some other healthy vegetables, cleaned up the kitchen, did the dishes, and put the kids to bed, she sat down at the kitchen table, stayed up all night, and without any complaint whatsoever wrote another screenplay for me.
The next morning, as I loaded my suitcase into the car, I saw the bags under her eyes and I could see how tired she was. “Make sure you get some sleep after you drop me off,” I told her.
“Me, get some sleep? With these two?” she said, laughing sleepily as she indicated the two little angels bickering with each other in the backseat. “You’ve got to be kidding.” I felt terribly guilty about leaving her once again to have to take care of and raise the kids all by herself.
The plane was in the air and on its way to Los Angeles by the time I finally got the chance to open my attaché case and get my first look at the screenplay she had written for me. The first thing I noticed was how thick it was. It was about twice the size of one of the normal screenplays that she regularly wrote for me. She had titled it Losing Control. What in the hell could that title mean? I wondered.
I began reading the script and then I almost lost it. This time Deborah had really gotten back at me. She had written page after page of long, difficult dialogue passages, dialogue that I knew the people I’d be working with wouldn’t be able to handle with any kind of believability.
But the dialogue was good and as I continued to read on I found that I really liked the story as well. This was definitely one of her better scripts and I was feeling very proud of her. But, I thought, how in the hell am I going to be able to get the actors I have to work with deliver lines like this? Deborah had given me a real challenge and I wondered if I was even up to it.
When Jim Talmadge read the script, he almost shit a brick. “How are we going to do this in one day?” he asked incredulously.
“One day? I was hoping that we had two,” was my honest response.
“We can’t shoot something like this in only one day and I don’t have anything else ready to go right now. That’s why we got you here.”
“I might be able to do it in a day.”
“You’re dreaming, Bob. You’d have to be a magician to pull this one off.”
“I was a magician, back when I was a kid.”
He shook his head. “Look, things are too hot to shoot here in the city right now,” he informed me. “We’re shooting this one up north of Santa Barbara, at my parents’ house. We’ve got one day budgeted for the entire shoot. We can go overtime because there’s no problem with the location but that’s got to be it. At the most we can go another half-day or so the next morning before we come back to grab the exteriors.”
“With the right cast, I can do it in a day,” I told him.
“Well you’d have to be one hell of a director to pull this one off,” he said dropping the script onto his desk with a loud thump. “You sure you don’t want to trim down some of the dialogue, cut out a scene or two?”
“Nah, it might fuck the story up. I kinda like it the way it is. Besides, I am one hell of a director.”
“I guess that’s why we hire you, but now I’m beginning to wonder. I’ll admit to having some reservations about this one,” he said.
“We can do it,” I said positively.
“There’s no we about it, Bob,” Jim Talmadge chuckled. “This is going to be all your baby.”
As it turned out, it was all my baby, even though out of necessity Jim did graciously assume the duties of assistant director as well as producer and provided me with the invaluable service of running lines with the actors to make sure they had them down before I shot their scenes.
Of course, when the actors saw all the excessively long dialogue passages they had to utter, some of them said, “What the hell is this?” while there were others that seemed to welcome the challenge that the script offered.
Fortunately, we had put together a pretty darn good cast to work with. And since we were shooting on 16mm film, I was delighted to learn that the very experienced and capable cameraman Tom De Nove would be doing the cinematography.
Jim Talmadge and I had driven up the day before. We arrived at the Talmadge house in the remote countryside outside of Los Olivos late that afternoon, and I got to meet Jim’s lovely mother, who prepared a wonderful supper for us, and his father Joe Talmadge, who was now retired after having been in charge of the still department at Twentieth Century Fox—plus, he was the legendary comedian Buster Keaton’s son and the nephew of the fabulous silent screen stars Norma and Constance Talmadge.
The cast and crew arrived the next morning and we began setting up and shooting the film. It was not an easy shoot. Most of the action of Losing Control takes place in a large, upscale house during the course of a single day. Since there was so much dialogue, I tried to shoot the scenes in chronological order, in order to make it easy on the cast.
Scripts had been sent to the castmembers a few days before, but of course I could tell that only a couple of them had even cracked them open, much less studied them. It was almost funny to watch the others as they opened the scripts for the first time to get a look at the parts they were going to play.
There were surprised choruses of “Holy shit!” and “Is this for real?” before everyone settled down.
I asked Eric Edwards, “You know your lines?”
“Sure,” he answered, “piece of cake.”
“Then help me out by helping some of the other castmembers learn theirs. We’re starting with Scene One.”
Before the camera rolled, I told the cast that if they flubbed or forgot their lines to just call for them and we’d feed the dropped lines to them so we could keep the camera running. I’d worry about making cutaways later. At least it kept everything flowing. But the quality of the results was far from reassuring.
A quote from the CDI press release describing Losing Control reads: “They were all Losing Control. Their relationships crumbling, their jobs gone, desperation setting in, these thirteen people were thrown together by circumstances no one could control. Lust and sexual needs are the threads that weave this story of hope into superbly crafted drama. Erica Boyer portrays Harry Reems’ insatiable girlfriend, Kimberly Carson is the beguiling psychologist who gets a lesson in reality from macho Steve Drake, while blonde newcomer Patti Petite shows businessman Randy West a few tricks of her trade! Adding their talents to this all-star cast, Eric Edwards and Jacqueline Lorians are two friends who, after several years and a couple of marriages, find their lives drawn back together in spite of everyone around them Losing Control.”
Well, I suppose the synopsis makes the film appear to be a lot better than it actually is, but I have to admit that it was an interesting project to undertake. It took all day, all night, and some of the following morning to complete the film.
We were bleary-eyed as we shot the final exterior locations and a brief scene in a laundromat. Every member of the cast proved to be real troopers. Most of them liked having a story to justify the sex scenes, and since they realized that the current production budgets didn’t allow for this kind of extravagance, they did their utmost to help me pull it off.
For some reason I’ve never been able to figure out, I’ve always had a great deal of difficulty sleeping during an airplane flight. But on this flight back to Hawaii, after downing a few miniature bottles of airline Scotch, I managed to drop off to sleep like a baby through most of it.
Directing seven features in the course of a nine-month period wasn’t exactly like being retired, but I had to do the best that I could to keep everything going. The year 1985 had been a very busy one for me, but with all the expenses of the back-and-forth flying, car rentals, and having to stay in hotels and motels and eat a good many of my meals in restaurants, I wasn’t making all that much money. But then again, we all have to do what we have to do.
Fortunately. I was able to spend what was left of 1985 in the company of my wife and kids. We went to all of the beautiful beaches around the island, picnicked in the parks, and enjoyed ourselves like a family should. Being able to do this seemingly made everything all worthwhile.
Work-wise, the year 1986 began with a video feature for AVC titled The Debutante. The star of this one-day shoot was a young lady—and I use that term very sarcastically here—that I had never worked with before and would never work with again named Ali Moore. I generally get along very well with just about everyone I work with, but this girl proved to be the exception.
To begin with, she arrived at the location several hours late. This would have been adequate incentive to fire her ass right on the spot, but she was the one that the producers wanted to star in that video. Coupled with that, she had a terrible attitude that just seemed to get worse as the day wore on. I gritted my teeth and simply soldiered on, doing what I could to get some kind of performance out of this prima donna. Fortunately, the rest of the cast was composed of great people like Erica Boyer, Bunny Bleu, and Rachel Ryan, and we had finished most of their scenes while waiting for the absent Ali Moore.
The experience on the next two features, which were to be shot on video for Cinderella Distributors, was more pleasant, but I was getting the distinct feeling that I was burning out once again. Jim Talmadge had written both the scripts for the back-to-back shoot, which would be done entirely on a soundstage.
The Honeymooners involved a just-married young couple played by Peter North and Bunny Bleu who find themselves with a group of extraordinary people trying to achieve a higher level of sexual awareness. The story was pretty standard and nothing spectacular and, sadly, neither was my video feature.
The second feature, Goddess of Love, starring Tracey Adams, concerns a bored goddess Athena who decides to meddle with life on Earth. But when her long distance interfence has the opposite effect and causes a couple to break up, she decides to visit Earth in person to put things straight.
What I do remember about this shoot is that I was there directing, but I was just going through the motions. Here is the review that appeared in Adam Film World which unfortunately confirms the results: “The setups are standard and the sex perfunctory, making Earth look like a pretty droll place to live. Marc Wallice is the saving grace, turning in two hot sex scenes. One, with the newcomer Wild Pantera…is sweaty and well shot by Monster Shot–creator Bob Chinn. He tackles big-busted Je T’Aime in an all-too-short scene that worked better than the one it was intercut with. Couples appeal seems to mean pretty tame stuff, and this one is no exception.”
Here’s what Cult Movies Magazine’s Michael Copner wrote about Goddess of Love: “This effort emerges as one of Chinn’s most uninspired efforts… Clearly Chinn was burning out. He would make only three more adult features, all of which he considered terrible (one was so bad he even used a pseudonym) before calling it quits after a career which spanned over eighteen years.”
After returning to Hawaii, I got to kick back for a couple of months before being called back to do a quick one-day shot-on-video feature titled Dressed to Thrill for Cinderella Distributing. The script had been written by Milton Ingley, who also served as the producer/production manager for the project, since Jim Talmadge had left CDI. Milton had worked as an actor for me seven years before in my film Fantasyworld. Apparently, at present, he was now one of the many producers in the booming the new adult video scene.
Tom DeNove was the cameraman for this quick effort, and the video feature was shot at a house that was some kind of swingers’ retreat somewhere in the Malibu Canyon area. The place was messy and grimy and I hated even being there. After I finished this shoot, I had to rush back to my motel and take a good, long, hot shower. I also remembered that I had never worked before with any of the girls that appeared in the cast. I had, however, worked with most of the guys, including Francois Papillon, Ron Jeremy, and Steve Drake. The script was nothing to write home about, and in my estimation it was barely adequate.
The main problem was that the production was rushed to keep from having to pay overtime at the location, and there were some minor problems with the video equipment that kept causing delays. Since the script was pretty thin, the sex would have to fill up most of the running time. Having to direct something like this made me feel like I was just shooting a bunch of loops.
A synopsis I found of Dressed to Thrill reads as follows: “The beautiful writer Rebecca Lynn opens the door, the handsome musketeer from another time steps into her home, reaches for her dress and with one smooth motion disrobes her. Her passions swell and she is putty beneath him. Who was the masked stranger?
“Her publisher can’t believe she would end her book with such drivel. ‘If you’re going to write about sex make it something people can fantasize. Drop your inhibitions and find real sex for your readers.’ True to her art she races toward fulfillment with anyone she can find. A party with the most beautiful women in the world attending turns into a full-blown leather orgy. She experiences love with her girlfriend in a hot tub but through it all she cannot shake the image of the handsome stranger.”
The year 1986 ended rather inauspiciously for me with another uninspired back-to-back shoot of two video features that would come out early in 1987. Deborah had written the scripts for the two features.
The first feature, from the script titled My Cousin Sam, would be released by CDI as The Out of Towner. The second feature, which bore the title Sweet Black Angel, would be released by Coast to Coast as simply Black Angel.
Both of the features, which were just a couple of light comedies, were to be shot at a house somewhere in the hills of San Bernadino, a good two-hour or so drive from Los Angeles. Ron Jeremy, who would be appearing as an actor in both of the films, was serving as the production manager.
The first thing Ron said after he’d had a quick look at the scripts was: “There’s an awful lot of story in these scripts, and a whole lot of dialogue. You know, nowadays people just fast-forward through this stuff to the sex scenes.”
“That’s the kind of features I do. Features with some kind of story.”
“It’s going to be tough getting all this stuff shot in the time we have.”
“I don’t think I’ll have any trouble doing it.”
Little did I know how optimistic I had been about that. Ron knew what he was talking about. Most of the cast had already been selected before I even got there and I hadn’t realized how inexperienced most of them were with handling dialogue. I only was able to add one performer to the cast, a relatively new girl named Viper who came highly recommended by my good friend Bill Margold.
Viper turned out to be one of the bright points of the shoot for me. This girl was more than willing and able to do just about anything. The budget for the two features had been cut so much that it was nowhere near what it had been for the previous back-to-back video shoot that I had done for Cinderella. As it turned out, this was going to be one of the most difficult shoots of my life.
Deborah’s scripts for both features were somewhat cute and clever, but with the ultra-low budget, relatively inexperienced cast for the most part, and my own lack of enthusiasm, I was unable to do them justice. I was there and I was directing, but it seemed to me, for some reason, as if I was just painting these two by the numbers. It was no longer fun. That big video distributor that I had met at the Consumer Electronics Show had proven to be right. Nobody wanted to buy videos with stories anymore. They just wanted to see the sex.
After the grueling back-to-back shoot for The Out of Towner and Black Angel, I decided that I didn’t want to make these video features anymore. I figured I’d had a long enough run anyway, and now it was time to just lay back and take things easy.
There was a whole new generation of younger people out there making videos, and the trend seemed to be going away from stories in porn features to shooting loop after loop of pure, unadulterated sex, which was something that didn’t interest me in the least. But apparently that was now what the adult entertainment market wanted.
That brought to mind a meeting I had with a member of this newer generation of video directors, a real character named Bruce Seven. When I was introduced to him at one of the AFAA meetings at the Brown Derby, he said, “Wow, Bob Chinn! I thought you’d be a lot older. I used to jack off to your films all the time, you know, back in the day.” That “back in the day” stuck in my mind for some reason. Maybe the way I made my features was simply too old-fashioned for the new adult market.
Another deciding thing was the fact that Honolulu’s duly elected City Prosecutor Charles F. Marsland, who had just about succeeded in his long-standing crusade against organized crime in the islands, had begun cracking down on adult video rentals and sales at the video and electronics stores.
I had no quarrel at all about Marsland’s continuing battle against crime in the islands, which had begun after the death of his son at the hands of a local criminal, but these stores and rental places had no real ties at all to organized crime. Censorship was rearing its ugly head in paradise and I just didn’t need the aggravation. In other words, I could plainly see the writing on the wall.
When I got back to Los Angeles, I decided to delay my return trip for another day. It was nearing the end of the year, and I spent the following day in the Los Angeles area wrapping up whatever business I had to take care of with the video companies out in the Valley and then doing a little Christmas shopping for my wife and children.
In Hollywood, I had stopped in at the newsstand on Cahuenga Boulevard to buy some magazines to read on the plane trip back to Hawaii and was walking back to my rented car when I heard someone calling my name. I turned around to see Kalton Lahue rushing toward me. We hadn’t seen each other for a few years, and it was an unexpected but welcome reunion.
“Long time no see Kal,” I greeted him. “How the hell are you?”
“Fair to middling,” he said breathlessly. He was almost totally winded from rushing to catch up with me. He immediately pulled a pack of Parliaments out of his coat pocket, lit one up, and offered one to me, which I accepted.
“Still smoking four packs of those a day?” I asked him and he nodded. “Jeez, Kal, those things will end up killing you.”
“I notice you’re still smoking,” he said as I lit mine up.
“Yeah, but certainly not that much,” I countered. “So what have you been doing with yourself?”
“Writing automotive books for Peterson Publications,” he answered, “how about you?”
“I just directed my last adult video.”
“Last?”
“Yeah, I’ve finally decided to retire from the business.”
“You’re too young to retire. Besides, you can’t leave the business and desert all your fans.”
“I really don’t think I have any fans, Kal,” I laughed.
“You might be surprised. Hell, Bob, those videos are so easy to make that if you go back to the way you used to shoot those quickie films in the old days you could probably turn out something like sixty to a hundred of those video things a year.”
“I probably could, but I’m not going to.”
“Your decision’s final, then?”
“Kal, I’m just tired of filming people fucking.”
I told him that I was living in Hawaii now and that I wanted to spend some quality time with my wife and family. Then we parted to go our own respective ways and I never saw Kal again.
Later that afternoon, I got a call from my old friend, the film critic Jim Holliday, who asked me if I wanted to meet him at Cantor’s Restaurant on Fairfax for dinner. That sounded good because I realized that I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, so I said, “Sure,” then hightailed it over to Cantor’s and got there in time to find that I was having dinner not only with Jim but also with the members of the X-Rated Critics Organization.
“What’s this all about?” I asked Jim as I ravenously dug into my pastrami on rye. Holliday informed me that the XRCO was going to induct me into their Hall of Fame at their next awards ceremony.
“Hall of Fame,” I said warily. “Does this mean that you guys think I’m over the hill or something?”
“No, Bob,” Jim put on an assuring voice. “We just want to honor you. Heck, if the only film you ever made was Candy Stripers, you’d still deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.”
Somewhat reassured but still feeling somewhat like a dinosaur, I muttered, “Well, thanks.”
“You can make it to the ceremony, can’t you?” he asked.
“I’m not so sure, Jim. I’m heading back to Hawaii tomorrow.”
“Well, think about it. It’s not going to happen until the middle of February.”
After I got back to Hawaii, I promptly forgot all about it until a few weeks later when I got a phone call from Jim, who, aside from the video companies I directed for who had my business line, was one of only two people affiliated with the adult film business who had my private home phone number.
“Are you coming for the awards show?” he promptly asked.
“I don’t know if I can make it. Can you send it to me?”
“Sure, but it would be so much better if you were here. And that way you could make sure that you’d get the award. It’s a really cool plaque in the shape of a heart that Bill Rotsler carves by hand. It’s called a Heart-On.”
“Well if Rotsler’s going to be making it, I suppose I should have one of those Heart-Ons. Let me think about it, I’ll let you know,” I told him.
Deborah, who had been hearing only one side of the conversation, came over to me and asked, “Who was that?”
“Jim Holliday. They want to give me some kind of Hall of Fame Award in Los Angeles and he wants to know if I can make it over to the mainland for the show.”
She said, “I think you should go.”
“You know how I feel about these award things. They don’t mean all that much to me.”
A week later Jim Holliday called again and asked, “Well, are you coming?”
“What was the date again?” I asked in order to delay an immediate reply. My wife, who had answered the telephone and knew that it was Jim Holliday on the line, was silently mouthing to me the word “Go!”
“It’s on Valentine’s Day at the Music Machine on Pico Boulevard. You know where that is?”
The Music Machine was a nightclub that was only two doors down from Pancho’s Family Restaurant. I thought about seeing Pancho again and tucking into a big porterhouse steak smothered with his delicious chile verde and paint-peeling hot sauce while downing a few cold bottles of Negro Modelo as I answered “Yeah, I know where it is.”
“Well you’ve had a full week to think about it.”
“I’ll be there.”
We talked for a little while longer, and after I hung up the phone I said to Deborah, who was seated nearby at the kitchen table, “I just realized it, but I don’t have anything to wear for a thing like that,” which was true because before leaving Los Angeles I’d jettisoned all of my unneeded winter clothing, as well as all of my suits, sports coats, and such.
“What’s Jim going to be wearing?” she asked.
“He told me he’s getting out his tuxedo.”
“Well, you don’t need to wear a tuxedo, that’s for sure,” she said. “Formal just is not your style.” She thought for a moment before she got up and said, “Come with me.”
Deborah took the kids over to the neighbor’s place to play with their kids while we drove to the Ala Moana Shopping Center in Honolulu, where she led me firmly by the hand into one of those large department stores that she loved to shop in and I usually tried to avoid. We went right over to the men’s department, where she carefully looked around for a while before going over to a display rack and choosing a white linen sports coat.
“Try this on,” she instructed me. I put the coat on and it seemed as if it had just been perfectly tailored for me. The light material it was made of was suitable for this time of year either here or on the mainland. Deborah always had a great eye for clothes. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror. I had to admit that I did look pretty good in that coat.
Deborah echoed what I was thinking when she said, “Looks good on you,” and she added, “It does go really well with your tan. White goes with everything and you have some nice dress pants you can wear with it. You like it?”
“Yeah,” I answered, “It does kinda look good on me, doesn’t it?” Out of curiosity I looked at the label: Armani. Then I looked at the price tag and gasped, “This thing’s nine hundred dollars! We sure as hell can’t afford that!”
I gingerly took off the coat and she took it from me and, draping it over her arm, headed over toward the cashier while pulling her charge card from her purse and whispering, “Just be sure not to spill anything on it or get it dirty. We’ll be returning it as soon as you get back.”
After arriving in Los Angeles on Valentine’s Day with my temporary Armani sports jacket, I rented a car, drove to Brentwood, and got a fifty-dollar haircut from Elisabet in her exclusive little salon next door to Dutton’s Book Store. She had just returned from a vacation to Bali, and she chattered on about what she had seen and done there enthusiastically. After that, I browsed around the bookstore for a while and found some things to take back to Hawaii to read, before heading on over to Pancho’s Family Restaurant to fortify myself with a few cold Tecates with my friends before going next door for the XRCO Awards Show.
It was good to see Pancho and his wife Catherine, Chris, Mundo, Nando, and all the others once again. Pancho was cooking in the kitchen, and the others were all sitting at the bar in their accustomed places. It was as if I had entered into a kind of time warp.
The show ended up being a lot of fun. I got to see a lot of old friends from the business that I hadn’t seen for awhile, like Gary Graver, Carlos and Maria Tobalina, Ted Paramore aka Harold Lime and Murray Pearlman, Bill Margold, and a lot of actors and actressess I had worked with in the not so distant past, as well as others whose names now seem to elude me. But there were also so many new faces that I did, indeed, feel like something of a dinosaur. Perhaps this honor I was receiving was a way of telling me that it was now time for me to be put out to pasture.
So anyway, here I was. At least I’d kept my promise to Jim Holliday and flown in from Hawaii to attend the show, and properly dressed I might add, only to be told by Jim that some of the wooden plaques for the Hall of Fame awards weren’t ready yet, mine being one of them. But I was presented with a certificate that said I had made a significant contribution to adult entertainment. So this is what I had flown across half the Pacific Ocean to receive. Jim promised me that he’d send me the coveted Bill Rotsler handcarved wooden Heart-On award when it was ready.
Of course, I never got it.