CINEMA SEEN - "Going All The Way Down To Get All The Way Up!"
By William Margold

     "There is no future if in the present we fail to pay homage to the past."
     And while it’s not exactly homage that Anna Waronker, Charlotte Caffey and Jeffrey Leonard Bowman pay to the early days of X rated entertainment with LOVELACE A ROCK OPERA---their demanding, dare I say "hard to swallow" creation is a "Little Big Play" resonating with aggressive and earnest energy, emotionally challenging songs, and a couple of remarkable performances.
     Director Ken Sawyer is "Fosse-sque" in his 90-minute presentation that conjures up images of "Sweet Charity" menage-a-trois-ing with "Evita" and "Jesus Christ Superstar."
     As America’s restlessness with the corruption of those in charge of its destiny fought its way out of the Sixties and slammed its way into the Seventies, rebelling against society’s mores was no more evident than by those who choose to make explicit adult movies that depicted hardcore sexual activities. And among those leading the way was a lady who would become known as Linda Lovelace. Essentially allowing herself to become the property of a manipulative man named Chuck Traynor...Linda became famous. And the film---DEEP THROAT---which she performed in---became infamous.
     Undulating with consummate evil, Jimmy Swan brings more dimensions of degradation and depravity to Traynor than I suspect the man himself possessed. Part snake oil salesman and part savior...Traynor was a man in the right place at the right time with the right product (Linda Lovelace)...and Swan resoundingly never lets us forget it.
     Katrina Lenk is achingly evocative as Linda, enduring Hell to get a little piece of Heaven, and is blessed with a voice that unashamedly unlocks the tear ducts.
     Whatever becomes of LOVELACE A ROCK OPERA and wherever it winds up...the production must take Swan and Lenk with it.
     For now however I am comforted by the fact that LOVELACE A ROCK OPERA has extended its run at The Hayworth Theatre thru Dec. 21, (visit www.thehayworth.com for complete schedule information), which will hopefully allow me to see the unnerving Mr. Swan and the luminous Ms. Lenk "at least" one more time.
     I would be ignoring my own past (and present) if I failed to mention my unique involvement---since 1971---in the adult entertainment industry---on virtually every level---ranging from actor to agent to activist---which, during its convoluted carnal course of actions and activities, placed me in contact with two of the major characters in the production: "Deep Throat’s" director Gerard Damiano and its male lead, Harry Reems.
     (I handled some of the recently departed Damiano’s publicity back in 1976, and then worked for him as a hardcore performer in 1989. My dealings with Reems took place in 1986, and again in 1988, and they were of a providing temporary help nature.)
     Because Traynor and Lovelace are such dominating characters throughout LOVELACE A ROCK OPERA, Damiano (Alan Palmer) and Reems (Josh Greene) are smartly rendered as caricatures, and thankfully provide some very necessary moments of comic relief. Very necessary!
     I would be denying my painfully accurate insight into the world of XXX, if I didn’t express the fact that the primary reason people (particularly females) enter the performing side of my business is for recognition. And if that means the bartering of their soul to gain immortality...then so be it. And as watched with that understanding of the fact that you’ve got to go all the way down if you to get all the way up in X...then you might come away from LOVELACE A ROCK OPERA (www.lovelacerockopera.com) a little less damning of the adult entertainment industry. But since I refer to the adult industry as "The Playpen of the Damned" that might be expecting too much from an audience of hypocrites "that jacks off to us with its left hand and then denies us with its right."
     I was invited to see LOVELACE A ROCK OPERA by an ebullient gentleman named David Bertolino, whose own play---THE DEEP THROAT PROJECT---will be opening in New York next spring (www.DeepThroatThePlay.com).
     Sort of validates my sentiment at the top of this page...doesn’t it?
     end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, November 27, 2008 issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "Tossed To The Lions!"
By William Margold

     This page is warmly dedicated to Milt Davis, who passed away a few weeks ago. He was a gentleman who made an indelible impression on quite a number of boys and girls who lived in Vista Del Mar during the late 1950’s. During that period, he was an All-Pro defensive back for the Baltimore Colts. But for me having the honor of knowing him simply proves that life is really just a series of unique coincidences. Milt Davis was originally signed to play pro football by the Detroit Lions.
     ********
     It all began with a football card.
     And for well over 50 years, being handed that tiny piece of cardboard in the fall of 1956 has caused me considerably more heartbreak than happiness. But despite all of the pain...the minimal pleasure, or dare I say "the pride" or occasional ecstasy of being a Detroit Lions fan, has been worth every bit of the agony.
     In October 1956, I was shipped from Los Angeles’ Central Juvenile Hall to Vista Del Mar, a home for troubled kids of the Jewish persuasion in Culver City. Trying desperately to "fit in"...I was hanging around the locker room in Cottage 33 one cold and rainy Saturday November afternoon (thus justifying our being inside), watching a couple of the older kids flipping football cards against the wall. Eventually the floor was covered with brightly colored 2 by 3 inch images of professional football players. Being too lazy to pick-up the pile of cards that he had just won, one of the flippers told me that he would give me a card if I picked up his winnings and gave them to him. I eagerly did as I was told, and in exchange for the neatly stacked pile that I presented to him, I was handed the Topps card of Bobby Layne who played quarterback for The Detroit Lions. A few weeks later, I was in that same locker room listening to a radio when I heard that Layne had been injured severely during a game against the Chicago Bears. I rushed to my locker and looked at my Bobby Layne card, and felt a symbiotic twinge, not just for him, but also for his team: The Detroit Lions. I attended The Pro Bowl in January 1958 that was played in Los Angeles’ Memorial Coliseum, and saw a defensive back named Yale Lary intercept a couple of passes. It was then that I really started to feel attached to "my team." After all... with Layne, Lions, Lary...there was some unmistakable "linkage" that demanded to be appreciated. (Lamentably..."losses" also starts with the letter "L"...but at the time, that concept never entered my mind.) And when I finally saw "my team" play against the Rams in The Coliseum on October 26, 1958 (50 years ago this Sunday)...and they won 41-24, my faithful fan fate was sealed..."Forever!" Yale Lary would become my first sports idol. I always sought him out first in the tunnel at The Coliseum after the game to get his autograph. Yale retired after the 1964 season and was elected to Pro Football’s Hall of Fame in 1979. My next idol was a supremely gifted defensive back named Lem Barney, who played with the Lions from 1967 through 1977, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1992.
     Meanwhile in 1965...a fellow who lived out sports fantasies named George Plimpton had written a book called "Paper Lion" which detailed his attempting to play quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and featured in the book was Yale Lary. By the time the book was filmed and released by United Artists (with Alan Alda playing Plimpton) in 1968, Lary had retired, but one of the players featured in the film was Lem Barney. I was writing for The Santa Monica Evening Outlook in 1968, and I sent my suspiciously "way too glowing" review to the Lions, and was invited to see them practice at Hollywood High when they came out to Los Angeles to play the Rams in November. It was there that I met their PR man, a very gracious man named Lyall Smith, who said, "If you are ever coming to Detroit, I’ll set you up with tickets."
     And in the fall of 1970, I took him up on his offer, and was privileged to sit in the Lions’ press box on a Sunday in November, as they beat the 49ers on Sunday, and then defeated the Raiders on Thanksgiving Day.
     Thanks to Lyall Smith, who said to call him whenever I wanted to "see a game," I began to travel all over the United States, catching up with the Lions in Houston (1971), Philadelphia (1974, and again in 1986), Washington DC, and of course, besides seeing many games in Los Angeles, I also went up to San Francisco and Oakland throughout the next couple of decades. And in recent years, I’ve even seen "my team" play in Phoenix.
     In 1988, the Lions drafted a ferocious linebacker named Chris Spielman, and I adopted him as heir to being idol worshiped...following in the cleats of Lary and Barney.
     In October 1993, in an experience that I’ve said was "like losing my virginity for the second time"...I was given an enormous still camera and was snuck onto the Lions’ sidelines in Anaheim (hopefully pictured on this page as my "football card") to see them play (and win, 16-13) against the Rams.
     And in January 1997, during an adult industry convention in Las Vegas, I had the humbling pleasure of meeting George Plimpton, and while I was trying to tell him that I had been him ("playing a different kind of game on a different kind of field") in the X-rated world for 25 years, he noticed that my famous "God Created Man...William Margold Created Himself" business card were the same colors (Silver and Blue) as "our team."
     He called me later that year, and we spoke for over two hours (with much of what we discussed winding up in a Men’s Journal article). During our conversation we shared the mutual depression(s) brought on by "our team." But in the end...we both fully realized that we were "Lions fans...’Forever!’" No matter how in the Hell long "Forever!" is.
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     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, October 23, 2008 issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "Playing The War Game!"
By William Margold

     Political correctness is a noose around the neck of creativity...and a very tight collar when it comes to expressing controversial opinions.
     Certain "select" people are pre-destined to say the seemingly wrong thing at the wrong time that eventually winds up being the right thing at a later time, as their life plays itself out on the roulette wheel of fate---and I take great pride (and perhaps even sardonic glee) in being one of those people who doesn’t hold anything back. My painfully honest manner in dealing with people (and situations) by any means necessary to get my point of view across can place those who are around me in a state of awkwardness---but I am duty bound to remain true to myself... and to my thoughts---and those who can’t stand the heat that I deliver are welcome to get out of my kitchen before they get cooked...or at least a little bit singed.
     As the issue of this installment of Cinema Seen coincides with the date of my 65th birthday (considered to be a chronological milestone), I created the preceding paragraph as a present to myself...and as an irritant to those whom I hold in contempt. Be they tragically lame adult entertainment industry columnists, unjustifiably pompous "nickel-and-dime gurus" or pathetic "practitioners" of the law---my use for them is only in the fact that I enjoy knowing that they are fully aware that they are loathe-some in my eyes.
     But lamentably I have no control over their hopefully sooner-than-later demises, so all I can do is derive "vicarious" pleasure from fantasizing about a world without them.
     And speaking of "vicarious"...it’s time to enter into a discussion of the film that gave me the most "vicarious viewing pleasure" so far in 2008---TROPIC THUNDER.
     Note the use of the word "vicarious" here...because I absolutely got an awful lot of bang for my buck---not once but twice---from seeing Ben Stiller’s playground war game that is painted with such broad strokes that virtually no sacred cinematic cows were left standing in the process. And if any did manage to slip through, I look forward to seeing them slaughtered when the DVD is released.
     And I am not the least bit ashamed to admit that I was more than a little bit jealous of those who did get to frolic around Stiller’s version of recess.
     (Although drastically unrelated, 25 years ago my writing partner Mark Weiss and I thought up an action/comedy storyline about a group of adult industry performers who get captured while making a movie in a miserable third world country, and since our government could care less about the fate of X-rated people, it’s left up to a collection of adult industry actors and actresses who have played heroes and heroines during their carnal cinematic careers to go rescue them. Our version, which I labeled "A Saturday Afternoon Matinee for Adults" was considerably more bittersweet with many of the characters---including mine---sacrificing themselves for the "cause.")
     Thankfully what Stiller delivers is nowhere near as heavy, but rather it is delightfully demented while at the same time being perceptively poignant, as Ben (who stars, directed and created the storyline) sets the viewer up in the middle of a film production about the adventures of a Vietnam War hero (Nick Nolte, at his raspy best) wherein the actors (including Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black) find themselves up to their cell phones and lattes in modern day Southeast Asian dope dealers.
     Downey Jr. is achingly eloquent as a film star who becomes consumed by his role of an African-American soldier to the extent that he not only talks the talk...he literally dyes for the part. And when his moment of resolve comes, it is the stuff that Supporting Actor Oscar nominations are made of.
     Stiller has never been better because he doesn’t take himself seriously in the role of a screen hero whose career is on the decline. And all that controversy about his handling of retard role-playing is a perfect example of weak-minded nay-saying by those who simply have nothing better to do than protest, because their own lives are so unrewarding.
     Black is on hand for much of the comic relief imagery as well as one of the more insightful discussions of oral sex.
      And on the home front, Tom Cruise, looking an awful lot like Ron Howard’s brother Clint, plays a mega Hollywood producer in a way that should make many of that type in this town squirm as if fleas have taken up residence in their chinchilla boxer shorts.
     end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, October 2, 2008 issue.

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