Let me take a moment out from blatant self-promotion to blatantly and lovingly promote a very fine author friend of mine, David Henry Sterry. He’s got a book out called Confessions of a Sex Maniac, and, as with everything he writes, it’s crackling with wit, ferocity, and graphic electrical muckraking genius.
“When David Henry Sterry writes about sexuality, it’s like a chef writing about food.”—nerve.com.
Resident genius Mark Allen recaps the amazing and seriously PLEASURABLE December 1st Pitch! show, which I was super proud to be a part of!
Also, here’s some video from the show.
Sam Benjamin at PITCH!, Dixon Place, NYC from Pitch Show on Vimeo.
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By the way … Mark Allen made some headlines recently by tweeting “Rick Santorum has Dan White-eyes.” (He does!)
If you follow that link, please check out the looney comments - they’re the best part. God Bless America.
I collaborated with the East Village Boys to create this interview/article about my porno past and 1980’s adult film soundtrack weirdness.
Big thanks to the LA Weekly for mentioning my book in their year-end article “Top Books We Read in 2011.”
from the article:
Sam Benjamin tried and failed to make art while a student at Brown University, so he did the next best thing and came to Malibu to make porn. American Gangbang is hilarious and honest about sex and pornography; it’s also intellectual enough to make you feel good about yourself. —Ben Westhoff
“I have not invented a new Hebrew letter made partially from hair, something that sweats and seems nearly human, something that imparts a folktale when held in one’s hand. I invent a lot in what I write — I invent almost all of it. But I don’t get past even the first half page unless I can tether the hell out of my real feelings to whatever I’ve invented. I need a thousand different emotional connections or else the whole thing is silly and without purpose.”
- Ben Marcus, in Six Questions for Ben Marcus, Harper’s Magazine
A new friend of mine, Cassandra Dallet, with whom I shared a stage recently at Evan Karp’s Quiet Lightning series in San Francisco, wrote a poem inspired by having read American Gangbang. I wanted to share it.
Gaggermeister
I’m intrigued still
wrestling with this man’s story
his agonizing over his love for a porno
a porno that is hard to believe is legal
it is apparently legal because it’s a series
in this series
different girls on their knees
mouth on dick close up
but she doesn’t suck the dick
she is force fed the dick
throat fucked
gagged
sometimes she pukes
and the guy with the dick
slaps her face
yup Slap Happy it’s called.
He writes on her face with magic marker
things like slut bitch cocksucker whore
and when he cums he doesn’t do it sexily
he does it violently.
All kinds of lines have been crossed here
all sorts of things that any man watching knows
make it a snuff film
snuff cause the girl may be living
may have pocketed a few grand
and went on her merry way
but a piece of her dies
every time some loser
jacks off to her gagging markered face
with each slap a scar is raised
out of site
down by her large intestine
snuggled up to her pancreas
maybe it will bitter into hate
manifest as cancer
who knows
the real damage.
but I’m not mad at this guy
a little horrified that he is turned on
that he jacks off to this mess on screen
I’m not mad
cause he is honest.
he admits girls like this snubbed him in high school
that he wanted to see them gag on his dick.
Which, I’m sure he imagines as big
as the guy’s in the skin flick.
I feel sorry for him.
He admits his obsession with it
and loses his good girl.
Who was perfectly happy to give an honest blowjob
but get slapped in the face dude, really!?
Still I want to drop him a line
wonder if we can get down to the bottom
of why we are all so fucked up.
Why I hate fucking my boyfriend because he isn’t aggressive enough
yet he watches rape porno on my computer when I’m not at home.
And how I hate sucking his dick
its too big and he’s too unresponsive
Yet I love the whole face fucking
forced gagging thing
as much as the next guy.
I was watching a scene
the other night
where the guy had a belt around the chicks neck
and it was smokin’ hot I was totally turned on.
Maybe we could talk about
what it would take
to make the perfect porno
or the perfect love
where our quirks and obsession blends
into something sweet.
Something that doesn’t leave us
heaving up guilt
or broken
as yesterdays turkey carcass.
I just uploaded a twenty-minute selection from my lecture, “A Brief History of Porn.” Enjoy.
—Raunch-O-Rama/Kink-O-Rama
You will get up on this piece of early 90’s spiritual funk porno jones NOW, if you know what’s good for you.
The early 90’s were a weird time, sonically. I was in high school when BBD was happening; POISON (never trust a big butt and a smile) was a hit when I was in 9th grade, and gumby-fade-tops, white jeans with airbrushed letters across the ass, Cross Colors, Africa necklaces, and Starter jackets ruled the roost.
This vibrant, funky piece of trash comes from the movie “Kink-O-Rama” presented by Leisure Time Entertainment in 1993, as part of a series called “Raunch-O-Rama.” It’s one of my favorite films, and features a host of replacement phalluses (plasticated) and heaving, concrete tits. Got to be seen to be believed; and for now, you can listen to something that sounds like a combination between a “Pretty in Pink” score and Another Bad Creation.
“Paris Hilton had a pet kinkajou until it went for her eyes in a lingerie shop. John Quincy Adams kept an alligator, swam nude in the Potomac and liked having sex outdoors. Saddam Hussein’s eldest son, Uday, had lions, a bear, a cheetah and Internet pictures Photoshopped to look like the naked Bush twins on his walls.
William Randolph Hearst introduced the moronic llama into the United States. Teddy Roosevelt kept a bear and a lion as pets at the White House. Phillip II of Spain enjoyed collecting dwarves.
As your Holy Royal President, I vow to bring Lou Dobbs to the White House as a reward for services rendered, put him in the Lincoln Bedroom, then fill a polar bear with Adderall and throw it in with him at around three A.M., while blasting Slayer’s Reign in Blood.”
- Cintra Wilson, Caligula For President: Better American Living Through Tyranny
—Love Jones
This song is called “LOVE JONES.” It is the opening and closing credits song from John Leslie’s 1990 movie, “The Tease,” a pornographic film starring Randy West, Randy Spears, Selena Steele, Ashlyn Gere, and TT Boy.
Leslie was at the top of his game in the late 80’s and early 90’s, pumping out a string of solid hits that were without exception competently written and well-shot, featuring acting that was fun to watch even if (or because) it was not quite believable.
I can’t put my finger precisely on what I like and respect about Leslie’s movies from that time period. In terms of production value, they’re of about the same caliber as television soap operas; and because Leslie tended to use only the best-looking performers from the adult film industry establishment, the look of his films in some way mimics that genre, insofar as the look of the actors was model-like, and sometimes wooden.
As an actor, Leslie was one of the most popular male stars of the 1970’s. He made his transition into directing gracefully. VCA took him under his wing in the late 80’s, and he made about twenty-five features for them until the mid-90’s, at which point he began distributing his films under John Stagliano’s Evil Angel umbrella, and switched to a more gonzo sensibility. He directed 147 films in all, according to iafd.com.
I believe Leslie wrote and performed “LOVE JONES,” though as I remember, the song is uncredited, and it’s possible I am wrong. He was a talented musician until the time of his death in 2007.
