An engrossing panorama of porn’s heady past.
A celebrated porn director looks back on the bawdy soul of his genre’s golden age in this frank, psychologically probing debut memoir.
Brown, who left behind this manuscript upon his death in 2012, recounts his 1967 epiphany when, as a film hobbyist roaming New York City, he discovered legions of men, and some women, eager to pose suggestively for his 16-millimeter camera. Some allowed him to film them having sex, and what began as a fun outlet for his own fantasies burgeoned into a business with the rise of the hardcore pornography industry in the early 1970s—a time when porn films ran in theaters, had press screenings, and got notices in mainstream publications, such as Variety, Interview, and Esquire. (Appendices cover the author’s filmography and glowing reviews.) Brown, a gay man who made both gay and straight porn, portrays his films as exercises in sexual humanism with upbeat stories and an emphasis on his actors’ pleasure. Central to his productions was an extensive casting process featuring interviews with performers about what kinds of sexual practices and partners they liked, so he could couple compatible actors in genuinely erotic scenes. There is much explicit, though not sensationalistic, play-by-play, but the focus is on emotions and personalities: most of the book consists of vivid, well-observed profiles of porn actors in which Brown tries to suss out what makes them tick (and who makes them climax) by playing both therapist and matchmaker. “I wanted to use him but was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to find his perfect cowboy ideal for him,” he writes of one Marlboro Man–obsessed prospect. The result is a parade of quirky character studies, including cross-dressers, BDSM enthusiasts, brazen showoffs—one actress rented a print of a film in which she appeared, for a gathering of her friends—and introverts who blossom for the camera. The common thread, Brown contends, is their drive to self-actualize by becoming the stars of their own life stories. The author’s liberationist take on ’70s porn sometimes feels a tad idealistic, but his warm empathy and unblinking eye for psychosexual foibles keep it grounded.
An engrossing panorama of porn’s heady past.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-937627-31-7
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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