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THE HARDEST (WORKING) MAN IN SHOWBIZ by Ron Jeremy

THE HARDEST (WORKING) MAN IN SHOWBIZ

Horny Women, Hollywood Nights and the Rise of the Hedgehog!

by Ron Jeremy

Pub Date: Feb. 1st, 2007
ISBN: 0-06-084082-X
Publisher: HarperCollins

He’s more than just a porn star, people.

“I’ve had sex with more than four thousand women in my life, but I've been in love with only five of them,” says Ron Hyatt, who changed his last name to Jeremy in order to mollify his parents. You won’t know much more than that about any of them after reading this basically affable but generally repetitive autobiography of the world’s best-known porn performer; you also won’t be surprised to find out that Jeremy has had very few long-term relationships. He’s quite fascinated with his career and hopes you will be, too—you’d better be, given his obsessive-compulsive attitude toward getting work, any work, and his tendency to talk about it ad nauseum. Born in 1953, he had a good-Jewish-boy upbringing in Queens, worked various odd jobs as a young adult in the Catskills and started on a master’s degree in special education. Things changed drastically after his girlfriend talked him into sending a naked photo of himself to Playgirl. The evidence of his sizable manhood resulted in a flood of men and women calling his parents’ home, and a rising adult-film star was born. Jeremy’s narrative is occasionally informative, especially for those curious about the porn business and the world of C-list actors. He effects an amiable lack of ego, constantly mocking his bad taste in jokes, portly physique and general dork-itude, but when the ego surfaces, it’s a monster, with him endlessly relating his celebrity encounters and friendships (John Frankenheimer to Slash), paying special attention to the compliments they shower on him. This makes for an amusingly schizophrenic book: half self-positive celebration of the purportedly fun and harmless porn business, half defensive retort that the author is above all that—being a classically trained pianist and all.

The wink-wink title tells readers everything they need to know.