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Clive McLean Remembered
AVN Hall of Fame director/photographer Clive McLean passed away early this morning (March 29) and in memory of the porn legend, we are re-running his Hall of Fame profile from the October 2001 issue of AVN.
It's a rare 55-year-old married man who could be considered even remotely cool. Maybe that's why Hustler's Senior Photographer Clive McLean has survived for 26 years in the adult business; along with brains and talent, he's got a wicked sense of humor. Any guy who's able to do a dead-on impression of Larry Flynt, and then use that gift for evil by impersonating Flynt in order to "fire" one of Hustler's editors over the phone deserves a place in AVN's Hall of Fame, and perhaps a parade as well.
Art school student McLean received his degree in graphic design and journalism in the 1960s, soon working on the English television show Top of the Pops and freelance photographing actors, musicians and models, as well as nudes of local hippie girls which were sold to men's magazines such as Men Only (which turned into Club and Club International).
"I did the first layout for Club, and shot for the early issues of Penthouse in England before it came to the States," McLean says. "The glamour kind of took over. I did Page 3 in England and I built up a name for myself. I had a [talent search] feature called 'Be a McLean Girl,' and girls would send their photos in."
Larry Flynt saw McLean's work in the early '70s and was interested enough to call, but McLean found Hustler too low-brow for his tastes - was it those tasteful Chester the Molester cartoons? - and declined the offer. It took nothing short of a personal scandal to change his mind; in 1976 he and his then-wife, a fashion model, were embroiled in a messy divorce that made all the newspapers. Something about a love triangle "that was really a love square," as McLean puts it.
"Larry and Althea Flynt read the English newspapers in Columbus, Ohio and called me, asking if I'd reconsider working for them. Right then I thought, 'Anything to get out of the fucking country'... so I came to the States to meet with Larry. On April Fools' Day 1976 I got off the plane with my 6-year-old son and there are Larry and Althea and all these bodyguards, and I thought, 'What the fuck? Who are these people? Hillbillies!' It turned out Larry and I got on like a house afire. He's a very funny guy. So we got to Columbus and he said what would you like? And I said, 'A house in Palm Beach, Florida.' No way did I want to move to Columbus, Ohio."
Amazingly, Flynt came through on this request. "That was when the Pulitzer thing was happening and the Kennedys were right down the street. And Larry put us right in the middle of Palm Beach in this huge mansion."
McLean's other conditions were met as well. "Our agreement was that if I worked for him we'd have a color separator. Larry's a very sharp guy; he knew what he wanted but he didn't know how to get it. He was at the mercy of freelance photographers. He wanted an in-house staff... we still send our work to a color separator in Switzerland, who's the finest color separator in the world. That was part of our agreement - if the subject matter is going to be that explicit, I want good quality printing, good quality everything."
In the 26 years he's been with Hustler, McLean has shot layouts for France's Hot Video Magazine as well as all of Hustler's magazines, such as Taboo, Chic and the defunct Rage, a particular favorite. "I could do b/w, funky speeds; it wasn't the strict, rigorous routine of Hustler. You could mess it up a little bit. It did me a lot of good. If I shoot with the editors and art directors in mind, which I did for a while, I go bonkers. I become very static. I like a fashion-type look; fashion with pussy. Clean, fresh, uncluttered - no frou-frou bed, no bowls of fruit; just straight-on and beautiful." He's also broken new ground, laying claim to the first boy/girl layout. And the first full male erection to appear in the pages of Hustler? McLean's. (The photograph, anyway.)
Recently, McLean has delved into directing Hustler Video's Barely Legal series ("because everybody said that I couldn't"), which proved to be an initiation into the world of flaky porn chicks. "I never had a no-show for the magazines, but [it's common] with the videos," he fumed. "We pay them good money... My pet peeve is girls not having respect for the money we pay them. Where else do these fucking girls make $800-$1000 in a couple of hours?"
And while he'd begun shooting his first feature (Young Sluts, Inc.) as we went to press, he insists, "I shall never put my layouts aside... I have a new approach to them; a different lighting look which has changed the look of the magazine a little bit. I always want to push on ahead; I always want to do new things.
"I'm 55 years old and I still want to push the boundaries. I'm always going forward."
- Susie Ehrlich
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