The New Yorker, October 30, 1995 P. 64
A REPORTER AT LARGE about men in the pornography industry & the effect of the suicide of male porn star Cal Jammer (real name Randy Potes)... Writer visits the San Fernando Valley suburbs of Los Angeles, which are home to World Modeling Talent Agency, central casting for the nation's pornographic film, video, and magazine industries. Writer interviews porn stars, producers & aspirants Damon Rose, Alec Metro, Tyffany Million, Nick East, Mitch Spinelli, Steve Drake, Bill Margold, John Wayne Bobbin, Sean Michaels, Jill Kelly, Raven Touchstone, Jonathan Morgan, Ron Jeremy, Zack Adams, T.T. Boy, Buck Adams, Austin & Dallas McCloud and Jeff Stryker, among others... World Modeling has become the last-chance opportunity for a generation desperately seeking "immediate placement." It is both the backstage door to the current American dream and an emergency-escape hatch for a capsizing American economy. Which is why World Modeling these days lures not just women but men. More men, in fact, than women. More men than this industry of feminine glamour can even begin to absorb... Stag films may serve as the male-bonding glue of bachelor parties, but in the occupational end of modern porn the male performers view one another with Darwinian teeth bared, aware of their endangered status... Female performers can often dictate which male actors they will and will not work with... Writer talks with Bill Margold, a leading figure in the porn industry since 1969 & talks about the death of Cal Jammer... A porn shoot is an intricately delineated ecology. Directors, while still more or less on top, are increasingly challenged by the rise of the "box-cover girl" and the "contract girl." With the advent of video, the box, not its contents, sells the product, which means that the box-cover girl can sometimes trump her supposed bosses. Under the directors and the contract girls is the reliable "male talent" which amounts to fewer than thirty regulars whom the industry can count on for on-call erections... A key to a typical porn film is the so called "money shot" in which the male ejaculates for the camera... It is the necessity for male erection which either guarantees or dooms a particular production... Describes the difficulties male actors have in "getting wood"... Writer describes scene with T.T. Boy, an indefatigable erective performer... Tells about the history of commercial pornography, which has split into widely-separated high- and low-end markets... Writer interviews Buck Adams, who graduated from simple porn to bigger-budget "action porn" video movies... Tells how he advised Cal Jammer that rather than hard his wife, he shoot himself in the head in the street, moments before Jammer did so... Writer attended his funeral... Describes male actors' antipathy toward Jammer's ex-wife, Jill Kelly, who got back into the business... Describes his abusive e relationship with her...
