Monday, June 02, 2008

Best Selling Porn Scribe Bites Back


Earlier today, New York's culture blog, Vulture, ran an item about running into porn legend Ron Jeremy at BookExpo America. Jeremy expounded at length upon his best-selling autobiography, Ron Jeremy: The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz, now in paperback, particularly that it was a bestseller.

Jeremy opines book publishing is a harder business to understand than porn, declares he beat Jenna Jameson in European book sales, and disses his ghostwriter: "[Jenna Jameson] gets Neil Strauss, and I get Eric Spitznagel. He got a lot of stuff wrong. We were delayed by one year, the things he got wrong."

Spitznagel is a Reverse Cowgirl pal, so I shot him on email on the matter. His response follows.

"I don't recall the book being delayed for a year because of factual errors. From my memory, it was delayed because Ron was too busy hosting wet t-shirt contests and signing tits at strip clubs to meet with his ghostwriter. He was also unamused that I decided to write the book rather than, say, just transcribe his long, rambling monologues word for word, directly from the tape.

I do remember that he wasn't pleased with my first draft. He thought my version of events placed a little too much emphasis on his porn career.

'Every page is just sex, sex, sex,' he yelled at me. 'Why does it all have to be about sex?'

'Well, you're a porn star, Ron," I reminded him. 'I'm pretty sure that's what people are expecting.'

'What about my work with PETA?' He suggested. 'Can't we include a chapter about that?'

'Unless you fucked a sheep, I don't think anybody cares.'

I sincerely apologize to Ron for not being Neil Strauss. But honestly, I suspect that even Strauss would've been flummoxed with instructions like 'less stories about the Golden Age of porn, more stories about hanging out with Mickey Rourke and Frank Stallone.' I stand by my decisions, even if they weren't popular at the time. If I didn't argue with Ron, there would've been no mention of his ability to self-fellate, or that he was once involved in a 14 women gangbang and somehow didn't have a heart attack. Instead, the book would've had at least sixteen more stories about how Slash is a close, personal friend of his and, like, totally respects him. Ron may feel like he was shafted, but I like to believe I made the world a better place."