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."
