Cancer benefit for Henri Pachard, veteran porn director

Donations to Henri Pachard’s Cancer Fund are now being accepted. And, for the next 30 days, every adult store order of Not the Bradys XXX results in a percentage donation, as do purchases of Pachard titles from my store on Gamelink.

Like workers in any industry – but perhaps more so than mainstream entertainment, which they are often compared to – Porn personnel work from job to job and, if they’re smart and lucky, put money away for rainy days.

Director Henri Pachard (born Ron Sullivan in New York), though responsible for hundreds of porn movies over five decades as well as dozens of Times Square grindhouse movies, is suffering from cancer and, because cancer is expensive and directors do not get residuals, has watched the disease eat through his savings.

Pachard wrote a regular column for AVNInsider called “The Pornographer’s Journal” when I edited that website, covering his current projects but mostly talking about Porn’s so-called “Golden Age” and before. He was always entertaining, compelling, and the kind of gentleman who would say “fuck” a lot, which made me trust him more than the gentlemen who didn’t.

Here is one of his columns about his early days as a director and the making of the classic Babylon Pink.

At my first AVN convention, I asked 100 youngish (ages 18-21) porn performers what “Deep Throat” was and, aside from a number of people telling me it was a style of blowjob, only two knew that it was the standard-bearing porn movie.

Knowing that, it is easy to believe that the porn world and the world at large often forget pioneers in the porn business; there is no real objective journal and its employees are often all too eager to hide their roles in the business once they are done, making for a business with no solid institutional sense of history.

But Pachard is and was a walking history lesson. He is a reminder of a time when people got into porn because they were film fans and fast-talking east coast players and, in a way, radicals. He is a beloved presence to those who have been around long enough to see him at work.

And, like many of the adult world’s established behind-the-scenes workers, Pachard got his son a job: Jason Sullivan shoots camera for most of Porn Valley’s big productions.

But Pachard and his lovely wife, Delores, are struggling. If you are a porn fan of a certain age, chances are Henri Pachard has helped form some of your earliest impressions of the San Fernando Valley.

Henri Pachard Cancer Fund
Mail: C/o All Media Play
1680 Vine St. #1118
Hollywood, CA. 90028 Ph-323.467.9900

Babylon Pink

Previously: My Big Fat Gang Bang: Corpulent Converge on Kat Kleevage; Wig-flipping with Nicki Hunter; Don Lemmon dies
See also: Henri Pachard on IAFD

About Gram the Man 4399 Articles
Gram Ponante is America's Beloved Porn Journalist

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