“Confessions of An Ivy League Pornographer” or: Johnny Can Read, But Is He Happy?

Why do people choose to work in porn? It’s not that porn work is an indefensible job but, unlike working in an aquarium, it is a job that more often than not has to be defended, and this takes energy.

Sam Benjamin managed to graduate from Brown University with a degree in esoteric degree that taught him to think about film. He will tell you, in his incisive, witty, and often tragic memoir “Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer,” that sometimes the energy involved in explaining your career choices could have gone to starting a different career.

Benjamin’s “Confessions” completes the list of my favorite books of 2009, along with Tera Patrick’s and Zak (Sabbath) Smith’s memoirs. At first glance it would seem like Zak Smith, who went to Yale, would have much in common with Benjamin, but this emphasizes a fundamental misconception about pornographers – that they are all the same – when we can then look at Tera Patrick’s book and realize that there is a good chance that the three authors would have been lucky to have been in the same city together at the same time.

Benjamin, the son of a psychoanalyst (who eventually tells his Sam, “I love you but stop asking me for money”) was directionless, picking fruit in Northern California, when he had an idea: He would make pornography that meant something. That was artistic.

We follow Benjamin through the Good Vibrations-flavored San Francisco porn scene in the early 2000s. That was a time when eBay was a viable option for distribution, and Benjamin sold his first awkward fetish tapes (yes, tapes) and solo masturbation movies there. He then heads to California where his career picks up; he finds two amiable black guys willing to be filmed plowing a succession of white women.

Despite his father’s warning, we get a sense through Benjamin’s book that he could go home anytime, yet the penury he allows himself to descend into is admirable, especially as his macrobiotic eating regimen hasn’t changed from his Santa Cruz days. “Confessions” will resonate with a lot of overeducated artists who ae trying – and failing – to get paid to do what they want.

Benjamin worked in porn for five years, eventually becoming a go-to gonzo shooter (this is another reason that Benjamin’s story is fundamentally different from the steveporn and pillow-queen worlds of Sabbath and Patrick, respectively) and “Confessions” can get vividly squalid at times. We leave his story in 2002, as he is about to embark on the part of his career that will be most lucrative but ultimately the most soul-destroying.

I asked Benjamin why the book ended with three years to go in his porn gig, and what made him leave.

“I was becoming an asshole,” Benjamin said (and proceeded to say a lot more but, like any good scholar, he began with his thesis).

“Confessions of An Ivy League Pornographer” offers expert insight into the garden-level tragedy of porn, as well as the freedom the business allows and the consequences of that freedom.

Benjamin has picked up another degree and occupation since leaving porn, but does not rule out a return, again, to make porn that means something. And that means he has renounced his L.A. privileges.

“Maybe someday I’ll come back, but not as a poor person,” he said. “The temptation to get back into shooting would just be too much.”

Benjamin is selling “Confessions of An Ivy League Pornographer” on its eponymous website, but the first ten people to e-mail Benjamin through the website will get a PDF copy for free (including the full comic art of “The 7 Stages of Your Porn Career.” Just mention this review.

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Looking at Porn from Three Sides Now – The Best Porn Books of 2009; Shay Jordan rechristened Shay J
See also: Confessions of An Ivy League Pornographer

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

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