Mug shot revisited

Since performer Kurt Lockwood’s return to the porn industry after announcing his retirement last September, he has been appearing in transsexual and bisexual videos. According to friends, “he has been telling everyone he is only doing gay movies from now on.”

But unless anything has changed in Lockwood’s understanding of himself from one year ago this week, he only plays a gay man in movies.

On March 1, 2007, I arrived at the set of a movie only to be attacked by an irate Lockwood, who said I’d called him a “fag.” He shoved me several times in the middle of the street, and I halfheartedly broke my thermos of lukewarm coffee on his glasses.

The cash-strapped production (the company went out of business soon after the movie was released), rather than boot Lockwood off the set, instead demanded that I and a blogger named Luke Ford leave, lest Lockwood become more upset.

It turns out I had arrived as the movie’s director, Jennifer James, was trying to calm Lockwood down from a previous threat he had made against the manager of the filming location. The manager hadn’t allowed Lockwood’s dog in the building and Lockwood threatened to kick his ass.

The day was already going poorly for Kurt. He was an hour late and had just been told by Bo Kenney, owner of SexZ Pictures, that Lockwood’s “The Real Boogie Nights” was unsalvageable, containing whole pages of dialogue plagiarized from P.T. Anderson’s 1998 “Boogie Nights” and, according to a SexZ director, being “almost unrecognizable as a movie.”

While there are a number of lifestyle heterosexual male performers who are “gay for pay,” appearing in the (on the whole) more lucrative gay movies, Lockwood’s boastful demeanor and frequent chatboard feuds with other adult industry employees drew criticism and scorn aimed at deflating his ego. Among these were numerous accusations of Lockwood’s own homosexuality with liberal doses of the word “fag.”

Unfortunately for me – otherwise I would have known what was coming – I had never called Lockwood a fag.

But I had written that, for a person who was once a go go dancer at gay clubs, who appeared in “pegging” movies, who had performed in all-male films aimed at gay consumers in the early part of his porn work and who, even in his stalled music career as “Stevie Sexyxrist,” had appeared in flamboyant drag, it seemed unseemly for him to act surprised that people might suggest he might be gay himself and downright weird for him to protest his heterosexuality so violently.

I had the chance to tell Luke Ford he did not have my permission to post the video he said he’d taken of the assault, but he posted it as soon as he got home. I was driving to another set, irritated with James and freaked out by Lockwood’s behavior, when I got a call from a former L.A. Times reporter who told me the video was on the web.

This is when the story evolved from something that could be dealt with privately in a day or two to something I still hear about. I filed battery charges against Lockwood with the L.A.P.D. Rampart Division and consulted a lawyer about suing the company that had allowed a demonstrably violent person to continue working after attacking an invited member of the press.

The lawyer correctly predicted that the company would have no money to pay me, “but there’s a case there if you want one.”

The day of the assault, Ford wrote Lockwood to ask him for his side of the story. Lockwood wrote back: “You’re next.”

Lockwood’s friends, the performers Jack Lawrence and Josh Hunter, both speculated to me that Lockwood thought I was Ford, who had also never called him a fag but who had printed more defamatory material on his former website.

But I did not believe this, as I’d heard Kurt ask Jennifer James who I was before he started shoving.

I kept notes of my interviews with city employees and they gave me details of their conversations with James and Lockwood.

Lockwood was questioned by an L.A.P.D. detective two weeks after the incident. He brought the shirt that he’d taken off in the street, said that I’d burned him with coffee, and filed a battery charge against me. This was immediately dismissed.

Meanwhile, Jennifer James had called me to apologize, saying it was not her decision to have me kicked off the set. “My hands were tied,” she said.

She had never given me any reason to believe her before; I’d determined after James had lied to me in an interview I’d published that I would never give her any publicity again, but I’d changed my mind, and then regretted it.

The movie’s producer, a newcomer calling himself Brian Scott, also wrote me and offered to take me to dinner. I wrote back and asked him his real name and the physical address of his business. He didn’t contact me again.

James was then interviewed by the L.A.P.D. She admitted that Lockwood had already appeared “out of control” earlier in the morning and that when he had gone after me, James was in the process of trying to calm him down.

When James was asked why she chose to have me and Ford leave the set rather than send Lockwood home, she said that the budget wouldn’t allow it. Producer Scott said Lockwood couldn’t be replaced that quickly, and the location had already been paid for. Later, James told others that she had “written the part” for Kurt and that, after the distractions had been sent away, he had done a “sizzling” scene.

In the coming months I dealt with two representatives of the City of Los Angeles. Both in their turn seemed at times bemused, fascinated, and repelled by the workings of the adult business.

The detective conducting the initial interviews, Dollie Swanson, would give me updates. She seemed, at times, shocked at the way people conducted themselves in the porn industry.

“In any other business people would bend over backwards to make sure you didn’t write anything bad about them,” Swanson told me after talking with James. “These people are on these chatboards all the time, getting into it.”

I said that in a business where the margins are so small and where one director’s product looked a lot like another’s, any publicity is good publicity.

Swanson told me that Lockwood brought her printouts of my work – or had searched a computer in her presence – and was still not able to find evidence of my having called him a fag.

But performer Kami Andrews had. She’d had dealings with Lockwood and called him a fag, on my site, when she wrote a guest column while I was on vacation. But it was clearly marked that she was the writer.

“I find no evidence of your having called him that,” she told me, “but there is enough on your site that clearly derides him about his sunglasses, and someone would be able to tell that you’re making fun of him.”

Lockwood told Swanson that sometimes others, such as girlfriends, wrote posts for him on chatboards. He said that the porn industry was homophobic and that it would not give him work if people thought he was gay.

“Is this true?” Swanson asked me.

I pointed out that since the incident, people had been mailing me undoctored photos of Lockwood in situations a reasonable person might call gay. These included pictures of his former band and some DVD covers. I also said that , whether or not it was true of Kurt’s orientation, “gay” was a word that people used in the adult business to describe him – but not necessarily pejoratively.

I said that I don’t think people call the director Chi Chi LaRue a fag, and she has often directed on the straight side of porn. I said that I didn’t think people cared.

But, I said, it was not his sexuality that people had trouble with. It was this business of freaking out on people. I suggested that it was Lockwood who was sensitive about his sexuality, and that he shouldn’t be.

But even if certain directors would no longer hire him for his belligerent behavior, enough would continue working with him because he’s a handsome dude and fans like him.

“I’m looking at some of these stories on the websites,” she said, “and it doesn’t seem like you can really get blacklisted enough to keep someone from hiring you.”

The police obtained statements from Abby Ehmann, who was with me on the set, from blogger and director Mike South, whom Lockwood had assaulted at the AVN Expo, and from radio host Wankus, whom Lockwood had assaulted – also on the “you called me a fag” pretext – at a memorial service for the director Jim Holliday.

Detective Swanson waded through Lockwood’s extensive digital paper trail of heated backs and forths with detractors. The case was kicked up to Civil Court.

By this point I was wondering why the two major adult “news” organizations, AVN and XBiz, had not done a story about an assault on a movie set involving a well-known director, a well-known performer, and a former employee of both their companies. XBiz finally wrote something on March 12.

Then James and Scott went to various websites saying that people like me should not write whatever they wanted with impunity and that I should apologize for disrupting the set of the movie. Lockwood told XBiz that sldiers were dying in Iraq and people interested in this story should get a life.

The backlash against James, Scott, and Lockwood was immediate, harsh, and educational. But James, having hired publicist Jeff Mullen for the movie, marketed it as “porn’s most dangerous movie” and capitalized on the assault.

I wrote Mullen that I would not print any of his press releases until he had distanced himself from James, which he has.

Other than people connected with the movie, the only person I know of who defended the production’s actions in asking me to leave was the late Jim Holliday’s friend, former porn performer Bill Margold.

The 60-something Margold comes from a time when porn was illegal, and believes in the strong bonds of something he calls “The Family of X.”

Of my decision to call the cops he wrote:

“Obviously the man is clueless when it comes to matters of honor and loyalty toward a business that allows him to butter his daily bread.”

He went on to relate a story about working as a juvenile corrections officer and shaming tattlers rather than dealing with the people they told on. I do think the honor and loyalty approach is effective for organizations like the Mob, where there is an internal system of controls, but I didn’t see any self-regulation happening on the set that day. Also, the Mob makes money – this movie lost it.

Margold works for an escort ad newspaper called the LAXPress. I’d been e-mailed one of their covers last summer that clearly identified the performer Hillary Scott as a hooker named Tiffany. I called the paper, said who I was, and was put on hold. The person who picked up the phone next had a familiar voice, but did not identify himself, but began lecturing immediately.

“You need to understand that when you allow your picture to be taken and you sign that release, that image doesn’t belong to you,” he said. “People can use it for anything.”

“Is this Bill Margold?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Uh huh. Now, you know that’s Hillary Scott, right? And not Tiffany the hooker?”

“Yes.”

Family of X…

I was then interviewed by Hearing Officer Cydney Bensimon of the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office. Lockwood was supposed to be there with me but the City sent his notice to the wrong address. By that time – early April of 2007 – I had compiled my own evidence of Lockwood’s behavior towards others and, for good measure, had brought printouts of some of his work that might be construed as gay.

“…but you know that doesn’t matter,” Bensimon said.

“Well, yes, but – ”

“You could tell him his mother wears Army boots; he still has no right to hit you,” she said.

She indicated to me that the case was probably not going anywhere; did I think I was in danger? Had Lockwood tried to contact me?

“Nope. Not even to apologize. But if he’s the type of person who tries to beat up someone who didn’t call him something, what might he try to do to all the people who actually did?”

“When I talk to him I will try to determine if he will do this sort of thing again.”

I told her that I was concerned that, because Lockwood had lied to the detective (there was no way he got burned with coffee; I should know, because most of it had landed on me), any contrition he demonstrated (Lockwood and I were both raised Catholic) might similarly be an act.

“We’ll see.”

At the end of May I got a call from Attorney Bensimon. She had met with Lockwood on May 14.

“I’m not going forward with the claim,” she said. “He admits he hit you, he admits he was out of control, he feels like a jerk for what he did. He’s sorry.”

I asked about a paper trail.

“He’s in the system, but there is no ‘criminal record’ per se,” she said. “There’s no filing or conviction.

“He’s going to be 38 in a week,” she said. “How many years do any of these people have in your business?”

Well, several.

“I don’t think he wants anything to do with you,” she said.

The case was over, and the hubbub had died down. Still, whenever I see certain people they say “Call me a fag now!”

I tried several times to get Kurt Lockwood to talk for this story. I left two phone messages with numbers I’d been given, and at least three e-mails. I then mentioned it to a friend of his, and CCd him on this e-mail:

I congratulated Lockwood on the recent birth of his son, and mentioned that I had a new son in 2007, too.

…But we have some unfinished business. Whatever you were going through that day (or that year) should have not had anything to do with me, and you have not once apologized, publicly or privately, for it. Further, the police are aware you lied to them. Not that that matters (as we’ve seen), but I’m wondering if you want a forum to tell the truth. And I would like your apology to be part of it.

As you know, the story of that day got to be bigger than my getting jumped on the way to work. There were issues of how people cover their butts (figuratively) in this business as well as how profit margins are so low that they affect decision-making. We both know you should have been sent home that day, but they couldn’t afford it. Now that company is bankrupt.

But I think it would do well for your image – and I know you’re concerned about it, else you wouldn’t have done what you did – to talk about the difference between gay and bi and gay for pay – and if any of those terms really mean anything anymore. I’ve noticed that you are venturing into the tranny/bi market again; I think you have an opportunity for that “legacy” (I think that was the word) you mentioned in your farewell AVN article to address the differences/similarities between porn and private life.

What do you think?

No reply.

So Lockwood is working again, Jennifer James can be seen at various events with a camera, ostensibly in the process of prepping a reality show, and the company that made the movie no longer has a website save for a MySpace page that hasn’t been updated. The movie came and went. A salesperson at the company that distributed the DVD told me that it did not sell many copies.

“The Real Boogie Nights,” the movie that Lockwood was told wouldn’t be released, actually was released with some intercession on the part of Ron Jeremy with his pal, P.T. Anderson.

I’ve started speaking to Jeff Mullen again because he thinks he’s going to Hell anyway, so why bother being mad? I feel the same about Luke Ford, who also sort of retired from porn.

I am grateful to Abby Ehmann, Wankus, and especially Mike South for giving me a little perspective in the early days, as well as the myriad chatboard commenters who were a wealth of information. Darcy Alison (now of Videobox) and Justin Berthelsen of Gamelink also provided support in the form of the first of several replacement thermoses that came in the mail the next few weeks.

And I don’t have anything against Lockwood. This is a hard business to be in sometimes; fame comes a lot easier than anywhere else, but it is directly proportional to scrutiny, and the scrutiny is fierce. The detective told him to stop reading stories about him if they get him so mad, but in case he’s reading: No one cares about your orientation. You have a good shot at a worthwhile third act.

I had told Detective Swanson that, when I started writing about porn, it was with the thought that I would eventually write a book about it. After a year I lost interest in writing the type of book everyone seems to write about porn; wide-eyed, titillated, sardonic and dismissive. But after this situation started playing itself out I’ve been thinking about it again.

I will call it “Eon McKai.”

One of the last things Attorney Bensimon said before she closed the case on myself and Lockwood shocked me, because it reduced everyone to the same (non-binding) judgment:

“I think you’re both nice men.”

UPDATE MARCH 2010:

After a brief career transition that involved trannies, Lockwood’s porn career dried up. He actively solicited work but he would not be hired. Lockwood told people he moved to France, though I got several enlightening e-mails from his former high school classmates in Maryland dealing with his recent activities there. Lockwood, or someone posing as him, also sent a few earth-scorching e-mails to various former nemeses, including a threatening letter to me, hoping to stir things up, defending his tranny and bisexual career as “punk rock” and misquoting the Sex Pistols. I dutifully forwarded these to the LAPD, knowing nothing would happen, but seeing the need for a paper trail. Much later, I was contacted by a Baltimore-based FBI agent who asked if I would give testimony against Lockwood in an emigration case and I refused; I said the agents could read what I’d already written but Lockwood (whose birth name that the agent gave me made several things a lot more clear) shouldn’t get the opportunity to blame anyone else for whatever consequences were waiting for him. I was told by a Lockwood acquaintance at the 2010 AVN convention that Lockwood had friended him on Facebook and said that he was taking his meds, so that’s nice.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2012:

Someone joins Twitter with the handle KurtLockwood, and I and XCritic’s Don Houston are within this user’s first ten follows. I pay no attention (beyond blocking the user—if it is not Lockwood, I don’t support identity theft; if it is Lockwood, I’m still waiting on that apology). AVN’s Peter Warren, who penned Lockwood’s “farewell to the industry” story several years ago, writes a comeback story. I’m still thinking, “Isn’t there supposed to be a family somewhere in France?”

A reader sends me a massage ad.

Porn is the place where, when you go there, they lack the sense of self-worth to kick you out.

Let’s hope that, in the grand scheme of things, this is just a huge eyeroll. People need to work. Has all the harm that is possible to be done been done? I sure hope so. In the meantime, I have nothing but pity for everyone involved.