Vivid at 25: Porn with a little reality

On Valentine’s Day I ventured from the bosom of my home to the bosoms of many other women for a retrospective of Vivid’s quarter-century of existence at the World of Wonder gallery in Hollywood.

World of Wonder produces glossy documentaries of porn, club, and gay culture, and has partnered with Vivid several times, most recently on Deeper Throat, detailing the company’s struggle with Arrow Productions to get the right to remake Deep Throat (which it did, with results directed by Paul Thomas). The gallery show doubled as a premiere party for the Deeper Throat miniseries that debuted that night on Showtime.

Vivid last worked with W.o.W. on Debbie Loves Dallas, another Showtime miniseries about the making of Debbie Loves Dallas Again, and the two companies seem to have the staged “reality” model figured out, though I’ve always found actual reality more compelling.

I spoke with Robert Interlandi of Arrow Productions, who appears to have been cast as a comic foil in the miniseries.

“There’s things I can’t tell you because of the lawyers,” he said, “but [the miniseries] made me look bad.”

Arrow Productions is the Las Vegas-based company that owns the rights to the original Deep Throat, released in 1972, directed by the late Gerard Damiano, and funded by elements of the underworld. Robert Interlandi is the vice president and son of Arrow’s owner, Paul.

The younger Interlandi is in his early 30’s and, among other things, capitalized on Deep Throat by making an energy drink out of it.

“[The producers] would ask me what was in Deep Throat Energy Drink and I’d say, ‘Vodka and, I don’t know, blue stuff?’ and all they aired was ‘blue stuff?'” Interlandi said. “They’d cut off my sentences so I’d look like an idiot. They did it a couple of times.”

“Do you believe the theory that there is no such thing as bad publicity?” I asked.

“Not if it makes me look like an idiot,” he said, “but it does sell the product.”

I haven’t seen Deeper Throat (Vivid’s publicist said I should check with Showtime for screeners) but it seems that there is a good chance the series followed the same formula of the Debbie documentary for a heightened and exaggerated depiction of what actually happened.

This was disappointing because I have enjoyed W.o.W.’s other productions, including the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat and 2003’s Party Monster, starring Macauley Culkin as Michael Alig, the New York club kid who bragged about killing his drug dealer.

At the time of the Debbie documentary (featuring Sunny Leone, above), I thought that the miniseries would be no less entertaining if no creative license had been taken. Instead, it seemed the audience wasn’t judged smart enough to not have things packaged for it, even if W.o.W. had let viewers make up their own minds in Inside Deep Throat and numerous other slick productions, like Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal.

Regardless, I’m sure the series will be entertaining for Real World fans. The Deep Throat remake itself, said Vivid production manager Shylar Cobi, is a throwback to classic porn movies.

“We’re not really good at endings these days,” he said. “Somebody pops and the screen goes dark? But Deep Throat is a full movie, and P(aul)T(homas) is really proud of it.”

I’ve met Thomas a number of times. I am a big fan of his work in Jesus Christ Superstar, among other things.

“Who do you write for?” Thomas asked me. Again.

“Who are you, Dennis Hof?” I said. With all my cosmetic surgery I must be starting to look like everybody else.

The gallery floor was packed, and the walls were hung with photos, arranged counter-clockwise by year with Vivid boxcovers from Ginger Lynn’s early successes in 1984 all the way through to something called Vivid-alt hidden in a far corner.

That part of Hollywood Blvd. – to the east of where the Oscars are held and across the street from Musso & Frank Grill – has heavy foot traffic. People gathered to steam up the windows. An older man asked me if Jenna Jameson was in there.

“No, but Sasha Grey is,” I said.

“The swimmer?” he said.

“The porn star,” I said.

“Don’t know him,” the man said.

Vivid’s Steve Hirsch, who co-founded the company in 1984, was inside. Hirsch is one of only a few of Porn Valley’s CEOs who has managed to keep his company afloat from the dawn of VHS through the Great Internet Dilution. The others are Larry Flynt and Adam & Eve’s Phil Harvey.

Inside I was happy to see Persia, who now follows me everywhere in case I pop an aneurysm, need dialysis, or have a seizure. Also on hand was Sunny Leone, of whom only grainy and out of focus pictures are allowed from my camera, apparently.

Nicki Hunter was there, too. She looked great, as always, but I gasped in horror at her iPhone.

“Don’t look at it!” she wailed. It was horribly scratched.

“What happened to it?” I said, feeling ill.

“I lost my earpiece in Vegas and I was walking my dog talking with the phone flattened against my shoulder,” she said. “Then the dog started running and I dropped the phone on the ground, screen first,” she said. But what she meant was, “Let’s you and I become one person, Grams.”

“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said (aside from someone thinking Sasha Grey was Greg Louganis).

I can’t guarantee you conversations as sparkling as the ones I got to have, but the retrospective runs through March 13 and is worth the trip.

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Is the feature dead?; Angry sex with Kelli McCarty; Paul Thomas Superstar; Free Speech Coalition – Mainstream Legal Titans Speak to Porn Notables in Historic Summit; Hirsch’s heavies heave haunches heavenward; Sunny no longer loves Matt; Sort of “Inside Deep Throat” but not all the way in
See also: Vivid, World of Wonder