The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz (46 page)

Whatever their reasons for choosing me, I was thrilled. A porno film that came with Howard’s blessing would be huge. And what’s more, we would be shooting in his studio, where Howard and Robin Quivers and the whole radio gang recorded their show every morning. It would’ve been better if Howard himself was more actively involved in the shoot, but allowing us to use his studio was close enough.

I quickly rounded up a cast of actors, which took all of five minutes. Including myself, I hired Taylor Wayne, Tabitha Stevens, Christi Lake, and some new actress out of New Jersey who came highly recommended. I couldn’t offer any of them a big salary; I was given a budget that barely covered the bare minimum of expenses. None of us would be paid a normal salary until the movie was sold to a distributor. But given Howard’s reputation, it seemed like a foregone conclusion. Any publicity from Howard Stern was reason enough to fly across the country and perform in a movie for less than full pay.

On a cold winter night in late 2000, we arrived at Howard’s studio at WXRK-FM in New York and were escorted upstairs by a nervous staffer. He seemed awfully jumpy about a porno shoot that was, to the best of my knowledge, completely sanctioned. But I dismissed it as porno jitters, a typical reaction among visitors to my sets.

We went straight into the recording studio and set up the cameras. We had only a few hours to shoot before Howard showed up for his morning broadcast, and we were given strict orders to be long gone by the time he arrived. So we didn’t waste a moment. After Crazy Cabbie did a brief scripted introduction—“Oh, what do we have here? Somebody’s in Howard’s studio! And…and…they’re
naked
!”—I had sex with Taylor Wayne right on Howard’s chair.

A few of the staffers were milling about, watching the action. Someone on the crew made a joke about using Howard’s microphone somewhere in the scene. I was well aware of Howard’s germaphobia, so I declined. But I did grab the O.J. Simpson mask off the wall and put it on while Taylor gave me head.

Though I wasn’t about to befoul any of Howard’s personal effects, I did make a few jokes about the possibility. As I was about to climax, I yelled out, “Oh God, here we go! I’m going to cum! Right…on…
the chair
!”

Taylor jumped out of the way and I started jerking myself, aiming my cock right at the chair’s cushions. “Uggghhh…,” I moaned. And then, just as I was about to explode, I stopped and smiled at the camera. “Just kidding!”
*

When we finished, we moved to the green room for the next scene. This time, I had sex with Tabitha Stevens on the couch, and I wore a Gene Simmons mask. I put my tongue through the mouth hole and flicked it at Tabitha, doing my best impression of Gene’s onstage KISS persona. Weeks later, I met with Gene at a coffee shop in Los Angeles and told him about the scene. He gave me written permission to use his mask in the movie. I never did track down O.J. Simpson, but I doubt if he would’ve given me permission anyway.

I was in the studio only for those two scenes, though Crazy Cabbie’s partner returned on other nights to shoot more sex on Howard’s chair. We shot the rest of the movie at a porn set in Manhattan, decorated to resemble the hallway outside of Howard’s studio. We filmed an orgy scene where Crazy Cabbie and I teamed up with Taylor Wayne and Christi Lake. We had a large crew, and Cabbie had a little trouble performing with so many people watching. He wanted to be with Taylor away from prying eyes, so he and his partner Brett reshot their scene at a hotel room downtown, and he did a fine job. After he climaxed, he pointed at his erection, pounded a fist in the air, and screamed, “Hey, Howard, this is for the fans! Look at this! All right!!”

Cabbie and his partner also shot some additional scenes with the rock band Alien Ant Farm, who had a Billboard hit at the time with “Smooth Criminal.” I wasn’t present at the shoot, so I’m not positive who was involved. It may have been an actual band member, or it could’ve been their tour manager. Whoever it was, he was wearing a mask and having sex with a groupie while “Smooth Criminal” played in the background.
*

I took the footage back to Los Angeles and gave it to my editor Jake. A few weeks later, we had our finished movie, which clocked in at over two hours and featured seven or eight sex scenes. We titled it
The Crazy Cabbie Movie
. The plot (such as it was) followed Cabbie during a “typical day,” as he and his friends had sex in a variety of locales, exchanging bodily fluids in the WXRK office.

As I waited to hear back from Brett and Cabbie, I happened to catch one of Howard’s morning broadcasts. He was scolding Elephant Boy, another of his comedy sidekicks, for purportedly having sex in the studio’s green room.

“You
cannot
mess around in my green room!” Howard admonished him. “Do you know what kind of scolding I’d get from Infinity Broadcasting for something like that? If you want to have sex, do it someplace else, but don’t bring it to my studio.”

Hmm, I thought. That doesn’t sound right. How could he lash out at an employee for messing around in his studio when he had just allowed a porno to be filmed in the very same location? That seemed awfully hypocritical. It didn’t make much sense at all. Unless…

Uh-oh…

I called Brett immediately and demanded answers. “Are you sure Howard’s in on this?”

“Relax, he knows all about it,” Brett said.

“And he’s okay with it, right? He knows what we did in his studio and he doesn’t have a problem?”

“Will you stop worrying? Howard said on the air that he’s okay with it. You think we’re going to go behind Howard’s back to shoot a porno without his consent? You think I
want
to get Cabbie in trouble?”

Like a putz, I believed him.

I sent Brett the edited film and all of the masters and waited for him to contact me with news of a release date. A month later, Brett called me in a panic.

“We’ve got to reedit the film!” he said.

Crazy Cabbie had been offered a full-time gig as a deejay, and he feared that he could lose the job if they found out about the movie. He didn’t mind being in a porno, but he couldn’t be shown participating in any of the sex scenes at Howard’s studio.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s the big deal?”

“He just doesn’t want it to appear like he’s sneaking into a radio station and letting porno actors have sex on the company’s property.”

“What do you mean ‘sneaking’? Didn’t Howard give the green light for us to be there?”

“W-well,” Brett stammered. “I think so. I’m pretty sure.”

“You’re pretty sure?”

Because I’m a director who follows orders, Jake and I made a second edit, which created two films. We called them
Scenes from a Shock Jock Studio
and
The Crazy Cabbie Movie.
In the second film Cabbie appeared only in scenes that were clearly shot outside of the studio. In the other, the scenes were
in
the studio, but not with Cabbie.

Months later, I began getting phone calls from Melrose Larry Green on behalf of Stuttering John. They’d gotten wind of the movie and were
not
happy. I felt like I was being backed into a corner, and I wasn’t sure if I should confess to everything or keep my mouth shut and hope that Cabbie wouldn’t get in trouble. When in doubt, don’t rat. That’s how I was raised.

“I cannot confirm or deny that such a film even exists,” I told them. “But I will say that if it does exist, there are no plans as yet to release it.”

“All we want to know is if you did anything sexual with his microphone.”

“Absolutely not. If this alleged porn film was indeed shot in Howard’s studio and I played some role in it, I can promise you that his microphone was not anywhere near a vagina. I would never do that.”

“We’re more worried about whether a penis was anywhere near it,” said Melrose Larry.

“No, of course not. My penis did not, at any time in this hypothetical porno, make any contact with his microphone. That’s just wrong.”

Cabbie was rattled enough to pull the plug completely. He stopped returning my calls, and Brett informed me that the movie was being shelved indefinitely. As Cabbie was making a
lot
of money for his upcoming Atlantic City boxing match against Stuttering John, he certainly didn’t need the proceeds from the film’s sale. I wanted to strangle them both. I had devoted months of work to this project, flying across the country and working for no pay, and it had come to nothing. Brett still owed money to my editor for the extra edits, and he should have at least thrown a few grand to my actors for their trouble. But he just wanted to sweep the movie under the rug and forget that any of it happened.

I called Brett and threatened to release the movie anyway. He had the only copy of the master tapes, as well as all the releases and receipts, but I had a few VHS dubs and I was prepared to use them. I couldn’t legally distribute it to video stores, but I could release it for free on the Internet, as a newsworthy documentary, just to spite Brett and Cabbie. Brett finally came up with the money for my editor. As a courtesy, I let the matter drop,
*
but I was still furious that my performers got a raw deal.

For all I know, Cabbie destroyed every last copy of the movie. But somewhere in some warehouse, I still have unlabeled VHS dubs of the original footage. I told Brett that I had disposed of the tapes, but it wasn’t true. One of these days, I may show it to Howard’s staff, if they ever ask to see it. Howard has moved on to satellite radio, so he may not care about the sexual high jinks that took place at his old station.

And as for Crazy Cabbie, well, it’s all water under the bridge between us. Maybe someday he’ll actually want to see the video again. He actually looks pretty good in it, and he did a fine job. One of these days, when he’s old and gray, he might get a kick out of seeing himself as a young whippersnapper, during his very brief career as a porn stud.
**

chapter 17

THE RON JEREMY SHOW, STARRING RON JEREMY

Over the past few years,
I’ve worked more consistently than at any other point during my career. I’ve done a few porno films for a company called Metro, with which I’m contracted, and I’ll almost always take a mainstream movie or TV role when it’s offered to me. But more often than not, when I’m hired for a live appearance, they don’t want me to portray a character or pretend to be somebody else.

They want Ron Jeremy.

If Ron Jeremy is a commodity, then I’ve been my most enthusiastic salesman. I’ll go almost anywhere, do almost anything, generally when I have something to promote other than myself. I’ve hosted S&M shows in urban nightclubs and judged spring break wet T-shirt contests in the Caribbean. I’ve lectured on college campuses including Oxford in England and signed autographs at Internet conventions. I’ve done posters for PETA, had couches dropped on me at Xtreme Pro Wrestling shows, and sang “I Got You, Babe” with the defense minister of Northern Ireland on British television. I’ve been interviewed for countless TV shows, from VH1’s
I Love the 80s
to
E! True Hollywood Stories
to CNN. I’ve served as the emcee at the Ponderosa Nudes-A-Poppin’ Festival for the past two decades. And if there’s a rock concert happening somewhere, the odds are good that I’ll get to introduce the band.

I’ve introduced acts as diverse as Blues Traveler, Peaches, Poison, Sublime, Korn, Sum 41, the B52’s, Mötley Crüe, Snoop Dogg, and Digital Underground. I’ve rapped with Kid Rock onstage in Las Vegas and in Louisville. I’ve performed with 2 Live Crew and the Wu-Tang Clan at the Luke Campbell Club in Miami. When gunfire erupted and I found myself on the floor (to avoid being shot), I actually
enjoyed
the experience.
*

“This is so exciting,” I chuckled as DJ Polo almost smothered me with his body.

I’ve appeared in more than fourteen music videos for MTV or VH1, more than any other actor. I’ve done cameos in videos for Moby, Mercury Rev, the Mieces, Sam Kinison, Guns N’ Roses, Kid Rock (twice), Nelson, Everclear, Pauly Shore, and Cool G & Polo, to name just a few. I had a decent speaking role in Alanis Morissette’s Comedy Central TV show. I was even asked by the band Sublime to help direct and produce one of their videos. I was approached by Brad Nowell, Sublime’s lead singer, at a 1995 AVN Award Show in Las Vegas. I’d never heard of the band, but my friends told me that they were getting heavy radio airplay, so I agreed to give it a shot.

“What’s the song called?” I asked Brad.

“‘Date Rape.’”

I thought he was just having me on. “No, seriously, what’s the name of the song?”

“‘Date Rape,’” he repeated, unblinking.

“Are you fucking
nuts
? How the hell am I going to make a video with a title like that? The feminists are going to have a field day with this. If you make it serious, you’ll depress everyone, and if you don’t take it seriously, you’ll be accused of making light of a serious situation! You’re damned either way!”