As we pulled up at 11pm on Saturday night, the marquee on the New
Beverly Cinema read ‘XXX’, and underneath it was an old man dozing on
the sidewalk. It was like the decades had melted away and Los Angeles’
premiere family-run rep house had been returned to its roots as a porno
joint, complete with a derelict.
Except that it’s 2008, and that old man was no derelict. He was the
great Clu Gulager, famed actor and one of the New Beverly’s most loyal regulars, and he
had turned out to see a bunch of reels of porn that had been found in
the theater’s attic. The New Bev had recently undergone some work,
installing a new air conditioning system, and while all that had
happened these vintage porn reels had been discovered. There were no
complete movies, just bits and pieces, but it was decided to take a
Saturday midnight screening and turn it over to this smut. The timing
was perfect; this month marks the theater’s 30th anniversary as a rep
house, a change it underwent with the late Sherman Torgan (who I never
got to meet, since he passed away literally days after I moved to Los
Angeles), and the theater has been showing the exact same double bills
it showed that first month, three decades ago. Taking a Saturday night
and exploring the place’s pre-Sherman history seemed just right.
I showed up early with Julia, the endlessly delightful New Beverly
Girl. There are a lot of people working hard at the New Bev, but for
most visitors Julia is the eternally smiling face of the theater. She
took me on a tour of the projection booth, and I got to watch Adam, the
projectionist, putting the reels together. Adam dressed up in his
finest 70s roadshowman outfit, a touch that exemplifies the exhaustive
enthusiasm everyone brings to the theater. We hung out in the lobby,
checking out photocopies of old newspaper ads for the porno-era Beverly
Cinema. I was amazed to see how many other great LA theaters once
housed porn; the Vista, a terrific theater in Los Feliz, once had live
all-male revues in between porno features.
As showtime got closer Julia put me to work handing out porno leaflets
from Hustler (advertising what looks to be a new classic: Hustler’s Gov
Love, the story of Governor Splitzer and his call girl. It turns out
there weren’t enough fliers by a wide margin; the turn out was
incredible, and the make-up of the audience even more surprising.
Ticket taker Matt said that the only time he sees that many women
coming to the theater is when they’re showing 80s teen stuff.
Apparently porn appeals to the female demographic these days.
Also on hand: real old fashioned pornographers. There were a couple of
directors milling around, and it was like checking in to see what Jack
Horner was up to today. Stars Herschell Savage and Cara Lott were also
on hand (Herschell apparently appeared in most of the reels found in
the attic; one classic bit of his that I saw had him being woken up by
two porn starlets carrying breakfest in bed. His remark in the film: ‘I
can never get enough of that Egg McMuff.’ I like to imagine that was
improv, discovered in the moment), as were Misti and Kiki, stars of
such new porn films as Teenage Anal Princess #8. Watching film star Cara Lott
being introduced to these video newbies was intriguing, and again I couldn’t
help but think about Paul Thomas Anderson.
The new girls, who work for the porn label Anabolic, were on hand to
read out winning raffle numbers before the screening. The winners took
home an assortment of porn – including Young, Dumb and Covered In Cum
and Ghetto Booty – as well as a video tape that was once part of Johnny
Ramone’s personal collection. It wasn’t exactly a porno but the Joe
D’Amato classic Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (which, depending on
the cut he owned, did contain hardcore sex). The raffle produced what
may have been the highlight of the night – seeing first John Gulager,
director of Feast, win a porno, followed by a win by his father Clu. What a family bonding moment that must have been.
Then the porn began. If you’ve never watched porn projected on a big
screen, it’s even more disturbing than you might have imagined. Penises
twice as tall as me thrust into cavernous, endlessly moist and
exceptionally hairy vaginas. Cum shots are volcanic eruptions at that
size. I’m used to seeing porn in a smaller-than-life setting… and one
that’s more personal. Watching porn in a theater with a hundred
strangers is an odd experience, and it was almost as fascinating to
watch the reactions as it was to watch the fucking.
One thing that became really clear really quickly is why old porn is so
talky. There’s an aspect of filling out a running time and making a
movie that’s at least defensible as a movie (making porn was illegal
all throughout its golden period, as was pointed out to the audience
during the Herschell Savage/Cara Lott Q&A), but the real reason
porn movies have those interminable scenes between sex acts is to give
the guys in the audience a chance to rest up for another round of
wacking it. It’s a fascinating bit of pacing that, while it’s
especially peculiar to the porn world, has a parallel in the action
movie world. And just like in porn, where the chatty scenes have been
getting shorter and more far between, action movies have been moving
towards becoming clip reels themselves, all money shots.
There was a lot of laughter in the theater: some of it was genuine, as
these films managed to be weirdly naive and cheesy and extraordinarily
filthy all at once. Some of it was due to basic uncomfortableness – my
only problem with the New Bev is that so many patrons think that their
duty is to shout back at the screen despite not having a single funny
thing to say. There was some of that. Some of the laughter came from
Cara Lott, who seemed to be in hysterics throughout most of the footage.
I didn’t stay all that long, but did see some great trailers (the Taboo
trailer, complete with gushing review quotes from adult magazines, was
a highlight) and reels from Marilyn Chambers’ Insatiable, which had a
memorable moment where John Holmes wiped some other guy’s cum off her
mouth before kissing her, and another great shot where Chambers opens a
closet door to reveal a box of Ivory Snow soap (which features
Chambers, not as the baby as everyone thinks, but as the mom. I leaned
over to tell Julia the meaning of the gag, but she already knew. You
don’t become The New Beverly Girl without being exceptionally cool, it
turns out). There’s only so much porn that you can watch, though, even
vintage 70s porn, and so when my ride was tired and wanted to beat it,
I didn’t complain. We got out of there around 2; the show lasted almost
three hours, and much props to those who made it through the entire
thing.
The New Beverly is going to be showing more porn in the months to come,
and they’ll be having directors and stars come by to talk about their
time in the smut industry. I was at the New Bev twice this week – once
to see Woody Allen’s Sleeper (which never gets props for being a really
good science fiction film in addition to being a great comedy) and once
to see porn. The theater ran Chinatown the day after the porn
extravaganza. Escape From Women’s Prison and a film succinctly titled
Crocodile are coming up. There’s a Psycho and Frenzy double bill
starting on Wednesday, the two films for seven bucks. The thing that I
love about the New Beverly is how perfectly it fits with what we try to
do here at CHUD, celebrating the high and the low. When I was hanging
out in the lobby before the movie, I chatted with Clu Gulager, who
hadn’t known it was porn night before he came in (Clu just shows up and
sees movies). I asked him what he thought of it, and he said, ‘I expect
I’ll like it. I like watching films.’
Exactly.