The Other Hollywood by Legs McNeil, Jennifer Osborne, Peter Pavia

explained very pedagogically what we were doing.
     
    FRED LINCOLN : You see, what Butchie really wanted was to make features. That’s what he always wanted—to make motion pictures. It’s kind of a sad story—here’s this mobster’s son who wants to be an auteur, you know?
    That’s why Butchie picked Gerry Damiano—because I don’t think Gerry ever did loops. Butchie put up the money because he knew Gerry could make a feature.
     
    HARRY REEMS : Gerard Damiano was a grown-up Wizard of Oz, a short, jolly, jelly bean. He had a gray goatee and a funny little toupee. He was sort of the stereotype of the second-string Hollywood director. But Gerard Damiano has been called the Mike Nichols and Ingmar Bergman of porno films.
     
    FRED LINCOLN : Gerry was a decent guy, but he did try to rip me off for twenty-five dollars on SEX U.S.A. The budget was really tight; there wasn’t any money, so he tried to pay me seventy-five bucks a day. I said, “No way.”
    I said, “Listen. Don’t fuck with me. I’ll break your fuckin’ legs.”
    Then Butchie asked, “What’s goin’ on’?”
    I said, “Gerry told me he was bringin’ me a hundred bucks a day. Now he wants to give me seventy-five.”
    Butchie just said, “Pay him.”
     
    BUTCHIE PERAINO : SEX U.S.A. cost about twelve to fifteen thousand dollars to make. So far it’s grossed six hundred thousand.
    So we decided to do another film, but we didn’t want to do a documentary. There was this film, Mona, that we had seen. It was different. It had a story. It was what you would call “improvisational.” We thought of doing the same exact thing.
     
    LINDA LOVELACE : Andrea True was the one that mentioned to Chuck Traynor that she knew this guy, Gerard Damiano, who was going to make a thirty-five-millimeter, big-screen pornographic movie.
     
    CHUCK TRAYNOR : I would see Gerard Damiano coming in and outta the Perainos’ office. Yeah, I was friendly with him, but it’s like two guys that are pushin’ wheelbarrows. If one guy has been there a long time, he thinks he’s a superior wheelbarrow-pusher to the other guy. Plus he was makingsixteen-millimeter films, so he’s big-time. I’m a little guy because I’m making eight-millimeter loops. Plus I swept the office, fixed the lights, went on locations, drove cars, stuff like that.
     
    RAY PISTOL (PORN PRODUCER) : Chuck and Linda came in to see Butch, and Chuck had loops underneath his arm. Chuck put one on—and it was Linda’s doggie flick. And Butch said, “We don’t do that shit here.”
    Butchie threw them out of the office. This is from Butch directly. And in the anteroom, outside, Gerard Damiano was coming up the elevator as Chuck and Linda were leaving, and they started a conversation.
     
    GERARD DAMIANO : I’d like to say something poetic, like Linda came in beauty like the night, but it’s not true. She came in wearing army boots, an old army jacket, and a wool hat pulled over her head.
     
    LINDA LOVELACE : Yeah, that army jacket. Chuck made me look like a hippie chick. It’s not something I ever would have been caught dead in.
    But compared to men like Bob Wolfe, Gerard Damiano was like Cecil B. DeMille.
     
    CHUCK TRAYNOR : Gerard Damiano was a pretty easygoing guy. I mean, he had a little bit of an air, like I say, because he was the director of feature films. And back in the early porno days, a feature film was a “FEATURE FILM.” Gerry was working with the Perainos—he was their director. And he was a good director; he knew about shooting sixteen-millimeter, you know, reversals and two shots and one shots and all that shit.
     
    RAY PISTOL : Chuck and Linda and Damiano hit it off and decided to go to a swingers’ club that night. And that was the night that Damiano saw Linda’s talent. He came back the next day and hit Butchie up to completely change everything around.
     
    BUTCHIE PERAINO : To be honest about it, we couldn’t come up with anything too good. We were just going to do