Take It From Me

Have you ever watched one of those movie of the week where a normal everyday person suddenly becomes famous and find that it all comes with a price? The main character will often leave the life of riches and being in the public eye to return to their mundane lives or find a more simpler way of life, usually with their true love.

Such is fiction.

I'm reminding you of these types of scenarios because I want to reflect back on a story I had in my head that blew up into an unwritten novel that came...well, let me tell the story.

When I first moved to L.A., I felt the glamourous coating the city offered to the world as its selling point. I had no grand dreams of becoming famous or anything of the sort...uh, well, maybe just a little bit. That got my mind conjuring up a story about a gay guy that wanted to work in advertising and ended up falling in love with his boss, who, of course, did not give my main character much after-thought other than work-related issues. Being much more Hollywood-ized back then than I am now, the story ended happily. And it was locked away in my head for a short period of time with much development and far-fetched ideas being thrown into the mix.

Later, the story progressed into so much more. The working title had become 'Smalltown Boy' and my main character had escaped abusive parents and a overly-religious small Southern town to the vast emptiness of Los Angeles, expecting to find love and happiness. However, his first love drags him into a world of pornography and drugs. Later, a good friend helps my main character to sober up and move on to bigger and better things. After working in the mailroom of an up-and-coming advertising agency, my main character gets promoted and meets and falls in love with a hot shot account executive who doesn't know he's alive. Throughout the process of telling the main character's story, I did sort of peek into the hot shot account executive's life from time to time. It was all very Harold Robbins meets Judith Krantz. And, still, the story did not get written.

I had ended up working as a receptionist at Catalina Video, who was then Falcon Studios' competitor. I wondered how they came up with script ideas and talked to a couple of the editors and directors. However, they had more ideas coming out of their heads than porn stars were shooting...um, I will leave my dirty little comparison to your imagination.

About three years later, I was working for another porn company in the San Fernando Valley making minimum wage as a receptionist/secretary. My boss was complaining about the outrageous amount of money he'd been paying his present writer/director and cameraman. I offered to write him a script for 75% less that what he was currently paying. He agreed and wanted a script on his desk after the weekend. I went home, sat in front of my typewriter and thought: what could I write about that would make a decent porn movie? I thought of my original concept of my novel 'Brothers' but gave up on that idea (happily). Then, it hit me: why not write the so-called love story of 'Smalltown Boy' and submit it? It would save money on location, as we could shoot it in the office and, hopefully, I'd be offered more creative assignments with the company's product. I threw in another side story of an account executive driven with passion to land an account and an extra scene that took place in the editing bay of the agency. I presented the script and idea that next Monday and 'The Boys in the Office' was in production three weeks later.

The photographer on the shoot asked me to set up some photos that could be used as the box cover and I was used as a production assistant (actually, it was my first producing gig but I did not get the credit).

Excited? Hell yeah, as something I had written was being produced. Did I get something more out of it? Damn straight as I had become the company's scriptwriter and producer - only, as with the entertainment industry, my boss did not like my creative ideas and suggestions. He did not like any script that presented any inventive artistry. Pornography was supposed to be about regular everyday situations taken to a sex-fantasy level. Even though Adult Video News praised my script, a bunch of great ideas had been left in a box in storage. When I tried to hustle them out to other production companies, I was often given rejection slips explaining a more Hollywood/copyright/protection/paranoid reason why scripts could not be submitted from outside the company itself.

Anyway, the company has since went bankrupt and my boss later died.

A few years ago, I was in San Francisco with a friend for a visit. We walked into one of the adult bookstores on Castro. As my friend looked for leather wristbands, I scoured through the DVDs. And there it was, 'The Boys in the Office' at the low, low price of ten dollars. I grabbed the DVD and showed-off to my friend. I did not purchase the DVD, even though I wish I would have. It was my one and only notable piece of work. Based on my boss' ideas for our next videos, my next few scripts were awful. The critics bombed me and the company stating that creative originality was strongly lacking.

I haven't worked in the porn industry since. I didn't even try to take my producing background to any of the major studios or television networks as I...let's just say that I met someone and learned a valuable lesson: that those stupid television movies were right: everything comes with a price.