I’ve always been a fan of Legs
McNeil, so I was definitely psyched when this book arrived.  Seven years in the
making and over 600 pages long nothing and no one in the porn business is
exempt from this gritty, candid view of the industry.

The book begins with the porn industry in the late
sixties/early seventies, and takes the reader on a forty-year journey though
free-love, AIDS, drugs and alcohol, among other things.  Every chapter is
filled with input from anyone who is anyone in the business — Ron Jeremy and
John Waters among others as well as some of the top porno actors and
actresses.  This book has got to be the most brutally honest look at the porno
industry throughout the last forty or so years.

Delving into the world of AIDS,
movies, videos, drugs, rape and even death (especially the death of Savannah, a
gorgeous woman who seemed to self-destruct at an early age), McNeil offers us a
glimpse into a world most people never get to see.  He takes us from New York
to New Jersey, L.A., Vegas and Miami, among other places.

With input from Tommy Lee, who
discusses in great detail the story of how the now infamous video of him and
then-wife Pamela Anderson having sex on a boat (along with footage of Tommy
actually steering the boat with his member) was stolen out of his home, copied
and then sold in mass quantities.  This book touches on every subject of the porn
industry and then some. 

While the writing is not for the
sensitive, and the language not for the pristine, this book is an excellent
look inside the world that manages to rake in billions of dollars each year, a
world which attracts characters ranging from the most unlikely (FBI agents) to
the most helpless (young prostitutes).

At times comical and at others sad,
this is an excellent read for anyone interested in the sex, drugs and rock
& roll aspect of the porn industry.

© 2006 Dana
Vigilante

Dana
Vigilante is a hospice educator as well as an advocate for proper end-of-life
care and a certified bereavement group facilitator. Currently writing a book
based on interviews with terminally ill hospice patients, she divides her time
between New Jersey and San Francisco.

Categories: Sexuality, Memoirs