The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz (39 page)

But his loyalty to me sometimes came at a price. He once came under fire in the media because of our friendship. At a press screening for
Dead Bang
, a reporter confronted him about it. “Why do you feel the need to use porn stars in your movies?” the reporter asked with a knowing smirk.

John was irked and a little embarrassed by the question. “I assume you’re referring to Ron Jeremy,” he responded. “I’m not sure why you think I put porn stars in my movies. I haven’t. I’ve used Ron Jeremy in a few, but not because he’s in porn. I use him because I think he’s a good actor.”

Even John’s producing partner at United Artists, Frank Mancuso, was befuddled by John’s insistence that I be treated like a real actor and not just a porn oddity. During a test screening for
Ronin
, the audience cheered when my face appeared on-screen. One might assume that this was a good thing—a cheering audience is a happy audience—but Mancuso was just annoyed by it. When he met with John later to discuss edits, Mancuso argued that I should be cut from the film entirely. He felt that the chase scene, in which I made an appearance, slowed down the movie because of my recognizable face, but John knew what he
really
meant.

“It’s because of porn, isn’t it?” I asked John when he told me the news.

John just sighed. “I can’t be sure, Ron. I think it was. I’m so sorry.”

Well, at least he was honest. And I did receive an acting screen credit and residual payments.
*

Director Adam Rifkin often sparred with producers who wanted to keep me out of his films. He used me in his 1994 feature
The Chase
and was asked by the studio, 20th Century Fox, to cut my scene. Adam fought for me, and my cameo remained in the final cut.

A few years later, he created a children’s horror series for ABC called
Bone Chillers
. He wanted to offer me a role, but because the show was being produced by the family-friendly Disney Corporation and Hyperion, he knew that it wasn’t even worth proposing. But that didn’t stop him from hiring me anyway.

For one episode, Adam cast me as Blisterface, a pimply-faced monster who attacks the young stars. I was a little hesitant when he gave me the script. It was a show for kids, after all, and if Disney should find out that a porn star was on their payroll, it could mean trouble. But Adam told me not to worry. My character was a
monster
, he reminded me, and it required an extensive amount of makeup. My face would be covered with pockmarks and open wounds, rendering me utterly unrecognizable. Aside from the makeup artist, who had already been sworn to secrecy, the entire cast and crew wouldn’t be the wiser.

And somehow we pulled it off. I arrived to the set hours before call time, and when the rest of the cast and crew showed up, I was already in full makeup. Nobody had any clue who I really was, and when asked, Adam just referred to me by my real name, Ron Hyatt. For my scene, I lunged after the teen star Linda Cardellini
*
and threw her over my shoulder. And you’ll be happy to know that I was nothing but polite and courteous. I even pulled down Linda’s dress when it started to ride up her legs.

“Oh my,” Linda remarked when she noticed this, “what a gentleman.”

I could hear Adam on the sidelines, snickering to himself. “He certainly is, isn’t he? What a nice monster. What a lovely, kindhearted, upstanding monster.”

“Shut up, Adam.” I’d scowl at him.

“What’s the matter, monster? Don’t you like teenage girls, monster?”

“Shut
up
, Adam!”

Our on-set joking might’ve been a little too conspicuous, because somehow a Hyperion executive did find out about our ruse.

“This better not be leaked to the press,” he told Adam.

The media never did find out, and
Bone Chillers
had a successful run on ABC. My lovable monster was seen by delighted kids across the country, and parents had no idea that the man entertaining their sons and daughters had, just weeks previously, starred in a film called
Backdoor Babysitters
.

B
ut porn didn’t always hurt my chances of being cast in a mainstream movie. In some cases, it’s even helped.

When Adam directed
Detroit Rock City
, he gave me a small but funny part as an emcee at a strip club. At the test screening—just as with
Ronin
—the audience cheered whenever my face appeared on-screen. Mike De Luca, the head of New Line Entertainment, was watching from the back of the theater, and he admitted to Adam that he was surprised by the reaction.

“Those kids really like Ron Jeremy, don’t they?” he remarked.

“Yes, they do,” Adam said.

Mike thought about it for a minute, and then said, “Keep him in.” He also allowed my cartoon likeness to remain on the poster.

It wasn’t just the mainstream Hollywood studios that were discovering my appeal among younger college audiences. Indie filmmakers were seeking me out specifically
because
of my porn-star status. I starred in a slew of B movies during the late 1990s, from trash-horror classics like
They Bite
and
Hell’s Highway
to Troma cult favorites like
Tales from the Crapper
,
Terror Firmer
,
Class of Nuke ’Em High III
and
Toxic Avenger IV
.

I was happy to be working in movies so regularly, but I started noticing a disturbing trend among the roles I was getting. In many of the films, I was murdered in some horrible, violent way. I was shot, stabbed, decapitated, bludgeoned, burned alive, strangled, run over by cars, drowned, poisoned, and smashed into walls. It didn’t matter if it was a B film or a major Hollywood feature, the director always found some excuse to kill me in the most unpleasant manner possible (which of course means I can’t be in the sequel). And here, for you film buffs, is an introduction to some of my best on-screen fatalities:

Ron Jeremy’s Top Five Death Scenes
*

1.
KILLING ZOE
(1994) In Roger Avary’s cult hit of ultraviolence, I played a bank security guard who was shot in the chest during a robbery. I was on-screen for less than a few seconds. The robber kicks open the door, points a gun at me, and blows me away. I didn’t even get to utter a single line before my chest exploded in blood.
**
But come on, can you blame me for wanting to do it? This is
Roger Avary
we’re talking about, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of
Pulp Fiction
.
***
Getting riddled with bullets in a Roger Avary film is an honor. When a director like Avary puts you in a film, you don’t haggle over dialogue. You say, “Which way do you want me to fall?”

2.
THE BOONDOCK SAINTS
(1999) I had a pretty decent part in this one before the guns came out. I played Vincenzo Lipazzi, a mafia boss and strip club owner. The film starred Willem Dafoe, and the first thing I said to him on the set was, “I heard a rumor that you were well hung. Is that true?” He almost did a double take. He couldn’t believe that I had the balls to ask him a question like that after just meeting him. But he didn’t deny it. He just told me, “Not a bad rumor to have, is it?” Anyway, in this one, my character was gunned down in a peep-show booth, which I guess is the most poetic way for a porn star to die.
Boondock Saints
was dropped by Miramax, but according to
Variety
, it was the number-one “straight-to-video” film in Blockbuster’s history. Whenever I do public appearances, there’ll always be a few fans asking me to sign their VHS and DVD copies.
*

3
.
CITIZEN TOXIE: THE TOXIC AVENGER IV
(2000) A classic horror film and hands down my most bloody death. I played Mayor Goldberg, a religious zealot who assembles a team of superheroes to battle the evil Noxious Offender. I’m killed with a metal crucifix, which is slammed into my mouth like I was a human shish kebab. There was blood everywhere, spurting out of my head like a lawn sprinkler. Some of the crew asked me, “Hey, aren’t you Jewish? Maybe we should use a Star of David instead.” “Hell, no!” I said. “It has too many sharp edges.”

4.
WITCH’S SABBATH
(2004) It wasn’t the first time I’ve been beheaded in a movie, but it’s definitely the most controversial. I play a Bible salesman named Craven Moorehead who has his head chopped off by a coven of witches. That alone wouldn’t make this movie death worthy of note. But things got a little messy when some of the producers were inundated with angry letters and phone calls, decrying their supposed mockery of the recent Taliban executions. We explained that it was just a joke and we had shot the scenes long before those horrible Taliban beheadings.

5
. ORGAZMO (1997) This is probably my most famous death scene. My head literally explodes after I’m kicked in the face by Trey Parker. It just shatters into a million pieces like an old ceramic pot. This is one of the few times that I’ve ever challenged a director. I knew it was supposed to be a comedy, but it just seemed a little too illogical and unrealistic.

With Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

From the moment Trey Parker asked me to be in
Orgazmo
, I was dubious. It sounded like a cute concept—a Mormon gets lured into making adult films—but I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to pull it off. This was before he and Matt Stone started doing the
South Park
cartoon on Comedy Central, so they were not yet the poster children of shock comedy.

I was cast as a porn actor/henchman named Clark, who used the porn stage name Jizz Master Zero. The script was funny, but Trey was doing things that just made no sense to me. He had actual female porn stars in the cast, like Chasey Lain and Juli Ashton, but he never let them show their bodies. During a sex scene, the girls would begin to lower their bras, but just as they were about to expose their boobies, some naked guy would step into the frame and block them with his big, hairy ass. It was confusing to me. Trey had specifically hired porno actresses, and yet he wasn’t allowing any of them to be naked on-screen.

I tried to offer my advice. “Don’t you need something a little more exploitive?” I asked Trey. “You don’t have any major stars in this film. It’s not going to play to the art-house crowd. Maybe you should think about showing a little more skin?”

Trey laughed at me. “Ronnie,” he said, “you just don’t get it.”

Though he wasn’t interested in T&A, he was willing to jeopardize his R rating because of a single line of dialogue. In one of the scenes, a porn actress explains just how far she’ll go to stay gainfully employed. “I’m the only one in town who’ll do a double anal and double vaginal at the same time,” she says. “You know, DVDA. It’s how I still manage to get work.” He refused to cut it, and, as a result,
Orgazmo
was slapped with an NC-17 rating. An NC-17 rating is the equivalent of an X. Most of the theaters in Middle America won’t pick up an NC-17 movie because it cuts down on their potential audience.

I begged with Trey to reconsider. “Please,” I said, “just cut the line, and everybody will be happy. Is it really worth having a limited release just so you can save one lousy gag?”

“Ron,” he said. “I don’t like succumbing to pressure.”

“Can’t you just compromise this one time?”

“Let me tell you a little story,” he said. “When some of the backers at October Films heard that you were in this movie, they tried to get me to fire you or give you a much smaller role. But I told them no. I wouldn’t even discuss it. Ron Jeremy stays in. If I had let them bully me, the first thing we would’ve lost is you.”

I thought about it and said, “Y’know, you’re right. You have to put your foot down. Don’t let those bastards push you around!”

But not all of Trey’s choices were so easy to get behind. The film had its own internal logic that just baffled me. In one scene, a black guy was brought in as a stunt cock for a white guy’s sex scene. Aside from the naked male asses, the only real nudity was a morbidly obese woman dressed in a skimpy bikini. After my character was killed, he reappeared a few minutes later, his head fully intact.

“What a minute,” I asked Trey. “Didn’t I die? How did I come back to life? What happened?”

“Ronnie,” he said. “You just don’t get it.”

I finally saw the complete film at a screening in Beverly Hills.
*
Trey had kept in all of my scenes, including the martial-arts kicks (which I’d done without a stuntman). There was a method to Trey’s madness that I never noticed before. The comedic special effects, the plot inconsistencies, the absurd overacting, it was all played with a wink to the audience.

As the credits rolled, I turned to Trey, who was staring at me with a shit-eating grin.