The Other Hollywood (51 page)

NEW YORK CITY
1986

BRUCE MOUW
:
Who was the greater power, Robert DiBernardo or Mickey Zaffarano?

There’s no comparison: DiBe. If you put aside the porno stuff for a second, DiBe was very knowledgeable in labor racketeering. He controlled the Teamsters for the Gambino family for many years. So he was a rising star in the Gambinos—and very well respected by the other families.

BILL KELLY
:
After Gambino family godfather Paul Castellano and his bodyguard were murdered in front of Sparks Steak House in December 1985, John Gotti took over the Gambino family.

BRUCE MOUW
:
DiBe was very politically astute. He knew how to appease the bosses. And because he was a very wealthy man, Paul Castellano liked him, so they had a very close relationship.

He was very, very competent. He just got things done. And he was smarter than most of those other wise guys.

BILL KELLY
:
John Gotti didn’t like Robert DiBernardo. I’m not sure, but I think it was because DiBe was Paul Castellano’s man.

BRUCE MOUW
:
In early 1986, while John Gotti was in jail, his underboss, Frank DeCicco, was murdered in a car bombing. So they were looking for a new underboss. And the person who wanted to be underboss was Angelo Ruggiero, who was a captain at the time. Angelo was John’s right-hand man, and his goal in life was to be John Gotti’s underboss.

SAMMY “THE BULL” GRAVANO
:
I would see DiBe three, four times a week. We handled the construction, the unions. Did I ever hear him express views on
who should replace Frank DeCicco as underboss? Yes, I did. His view was that I should be underboss. And it came up at a meeting with “Joe Pinney,” myself, and Angelo. Angelo said that DiBe expressed an opinion that I should be underboss, and then he asked me if it was so. I said, “Yes.”

SHARON MITCHELL
:
I met DiBe only once. I had to go get permission for money to make a movie because I was producing and directing. I think it was two hundred and fifty thousand, which was pretty standard then for a thirty-five-millimeter film.

So I was put in the back of a car, driven out to some godforsaken town on Long Island, and had a conversation with DiBe and some other old fuck. And they said, “You made a lot of money for us in the past. Okay, fine.”

FRED LINCOLN
:
I wasn’t friendly with DiBe. Nobody was. You just didn’t talk to DiBe. He had nothin’ to do with us. I just spoke to Teddy Rothstein and Andre D’Apice and I got along real good for a long time. Andre and I were good buddies. We’d probably still be partners if Andre hadn’t gone to jail on MIPORN.

RUBY GOTTESMAN
:
They loved DiBe. He made ’em serious money. But then the people came to Gotti and said DiBe was talkin’ bad about him, and that’s why he got whacked. But they killed him for that? They shouldn’t a killed this guy. This guy made ’em nothin’ but serious money. I mean, DiBe had that whole pornography thing, and once he was gone, it was harder to make money. The mafia left the business. That was the only involvement: DiBe and Mickey Z.

JOHN GOTTI [FBI WIRETAP]
:
“DiBe, did he ever talk subversive to you? Never talked it to Angelo, and he never talked it to ‘Joe Pinney’? I took Sammy’s word that he talked about me behind my back. I took Sammy’s word. I saw the papers and everything. He didn’t rob nothin’. You know why he’s dying? He’s gonna die because he refused to come in when I called. He didn’t do nothing else wrong.”

BILL KELLY
:
At one point John Gotti ordered DiBernardo to come for a meeting, and DiBernardo ignored him. I understand that was the main reason he was killed. That, and the fact that DiBe was in line to move up; Gotti figured, “We better get rid of this guy, ’cause he’s got too much clout.”

BRUCE MOUW
:
Sammy “The Bull” Gravano and DiBernardo were actually very close friends. Gravano thought the world of DiBe. Sammy thought it was a bad idea to kill DiBe because they needed guys like DiBe to run the family and spread out things like labor racketeering to other businesses.

But Angelo Ruggiero started spreading stories that DiBe was talking behind John Gotti’s back—that he wasn’t a team player, and that he wanted to become boss of the family. So word got back to Gotti—and being the impulsive person he was, he said, “Kill him.”

SAMMY “THE BULL” GRAVANO
:
Angelo came to me and told me that John Gotti sent out an order to kill DiBe. Angelo said that DiBe was talking behind his back, and there was another reason….

BRUCE ELLAVSKY
:
Do I have any knowledge that Robert DiBernardo may have been cooperating with the United States Attorney’s Office at the time of his disappearance? Hmmm…

I don’t, but I probably wouldn’t tell if I did.

ROGER YOUNG
:
Two things were behind the fact that DiBe got killed. One, I think, was too much publicity—too much going on where people know too much—and they were afraid he might roll to save his own skin.

Secondly, a lot of times they think, “They’re getting too powerful. We can’t trust them anymore. They might not be turning everything over to us—information and money.”

SAMMY “THE BULL” GRAVANO
:
DiBe was just talking a lot and not meaning anything. He wasn’t dangerous. It was something we could hold up on. But Angelo responded to me that this had to be done, that John was steaming. We already had a location to kill him, which was Tony Lee’s mother’s basement.

BRUCE MOUW
:
The hidden motive behind Angelo Ruggiero wanting Robert DiBernardo killed was the fact that he owed DiBe a ton of money. I think DiBe helped him buy his house in Cedarhurst, Long Island. So in one fell swoop DiBe gets killed, the way is cleared for Angelo to become underboss—even though it never happened—plus he wiped out his loan.

SAMMY “THE BULL” GRAVANO
:
DiBe came in. He came downstairs. He said hello. He sat down. Then old man Paruta got up, and I told him to get DiBe a cup of coffee. He got up. In the cabinet there was a .38 with a silencer. He took the gun out, walked over to DiBe, and shot him twice in the back of the head. Me and Eddie picked him up and put him in the back room, locked it up. We left the office. We locked the office up, and I went and met with Angelo in the Burger King in Coney Island and told him it was done.

SHARON MITCHELL
:
DiBe was a very sweet guy. When they picked him up and took him for the ride, everyone looked at it as a big disservice. There wasn’t an ounce of honor in that. I mean, why, because he didn’t come in for a sit-down?

See, that’s just where I come from in the school of pornography—from organized crime. For me it was ideal because I felt like these mobsters would protect me from anything. I wasn’t attracted to them because they were dangerous or anything—but because they weren’t. They were family guys; they were like my uncles. I felt safe with them.

BOBBY ELKINS
:
Everybody loved DiBe. But that’s what I’m saying: If the mentality of the dagos was that they would kill DiBe because he was a big money earner, then they killed him because of their pride.

Gotti was an asshole. So was this little fucking stool pigeon Sammy the Bull. He was a piece of shit.

RICHARD ROSFELDER
:
They supposedly fed DiBe through a tree shredder.

BILL KELLY
:
We still don’t know what happened to Robert DiBernardo’s body. Somebody said, “He’s having lunch with Jimmy Hoffa,” and he probably is.

U.S.A.
1986–1987

GLORIA LEONARD
:
The radical feminists ended up as kind of odd bedfellows with the Christian right because they were basically espousing the same rhetoric. I used to debate the radical feminists all the time, at dozens and dozens of colleges and universities. Toward the end of one of our gigs, one of the so-called feminists with whom I used to debate actually hit on me, ha, ha, ha.

But I was asked to speak in front of the Meese Commission, and as luck would have it I wound up being very ill and was hospitalized. So I sent Veronica Vera down in my place. She did great.

VERONICA VERA
:
I had to think twice about it because there are parts of pornography I find stupid and silly. I didn’t want be seen as representing some of the very misogynistic sleazy stuff. But I felt it was more important to stand up for free speech than to worry about being seen as defending stuff that I find distasteful.

I had sent them photos of myself in bondage because I thought this was really what they’re concerned about. And accompanying the photos was a piece I had written, saying that pornography was a way to explore my own bondage fantasies, and I asked to read it.

Senator Arlen Specter said, “Okay, you can read it.”

BILL MARGOLD
:
When the Meese Commission reared its empty head, we in the industry were told not to cooperate. That’s the worst thing you can tell me. I said to the people around me, “Don’t you want anybody to go there and tell the truth?”

“Oh, no. Don’t cooperate—they’ll go away.”

I said, “If you don’t tell them what the hell we do for a living, if you
don’t tell them what we’re all about, then they’re gonna make up their own stories.”

KRISTIN STEEN
:
My instincts were sharp, but I made some serious mistakes, too. Back in 1969 or 1970, I agreed to do this one film—it was just supposed to be a very short, one-night thing. I was actually filling in for somebody who couldn’t make it. I was supposed to be a body double. They got me on the set—it was a very small crew, and just me and one other actor. The scene was supposed to be in an airplane; the guy was supposed to try to touch me, and I was supposed to rebuke him.

It was just supposed to be a short, little, funny scene. He’s supposed to get my three buttons open before I smack him. And that was it.

Well, we start shooting, and he gets the three buttons open, and I do my thing—and he doesn’t stop. And I say, “Wait a second!”

He keeps going, and by now I’m trying to fight him off me, and he keeps going and the camera keeps rolling and I start to yell. I look around at the director, and all of a sudden I’m getting really, really scared, right?

He’s on me, and he’s in me, and he’s…And I’m crying and screaming—and they’re filming this, right?

VERONICA VERA
:
So I read, “I am the love object, waiting for you to enjoy me, to tie me up, to take pleasure from me. I’m the object of your desire, always open to your cock and your mouth….” But when I was testifying, I got to this part about the cock in the mouth, and I thought, “Am I going to be able to say this?”

I stopped just before the word
cock,
and Specter had the text in front of him. I said, “Shall I go on, Senator?”

He said, “You certainly may.”

So I finished up and said: “Always open to your cock and your mouth! Enjoy me, take pleasure from me, as you do, you’ll understand by the purity of my surrender that you have become my captive, too.”

Then I said, “Senator, I’m not a victim. I don’t want to be considered a victim. I think that both men and women need to be free to explore their fantasies. I think otherwise it just makes it unfair that men or women have to feel guilty about exploring our fantasies.”

VERONICA HART
:
The Meese Commission tried to get as many horror stories as they could, to validate the idea that people in the industry were victimized.

KRISTIN STEEN
:
Finally the camera stops, and the director comes over to me. I’m begging him, “
What the hell are you doing?!
STOP THIS!”

And he says, “Listen, the guys producing this film are really, really
heavy guys, all right? They’ve paid a lot of money for us to get this, and I’m really sorry, but you’re gonna have to go with it.”

It was totally unbelievable to me. I’d never had any kind of experience like that. This was rape, and they were filming it. They turned the cameras on, and the guy had me pinned….

That was the first time I had sex on camera.

NINA HARTLEY
:
What really irritated me about the Meese Commission and the radical right-wing feminists were the cries of “Women and Children! Women and Children!” As an adult female, I didn’t appreciate somebody infantalizing me and portraying me as someone who needs protection from the big, bad phallus—or my own fantasies.

KRISTIN STEEN
:
So they finish, and the guy gets off me, and I’m crying. I’m completely in shock, freaking out, and they just walk away, right? But the cameraman is there packing up his stuff.

I don’t know what the hell to do, so the cameraman takes pity on me. He comes over, puts a blanket around me, and says, “Listen, I’m really sorry. Can I take you home?” I can’t believe this, but I believed he felt sorry, so I let him drive me home. I get home and I can’t sleep and it’s like four o’clock in the morning now. I stay up all night, and I’m freaking out.

VERONICA HART
:
This was a very frightening time for the porn business. It seemed like everybody was out to get pornographers, and you could actually go to jail for having produced or distributed or directed an adult video. There seemed to be a real witchhunt going on.

BILL MARGOLD
:
I’m not sure how I got to the Meese Commission. All I know is that I got this very strange call from this FBI man, Hagerty, chief investigator of the commission, and he says, “I hear you want to speak to the Meese Commission. What do you want to tell them?”

I said, “The truth.”

KRISTIN STEEN
:
The next day I call my boyfriend, and he says, “What’s the matter?” because I sounded really screwed up.

I said, “Well, I had this shoot last night….”

So he drags it out of me, and he blows his top. He’s furious. So he picks me up, and we go to the police station. And I said, “They’re never gonna believe me!”

He says, “No, this is serious.”

I said, “Well, I know it
feels
serious, but I don’t know if
they’re
gonna think it’s serious.”

But they did. They made out a report, and I gave their names. My
boyfriend got me a lawyer, and we took them to court. I won about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a civil case against them. But they’d disappeared.

TOM BYRON
:
The Meese Commission said that pornography spawned violence against women. They cited all these biased reports of research they’d done with criminals, saying that criminals were inspired by pornography—which is so much bullshit. We inspire violent behavior no more than Freddy Krueger. I mean, we’re doing movies, okay? We just happen to put a penis into a vagina, and that makes it bad?

KRISTIN STEEN
:
I had been raped on film. I don’t know whatever happened to that; I mean maybe it was sold in South America. A few years later, when I was taking classes at NYU, I met some of those Women Against Pornography, and they wanted me to join them. But I didn’t feel that my experiences with pornography were damaging to me. What was harmful to me was the violence perpetrated on me on that one occasion. So I didn’t entirely agree with their premise; there were a few things I agreed with, but I couldn’t blanket it. And I didn’t want to go into attack mode.

JOHN WATERS
:
I think good pornography today is when the women are having as much fun as the men. I don’t think all pornography is degrading to women at all, and some people I know are happy being in pornographic movies. Many are not.

But I would bet, if they ever did a survey, that 90 percent of porn stars were abused.

KRISTIN STEEN
:
I couldn’t be a feminist because I’m not
against
anybody. I could be against child pornography—because children don’t have a choice. And if I’d been abducted and raped as a child, and films were made, and pictures were taken, I would probably be very active in the movement. I have a child now, and I’ve educated her about certain rules—that you can say
no
.

BILL MARGOLD
:
The Meese Commission found some underground shit that somebody had made that had nothing to do with my business because I’m in the adult entertainment industry. This wasn’t commercial stuff—it was underground mail-order crap. It wasn’t sex; it was violence. It’s seeing somebody with a cut-off tit or a hacked-up breast. That’s what they thought was hard-core.

VERONICA HART
:
People love to see stories about how we’re victimized.
I mean, obviously, how could a thinking, rational, sexually whole person choose this as a business?
You know, it’s baloney—every business has their
casualties. But the porn business—as much as any business—has some very smart, bright, well-balanced people working in it.

BILL MARGOLD
:
At one point, as an aside, I told them, “What you people believe is that we have sex with underage German Shepherds and then kill them. We don’t have any time for that. Animals bite, and kids say no. Our stuff is between consenting adults. My job is to talk people out of this before they get into it. I don’t want them to do anything that will hurt them.”

TOM BYRON
:
I go on Cinemax and HBO, and I can’t find a good movie to save my life. They’re all soft porn—but that’s okay. But as soon as you put a penis into a vagina, the rules change. The gloves come off; and all of a sudden you’re branded a criminal, a detriment to society. You know, “We’re gonna put you in jail for the rest of your life. You dirty, filthy pornographer, you.”

BILL MARGOLD
:
As I was coming down from testimony, Barry Lynn of the ACLU came over to me and said, “I wish I could speak like that for those people, but I wear a suit.”

And I realized at that point that the ACLU would sell us out in a heart-beat—that they have no use for the X-rated industry. Come fucking
on
.

KRISTIN STEEN
:
The Women Against Pornography were throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I think pornography has a place in our society—sex for money has a place in our society. Definitely.

Until people can have really honest, fulfilling relationships with each other, this is the way it’s going to be. Pornography has always been there, and it always will. Until we’re so evolved that we don’t need to pay for it, or don’t miss it, we’re going to suffer from not having it.

I am not against pornography at all. I’m for it. I’m against people being used—and you can use people on either side of it.

LINDA LOVELACE
:
When I look back at all the feminists and Women Against Pornography—I kind of feel like they used me, too. Because when I came out and said what I said, you know, about being a victim, too, it supported everything they had been saying, and it was coming from the horse’s mouth.

They needed me; that was good. But if I ever needed anything, they weren’t really there. Between Andrea Dworkin and Kitty MacKinnon, they’ve written so many books, and they mention my name and all that, but financially they’ve never helped me out. They don’t want me to do this or that, but they’ve never really helped me. When I showed up with them for speaking engagements, I’d always get five hundred dollars or so. But I know they made a few bucks off me, just like everybody else.