The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry

As seen in Vanity Fair: A rollicking, funny, raunchy, and moving oral history of the adult film industry–from Deep Throat through today.

As a recent New York Times Magazine cover story pointed out to average Americans, the adult film industry is a $10 billion–per–year business. It has infiltrated the American mainstream, with its stars showing up as mainstream TV hosts, making guest appearances in Hollywood feature films, and gracing the CD covers–and arms–of rock stars and Hollywood actors alike. But what most people don't know is how the porn industry got started–with a $22,000 Mafia investment in a film called Deep Throat–or how it mushroomed over the next quarter–century despite efforts by politicians, the FBI, and others to bring it down.

The Other Hollywood tells that story, through hundreds of interviews by the people who lived through it. In the riveting oral–history format that made his first book, Please Kill Me, one of the most memorable accounts of 1970s underground culture, Legs McNeil now pulls back the grimy satin sheets on one of the most astounding success stories in the history of American business. Careening back and forth between two groups–the actresses, directors, and others who made the films and the shady underworld figures who financed them–The Other Hollywood offers scores of never–before–told stories, all in the voices of those who lived them.

Witty, always compelling, and ultimately moving, The Other Hollywood is a Hollywood Babylon for today.