Ron Jeremy

Q: How do you explain the popularity of gonzo and gonzo-type filmmaking?

Ron Jeremy: It's a very good way to describe it. It's kind of like the success of "Cops" and reality shows on TV. There's a lot of similarities between mainstream and porn. If you look at mainstream there's TV shows about cops. And along comes a TV show called "Cops". We see a film where they're in make-up and [with] scripts. [Now] Let's see how real cops act. Look how popular that show got. You just get the reality of that all. You could either see a script where cops are told what to do by a director or a producer, or you can see a real gritty 'What You Gonna Do When they come for You." Porn is the same thing. Why see a girl doing dialogue, memorizing a script, when they can or cannot act, going through make up all that, when you can see the girl next door in nitty gritty hardcore...lets see what she sounds like, talks like, let's use her own words...get to know the real person. So the interviewer... the typical things like 'Hi, honey, what are your hobbies, what were you doing before you did this, what would your family do if they found out, what kind of sex do you like, what was your first sex experience like. Oh, would you do a little dance for us, how does it feel knowing that the rest of the world is watching you right now? How about a lap dance? Oh, I'm hard, eat this!' There you go. I just gave you every gonzo from Max Hardcore to the Buttman to Seymore Butts to Joey Silvera to Tom Byron to T.T. Boy, right now, in a matter of a few sentences. If you really want to cut corners how's this one? Get me a cup of coffee, blow me. It got popular [because] it's reality based. Look at what's going on at the networks now. Every other show is reality, from "Survivor" to "Fear Factor". Real people doing real things. I find it kind of boring on regular television. I think it works in porn. I think it fails miserably in mainstream. When I watch a regular movie I wanna see dialogue, I wanna see actors. In porn I don't mind seeing gonzo. See a cute little girl come into the office, watch the nasty things she does. The more innocent a girl looks, the more popular a gonzo series is. If a girl looks like she's got a lot of make-up on, like a real hardened street girl, it's not exciting to see her have sex because you expect her to. See an innocent girl next door right off the farm, it's exciting. In our series, "On The Loose" we find a lot of innocent people. Girls out there, and guys, get autographs from me. They all come around, check out the limousine. We'll get a couple of people that want to have sex in the limousine. Or follow us back to our home, or hotel and have sex. Either with each other, or with one of our professionals who we have on standby. It's real, authentic, natural gonzo. We can't make ours any different than anybody else's. We can't think of any new positions. It's all been done. What ours does is try to put in me and my personality. I'll put in little comments over it, I'll direct it, put a little fun into it. Showgirls actual swallowing, close ups of the neck, try to make it as natural as humanly possibly. Put a little bit of humor in there. I'm the observer, 'Oh, boy, look at this!' I get involved too, sometimes. When we first set out to do this series... I was trying to think how are we going to make it any different? Then the people here at Metro said it's going to have you in it. I said, I see the point. Because what can you do to make a series different nowadays? It's all been done.

Q: Do you think, like in mainstream, it will swing back eventually to more plot oriented features?

Ron Jeremy: Yes, I think there will be a swing back. In fact, the gonzo will keep getting better and better. Look at Hollywood; again you compare it to mainstream Hollywood. You have your 'A' movies, you got your 'B' movies, you got your slice-n-dice horror films, you got your T-n-A movies, you got your intestines falling out of the body movies. Just like in porno films...you'll have the big serious features, big scripts, big dialogue, like Metro does some of those. Then they'll be some of them like gonzos where you just have sex wall-to-wall. Some gonzos will appeal to a certain niche market. Young guys, old girls, old girls, young guys, heavy set girls, thing girls, black on white, black on black, twosomes, threesomes, foursomes, gangbangs. Gonzos will cater to the type of sex it is. Or just a new, fresh face. Whereas a big script will be dictated by the characters; it will be character driven, whatever the plot calls for. While there's cable TV and the foreign market, filmmakers are still behooved to make big movies with big storylines. Because Playboy wants that, cable wants that, mature audiences want that. But they also want wall-to-wall sex too. I think there will always be a market for both. I don't think will ever loose the dialogue driven films. It's easier to make the gonzos because it's a lot cheaper and easier to make.

Q: Now you were nominated for a couple of AVN awards this year... what is your honest opinion of the AVN Awards?

Ron Jeremy: AVN Awards are fun. It's a chance for us to do the Academy Awards of porn. I love how the Best New Starlet always cries, 'I want to thank my Mom for getting me into the business'. It's kind of like The Twilight Zone in a way. It's fun. I look at it from all perspectives. From a person being in the business and how I would feel if I was outside the business. And it is pretty bizarre. But it's fun. And how do you knock fun? It helps careers, it makes people strive to make better movies, it makes you more honest, and AVN magazine is very important.

Q: You've been in the business....

Ron Jeremy: Since you were sperm. Twenty-five years. How old are you?

Q: 23.

Ron Jeremy: Oh, god, you weren't even thought of yet! I have ties older than you.

Q: Now you've been with the Ginger Lynns and the Nina Hartleys and also some of the newer faces. What are some the differences in terms of girls?

Ron Jeremy: The girls have gotten prettier. It's been a gradual progression. From the days of the late seventies when everything was shot on film to the video era. Now they're the best because now it's the feature dancers. Now you have all these girls who are dancers who come to L.A. to make some movies and then they go back on the road dancing. These beautiful, beautiful feature dancers. That's actually our biggest market. More girls getting into porn today are dancers. Every porn star today will eventually get a box cover and get either Lee Network or Frank Bane to get them on the road. That's the way it is now. And they make a lot of money. A lot of money; more than the make from the movie. Now we are getting a lot of competition. It's harder for the girls to get work. It's now in our corner. In the old days you had a gorgeous girl and every one wanted to use her. Now you have a gorgeous girl you have twenty more like her. Now basically the girls are trying very hard to get the work. I'm seeing gorgeous girls that complain they aren't getting enough work! And I go, oh my god, ten years ago you'd be working every day.

Q: Who's your favorite new face?

Ron Jeremy: I like Tabitha Stevens a lot. She's my favorite.

Q: You've been in something like 1,700 movies.... Have you ever seen, or watched a movie you did and forgotten about it?

Ron Jeremy: I do that all the time. I'll met a girl today, and it happens all the time, and we'll discuss doing a scene, or I'll be directing her and she'll go "Ronny, we worked together two years ago." And I'll go was it okay? "Ronny, you did fine, you put it in my ass." Oh, okay, nice to know that. You can't remember. Over 1,700 films, a hundred still shoots, a couple of hundred of cameras...how can you ever remember? The ones where I had really good dialogue scenes, had real character parts, I definitely remember. Or when the sex was super, super special. It was a girl I could not wait to have sex with I'll remember those. I'll see a film on cable or on satellite and go, "Oh, wow, I did have sex with that girl! What a great old time." I get depressed out how much fatter I get. I sit there and say. Oh god, now I can't even see the penis, or I see more of the hair on the back. Makes me wanna cry. Isn't the Lord mean? He takes hair on your head and puts it on you ears and nose. That's just wrong! I'll notice things like that. Something weird in my later films...I never said this before...I got a suntan at a nudist camp where I host a show every year. And you're never supposed to let your penis get a suntan. It was aiming up. So you know how you get little skin peels on your face and stuff, and I had a little bit of peeled skin on the bottom of it, and I peeled it off. It never quite got the color back. You know how you get the pink skin, so I still have a little pink dot on my penis...So I know that year! That was about 1985 or 86. So if you look at the up and over position when I'm doing it it's a solid color, anything after that you see a little pink dot. I could always look at a film and use that as a judge.

Q: You did this documentary a year ago...

Ron Jeremy: Comes out on DVD March 25th.

Q: That's was my question... And it was really well-received by the mainstream. Do you plan on doing more mainstream?

Ron Jeremy: I am. A lot of the documentary was about a lot of the mainstream stuff. They showed the scene from Nash Bridges with Don Johnson. They show a lot of scenes from mainstream movies. But I wish we could show more. We lost so much! We lost Jay Leno, we lost a commercial I did with Samuel L. Jackson. I did a show with Barbara Walters and we couldn't get that. A lot of films they couldn't pay the rights to. It was a nightmare. Porn was cheap, or free. But to get the rights to play mainstream stuff in my documentary it was like $9,000 for every seven minutes, and the filmmakers just couldn't do it. It was depressing, because I wanted the documentary to be about that. You look at the documentary and you say he's done some...I've done more than some!

[There's a brief pause in the interview as Ron's cell phone rings and he takes the call]


Ron Jeremy: That's Andy from The Turtles. You know I saw them; they had a big reunion in Las Vegas. I hung out with Herman's Hermits, Peter Noone, and The Turtles. My childhood; it was kind of nice. People that I used to listening to all the time that are now becoming my friends. That's like one of the greatest things about being a star. People know you, people get you to sign autographs, people stop me. Peter Noone stopped me. Billy Joel stopped me. Patty LaPone stopped me. Richard Pryor came up to me. These are the things that they came to me before I came to them. I'm bragging here, but that's what I do. Billy Joel taps me on the shoulder and says, "You're Ron Jeremy. It's very nice to meet you."

Q: Now you're one of the most recognized faces in porn....

Ron Jeremy: Excuse me. I'm the most recognized face in porn. If you read AVN...they had me as number one and Jenna Jameson as number two.

Q: Do you ever feel like your privacy is just being invaded?

Ron Jeremy: Yeah, but you can always adjust that. I find that very offensive when people complain about it. I've hung out with Robin Williams. Oh, what fell? Oh, I dropped a name. If you look at my website, ronjeremy.com, you see about eighty pictures with my and celebrities on it. I hang out with all this guys, and they didn't get recognized. They stuck their collar up, wore a hat, had the glasses on like Robin [Williams] did once. You can avoid it, you can always get your privacy whenever you want it.