Requiem for A Pornographer

What's with the whips and chains?

Spanish version is here.

In August of '69, with Woodstock on the horizon, I came to the East Village. The place had the raw intensity of 'Nam. Days passed, marked by the shadows of junkies and drifters, each moving in a silent, relentless dance. The city's pulse was chaos, and I was in its midst.

It was my summer break from NYU Film School. Those days were exhilarating, bursting with creativity, taxi driving, and frequent visits to Leshko’s for pirogies, Ratner’s for blintzes, and the Fillmore East for Hendrix, The Electric Flag and Procol Harum.

I took on a part-time job as a cab driver, a role I would intermittently pursue for the next decade. One fateful night, I picked up a young passenger heading to East Harlem, another questionable neighborhood. As I reached his destination he pressed a knife against my throat and netted my cigar box with $35, roughly equivalent to $100 today, and then swiftly vanished. The entire ordeal lasted a mere two minutes.

How could I have been so recklessly naive? Drug addicts and petty criminals knew that cabbies carried cash and were easy targets.

Of course the cabby overlords wanted their green, every last cent, all tracked by that damn meter. I rolled my ride back to its den on West 55th, where my colleagues listened in horror to my harrowing experience. One kind soul offered to drive me back to the East Village without charging me.

On the front steps of my building, a fellow resident whom I had never met before gave me a discerning look and asked, "What's troubling you?" I confided and he shared that he too had faced a similar setback a few years earlier while moonlighting as a part-time cab driver.

"I'm Alex Mann, and I have the most famous cock on Eighth Avenue," he proudly proclaimed. I wasn’t sure if I should shake his hand. He was referring to the “skin flicks” produced and presented on the westside of midtown Manhattan. That was ground zero for porn, the electric nerve center of debauchery, the pulsating heart of the pleasure trade with street walkers, pimps, drug dealers and married men looking for action.

Fifty years back that world of risqué was a neon-lit, smoke-filled carnival, miles apart from the sanitized digital debauchery of today. The landscape of pornography over half a century was notably distinct from its contemporary iteration.

Elsewhere, access to pornographic films was exceedingly restricted. Apart from private stag parties, the sole venues for viewing such content were small theaters with very sticky floors, on 42 Street, and up Eighth Avenue. And their counterparts, not so discrete adult shops featuring individual viewing booths, occasionally shared by like-minded strangers.

In stark contrast to today's explicit offerings, the hetrosexual pornography primarily featured topless women with men engaging in fondling, while avoiding any explicit depictions of male or female genitalia. An occasional limp member might make an appearance, but it was still the quiet before the storm.

Alex appeared to be in his early 30s and spoke with a distinctive Brooklyn accent. Evidently, his profession required him to maintain a robust physique, possibly explaining his bodybuilder's appearance.

Next, an offer I could not refuse: "I have some Afgani hash you should try.” He took me up to his cramped first floor studio where he lived with his wife Pam and their fourteen cats. Pamela, decked out in leather, looked like she'd just walked off the set of a B-movie about bikers and their dolled-up partners. Her platinum blonde hair and form-fitting attire gave her a sultry vibe that many might find irresistible. Not me.

Their quaint home had windows shrouded in black, and the walls displayed an assortment of whips, chains, and various tools. Candle-lit sconces added to the ambiance, giving the place an uncanny resemblance to a medieval dungeon.

Alex's hash came in sizable black slabs, bearing the government stamp of approval and originating from Afghanistan. He was more than a consumer, with pounds of the magic elixir on hand. It possessed remarkable potency and within fifteen minutes, all my worries and concerns drifted far away. In those days, cannabis wasn’t very potent, but easy to find hash did possess a much higher degree of potency.

In our talk, it was clear we both loved film. He told me his name was once Alan Herman, but he changed it, respecting the director Anthony Mann. Those nights, the Late and Late Late shows showed old Hollywood movies. Watching them, one could learn much about making films. It was a simpler time.

When Alex learned that I was enrolled in film school, he made an unconventional offer to assist me in finding work as a cameraman within the adult film industry. Shortly after Labor Day, I found myself in a peculiar situation. Alex, who was shooting a film in an abandoned commercial space on West 48th Street next to the renowned A & R Recording studio, offered me a gig as a cameraman, promising $100 for just two hours of work. Back in those days, that was a decent sum, so I agreed, despite having no clue about what I was about to film or the equipment I'd be using.

The place was a sprawling floor, much like an abandoned loft forgotten by time. Disorder reigned. Alex and Pam had marked out five spots with vibrant construction paper for "the scenes." Taking on the director's cap, Alex watched the five pairs shed their clothes and simply said, "Make nice with each other." My job was to weave between them, filming the moments. Armed with just a Super 8mm camera, lacking sound or proper lighting, the task was daunting.

I took a moment to express my concern to Alex about the lack of proper lighting, emphasizing that it would be challenging to obtain usable footage. He responded, "Doesn't matter. As long as they can see some skin, they'll be happy."

I spent an hour filming men and women in a state of partial undress, a modest precursor to the explicit age of "Deep Throat." Absorbed in my work, I didn't pause to reflect on the oddity of it all. It felt like being thrust into a Fellini sequence—gritty, dreamy, and uncanny, where the line between the real and the imagined was thin.

This endeavor often left me feeling the need for long, thorough showers to cleanse myself of the moral discomfort associated with the nature of the work. Although the money was good, I didn’t stick with it.

Alex had a script for a film he aspired to produce, titled "The Appointment." It revolved around a lesbian dominatrix and her attempt to seduce and convert another woman to her lifestyle. With the promise of an endless supply of hashish, Alex managed to persuade me to get involved. We conducted several shooting sessions in his apartment, featuring Pam and a rather nondescript woman named Arlana who seemed anxious to remove her clothing.

While the work didn't stir any personal passions, it was undeniably intriguing from a cinematic perspective. Yet, once it wrapped, I was quick to leave. Back then, my world view was limited, but I sensed that this shoot was just the beginning of that evening’s peculiar journey into the human condition, set in their own otherworldly realm, a twilight zone of bizarre sexuality.

The film was never completed after I dropped out.

Egg Cream Heaven, Gem’s Spa, 2nd Avenue and St. Marks Place

After a year of life in the East Village, I escaped to a railroad apartment on Tenth Avenue and 34th Street, owned by a friend of a friend, where the rent was $79 a month. One night at 3AM, I got a call from Alex. He had been busted and needed me to cat sit until his Super got up and fixed a broken window in his apartment where the police broke in. And then I was to go to 100 Center Street to bail them out.

When I arrived I found Alex, Pam and two policemen,chatting like they were long lost friends. I later learned Alex had gifted each policeman five hundred dollars. Alex gave me a huge wad of bills. Then one of the policemen took Alex and Pam and several pounds of the Afgani Hash to the police car. No handcuffs were necessary.

The remaining officer starting going through to the contents of Alex’s desk revealing Alex wasn’t “the big guy” and that mega dealer was either going to stop by or call very soon. I should at least get his number and give it to the cops, he explained. “That will really help your friends,” he told me. Of course Mr. Big never called. It was ruse anyway, a way out that Alex sold to the cops.

The policeman stumbled upon a stash of polaroid photos featuring Pam engaged in a variety of solo sex acts. “What a crazy broad,” the cop exclaimed. Indeed. Then he left, taking the the photos, either for evidence or inspiration.

On the late show that night, Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Wrong Man,” a film noir classic with Henry Fonda as a musician accused of a murder he didn’t commit. I went through the desk and happily encountered a chunk of hash that had been left behind. When the sun came up a few hours later, I found the building super and made my way to Night Court.

I'd never set foot in a courtroom before. The assortment of quirky characters and minor lawbreakers was oddly entertaining. When the judge summoned Alex and Pam, I stepped up, ready with bail: six freshly minted hundred-dollar bills.

Several days later, Alex called with good news, their case had been dismissed. The cops didn’t have a search warrant. I always wondered what happened to the hash, and the photos of Pam.

I rarely saw Alex after I moved but the next time we spoke, he had plans. A landlord on 48th Street had offered space on the second floor of building with a street front jewelry store operated by Hasidic Jews and that was going to renovate the space and rechristen it, The Love Nest, offering a live sex show with Pam. Not long after that, he got busted again, in the 48th Street location, for “operating a brothel.” Shortly thereafter, Alex decided to move to LA, since most of the porn industry had relocated out there as well, in the Valley.

After film school, I was also considering whether or not to move to LA to try and become a sitcom writer. In February of ’77, I visited tinsel town on a reconnaissance mission but decided it wasn’t for me. In New York, we wore our truths on our sleeves; but in L.A., it seemed the city's shimmer was just a cover for the phonies beneath. I called Alex a couple of times, but he never returned my calls. I always wondered, what the hell happened to Alex and Pam?

In preparation for this posting, I found out, when I came across his IMDB bio:

“Alex Mann, 1941 – 2010.  Handsome and muscular actor, writer, and real life tough guy Alex Mann was born in the rough neighborhood of Brownsville in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a pool player nicknamed "Cue Stick" and his mother worked at the candy counter at Loew's Pitkin Theater. Mann was involved with criminals in his younger days and had many run-ins with the police during this time. In the early 1960's Alex moved to Manhattan's East Village, where he became part of the local beat scene. Mann first started acting in underground movies. He soon became a welcome and familiar rugged face in East Coast exploitation cinema fare which includes both soft-core features and more explicit porno flicks. His most memorable roles were the dissident Shelley in the outrageous hippie horror splatter cult favorite "I Drink Your Blood," a vicious rapist in the poignant porn gem "Sometime Sweet Susan," and slimy pimp Tony in the supremely scuzzy "Malibu High." In 1969 "Life" magazine ran a two page article on Mann and his wife Pamela after the couple was arrested for running a brothel. (Mann also performed in live sex shows with Pamela.)

After Alex moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, he further pursue his acting and writing career. He kept himself afloat by working as a bouncer for a notorious Hollywood club owner. Mann won rave reviews for "Sailor Falls in One," a boxing play that he wrote, produced, and directed. Alex made guest appearances on the TV shows "Weird Science" and "Strong Medicine." Moreover, Mann did the voice of Jimmy the Grape for the video game "The Darkness" and had a co-starring role in the crime thriller "The Transgressions of Tina." Alex lived in Sherman Oaks, California and died of tongue cancer in July, 2010.”

R.I.P. Alex Mann. Thanks for the memory.

This is my NYU Film School senior project, Rough Ride, one night in the life of a New York taxi driver. Alex Mann, in between two other cabbies, is featured in the opening scene.