Benkharakh.com

By Ben Kharakh

This is an interview I did with Eric Spitznagel for Celebrity Skin in 2006. It's not available on the web, there's no site to link to, and I don't have an intro in this word document for it, but it's a high quality read that you're very likely to enjoy! Eric is a humorist who's been published all over the web and wrote a very informative, interesting, and amusing memoir called Fast Forward: Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter.

When did you start writing in general?
When I was a kid. I wrote my first story in fifth grade. It was about a drunk gnome who wanders into a bar and defecates. My English teacher was outraged by it and brought my parents into the school. He said it was the worst thing she'd ever seen in her life, that it was horrible, and inappropriate. At the time, I loved it and thought it was so amazing that my little story could cause such a heated and angry reaction. It was something I wanted to do because it got such a response from someone. The teacher kept trying to find the polite words to describe what happened in the story. "And then this gnome is intoxicated and took a number two."

In your book, you write about your fear that being associated with porn would impede your career. Has it in anyway?
It hasn't in anyway. I was terrified that once people found out that no one would want to work with me again- whether it be magazines, editors, producers, or agents. It turned out that once people found out, they either didn't care or wanted to know more about it. The other thing I figured out is that most people who watch porn don't wait around for the ending credits. "Who wrote this? Oh, that guy! I'm going to do an IMBD search on him and see what else he's got going on." The only way it can impede your career is if you're an actor. It only effects what your parents about you. The industry doesn't care. As long as your pants don't come off and no one sees your junk onscreen, you're not going to have any problems.

Are there any similarities between porn and comedy?
I can't think of a single one; just nothing but differences. Comedy has a sense of irony to it; porn does not. Even porn comedy doesn't have any irony to it. There's nothing as horrifying to watch as a porno comedy. That was my main thing when I got into business. I thought I was going to write the Waiting for Guffman or Groundhog Day of porno. It's not possible because porn actors don't have a sense of irony. Everything that's funny about porn is unintentional. An intentional laugh line in a movie is terrible. Most porn comedies are parodies, and it's like the worst Mad TV parody you've seen in your life. Some actor doing a terrible impersonation of Bill Clinton or E3: The Extra Terrestrial. Everything that's funny about it is these terribly unfunny people trying to make us laugh.

Is there an alternative porn, with longer, ramblier set ups? Or anti-porn, where it's so un-sexy it's sexy?
That's what Jerry Stahl did so brilliantly in Café Flesh. It was this film about an apocalyptic future where everyone was a sexless leper and only a few people who were sex positives could have sex anymore, so they put on these weird Vegas style stage shows for the sex negatives. If you see it, it's profoundly un-sexy. It's like a freak show. It was a rare blip on the radar for porno. More often than not, if you suggest an idea to a director that's meant for artistic merit or to be weird rather than pleasing the audience they're going to reject it. They do exist, but it's on the fringe.

Are surprise and juxtaposition as effective in porn as they are in humor?
I want to believe that they are, but, especially with surprise, as I've been told by directors time and time again, "You don't want to shock your audience too much." Surprise and comedy go hand in hand. An audience has a certain expectation and that expectation is pulled away, but porno is really about expectations being fulfilled. You don't want to pull the rug out from under your viewer. Once the scene begins, you should know exactly where it's going. For porn, comedy is mostly about the witty line of dialog. They want a dumbed down Marx Brothers.

How about exaggeration?
Exaggeration is really the only comedy element you can use because porn is all about exaggeration. It's about penises being larger than life and breasts being big enough to inhabit their own area code. When they have a pimp character, that character is blown up to absurd proportions. But they do it for the wrong reasons. It's not exaggeration for a laugh, it's an exaggeration because that's how they think the world works.

Does the rule of three apply to porn?
If it does, I've never seen it played out. There's a dramatic principal that plays out in porn, which is if a gun makes an appearance in the first act it must be fired in the last, but that's mostly penis related. For the rule of three to work, you need some patience. The rule of three is you set up something, set it up again, and the third time there's a twist. You need the audience to be around long enough to make it to the third round. By that moment, most viewers have finished their business and turned off the video, missing that twist at the end.

Aside from your forthcoming biography of Ron Jeremy, what are some other projects that you're involved in?
I'm doing a lot of editing for The Believer and am editing Amy Sedaris's advice column. There's hope that we may turn that into a book, which I would work with her on. I'm also working on a book on Del Close, the old Improv guru who passed away in '99. He's this legendary figure who basically worked with everyone in comedy. He created this weird mythology about himself that's open to debate if it actually happened. He has all these weird stories about traveling with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, doing dream experiments for the government, and that he was buddies with L. Ron Hubbard. Part of it is writing a biography and part of it is the story of trying to write the biography of him and how impossible it is when everyone has a different idea of who he was and believe these stories about him but have no way of verifying them. It's about writing a biography and realizing mid way through it that you might be writing fiction. That's the big project I'm working on right now.