HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So I looked at my favorite little new, this clothing company that I like that I get from and it's Japanese. And so I was looking at an interview with the guy who made it, right, the guy who first designed all of it in like the mid 80s. And they were like with much vigor, Mr. Sashishoto, he is always filled with ideas. And he's like my number two fashion icons of all time, it was James Taylor from the album Graceland.
MARCUS PARKS
That's Paul Simon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's the other one? It's James Taylor...
MARCUS PARKS
Fire and...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not that. But it's the one that...
BEN KISSEL
Are we on, Rob?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) How sweet it is-
MARCUS PARKS
(singing) To be loved by you!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I can't remember.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's that one. And Woody Allen. And I was just like wow. I didn't know he was a fashion icon.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he's got the glasses.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is.
BEN KISSEL
I did love that Sleepers. Sleeper?
MARCUS PARKS
Sleeper was a great movie.
BEN KISSEL
Very funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it was.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Sleeper was, yeah, very funny.
BEN KISSEL
And also it predicted Monsanto.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then so did Big Top Pee-wee. He becomes Monsanto in Big Top Pee-wee.
BEN KISSEL
Big Top Pee-wee becomes Monsanto?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In that movie-
BEN KISSEL
Wait, what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is genetically engineering. Remember he makes the hotdog tree?
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, Pee-wee!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He makes the tomatoes really big. Pee-wee, and I don't mean to sully the good name of Pee- wee.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Never.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because yeah, but he's Monsanto.
BEN KISSEL
He only did what he was supposed to do in a jerk off theater, he jerked off. He was tactically a good client, much like-
MARCUS PARKS
John Holmes?
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Never.
MARCUS PARKS
What? Sorry, I was only paying attention to the fact that you only bring up Pee-wee Herman in the context of his masturbation charge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. It's the only time.
BEN KISSEL
Because do you remember-
MARCUS PARKS
You never bring up his talent, the joy that he's brought to people.
BEN KISSEL
No. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
You only bring up his masturbation charge.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, okay, we'll talk about John Holmes. We're not gonna talk about that. Also Fred Willard. But what I was gonna say is this-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The only other man you ever bring up ever.
BEN KISSEL
Because I love both of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Do you remember the greatest joke of all time? Pee-wee Herman comes on The Tonight Show after months and months of his scrutiny. Heard any good jokes lately?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I remember.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I remember that.
BEN KISSEL
Boom! And the crowd goes crazy. The big top exploded.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really crushed it. He knew what he was doing, he knew what he was doing.
BEN KISSEL
He did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What I like about this series as we begin-
MARCUS PARKS
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that because there's nothing Pee-wee about this series.
BEN KISSEL
Oh mamacita.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I got into some fun like a little like jaunt of like okay, big penises.
MARCUS PARKS
Big penis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Big penis, right?
BEN KISSEL
You just got into it. Just kinda dived in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just dive right in, right. Did you know that currently the world's biggest penis belongs to Roberto Esquivel Cabrera.
BEN KISSEL
Is it natty?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want you to...
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's natty.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now look at this man now. Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's a condition. That's a medical condition.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So the man, the only way you can look, the way I describe the look on his face in these pictures for thesun.com, only the best journalism here at Last Podcast on the Left.
BEN KISSEL
It only gets sued like three times a year for doing horrible illegal things.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it. But he's got this like smirk-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of almost a grimaced appreciation for you seeing what it is.
BEN KISSEL
Do you think he likes it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it was an issue, right? So if you look at him, his penis is 19 inches long. He never takes his shirt off.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He only ever shows his penis. And now when you look at his penis and it's just there.
MARCUS PARKS
Well you can't actually see his penis because he has it wrapped up in three types of gauze and a sock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now the reason why, it turns out the reason why, and this is why Jonah Falcon, the guy with an actual measured 13.5 penis, he used to have the world's biggest penis.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is currently challenging this man to say that your penis does not count because it turns out, and you must go to your social media to look at this picture at some point or on your own computer, I don't know how we're gonna show this.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have to go and look this man up so you could look at this and apparently there is only 6-7 inches of penis inside of that-
BEN KISSEL
He's lying!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is all stretched foreskin that he has pushed together.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. That doesn't count.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He has mashed together. You know how Netflix puts together their numbers?
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like kind making stuff up?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did the same thing but with his own dick size.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
He's just tugging until he's just got a windsock between his legs.
BEN KISSEL
Foreskin and seven years ago. Let's just hop into Last Podcast on the Left. Ben hanging out with Henry and Marcus. Wow, we're gonna learn about the male member today. Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And one of the worst members of the male party today as well, John Holmes and the Wonderland Murders. Don't worry, this is just part one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's a two-parter.
BEN KISSEL
It seems like it would take two to handle John Holmes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So the Wonderland Murders, known at the time as the Four on the Floor Massacre, was a drug-related bingeful mass killing that occurred in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles in the early 80s. The four victims had all been brutally beaten to death with a lead pipe, their faces crushed beyond all recognition.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if you believe the detectives that wrote 'Malice in Wonderland' about this, first of all they want you to make sure you know at the very top, just to clear things up, 'Malice in Wonderland' is a play upon the title 'Alice in Wonderland'.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you know that he's just like this is not about Alice, there's no Cheshire cat involved in any of these proceedings, just the hard work of the LAPD.
BEN KISSEL
But there was probably a late bunny rabbit at some point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But at some point they basically just say like this was truly one of the worst crime scenes that they had ever seen in their whole homicide investigating lives.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I believe them. This is when detectives were really drinking hard and having a horrible time because it was difficult to solve these crimes.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean this is the late 70s, early 80s Los Angeles. This is the time of bad crime scenes.
BEN KISSEL
You can just smell the cigar smoke and the whiskey.
MARCUS PARKS
The perpetrators however were never convicted. But that doesn't mean that we don't know who did it. The perpetrator, or at least the man who gave the order, was almost certainly a violent, unpredictable lunatic coke dealer and nightclub owner known as Eddie Nash.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just a purveyor of entertainment.
BEN KISSEL
Hey, Penguin. Got any smack? I'm actually, I'm Batman but I'm also like really rich.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my god, Batman's got an opioid problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Now there have been multiple drug-related mass murders in Los Angeles over the decades.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Really? Wow, no way. What?
MARCUS PARKS
Fair amount. But the Wonderland Murders have endured because of the man who set these events in motion. This man was also almost certainly on the scene when the murders occurred and may have even participated.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The jury is still out on that.
MARCUS PARKS
That man was the so-called king of XXX, John Holmes, aka Johnny Wad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. What else? Oh, Family Feud. Steve Harvey, king of XXX (buzzer sound).
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Weird. Just imagining Steve Harvey's O face.
BEN KISSEL
Imagine John Holmes as the host.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause you know what it looks like? Again, you can't see it at home but it looks like...
BEN KISSEL
Did they just say that?
MARCUS PARKS
Holmes is quite possibly the most well-known pornstar, well the most well-known male porn star in history. Although if we want to talk about the true talents of the vintage age, give me a Peter North or a Randy Spears any day over old Johnny Wad because at least Peter North put some effort into his fucking appearance.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Peter North was a showman.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Randy Spears, pure passion. Randy Spears.
MARCUS PARKS
And comedy. Don't forget.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember.
MARCUS PARKS
Don't forget, Randy Spears was the-
BEN KISSEL
Wait, what comedy?
MARCUS PARKS
He was the funny one.
BEN KISSEL
What did he say?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He would go like oh tits! Whoa, is that tits?
MARCUS PARKS
Whoa! No, no, Peter North, he put some effort into it, you know?
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Peter North, I really do... Because finally we can really get into this because we've never been able to. We've talked about the ladies.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Many, many times.
MARCUS PARKS
Many times, of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right. We've talked about the performers we've liked to watch. Because it's interesting about the guys, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because to me, I think the guy has gotta kind of be like, how do you put it? Like a nice cologne, where you appreciate that it's there, it's serving a purpose.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's not the whole story.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm not here for you.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not the whole story but I like the man to be attractive and in shape. That's just me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I agree.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't like a big fat slob.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Me neither because I want you to be better than me. I want you to look different than me.
BEN KISSEL
I just like to fantasize that that penis is my penis and everything is making total sense.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But guess what, man? It's not my penis.
BEN KISSEL
I know. I know that. I haven't seen my penis in a minute.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is like no way.
MARCUS PARKS
I like to watch it, I like to enjoy it. I like to be in the room, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually most of the time I sit and watch being like that's a lot of hard work.
BEN KISSEL
Seriously. I've known some, we actually have known some adult male pornstars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And it is not an easy gig.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Be careful what you wish for.
MARCUS PARKS
But the reason why John Holmes is far more famous than Peter North or Randy Spears is because John Holmes has an absolutely massive penis. But it's not weirdly misshapen massive like say serial killer Ottis Toole's penis is rumored to be.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like in the rough draft I think you just put that the reason why John Holmes is far more famous than North or Spears is because his penis was big and attractive.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's what I was about to go into.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Is that John Holmes has a nice looking penis.
BEN KISSEL
It does look like there's a pot of gold at the end of it, it sort of rainbows.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's a Gonzo.
BEN KISSEL
It's a Gonzo.
MARCUS PARKS
When it's getting ready, it's a Gonzo. But at the end of the day, it's nice to look at. It doesn't have like that weird bulge in the middle like where the top is really small and the bottom is really small.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate that.
BEN KISSEL
Are we gonna do this now?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Two tones. I also hate two tones.
MARCUS PARKS
Hey, don't talk shit on two tones. Two tones are fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wait a second, am I talking to a two tone?
MARCUS PARKS
You're talking to a two toner, my friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No way.
MARCUS PARKS
You're talking to a two toner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Brown to pink?
MARCUS PARKS
Bro, I'm a two toner.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, that just means he's going the distance and his dick got so big that it changed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
We've talked about this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually I don't know if I have.
MARCUS PARKS
We absolutely have because I remember you maligning two toners before and I remember defending myself as a two toner.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what, I'm not doing this.
BEN KISSEL
We're not doing it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm post-vacation me. This is a no judgment zone.
BEN KISSEL
That's right.
MARCUS PARKS
That's good. Reportedly, John Holmes had a 13 inch cock that was 4 inches in circumference.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean well they say between 10-15. 15 would make it one of the largest cocks in existence.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I would say it's probably around 11.5.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because the guy with the 19 inch penis basically said it is completely unusable.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he's been stretching and tugging and stretching and pulling on it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well you know I went to go see puppetry-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's lost its integrity.
BEN KISSEL
It really has and that's unfortunate. It should run for office.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I went to go see Puppetry of the Penis and I don't think those guys can get hard.
MARCUS PARKS
No, probably not.
BEN KISSEL
After all the things that they do and with their balls.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I know.
BEN KISSEL
That's a special treat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually would be kind of pissed if they can.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the thing is about that is that size means nothing without performance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
And when Holmes was at his peak, he could stay reasonably erect for hours and more importantly, he could ejaculate on cue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(moaning)
BEN KISSEL
That's incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Was that bad? Was that not my cue?
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's like that scene in Boogie Nights. It's like I could do it again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can do it again. And they were like whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I to this day honestly, because we'll talk more about it, but I used that all the time on Pretty Face. It was always being like I'm ready to fuck now!
MARCUS PARKS
Oh no, ready to fuck now has been our fucking let's go, let's do this thing for years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Especially before live shows. I don't know how many times, I don't know if you guys know before a live show it's like 7:45 and I'm sitting in the fucking green room going, I'm ready to fuck now!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm ready to fuck now!
MARCUS PARKS
Let's do it now!
BEN KISSEL
I do recall that.
MARCUS PARKS
Now speaking of which, there was a movie made about the Wonderland Murders in particular back in 2003 starring Val Kilmer as John Holmes, which is a gross miscasting if you ask me, considering how homely John Holmes actually was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think if modern America really saw what John Holmes looked like, you'd be like huh? So Val Kilmer helps. He also played Jim Morrison.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
I could see Adam Sandler as John Holmes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
I just watched Little Nicky, he could pull it off.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He's very talented.
MARCUS PARKS
The voice ruined that movie.
BEN KISSEL
I love Little Nicky.
MARCUS PARKS
I like the movie but the voice ruins it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They redid it for me. It came back around for me.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I love it.
MARCUS PARKS
I'll try it again.
BEN KISSEL
Please do.
MARCUS PARKS
But as you may already know, the far more interesting take on the John Holmes story is of course the PT Anderson masterpiece Boogie Nights, which sits at number three on my all time favorite movie list.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love that movie.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Massive, massive fan of Boogie Nights.
BEN KISSEL
Such an uncomfortable film. I always think of a person who got into porn because they only watched the first half.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's true. You're right though.
BEN KISSEL
Yes because it ends quite brutally.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
No, actually it ends as a bit of, there's a redemption arc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's like the first half of Blow.
MARCUS PARKS
You're a star.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When you watch the first half of Blow and you're like man, being a drug dealer must be awesome. First half of Wolf of Wall Street. Whoa, stealing stocks, that's awesome!
MARCUS PARKS
Boogie Nights however is only loosely based on the John Holmes story because PT Anderson wrote the screenplay when he was in his mid 20s, based solely on a memory he had of an article called The Devil and John Holmes that Anderson read when he was 17.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was watching a documentary called Wad and Paul Thomas Anderson was on it and he's obviously high on cocaine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right?
MARCUS PARKS
Entire time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just understand, this is gonna be a through line with this kind of thing.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. A true line indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Truly the coke line throughout this whole series is just about like... Because it's no one should have this level of confidence. Because Paul Thomas Anderson in that documentary is convinced and continues the myth that John Holmes was a good actor. And he was not a good actor.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just didn't show up and immediately just go like meh. They basically were so amazed he can even memorize lines.
BEN KISSEL
But as a porn actor, the fact he could cum on command, that makes him a great porn actor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Performer. That's a great performer.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Performer. Well as I was telling Ben before the show, John Holmes, he was a good actor in the sense that he was always the best actor in the porno.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
That was the extent of his great acting though. But even so, some of the characters in Boogie Nights were indeed based on real people in this story. Besides Dirk Diggler obviously being a stand in for John Holmes, the character masterfully played by Alfred Molina is heavily based on the man who allegedly ordered the Wonderland Murders, Eddie Nash.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And the scenes in the pornos in Boogie Nights are basically completely lifted from Johnny Wadd movies.
MARCUS PARKS
This food, it's not good. It's the best. Probably the best in San Francisco.
BEN KISSEL
Well you gotta be careful. I know some people in the adult business and you can't eat peanuts before an anal scene for 24 hours otherwise you get sicker barred.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I agree. And again, that's all about performance.
BEN KISSEL
Indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
But as far as what today's story is gonna be, this is a tale of a coward with a big dick, a taste for underage girls, and a legendary coke habit whose actions led to a mass murder that was at the time only comparable to the Sharon Tate crime scene in terms of its brutality.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
It also however is partly the story of how the adult film industry grew from a legal eight millimeter loop sold out of the trunks of cars outside of dirty magazine stores, to vague mainstream acceptance with movies like Deep Throat, Debbie Does Dallas, and The Devil in Miss Jones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Oh yeah. I should have used a sex voice. Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's your sex voice? Oh mama.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also remember when we covered The Iceman, Richard Kuklinski.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All these guys. This is all the land of the mafia.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The mafia was selling a lot of this shit. It was very, very illegal and it made it really, really dangerous. And then the money kind of like and the legality kind of made it dangerous all over again.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as sources go today, we've got mostly reliable narratives like 'The Devil and John Holmes' by Mike Sager, the same one that inspired Boogie Nights.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But one source in particular that we're leaning on for the John Holmes side of the story is to say the least highly suspect.
BEN KISSEL
Who wrote it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One of my favorite type of sources.
MARCUS PARKS
That source is John Holmes' self-serving autobiography, 'Porn King'.
BEN KISSEL
I feel like it sounds like when Mr. Garrison on South Park was writing erotica.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes. Yes.
BEN KISSEL
I feel like there's gonna be a lot of cock talk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well everything is just all how cool John Holmes thinks he is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. It gives us a glimpse into how Holmes saw himself, his story on how the Wonderland Murders went down, and of course some incredibly disgusting quotes.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
For an example, here's how John Holmes described the oral sex skills of a porn actress named Rene Bond.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She sucks cock like a starving orphan with her first candy cane. Have you ever seen that?
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a mess.
BEN KISSEL
I don't...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cancel Christmas.
BEN KISSEL
Also give the orphan a hamburger. There's no nutrition in a candy cane.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the second part of that line is "and when she was done with you, you were nothing but a pile of goo."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Shit. Have you ever seen a candy cane at the end? It becomes sharp, cuts your tongue.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness gracious. Bringing Christmas into it.
MARCUS PARKS
Rene and Holmes by the way appeared together in a movie called Fantasm about a professor exploring common female sexual fantasies. It was a bunch of segments and the segment that John Holmes and Rene Bond were in was simply titled Fruit Salad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Already romance.
BEN KISSEL
Did the Tall Man show up at all? Was there a portal into another realm?
MARCUS PARKS
No, not at all. I think there was however a demon scene.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There might have been a demon scene. I didn't see... I am not the hugest fan of the quote unquote "golden age of pornography". Some of it, it's not my vibe.
BEN KISSEL
I do like the bush hair.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do too. I watched a lot of it for this, again research, I had to warn, I told Rob right before the show, I told everybody that was in the studio. I was like if you hear active pornography coming out of this room, it is research, my door is open. I have my hands are up.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They all learned.
MARCUS PARKS
There was one segment called Blood Orgy.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But then there was another segment called, yeah, After School.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well maybe it was grad school.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. After masters class.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Mother's Darling.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But on the other hand, is it that different from what we've got on the front page of Pornhub today?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's not.
BEN KISSEL
Please stop with the bratty families.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We know.
BEN KISSEL
What about neighbors gone fucking?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Anything else. Grocers.
BEN KISSEL
Oh sure! Oh you're banging the person who stocks the shelves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey bitch, you want two pounds of sweet potatoes?
BEN KISSEL
Boom! Get into the sex.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gone grocer porn.
MARCUS PARKS
But long before Holmes was the biggest male actor in porn, he was a poor old country boy born in Columbus, Ohio in 1944.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Supposedly John was born with what he repeatedly called his unusual member, that's his way of referring to his... I mean you can only say big cock so many times.
BEN KISSEL
Sure, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So he had to come up with creative ways to refer to it.
BEN KISSEL
I don't mind that, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
According to legend, the midwife explained upon John Holmes' birth that quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This baby has three legs and two feet!
BEN KISSEL
Ma'am, can you just deliver the goddamn baby and stop commenting on its fucking dick?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's blue as hell.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my. I don't need the commentary, ma'am.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This baby corpse has the biggest cock I've ever seen.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as his family life went, Holmes' birth father was an absent alcoholic who would come home at night drunk only to fall over his kid's bed in mid vomit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
As a consequence, Holmes stayed sober until he was well into his pornography career and discovered the seductive powers of cocaine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, hey man. What's going on, man? We gotta get something to eat, man.
BEN KISSEL
That's incredible. So he didn't start, everyone says it's a gateway drug, you start with the alcohol and go to weed and maybe cocaine. But he just started with coke.
MARCUS PARKS
He started with weed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he had weed.
MARCUS PARKS
And then we moved on to cocaine. He was Cali sober for the most part and then cocaine. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha, interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Well soon Holmes' alcoholic father was gone. But that guy was replaced with a severely bipolar WWII veteran named Harold who had a hard time even physically moving when he was depressed and of course got highly violent when he was manic.
BEN KISSEL
And also you do not want to be a bipolar soldier because it's like I'm a nazi! I'm an American. I'm a nazi! I'm an American.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very funny though. In the sadness of it, because they were all talking about like you know we just loved it when Pappy was depressed because he'd stop hitting us.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then he'd be sleeping. And then all of a sudden you're like oh Pappy, you're feeling better. Ow! Ow, ow!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's literally my grandmother.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not good.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he said that the grandfather would kick John in the spine repeatedly saying like John, John, your name's John, right? Your name is John, right? While he's kicking him in the back.
BEN KISSEL
That's horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
As an example of how unstable Harold was, when one day work got to be too much when he was depressed, he jammed his hand into a harvester machine-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes!
MARCUS PARKS
To remove himself from the workforce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude. This is fucking American as hell.
BEN KISSEL
Just tell them you got a cold.
MARCUS PARKS
He lost a thumb and three fingers and afterwards he supposedly told his wife, quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll never have to work again, Mary. Unless they meet me in the pinky police!
BEN KISSEL
Oh mama. That is one stinky pinky.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, hey! I promise you I won't cut off another finger.
BEN KISSEL
That sounds like a horrible way to get out of a job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
I didn't imagine him to be saying that in such a jovial voice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll never have to work again! Of course, he's thrilled.
BEN KISSEL
It's Office Space. again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
The guy who got hit by the car who never has to work again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This was the best thing that ever happened to me.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I imagine him just like in this very manic moment like I'll never have to work again, Mary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, completely insane, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. You're correct.
BEN KISSEL
His favorite artist, Billy Joe Shaver.
MARCUS PARKS
Now all these traumatic childhood memories are outlined in great detail in Holmes' autobiography. But peppered throughout are graphic descriptions of Holmes proudly detailing his childhood sex life. Which if we're being honest-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Childhood sex life, I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that the term?
MARCUS PARKS
That's the only way to describe it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
MARCUS PARKS
Is childhood sex life. And if we're being honest, it's almost exactly how Anthony Kiedis' autobiography starts out as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But there's something about... Because again, Anthony Kiedis also lost, didn't he lose his virginity at like 8, 10 years old?
MARCUS PARKS
Like 11, 10, or 12 or something like that. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right, okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like then you see Anthony Kiedis is now fine. He was raped essentially, you know, I mean he was molested.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it shows how like talent can really take you in a different direction.
BEN KISSEL
I suppose.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Holmes claimed to have lost his virginity to his babysitter at the age of 8, but most likely John's loss of innocence came at the hands of a 36 year old neighbor who sexually abused John at the age of 12 or so when they lived in the Columbus projects.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And as was the case up until literally 2005, everyone applauded that. This was funny in this book. In this book it was written as like I was always a fucking player.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everybody always fucking wanted me. And it's this thing.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where obviously now we know what that's called, that's internalized abuse. That's like a thing that's inside of you, that you got molested and now you're trying to figure it out in your own fucking head how it makes sense for you. But at the time people were high fiving him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
See John Holmes, like many in the adult film industry, escaped a life of pain and abuse into the world of sex, finding solace, pleasure, and closeness in the act to contrast repeated beatings from a mentally ill six-fingered stepfather.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! Unemployed by these six fingers!
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like Hank Hill's dad.
MARCUS PARKS
So in 1960 when John was 16 years old, he joined the army and served his time in Germany. There he met a guy named Tony from New York.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No way.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Who would eventually introduce John to the world of sex work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have you ever heard that old joke, that's why all Italians are named Tony?
MARCUS PARKS
Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because when they were coming over from Ellis Island, they all had 'To New York' on a shirt. 'TONY'.
BEN KISSEL
That's real funny. That's good stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Tony.
BEN KISSEL
That's good stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man.
MARCUS PARKS
Real good stuff. It's some real good Queens humor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey. This is what I provide.
BEN KISSEL
I love that Queens humor.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have a list of big dick jokes.
BEN KISSEL
Made in a lab.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Tony didn't know about John's unusual member until they were out of the army because John wasn't the type of dude who would flop it out at a moment's notice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He had class.
MARCUS PARKS
He had class.
BEN KISSEL
okay.
MARCUS PARKS
He was actually somewhat shy about it. It was only when John left the army, moved to New York with Tony, and started dating girls in Brooklyn, that were got back around to Tony about John's appendage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know who's not ashamed is Roberto. I'm just looking back at Roberto, I'm looking at his face.
MARCUS PARKS
19 incher.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's literally holding it like he is bringing a sub to a christening.
BEN KISSEL
I am gonna need to see it though. I gotta see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Also they call Italians Tony cause when they were coming over here they had t-shirts that said TO NY.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's joke thievery.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as it turned out, Tony was already working as a gigolo. So he took John under his wing and both of them started just fucking railing rich old ladies in Manhattan.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Supposedly John cleaned up as a gigolo, claiming that he was soon awash and furnished apartments, diamond studded jewelry, a Mercedes Benz, and more cash than he could possibly spend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was rich, you see? Yeah, I made $150 per ball.
BEN KISSEL
That's a lot back then.
MARCUS PARKS
One of his rich clients were so enamored with him he said, that her lawyers paid John $50,000 to stop railing her and just go away.
BEN KISSEL
That is big cock energy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now from what John claimed, he quite suddenly and for seemingly no reason wanted to give California a shot. But before he left, he gave all his gigolo money to a girl he grew up with named Mary-Kay who seemed to kind of be the Jenny to John's Forrest Gump.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Forrest Pump.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is interesting because again, it's from his perspective.
MARCUS PARKS
Or Forrest Hump.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Forrest Hump. Forrest Glump.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Forrest Clumps of Cum on your Tits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Forrest Dump is again, German.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now he had to go to California. In my mind, what do we know about John Holmes? What are the things that he's truly best known for? Is having huge cock-
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And being an unrepentant maybe murderer/snitch, right? So he's like a guy that was an entirely unreliable bad person.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I imagine that at some point while he was being the so-called super fantastic gigolo that everyone was addicted to, he might have made some bad decisions somewhere into that temper that might have forced him to leave town.
MARCUS PARKS
Quite possibly.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
The way John figured it, he could just make all that money back once he got to California because he was just that goddamn good.
BEN KISSEL
That dick ain't going anywhere.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can make my balls fart.
MARCUS PARKS
And so he hitchhiked to California.
BEN KISSEL
What would they call that? A bwofe? A ball queef?
MARCUS PARKS
And so he hitchhiked to California and landed on the steps of the older woman he'd lost his virginity to, because apparently they'd kept in touch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now first John went legit, he got a job as an ambulance driver. Possibly through this job, he met his soon to be wife Sharon who was a nurse at USC County General.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now all Sharon knew about John's past was that he was a reasonably charming country boy who was just trying to make it in the big city.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And actually his being an ambulance driver will factor in later on into his trial.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because on one side he said all of this stuff about how when I was an ambulance driver, I saw enough gore for the rest of my life. There is no way I would have ever been involved in these murders.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then later on he would just be like... He acted like whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's all over the place.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well John's soon to be wife Sharon had no idea that just a few months earlier, John had been a gigolo in New York City. Likewise, she also had no knowledge of John's unusual appendage until the night of their marriage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
Which happened just five months after they met.
BEN KISSEL
I mean hey, there's worse things that could happen.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine being with me for like a couple of years and then that night I'm like honey, I'm a comedian. For the very first time?
BEN KISSEL
That's not an 11 inch dick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's mine. That's the only thing I have.
BEN KISSEL
That's a whole other thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Well reportedly when John's talent was unfurled in their wedding chamber, Sharon was said to have muttered-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh dear!
BEN KISSEL
She's fucking British?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, my word!
BEN KISSEL
I can't imagine she was that upset.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh!
BEN KISSEL
But who knows?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh dear. I mean that's the thing, a lot of women don't like a penis that big.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you know what it is about it truly? If you're not expecting it, because there's difference, right? 8-9 incher.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's really get into the nitty gritty.
MARCUS PARKS
Let's get into the nitty gritty.
BEN KISSEL
I think we know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
8-9 incher, you're like wow, great.
MARCUS PARKS
Wonderful.
BEN KISSEL
Who knows?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're like ooh, fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, 8-9 incher, absolutely. I get what you're saying. Like 13 inches-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's insane.
BEN KISSEL
There's a lid for every pot. Because sometimes people have small vaginas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
And they don't mind a small penis. But sometimes women have larger vaginas and they like a big old penis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But this woman didn't know what her vagina capacity was. That's maximum capacity.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is like you're just jumping... It was like when I lied to that movie set about how I could ride a scooter.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, that's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like what if instead of them showing up with a scooter, they showed up with a Harley? I'd go oh dear! Oh no!
BEN KISSEL
Didn't you get to kiss Sharon Stone?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I did.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And when it comes to that massive penis we've been talking about so much-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is unavoidable.
MARCUS PARKS
Well yeah, I mean it's the only reason why we're talking about this man.
BEN KISSEL
True.
MARCUS PARKS
If he was just involved in a drug related murder and he was just some dude, we wouldn't know who he is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
But because he's John Holmes, he's got the big dick and we gotta talk about it.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, hey, hey. Again, we're not leaving anything on the floor here. We do everything we can.
BEN KISSEL
Other than the tip of his penis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And he himself actually included a bit of an instruction manual in his autobiography for All you big dickers out there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, come on, you long dongers. We know that a lot of people don't have a heck of a lot of like consideration for you because you suck. But this is important for you to know.
MARCUS PARKS
It is important for you to know. Henry will now read the instructions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
For big dickers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I developed my technique as a teenager because of my size. It was during those years that because of my size, I had to go slower and to spend more time on foreplay than other guys did. If I just jumped in the saddle, I caused a woman pain. So I learned to take my with extended foreplays to make her more receptive to me. My rule of thumb became when a woman pulls me to her, she was sufficiently lubricated to receive me. I learned too that while a flat muscular stomach may appeal to a woman visually, a slight bit of a stomach is more exciting in bed. It's because even the slightest paunch adds friction and stimulation to the pubic area. Therefore the more padding around a man's stomach, the more he will stimulate his partner. Which is actually from my house.
BEN KISSEL
All right. Yeah, I love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That last bit at the very end.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, very romantic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it said the paunch is better for sex?
BEN KISSEL
I've been saying it for years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dad bods are better at it because with the boom-boom-boom. Boom-boom-boom!
BEN KISSEL
It's Don Rickles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Here he comes!
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. All right. Well that's actually quite sweet. So he did it seems, I'm just talking right now, from what I'm learning it seems as if he did like to pleasure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Which is good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He created a character where John... This is basically, imagine John Holmes has... Once we get to the Johnny Wad part of this-
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is now a walking, living version of Johnny Wadd. And in Johnny Wad world, his whole thing is that yes, he has a huge dick. But he treats women like equals. Because you remember there's a time, we'll get more into the history of pornography.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's all more like yeah, I'm with the women's lib movement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not some machismo guy. I'm the sensitive guy.
BEN KISSEL
That's nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like mixed in with all of the stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now unbeknownst to his new wife Sharon, John Holmes was slowly inching his way, so to speak-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(moaning)
BEN KISSEL
Don't wink at me when you say that please.
MARCUS PARKS
Into the world of hardcore pornography. See in those days, the late 60s, pornography was not yet an industry in America and was in fact still highly illegal. Making pornography could actually get a producer charged with pimping because technically that producer was facilitating the act of sex between two people in which money was exchanged.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But John's introduction into the industry actually seems, from the stories I've heard, to be a fairly common way to get noticed. One night in 1968 John was gambling at a poker parlor when in the bathroom-
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
MARCUS PARKS
A photographer at the next urinal peeked down at John's business end and had a bit of a wowee-wow moment.
BEN KISSEL
I don't ever want to meet a photographer in the bathroom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wowee-wow, wowee-wow. Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine though? Remember the guy who kept trying to show me his penis when I was in the Slippery Noodle?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. Can you help me out?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you help me out?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What if I looked over and it was a contract? Yeah. We're bringing the 12 dwarfs to the erotic movies.
BEN KISSEL
Aw, that'd be nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We want you to play Dopey.
BEN KISSEL
Oh very cool.
MARCUS PARKS
There's been multiple pornos with Snow White and the seven dwarves.
BEN KISSEL
Oh of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Quite a few of them.
BEN KISSEL
It's crazy, those scenes there. Nuts.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the photographer soon introduced John to the worlds of nude modeling and nude dancing at male strip clubs. But it was a friend named Linda who brought John into the world of film by asking him if he wanted to make a quick 100 bucks.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
See Linda had met a guy named Harry at a party. Harry made so-called dirty movies for frat houses and stag parties. And when Linda asked John if he was interested in participating, he enthusiastically said yes. Now Harry was your typical Hollywood scuzzball who bartended as his main gig. But he supplemented his income by selling stag films out of the trunk of his car in dark alleyways. And indeed once Harry showed up to Linda's apartment with an 8mm camera and John pulled out his monster, Harry knew he'd struck gold.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wowee-wowee-wow.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. I think we're gonna need a bigger lens.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as I said, pornography films were highly illegal at this point in American history. So Harry covered up the windows in Linda's apartment with foil to hide the set lights from any vice cop who happened to be driving by. This was actually serious business. Everyone in that room could have gotten up to 10 years in jail for making a porno.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. That's crazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they were aggressively going after it as well.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
That's stupid.
MARCUS PARKS
That however didn't happen to John, at least not this time. Everything in that first scene with John and Linda went off without a hitch and Harry developed and cut that footage into something called a loop. Loops were short black and white scenes of quick sex with no story sound or dialogue. It's just two people in a room fucking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's whatever was playing in the back of John Wayne Gacy's house, right.
BEN KISSEL
I really wish that I understood why they were having sex with each other. And do they like each other? Do they not?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My questions alone about the plot are bumping me out of this. Who is this man? Why was he having with that bumblebee?
BEN KISSEL
Why are they there?
MARCUS PARKS
These were actually the first porno films made available to the American public. And since they were illegal, they had to be sold out of the trunks of cars that were parked near magazine stands, bars, and adult bookstores.
BEN KISSEL
I guarantee you somebody bought one out of a glove box.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.
BEN KISSEL
I'm sure at some point.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but it's that guy that's in there going hey, pst, hey, come here, come here.
BEN KISSEL
Hey, over here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come here.
BEN KISSEL
Man, I'd just be so upset if it was just porno and nothing you can get high on. But I guess, I don't know, different times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This was very different times. I actually don't know, I guess it's still a puritan country and we haven't been not that puritan for that long.
BEN KISSEL
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
Well alternatively you could also sometimes watch these loops in curtained booths inside adult bookstores.
BEN KISSEL
Well we remember the store we used to get our bootleg DVDs from on Grand Avenue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They still had the old spank booths. Very interesting odor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He also had a fish tank in there, remember?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is back when real estate was important.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's just like 15 years ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The booth was actually the easiest option because if you bought a loop from a guy like Harry, you needed a film projector to actually watch them, which these viewings most often occurred anywhere large groups of men congregated in man only gatherings.
BEN KISSEL
I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just glad I never did a big group jerk off.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I did enjoy playing some sportsball and wrestling but we never... But I know some guys who bonded over unique-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Boys are gross. They're gross and I don't like them.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know about that, I do like boys. I think they're good people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh. I think boys are bad.
BEN KISSEL
Well you know. It's a unique way to find friendships.
MARCUS PARKS
It is. By some estimates, John Holmes made somewhere around 1000 of these loops.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
That got shown at frat houses, bachelor parties, VFW halls, any place where a bunch of guys would get super hard sitting close to one another in rows of uncomfortable chairs, hooping and hollering at the content on the screen.
BEN KISSEL
It's really the VFW halls because you can just see the guy with his scars like that reminds me of WWII.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I think I met a girl like that in WWII.
MARCUS PARKS
At this point it's like this reminds me of five years ago in WWII.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, holy fucking shit, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Last year in Korea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you remember the goddamn sands of Iwo Jima? Yeah, I'm trying to get hard, Dan. I'm trying to have sex with myself here, Dan. I don't want to think about goddamn Iwo Jima.
MARCUS PARKS
No, the decrepit guy at this one is like I remember Gettysburg.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ew.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, he must have been like this is magic!
BEN KISSEL
Seriously.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is incredible! When I had to masturbate back in the day, I had to get my daughter well into the house.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, let's nip that in the bud.
MARCUS PARKS
But considering how accepted and ubiquitous porn is in today's society, it's hard to imagine a time when these movies were highly illegal. And that's not even to mention how strict movie standards were in general for decades. I'm just talking about like regular theatrical releases. For context, movies were not protected under the umbrella of free speech until 1952.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And the film industry had been somewhat self policing themselves since 1934 under something called the Hays Code. That was just to keep legislation out of the business. Comic books had the same thing, the Comics Code Authority.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe they weren't even allowed to picture like man and wife in the same bed.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It went that far.
MARCUS PARKS
It was crazy shit. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Even showing a pregnant woman was a little like, that was on the edge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, I'm still there. I'm still there, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That could have stuck around to be honest. I'll never understand that. That's fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sorry. Get that goddamn pregnant woman off the screen. You get that fucking pregnant woman out of this movie. This is Oppenheimer.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, well...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, I am here.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm here to discuss serious matters.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
But since humans are extraordinarily horny creatures, filmmakers have been getting around the strict self-imposed rules for decades by presenting movies with explicit content as so- called educational films.
BEN KISSEL
And in many ways, they are. Also I think I suffer low T.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What do you mean?
BEN KISSEL
Not that horny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good for you! I'm gripped.
MARCUS PARKS
Great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gripped with it. It's my fucking... It's every bit of me.
BEN KISSEL
That's why you don't have as much hair on the top because you have high T. I got extra hair on the top because I have low T.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Much like Jesus fucking Christ himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know I think about him a lot when I look at you.
MARCUS PARKS
Last time I did a checkup, I had extraordinarily high T. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
The doctor told me that it's almost dangerously high.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck yeah. Rock and roll!
BEN KISSEL
I didn't know you could test for it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He said if it was any higher, I'd have to take medication.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because what they do is first of all they show you ripping your shirt off, right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have to rip your shirt off and see if you can do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And I did it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they cover you in bronzer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they kind of see like how does this move go? You have to clench your muscles.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, Mr. Universe pose, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And I'm not super muscular but you know what? I've got a Spiderman body going.
BEN KISSEL
Of course you do.
MARCUS PARKS
It was good enough. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pretty similar to John Holmes.
BEN KISSEL
All right!
MARCUS PARKS
Actually it is very similar to John Holmes. And that's the tragedy that I had with John Holmes when I was a young boy.
BEN KISSEL
I do love this story. It breaks my heart though.
MARCUS PARKS
Is that me and my buddy stole a porno tape called the King of XXX.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
That was the best of John Holmes. And I was about 12-13, somewhere on there. Had no context for what penises looked like other than my own.
BEN KISSEL
Sure. Good. Actually that's Very good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, very good. And I thought that John Holmes'' penis size was a regular size penis for a man to have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wowee-wow. That's pure tragedy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So I was extraordinarily insecure about my penis size for a very, very long time.
BEN KISSEL
I had a poster of Reggie White and I was like that's an average football player there. And then I went out there and I sucked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So it's kind of like that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And then that trauma was only further extended when a girl that I was dating in high school spread a rumor that I had an extraordinarily small penis. And some of the older boys started calling me Dirk Diggler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ironic.
MARCUS PARKS
In an ironic-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sort of an embrace-
BEN KISSEL
Well you grew up in the dirt land so it'd be Dirt Diggler.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Well they said this girl said you had a big one, so we're gonna call you Dirk Diggler. And so they called me Dirk Diggler. And then I found out years later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because half the time you're like oh wow, these guys like me!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it was really fun. And I found years later that they'd been mocking me for years and years and years.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And I don't particularly enjoy those people.
BEN KISSEL
I went back to Stevens Point. I was revisited when I drove by my high school of all the unbelievable torture that took place in that building.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But also some good times too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People loved me in Little Shop of Horrors. (singing) Mushnik and Son sounds great!
BEN KISSEL
Hey, that's ones of the characters you can still do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. (singing) Three words with the ring of fate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I wasn't bad as the lead in Picnic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I could see that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I was in a play called Babes In Arms.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. I only got the role because my friend Paul broke his leg.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, it's called show business.
BEN KISSEL
Indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Well one of the most infamous, we're going back to the world of educational films here, we're going back to the world of-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(moaning)
BEN KISSEL
Cum.
MARCUS PARKS
Let's see how much cum we can put in here without getting into trouble.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
One of the most infamous was a so-called sex hygiene film called Mom and Dad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
John Waters actually lists this as his favorite sex hygiene film. Now the of Mom and Dad is just set up for the action at the end. It involves a woman who is impregnated by a sweet talking pilot who dies in a plane crash and therefore the girl is left to deal with the pregnancy on her own.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
She can't turn to her mother, her mother is very judgmental.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
BEN KISSEL
A lot of plot, a lot of plot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A lot of plot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So she seeks the advice of her teacher. And as it just so happened, her teacher had just been fired from another job for teaching sex education.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, okay.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One and one is starting to become four, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What's gonna happen?
MARCUS PARKS
The movie then switches-
BEN KISSEL
Imagine being surprised when they start having sex. What? I never saw that coming!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa. This is disgusting!
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, they don't have sex.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, it's far worse than that actually.
BEN KISSEL
Oh great.
MARCUS PARKS
The movie then switches to its so-called educational portion. It's a lot like Glen or Glenda, the Ed Wood movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Have you ever seen it?
BEN KISSEL
yes, of course. Love it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Thinly veiled autobiographical tale of Ed Wood telling his girlfriend that he likes to dress as a woman. And then when she hands the angora sweater to him at the end, it very jarringly cuts to very graphic sex change operation footage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Educational.
MARCUS PARKS
Educational.
BEN KISSEL
Educational, yes. I remember that the old TLC, The Learning Channel. It used to just be surgeries.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude, Rob and I were talking about this right before the show. There's the fucking guy who shows, there's educational videos on YouTube of him washing his own asshole. And then you remember when I-
BEN KISSEL
You can show that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I showed you videos of the guy trying to extend his foreskin back out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all just on YouTube. It's fine as long as it's a documentary.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in the case of Mom and Dad, when they switch to the educational portion, they showed graphic images of female genitalia and two live births. That was their way to show vagina.
BEN KISSEL
I hate it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I want to see the mukbang, I don't want to see the muck shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like I wanna go to see a fireworks show and then they show you the Hindenburg crash.
MARCUS PARKS
Now you think this might be somewhat of a niche film, kind of a little quirk of movie history, something that not a lot of people saw.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Mom and Dad was the third highest grossing movie of the 1940s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because no one else got to just see open vagina.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
If you compared it to a movie today as far as like ticket sales and money made and all that, it made as much money as the last Star Wars movie.
BEN KISSEL
Get the fuck out. Seriously? Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
Adjusting for inflation of course.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the retconning. The retconning on the internet alone is just unbelievable.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I remember they took all the scalpels out and replaced them with walkie talkies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's just like what is this film?
MARCUS PARKS
Well from there, guys like the producer of Mom and Dad, this wonderful character named Kroger Babb-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He circumvented censors even more by showing quote unquote "documentaries" about foreign cultures who just happened to be topless all of the time.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was our whole childhood. Remember, we had National Geographic.
MARCUS PARKS
National Geographic, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It shaped my sexuality to this day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Funny side note, Kroger Babb's Company was called Hallmark Productions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! Yes!
BEN KISSEL
Happy Mother's Day.
MARCUS PARKS
Kroger Babb, he's a really interesting guy. He's like in the film world, he's sort of a William Castle type.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Where his whole thing was promotion, where he would start a fake outrage campaign in advance of Mom and Dad.
BEN KISSEL
It's perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
And like write all these letters to newspapers saying like I can't believe this movie is going to be shown.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
True American. These are the guys that led us to where we are today in many ways, like how entertainment is rolled out and what they do. It's all baked into the spine of show business.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
The movie is too dangerous to see. The movie no one wants you to watch.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it just came out that there's been like this PR company paying critics for Rotten Tomatoes for good film reviews. It's been going on for like five years now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I did send Henry a clip of Roger Ebert surprisingly loving Nutty Professor II. He loved it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it might have been the chemo talking but it was honestly really nice.
BEN KISSEL
It was the nicest review he's ever given.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, this country, it's just flim flam men all the way down.
BEN KISSEL
You tell me that again.
MARCUS PARKS
But once the sex hygiene films opened the door, filmmakers moved on to another genre that was a bit closer to pornography but not quite there. These movies known as nudie cuties in the industry were all-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
When it comes to porn, all of these words are gross.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well these were all movies that were set in nudist camps.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Somehow they got around it. Like if it's a nudist camp, it's fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's educational.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
These included such classics as nude on the moon, which asked the question what if there were nudist camps on the moon?
BEN KISSEL
Honestly for men and women, that gravity, tits are tight, dicks are nice. I would love that. Everyone's tighter, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got dust in my cooch!
BEN KISSEL
Well that's space dust, that's space dust.
MARCUS PARKS
I watched part of it and I would compare it to the Roger Corman softcore classic Dinosaur Island. It's very similar to that, where two astronauts fly to the moon and find that the moon is just like Southern California, incredibly enough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Incredible.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. It probably is.
MARCUS PARKS
And there's a nudist camp and then there's the women and it's all run by... There's only women in the nudist camp and they wear their spacesuits the whole time. And it's a fun romp. It's just a romp.
BEN KISSEL
It does sound fun. I was reading an article, they say there's aliens on Venus.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well yeah, there's some ideas. We'll save it.
BEN KISSEL
We'll save it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's some ideas, yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
We'll expand on that later.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these nude cutie films led to the acceptance of at least bare breasts appearing on the screen. Because as one LAPD vice cop put it, as long as there ain't no pubic hair, there ain't no problem.
BEN KISSEL
Well then he wouldn't mind porn today.
MARCUS PARKS
But after Denmark legalized pornography in 1969, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world followed, America included.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
That same year, the Supreme Court decided that any adult had the right to possess pornographic material, making it on the other hand was still dicey legally.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very interesting because it's like all these states that are decriminalizing weed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where you can have it in your hand and you can smoke it but you can't sell it or buy it. So it's like where did it come from?
BEN KISSEL
Well it's the difficulty thing of how do you get an acting role without an acting role? You need an acting role to get an acting role.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Remember when everybody and their brothers and sisters when we were coming up were like trying to be bartenders?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you'd go in and they're like well do you have any bartending experience? And you're like this would be that.
BEN KISSEL
Now hear me out, man. I've been in multiple bars. Have you ever bartended?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I might as well. I've crawled behind many a bar.
BEN KISSEL
I gotta thank my boy at BBCs, speaking of pornography, because I was just a regular there when I was in Milwaukee. And I was like you're gonna get a phone call from a bunch of bars. Tell them I bartended there for years. And he did! But then they found out I was just an alcoholic who went there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, that's how it is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I actually do have a... There's a reason why they don't hire you, because I was hired at a place in the Lower East Side called Lotus Lounge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And it turns out if you have no experience bartending and someone asks for a margarita and you don't know how to make it, or say a martini or other drink, just any mixed drink at all, and you don't make it well, people get really mad.
BEN KISSEL
Dude, I got fucking screamed at. I was working at this, I think it was like Old Hamlin's or something on the Upper West Side and they're like you're just taking too much time! And I was just like beer or whiskey? You want beer or do you want whiskey? That's what's happening now.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We were talking about on the stream, you as a server, Marcus. Either one but you as a server at that time period with the long hair-
BEN KISSEL
I could see Marcus-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just going like yeah, fucking, whoa, yeah, sure, yeah, that's what you want, man?
MARCUS PARKS
2007, bro.
BEN KISSEL
I think you would be a great bartender.
MARCUS PARKS
I was a great bartender. I was a bad drink mixer, I was a wonderful bartender.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a bartender. That is a bartender.
BEN KISSEL
Well but it's also about the conversation.
MARCUS PARKS
I was. Shortly after, Andy Warhol took advantage of the Supreme Court ruling by releasing an art film simply titled Fuck, which was the first American movie to show-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck!
BEN KISSEL
Fuck!
MARCUS PARKS
Which was the first American movie to show explicit sex on screen. This was in contrast to Warhol's previous erotic film Blowjob which only showed the face of a guy receiving the titular action.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's the worst porno I've ever heard of.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's fun to watch though.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but you're not spunking to it.
MARCUS PARKS
No, you're not spunking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a guy going (groaning).
BEN KISSEL
Oh I don't wanna see that at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I never want... Oh god, there's a mirror in our room and every once in a while if we do catch it, it's just like the dead-eyed shark face that you have. And it's just like (groaning). I remember I was like oh, I should move my face.
BEN KISSEL
Don't overthink it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But three years after Fuck, America became fascinated with a hardcore porn called Deep Throat. Simply because unlike most porn at the time, including Warhol's art piece, Deep Throat had a plot, ridiculous as it was with the clitoris in the throat and such.
BEN KISSEL
Sometimes god got it wrong. How great would that be if we all had clits in our throats and every time you eat, you also cum?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my god. I don't even know. I don't need it that directly connected.
MARCUS PARKS
No. But because then it would become old hat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you'd eventually get bored with it.
BEN KISSEL
Nah.
MARCUS PARKS
If it was three times a day.
BEN KISSEL
That's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Remember the guy who uncontrollably orgasms again and again?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then he was orgasming at his father's funeral.
BEN KISSEL
It was sad. He didn't like it. He's like I don't want to cum right now.
MARCUS PARKS
But no matter how silly the plot was, Deep Throat brought pornography to the mainstream. And that place was only solidified when cultural icons like Johnny Carson started making jokes about Deep Throat on The Tonight Show. And as it just so happened, when pornography was legalized and its existence was slowly but surely being accepted by mainstream society, John Holmes was in the perfect place and the perfect time to become the biggest male pornstar of what came to be known as the golden age of pornography.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd call it a light brown.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, kind of a creamy age.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like a brown. Bronze age.
MARCUS PARKS
Well they call it the golden age of pornography because it actually like shows it in Boogie Nights and like two scenes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like there's that scene with Ricky Jay where he's watching Burt Reynolds' character edit the first movie, where he looks at him and goes it's a real film, Jack.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man. Philip Seymour Hoffman also, man, what a character.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And then about an hour later into the movie, after Dirk Diggler has left the scene, where the girl goes is he gonna fuck me in the ass? And he's like do you want him to fuck you in the ass? And She goes it would be nice. and he goes fine, fuck her in the ass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's that.
BEN KISSEL
It becomes too passé.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those are the the bookends.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, it is.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now right around the time that porn was becoming legal, John showed up at a sort of open air mall with office buildings on Sunset Boulevard called the Crossroads of the World.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you look it up, it's famous.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The Crossroads had been built in 1936 by a woman named Ella Crawford who actually had a true crime story all her own.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, Los Angeles is fucked, man.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
It's just in LA everywhere you turn there is like a fucking incredible true crime story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Ella had been married to a prohibition crime boss named Charles Crawford who operated bordellos and casinos in Los Angeles until 1931. Crawford's reign ended that year when he was killed in his office, supposedly in self-defense, by a former district attorney named Dave Clark.
BEN KISSEL
Dang.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Acquitted of the murder eventually.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. If you're your own district attorney.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Ella Crawford of course inherited all of her husband's ill gotten gains and used them to build Crossroads of the World on the very spot where her husband had been murdered.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Holy fucking shit.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. So it's haunted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, that puts in such context. I went to many auditions there. I've been to many-
BEN KISSEL
Is that right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Because they do HBO, good places had offices out of there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, a lot of places did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so I used to go and it's just thinking about, I was like now knowing that it's all murder, the whole thing is literally based on murder-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I remember that and actually I think there's footage of you being like can you fuck me in the ass?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And they're like fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It'd be nice if he did.
MARCUS PARKS
Now by the late 60s, the Crossroads of the World had become seedy, like many other locations built in the 20s and 30s that started off as classy. LA is full of places like that.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
New York's full of places like that. Whereas before the offices at the Crossroads had been rented out by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, they were by the late 60s populated by con men and pornography producers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The backbone of show business!
BEN KISSEL
Truly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And how fucking dare you?
BEN KISSEL
I don't disagree with that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is the backbone of this industry!
BEN KISSEL
I think it is.
MARCUS PARKS
See many of the storefront facades had small sound stages consisting of little more than a few lights, a tripod, a rumpled bed, and some worn furniture as set pieces. These humble beginnings however were the birthplace of the American pornography industry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(moaning)
MARCUS PARKS
And John-
BEN KISSEL
I'm starting to think my sister's a little bratty.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh what's that? I think someone's stuck in my washing machine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Help. Help.
MARCUS PARKS
And of course when the American porn industry was born, John Holmes was in the right place at the right time.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And yes, obviously this is one of these stories where you never really hear of an entire career based off a penis. But we hear actually careers based off of boobies quite a bit.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so it's interesting that he was just... Because he wasn't right about anything, right. In my mind, John Holmes was never correct. He just happened to have a huge schlong-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At the right place when a huge schlong would make you a lot of money.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I mean just the story at this point though, he does seem like a sympathetic lover.
MARCUS PARKS
He's not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a coward, he's an asshole.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a coward and he's a piece of shit. He's an awful person.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm just saying from what we're learning thus far.
MARCUS PARKS
Not at any point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we're hearing his version.
BEN KISSEL
At no point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're literally hearing his version of the story.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh so this is his take on his life.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we're just hearing John's side of the story.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha, okay. Good to know.
MARCUS PARKS
And we're going to hear more of the rest of the story as it goes on.
BEN KISSEL
Or could it be it was nothing but an alien power port?
MARCUS PARKS
Well as the story goes, a porn magazine had made an open casting call to an office at the Crossroads. And when John walked in, the people who made the open call didn't think that they could use him because without his dick, John was just a skinny, weird looking dude with an afro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He just looked like low rent Ichabod Crane. He was gross. I feel like there's some people after that who call him cute or handsome or whatever. And I don't see it.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
But once John went to the back room and stripped down, the casting director took one look and said:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kid, you're gonna be a star.
BEN KISSEL
This is gonna go great.
MARCUS PARKS
And from that moment forward, John C. Holmes began saying that the C stood for Cash.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what's funny, man? Is it for such a long time I thought it started with a K.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I would say cock but I guess he went with cash.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's already there.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now after the success of Deep Throat, porno theaters like The Pussycat in Los Angeles began popping up all over the country because Americans suddenly had little problem being seen waiting in line to watch a fuck movie with a bunch of other people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it became a political movement in a way.
MARCUS PARKS
In a bit.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a little bit about like about people's liberation.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
About being able to artistically express themselves. So it was kind of cool to go see porn for a second.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as John's first legal movie went, the first with the plot, it was called The Lady's Bed Companion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
Oh what's that about?
MARCUS PARKS
Holmes plays a dildo salesman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually this one's a renter.
BEN KISSEL
At least make him selling vacuums. Very on the nose.
MARCUS PARKS
And he hadn't quite found his confidence yet, so it's said that his voice in this movie, they said he sounded like Eddie Haskell from Leave It to Beaver.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I had friends that my mom called little Eddie Haskells quite often.
MARCUS PARKS
That meant that she didn't like them. They're troublemakers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well she said that they were always suck ups.
MARCUS PARKS
Suck ups, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, suck ups. (mumbling)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that Jay Leno?
MARCUS PARKS
(mumbling)
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, a little Doritos, I'm just a regular guy. I'm just a regular guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Holmes however put in an adequate performance when it came to acting, big performance when it came to cock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's got a huge cock.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's the main thing.
MARCUS PARKS
And his career took off from there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I will say I saw a documentary where several women that worked with him said he was never completely hard.
MARCUS PARKS
It's difficult to be completely hard with 13 inches.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
To get the blood up there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing. Smaller penises, very hard.
MARCUS PARKS
Indeed.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But would you rather have a tiny toothpick or a big floppy broadsword?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would honestly-
BEN KISSEL
Well it depends what you wanna do with it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not a toothpick, it's more like a serving spoon.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, nothing wrong with.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A salad fork.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I prefer a strong backed salad fork.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the problem was John Holmes was, if you'll remember, married.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And he hadn't told his wife about any of this.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you're gonna want to just bring it up.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as the story goes, John's wife Sharon came home from her job as a nurse one day to find her husband measuring his penis, marveling at the monstrous size of his own member.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did you see this? Did you see this thing?
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Have you seen it? You know what I'm talking about? Have you seen this thing? You know what I'm talking about? Have you seen this thing?
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. Foot long, get your foot long.
MARCUS PARKS
Have you seen this? You know what I'm talking about?
BEN KISSEL
Am I at Dodgers Stadium over here? What's going on?
MARCUS PARKS
Well when she asked why he was measuring his own penis, John decided that this was the moment to come clean.
BEN KISSEL
Might as well, I mean.
MARCUS PARKS
He told her that he discovered what his life's work was gonna be. He said that he always wanted to be the best in the world at something. And Sharon, you're never gonna guess what it is. It's pornography.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh good.
MARCUS PARKS
Isn't that great?
BEN KISSEL
It's a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no!
BEN KISSEL
It's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Isn't that great? It's pornography. I'm gonna be a pornography actor.
BEN KISSEL
To Henry's previous joke, it is still better than being a comedian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
If you're married and you're like honey, I'm gonna get into stand up comedy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that means it has to go all right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now if you'll remember, Sharon was a nice lady. She'd waited until marriage to have sex. She was a nurse. She just wanted a nice normal life.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
She was devastated to find out that her husband had at this point been a pornography actor for years.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Thousands of times over.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is kind of...
BEN KISSEL
She didn't know?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like how do you put this? There's something about like having, again, it's that size of penis. Again, other guys have got it but you're a normal lady, you know that this is gonna lead to trouble. I feel like you're looking at this thing, it's just leading to trouble.
BEN KISSEL
There are many big dicked men out there who have totally normal lives.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm saying normal big dicked men. I'm saying a 13 incher, you're looking at it and you're like this is bad news.
BEN KISSEL
The indictment on the big dick community coming from Mr. Zebrowski today.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as John explained it to her, his job, it's no different than being like a carpenter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh god.
BEN KISSEL
Well no. So she looks at people all the time nursing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
Fucking Christ. Are you fucking kidding me?
BEN KISSEL
I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I see Jesus whenever I look at him.
BEN KISSEL
And he was hung like John Holmes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was hung like this.
BEN KISSEL
You get it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I get it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's funny.
MARCUS PARKS
They don't even have to see it.
BEN KISSEL
They get it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Good humor.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Rich humor.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the way John put it, his big cock, it's just a tool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the thing that he uses to make a living. And when he comes home at night, tool stays at the job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, that's the job. Yeah. I mean it's covered with the, let's call it job residual. But it's here now.
BEN KISSEL
Residue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, the residue. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, man. It's like when a mechanic comes home. He washes the grease off his hands.
BEN KISSEL
I mean...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's true.
BEN KISSEL
But some people do get upset if you are-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sex workers deserve love, they could do the thing.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I feel like it's how you position it. And I feel like if you've been lying for years for being a pornography actor for a long time and you're doing stuff like, that's like bad. You've got to start from a place of communication.
BEN KISSEL
All right, well.
MARCUS PARKS
You have to start from a place of I do this, are you cool with it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. That's all you gotta do. That's first up.
BEN KISSEL
Did she ever ask where the money is coming from?
MARCUS PARKS
Well I think he lied.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't make-
BEN KISSEL
He must have made some cash.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was starting to make money but it wasn't until he like became a star.
MARCUS PARKS
He was making like $75 a film.
BEN KISSEL
So he's in the minor leagues.
MARCUS PARKS
He's definitely in the minor leagues at this point, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
He's done like one big film but he's done thousands of those loops.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
He said he's done 1000 of those loops.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
So he'd made a good amount of money at that time. You know, those loops, sometimes you get paid $20, sometimes you get paid $50. It's not a lot of cash.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he knows from experience.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But he said he wasn't cheating at all. He says this is just my tool, so you should be cool with it. And Sharon, she wasn't swayed. But amazingly she stayed.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They kept living together in a sort of like weird domestic arrangement for almost another decade. They still slept in the same bed, they would kiss each other good night. But they did stop having sex in 1975.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
That was around the time that she saw a picture of him in the midst of full deep penetration.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, flagrante.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now around the time John came clean to his wife, he met a UCLA film school graduate named Bob Chinn who saw the fledgling porn industry as an opportunity to make his mark on the world of film. See, porno theaters were requesting more feature length movies like Deep Throat but Bob was just taping five or six loops together to make a porno that was technically featured length, but it didn't have a plot.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha. You're gonna need the story.
MARCUS PARKS
That all changed of course when John Holmes entered Bob's office looking for work. Now at first glance, Bob thought that John was like a gaffer or like a grip.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's ugly.
MARCUS PARKS
He thought he was crew. John was not a handsome man. But according to legend-
BEN KISSEL
Well he just had that mustache though. Let's give him a little credit for that stache.
MARCUS PARKS
Every guy had that stache in those days.
BEN KISSEL
But not like that one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're bringing it back.
MARCUS PARKS
But according to the legend, when John dropped his pants, Bob's partner said, quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What a wad this guy has! Wowee-wowee-wow!
BEN KISSEL
This entire thing is just... Man, it is a superpower.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's huge!
BEN KISSEL
Because he alters reality. They see one thing and then he drops trou and it all changes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they just like, dollar signs. It's all dollar signs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now for some reason the word 'wad' stuck in their head, they loved it. They didn't think it sounded disgusting or off putting at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's porno. Johnny Wad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
Instead they built an entire character around the word 'wad', a character that would come to define the career of John Holmes. And that character was, of course, Johnny Wad.
BEN KISSEL
I think for a pornstar that's a proper name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he was still John Holmes, Johnny Wad was the character he played in a series of films.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was the detective.
BEN KISSEL
This is how he got to keep the marriage. Because he says-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's Johnny Wad.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm playing a character.
BEN KISSEL
When I'm at the house, I'm Holmes, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
See Johnny Wad was kind of a hard boiled, Dirty Harry type detective whose trademarks were a pinky ring and a big dick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just like his father.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Usually Johnny Wad would extract information about a case from a woman through said big dick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It wasn't a complicated plot.
BEN KISSEL
I guess not.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it was not. Now while John was-
BEN KISSEL
It's no less complicated than Matlock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while John was an ugly man, he had an edge on other porn performers at the time because he could memorize lines and he could sort of act.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like how he chose the horse to be Mister Ed.
BEN KISSEL
Peanut Butter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He can make his mouth move right.
BEN KISSEL
That was with peanut butter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep. This helped considerably because porno theaters were looking for porno flicks with at least a semblance of a plot. Here's an example of John's acting skills in a Johnny Wadd movie.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
That also shows how Johnny Wad got things done.
LPOTL
(audio)
(woman) I'll come straight to the point, Mr. Wad.
(JH) Johnny. Call me Johnny.
(woman) Johnny. You have something that I want.
(JH) I cannot possibly imagine what I could have that you'd be interested in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dick.
MARCUS PARKS
Or does he?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's cock.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The answer is cock. The answer is a big cock.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he's got a big cock.
MARCUS PARKS
You didn't see the smile that he had or the smile that she had. But the answer is a large unusual member.
BEN KISSEL
You guys, I think you're demonizing his looks. I think it's confident, competent. I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
So Bob Chinn wrote the first Johnny Wad script on the back of an envelope and shot it two days later at his cameraman's apartment on Venice Beach. Johnny Wad was an immediate hit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The back of an envelope.
BEN KISSEL
I do love that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a movie. That's a movie right there.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a large envelope.
BEN KISSEL
Didn't that JK Rowling chick start writing on napkins?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the same.
BEN KISSEL
It's very similar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very similar.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but she didn't write the entirety of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on napkins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who knows?
BEN KISSEL
Well I mean she had no big cock to save the scenes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, wouldn't that have been incredible?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If Harry Potter-
BEN KISSEL
Hodor. Isn't Hodor in that one?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Harry Potter reveals his 13 inch fucking cock.
BEN KISSEL
He did onstage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh dear! I saw it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he did. He's got a wad, speaking of that.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not bad. Well two weeks after the release of Johnny-
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna get some grief, it's not Hodor. Who's the big hairy guy in that one?
MARCUS PARKS
Hagrid.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the same. It's all the same.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not the same.
BEN KISSEL
I get called all of these things, so I'm just trying to get it called right.
MARCUS PARKS
Hagrid is much nicer than Hodor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, my friend-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause Hagrid can talk.
MARCUS PARKS
Cause you do genuinely at this point in time, you do genuinely look like Hagrid, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Like Jesus Hagrid Christ.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God help us all.
MARCUS PARKS
Jesus Christ.
BEN KISSEL
I did ask my friend, I said they call me Hodor. And he's like well he is really nice but he's super stupid. I was like god dang it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool, yeah. Well that's makes sense.
BEN KISSEL
You got me good.
MARCUS PARKS
Well two weeks after the release of Johnny Wadd, they shot a sequel called The Flesh of the Lotus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's cool because they're trying to be classy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they're trying to be classy. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
That took just a day to shoot and it was in theaters within a week.
BEN KISSEL
Well see, they're like South Park.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are.
BEN KISSEL
They just come up with it and they get it done.
MARCUS PARKS
They shot it during the day, they developed it that night, they edited it the next day. And man, it's just out everywhere.
BEN KISSEL
You can't say they were working.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Now porno movies could be shown in Los Angeles in the early 70s but you could still be prosecuted for filming porno in Los Angeles under pimping and pandering laws. Pandering I actually hadn't heard of before. Pandering is the act of attempting to influence a person into doing illegal sex work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'd never heard of that term.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. There was even a special vice squad assigned to busting porno shoots which the porn industry nicknamed the pussy posse. And the industry even would provoke the squad. They sent them 15 t-shirts that said pussy posse.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They really did, they went after it very hard.
MARCUS PARKS
Really hard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I think a part of it-
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Obviously back in the day, which is why it's nice for these things to start to come like get folded into legal systems and have all these people looking at it, is that there was a lot of human trafficking in this industry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were being pulled back and forth. There was a lot of rape, there was a lot of people getting pulled out of like horrible situations and getting forced and put into movies, all this type of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean Linda Lovelace said specifically like Deep Throat is rape pornography.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That she was coerced and she was raped onscreen and everybody saw it and she didn't come out until years later with that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But now it's nice, like that's the idea, if you make it a regulated industry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Then capitalism does its thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as a result of the increasing police pressure in Los Angeles, Bob Chinn started filming in San Francisco. And there he and John ended up making 14 Johnny Wadd films in total, with names like Around The World With Johnny Wadd, Tell Them Johnny Wadd Is Here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh good!
MARCUS PARKS
And Here Comes Johnny Wad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. So it seems like there's a similar theme to the names.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well those are only 3 out of 14, there's others.
BEN KISSEL
Do all of them have Johnny-
MARCUS PARKS
Not all of them have Johnny Wad, no.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Only five or six of them had Johnny.
BEN KISSEL
I did love to play this Johnny Wad in Mortal Kombat though. I really did.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Johnny Cage.
BEN KISSEL
The cock finisher, there.
MARCUS PARKS
The cock finisher.
BEN KISSEL
He would just drown them in semen. Finish him!
MARCUS PARKS
He did actually punch people in the genitals, so there is a slight connection.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It tracks.
BEN KISSEL
There is a slight connection.
MARCUS PARKS
Now by the mid 70s, John Holmes was getting paid the modern equivalent of $20,000 a day for shoots.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Which had extended from one day affairs to six week productions.
BEN KISSEL
So he was making over $100,000 a week?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
For certain shoots, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
For a short period of time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. For a short period of time, yeah. It's a real film, Jack.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
He'd become so popular that according to one porn actress named Bunny Bleu, when John went on promotional tours, women would literally urinate themselves in excitement when they met the infamous Johnny Wad.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You kind of see it. I saw a section of one of his interviews from the Exhausted documentary and you can kind of see the giddiness of the woman that is talking to him. I equate a lot of it to cocaine. In that documentary you can kind of hear the people that are enjoying themselves on cocaine. And then you see John Holmes who is cocaine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And watch how he's in total, he's obviously all fucked up but they're all laughing and giddy to be around him. And he's making these dumb ass coke jokes. You know what I mean by coke jokes?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. They were doing a bunch of coke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well John Holmes, by the mid 70s, had even earned a nickname. He was called the Errol Flynn of pornography. This is because of his swordsmanship, if you get my drift.
BEN KISSEL
Who is Errol Flynn?
MARCUS PARKS
He played like Zorro.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see, gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he always played the swashbuckler roles.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
And indeed John Holmes was becoming a bonafide celebrity with movies like Dickman & Throbbin.
BEN KISSEL
What's that about?
MARCUS PARKS
Batman & Robin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Batman & Robin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I actually didn't even... Well look at that.
MARCUS PARKS
It took me a little, I had to think about it because-
BEN KISSEL
Dickman & Throbbin, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I approached it as a word puzzle.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And I was like I'm gonna have to think. And yeah, Batman & Robin.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He also had Confessions of a Teenage Peanut Butter Freak.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And most controversial, The Zodiac Rapist, which is exactly what it sounds like.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How'd that test?
BEN KISSEL
What? Wait.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wonder how that did in testing.
MARCUS PARKS
And it was like around the time of the Zodiac Killer murders as well. It's a controversial film.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One thing I think about, it actually brought up, I was reading Joe Bob Briggs' book about exploitation films and pornography in particular. And he brings up a little bit about like this guy, it's not the same but Rudolph Valentino.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like that guy that was Valentino, super famous. That kind of happened with him too. Like his most famous movie is a gigantic rape fantasy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Sheik that he was famous for, it's all like...
BEN KISSEL
Well I mean it's also I suppose it plays on films as well like I Spit On Your Grave, which was the revenge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, later on.
MARCUS PARKS
No, this is just John Holmes raping a bunch of women.
BEN KISSEL
No, I know. But I'm saying that movie is literally a comment on that culture.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, exactly.
BEN KISSEL
Where she gets revenge and murders everybody. It's a brutal first half of that movie and then the second half you're like kill them all! Kill them!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But John Carpenter who made that movie, part of it is that he worked in pornography for many years.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I didn't know that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And the The Zodiac Rapist does end with him getting captured and sentenced to death. He's supposed to be sentenced to hanging but the epilogue said that his execution was canceled after they discovered he was hung enough already.
BEN KISSEL
It end with a pun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right, there we go.
MARCUS PARKS
Such was John's fame that he began filming all over the world. One time he went to France to make a porno remake of Beauty and the Beast. And a Haitian dwarf who was part of this like weird Fellini type orgy scene delivered a pound of African weed to the set for the enjoyment of all involved.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
Sweet. That sounds awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
John performed in quite a few gay pornography films as well.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
As it wasn't uncommon at the time for performers to do both. His best known gay works are The Private Pleasures of John Holmes, Pool Party, and Just Good Friends.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, that's what we are!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're just good friends.
MARCUS PARKS
We're just good friends. Now even though John was more or less a minor celebrity by the mid 70s, he'd secretly been a police informant since 1973.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is where it all begins. This is why, I mean he's truly a piece of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
See the vice squad was so on top of the porno industry that producers would never tell the cast exactly where they would be shooting until the day of the shoot. I would say like porno actors and actresses, loose lips.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right, right. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Usually the actors would meet the producers for lunch at a Los Angeles restaurant and then they would be told okay, go to this address and this is where we're gonna film. Or go to this address, pick somebody up, then take them to the film.
BEN KISSEL
They had better security than Ronnie Reagan did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they needed to do it because they knew that they were gonna get arrested and they were following them. They were all over the industry.
BEN KISSEL
Right. 10 years is no joke.
MARCUS PARKS
And on the day that John got busted, a different informant had told the vice squad the time and location of John's meeting with a producer in Hollywood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And just like anybody in Los Angeles when he heard somebody else just got a job, he was like how do I get that?
MARCUS PARKS
After the meeting, the LAPD followed John to the valley where John picked up two girls who were supposed to be involved in the production. As it turned out, the girls were underage, 16 and 17 years old. So the cops showed up at John's house in Glendale where he still lived with his wife with an arrest warrant.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
John was facing three years in jail for pimping. But if he so chose, he could cooperate by telling the vice squad who was directing, producing, and financing pornography in the valley, in addition to telling them the locations of shoots and where actors were being picked up for said shoots.
BEN KISSEL
It reminds me of Walt Disney who was also an informant for the FBI. And did you know the original Mickey Mouse Club was filmed in FBI headquarters?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Walt Disney reminds me a lot of John Holmes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Well he's a snitch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
John then spent three years snitching on the rest of his industry, which would later go a long way in keeping John Holmes out of jail when he became extraordinarily addicted to freebasing cocaine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You never hear anybody who's just like I just tried it once.
BEN KISSEL
Well sometimes, yeah, you do sometimes. May I ask, I actually don't know what freebasing... What's different between snorting and freebasing?
MARCUS PARKS
We're gonna get into all... Trust me, man.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
You're gonna hear a lot about freebasing cocaine in this series.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah! Yes!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna teach you how to do it and we're gonna do it together.
BEN KISSEL
This is the DARE program for our listeners.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I dare you to freebase cocaine with me.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as I just mentioned, John was still living with his wife Sharon in Glendale all throughout the 70s. When John wasn't filming or doing publicity, he helped his wife manage a series of cottages that were owned by a pediatrician that Sharon worked for. In 1976 though, a 15 year old girl named Dawn arrived at John and Sharon's cottages with her sister and her abusive father who had just returned from Thailand with a new wife after abandoning his family for seven years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Welcome back, daddy!
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's just broken home after broken home.
BEN KISSEL
Right. There's a theme there.
MARCUS PARKS
John soon took notice and began grooming Dawn. And after he took her to a showing of one of his movies, The Autobiography of a Flea, which was based on the anonymous 19th century erotic novel of the same name-
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
John began a long lasting sexual affair with this underage girl. Soon Dawn became emancipated from her father, her sister moved back to Florida, and all that was left was Sharon and John. Now Sharon still tried being a good person by acting as a mother figure but Dawn was smitten with John, who was more than twice her age.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is very similar to Boogie Nights too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. She was 15, he was 32.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
Basically Dawn would do anything for John. And as it was, the days were coming when John would need quite a bit of assistance. See by the mid to late 70s, porno sets had become awash with cocaine to the point where some actors were straight up paid in cocaine so as to cut out the middleman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what's so hard though about cocaine? It's paying rent with it.
BEN KISSEL
Well you can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but a lot of people, it takes some time. You gotta build up trust with your super.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And this is also the very dark side of the industry here.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Because these producers would use cocaine to control the actors.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
To get them to do shit that they didn't want to do. It's like well if you don't want to do anal, you're not gonna get your cocaine. Here's a little sniff, go for it. And then so on and so forth.
BEN KISSEL
Of course. Industry 101.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Disgustingly enough.
MARCUS PARKS
Now John was actually Cali sober until the mid 70s, only smoked weed. But at the encouragement of a producer, John tried coke for the first time in 1976 and he, like most people who try it, fucking loved it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. I will start the seed of this thought which I actually thought it was really... Miley Cyrus made a really interesting comment about touring and how it was like fucking up her life. And the one thing that she said was because as you are performing for hundreds of thousands of people, on some level they're looking at you as this rockstar that is creating this massive sea of entertainment for them and they love you and they worship you. But you know in your own head you're just a lady, you're just somebody who just does fucking whatever. It's like I sing good, I come from a singing family. To me this is normal. I'm doing this for forever. So at some point, you either have to believe that you are this otherworldly beyond human rockstar and it makes you some kind of weirdo. Or if you're a normal person that is in this type of job, you have to do something to supplement that behavior. And one of those things that really helps you feel like a rockstar apparently is cocaine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then what that does is fill out the ego. And now what we're gonna see with John Holmes is that that connection of all of this shit where the cocaine is gonna make him feel like quote unquote "Johnny Wad" all the time.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Versus not being... Instead of going from Johnny to John, right, I'm not Johnny Wad anymore.
BEN KISSEL
You wanna remember you're Brian Warner, in other words.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You wanna remember you're the guy. You're a human being, yes.
BEN KISSEL
You're just a person, you're a human being.
MARCUS PARKS
That's why Iggy Pop is the best because he never forgot about Jim Osterberg.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
That's his real name?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Old Osterberg. There you go.
MARCUS PARKS
He doesn't introduce himself as Iggy. Like when you meet him, he's like hi, Jim, nice to meet you.
BEN KISSEL
That's what you have to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Every time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would love to meet him.
MARCUS PARKS
I would love to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would be like Mr. Jim, I love your work.
BEN KISSEL
That's all I've ever said to anyone that I've met thus far.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You are good.
BEN KISSEL
I got to meet Wayne-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wayne Coyne.
BEN KISSEL
I was just like, I literally just did the 'I'm not worthy'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Your name's Wayne.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think I said that to him.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're Wayne.
BEN KISSEL
It's incredible.
MARCUS PARKS
Now even though cocaine was becoming common on most sets, Bob Chinn, the director of the Johnny Wadd movies, knew that having drugs on set only made porno shoots more dangerous than they already were in the legal sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. He had almost like a sense of propriety.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Well he understood. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Therefore Bob banned coke and that's how his relationship with John ended. One day Bob caught John on set with coke and flushed it down the toilet. John therefore refused to work and from that point on Bob refused to work with John at all.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And of course that is the point where John's life began to rapidly slide downhill. I mean it's not even sliding downhill. This is when John Holmes fell off the cliff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was no gradual-
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
So technically the safety net that was keeping him air quotes "kind of sane" was porn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the dude was trying-
BEN KISSEL
So once that went away-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was trying to make it safe for him because he understood oh, we're cruising for a fucking bruising. This train is going to a wall.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so he did the good thing. He did the thing where he said I'm gonna stop this for you, I'm gonna try to stop it for you. And then he said no. He decided he knew better because now he's Johnny Wad.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's not John Holmes anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
Well pretty soon John and his underage live-in girlfriend Dawn were doing coke 2-3 times a week starting off. But that developed into an all day everyday freebasing habit, which is to put it lightly the least cost effective way to do cocaine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Warren Buffett would never do cocaine that way.
BEN KISSEL
Not diversified enough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now freebase cocaine is similar to crack but it's actually far more potent.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
In those days, freebase users cooked cocaine into crystals themselves using a heat source, water, and baking soda.
BEN KISSEL
Bunsen burner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's basically smoking cocaine, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In a way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it is.
BEN KISSEL
Well people used to do that, put their cigarette in a bag or something and smoke it like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah and then famously that was like, I forget, the chronic I believe is what we called it back in the day.
BEN KISSEL
Back in the day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When someone would put cocaine on a blunt.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as John's setup went-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You like that? Is that good?
BEN KISSEL
That's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do I not sound like an undercover police officer? Is it the mustache? I have heard of this chronic you speak of.
BEN KISSEL
I'm here for the chronic. Do you guys have chronic?
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as John's setup went, he was never seen without a Samsonite suitcase which contained what we would today call a crack pipe, plus baking soda, a petri dish, and lots of cocaine, in addition to a bottle of 151 and cotton swabs for lighting the pipe. Because this is before the days of the butane lighters.
BEN KISSEL
You just see Jim Carrey from Dumb and Dumber opening it up and being like he must be a scientist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He puts an IOU in there. IOU for $100,000 worth of cocaine. You're gonna want to keep that.
MARCUS PARKS
Now from a gram of cocaine, John could get four or five hits of freebase.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it.
MARCUS PARKS
That's it.
BEN KISSEL
That's it? That's like going to the high stakes slot machines, putting 100 bucks in, and hitting it one time and be like god dang it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep. Those grams cost $100 each in 1978.
BEN KISSEL
He'd be burning money.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He was freebasing every 10-15 minutes.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
His fucking freebasing habit cost him the modern equivalent of $8000 a day.
BEN KISSEL
Holy fuck!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Worth every penny.
BEN KISSEL
I mean wow, that's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course the more John freebased, the more erratic he became on sets and the less his dick worked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
By 1978, he'd gone from proudly being the most reliable performer in the industry to a glassy eyed gaunt mess who would get caught rifling through drawers on sets for something to steal and sell for more cocaine.
BEN KISSEL
So he's really hitting rock bottom here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's around this time-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It went right to the fucking sea floor, dog.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he never should have started that cocaine I don't think.
MARCUS PARKS
No. It's around this time that Holmes filmed his infamous quote unquote "documentary" about his own life. It's called Exhausted.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. It's such a cry for help.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And Holmes is so out of his mind high that he barely remembered where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. Here's one highly coked up clip.
LPOTL
(audio)
(woman) You've made love to 14,000 women. One would tend to wonder how you stimulate your thoughts to make love to another one. Or get bored.
(JH) A happy gardener is one with dirty fingernails and a happy cook is a fat cook. I never get tired of what I do because I'm a sex fiend. I really enjoy what I... I'm very lusty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You could tell he's lying. You can tell that he hasn't felt his own cock in so long that he's just...
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's gone.
BEN KISSEL
That's cocaine. He's definitely hollow-eyed.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's the scene in Boogie Nights where he's sitting there like jerking off for 30 minutes in the bathroom, like trying to get it up because the cocaine has just absolutely killed it.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hope you're not in the middle of trying to like make a child. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
I don't think they're listening while they do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just understand, god, cause it's not sexy.
MARCUS PARKS
No. It's not sexy at all.
BEN KISSEL
No. But it's weird that he says that he was so excited for it because the name of the thing is Exhausted, he looks exhausted. The words don't match up.
MARCUS PARKS
No, not at all. And at this point nobody works with him at all. He's out of the film business. Now at the height of his fame, John Holmes was making the modern equivalent of $3 million a year. But by the late 70s, he was reduced to breaking into cars, ransacking the houses of old friends, charging appliances to his wife's credit card then selling them for cash, and most pathetically, stealing luggage from LAX.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This was one of the weirdest scams I'd ever heard of, that he would just go to LAX, pull bags off a carousel, and then take it to pawn shops and just sell all the shit.
BEN KISSEL
Just walk out.
MARCUS PARKS
The novel that John Waters just wrote, 'Liarmouth', which is just fucking incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what it's about. It's about a woman who steals luggage from airports.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa. That's interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
It's so good.
BEN KISSEL
I guess you could still do that, I suppose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's so fucking good. He's gonna make it, he's finally returning to filmmaking. He's gonna make it into a movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes!
MARCUS PARKS
I can't fucking wait.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't wait. That's great.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's the thing, man, I mean at the height of his fame, $3 million a year. So at one point he could have had conceivably $6-7 million in the bank in today's money.
BEN KISSEL
Not with $8000 a day in freebasing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nope.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. And it's just by 1978-1979, it's fucking gone. John's cocaine-fueled paranoia was also getting out of control. See at this time the Hillside Strangler murders were in full swing.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which makes it so... Yeah, yeah, Kennifer is out there doing this shit. So the high paranoia is coming from somewhere.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And they were dumping bodies like around John Holmes' cottage in Glendale.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And I must ask for the audience and myself, Manson family? What are they up to?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was in '69, that was before.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So they're not around.
MARCUS PARKS
This is like a decade after.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, gotchu.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so John started carrying around a .357 magnum everywhere he went just in case.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you know who knows how to use guns better than anybody else? An actor.
BEN KISSEL
Especially a porn actor, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ask Alec Baldwin.
BEN KISSEL
Indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There has never been a more powerful actor.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez Louise.
MARCUS PARKS
Now when a drug habit gets to be as bad as John's, the addict will inevitably become well known to their dealer, perhaps you may even become friends. If you're just buying like weed or shrooms, you get friendly with the guy.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they get to know you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
But a guy who deals weed is an entirely different animal from a guy who deals coke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And when a person becomes close to their coke dealer, it's almost inevitable that they're also going to get caught up in the coke game.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? Have a coffee.
BEN KISSEL
Have a coffee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have a Mothman blend.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, this is a good plug. That's a good plug, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Spring-Heel'd Jack coffee.
MARCUS PARKS
That's a good plug.
BEN KISSEL
Great, that's great. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you're freebasing cocaine right now, put it away.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have a cold brew.
BEN KISSEL
Freebase Mothman coffee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Anytime.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic idea.
MARCUS PARKS
Now when it came to John Holmes-
BEN KISSEL
And also you're welcome for the free ad. What a great ad it was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Mothman coffee from Spring-Heel'd Jack. Springheeldjack.coffee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Check it out. If you're thinking about, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. If you're thinking about it, just coffee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just coffee.
MARCUS PARKS
Now when it came to John Holmes, his addiction was so bad that he had two sources and both were equally scuzzy. The first was a group of heroin addicts known as the Wonderland Gang.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
So named because they lived at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon, right in between the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood. It's like 20 minutes from where we are right now.
BEN KISSEL
Seriously. Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Beautiful San Fernando Valley.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in the late 60s before all of this shit, Laurel Canyon was what people think of when they imagine the music scene at the time to be in Los Angeles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Graham Nash and David Crosby are hanging out at Mama Cass' place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Joni Mitchell is looking out of her dining room window-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Seeing naked girls floating in Frank Zappa's duck pond.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't eat yellow snow.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's fine, I just ate all the brown snow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I ate all the shit on top of the snow.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's the iconic, that's the 70s or 60s, that's what you want. I mean just hanging out with Joni Mitchell and that whole crew.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's classy.
MARCUS PARKS
The Doors are hanging around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's real Hollywood. That's real Hollywood royalty at the time.
BEN KISSEL
There was probably a dibble dabble of cocaine there as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It was better cocaine.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Of course there's also like the conspiracy theories surrounding Laurel Canyon at this time period are fucking insane.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well the fact that it was a giant remote outpost of the CIA that was using the counterculture movement in the 1960s to proliferate acid in order to discredit them and destroy the hippie movement.
BEN KISSEL
I thought you said conspiracy theory. That's just a straight up fact.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup. No, no, no, it goes there's an old man named Dave McGowan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He's got a whole book about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, we did it in our live show not too long ago.
MARCUS PARKS
We did.
BEN KISSEL
It's fascinating stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
It's bullshit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Fascinating stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a bunch of lies just like all of his works.
BEN KISSEL
Well they look like words to me. And those are words that I heard.
MARCUS PARKS
Well during this idyllic time back in the late 60s before all the shit we're talking about now, 8763 Wonderland Avenue, where the Wonderland Murders happened, it had actually been occupied by none other than Paul Revere & the Raiders.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a No Dogs.
BEN KISSEL
That is a Marcus... That's, you know what? Fascinating.
MARCUS PARKS
No, the garage rock, Paul Revere & the Raiders.
BEN KISSEL
I know, I love it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they did the best version of Stepping Stone outside of Minor Threat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Stepping stone!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
They're fucking great.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But by 1978, about 10 years later, 8763 Wonderland Avenue was an eyesore in an otherwise nice neighborhood. Paint cracked and rust stained, caged behind iron bars, and guarded by two pit bulls on the front steps. Now when the house was flush with cocaine and heroin, traffic would actually build up outside of the house as dealers threw down bags of dope to every type of car from beat up Volkswagens to Rolls Royces. Some however would come inside to party. But Wonderland was one of those dark party houses.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The kind that you immediately regret stepping into the moment you arrive-
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But somehow find that extrication is impossible for at minimum 2-3 harrowing hours.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just you nursing a warm beer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Watching a bunch of people kind of dance with all the doors open.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's dogs barking and everybody's like mad, there's guy going like you don't understand!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. The small sense of urine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, there's a guy that's talking to you way too close.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You and me, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You and me, man, we get it. But those guys, those guys over there, man-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't fucking get it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But that's kind of the trap because then you have to do drugs to make it seem okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Because you're caught.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You're Buster Keaton in a world of insanity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you can't look like a cop.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's hardwood floors but it's only hardwood floors because they had to pull up the carpet for some reason that they're not going to tell you about. Or they tell you all about it and you wish they hadn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because now you're a part of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Truly.
MARCUS PARKS
Texas is full of all kinds of wonderful places.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it is. I mean don't worry, we spent our time in Florida.
MARCUS PARKS
Now wonderland was rented by a woman named Joy Miller who shared the place with her boyfriend, Billy Deverell. Deverell was a 42 year old heroin addict with a long record who was described as looking like the kind of guy you'd find in an El Paso dive bar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Big hat, big buckle, long legs.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, sure. I guess he has boots.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he's not a cowboy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, he's a rough and tumble.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, rough man.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Also living there was another heroin addict and accused multiple murderer named Ronnie Launius, 37. Launius was a Vietnam veteran who'd been dishonorably discharged and jailed for smuggling heroin back to America in the body bags of dead servicemen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a real piece of shit.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Holy hell, that's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Ronnie-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Name's Ronnie, everybody hates me. Yeah, I'm a piece of shit. You ever get fired from a murdering squad? That's me.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. That sounds like what you gotta do to get dishonorably discharged from 'Nam.
MARCUS PARKS
Ronnie had also been charged with killing a police informant but the charges were dropped when the prosecution's key witness was killed in a shootout with the police.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's called Mercury just getting out retrograde.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. That's interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Ron's propensity for murder in the pursuit of crime was so great that at the time of his death, he was linked to almost 30 homicide cases all over California.
BEN KISSEL
So he's a serial killer.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he's not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. I'm just a terminal... I'm a professional person of interest.
BEN KISSEL
How many bodies-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kinda my gig, yeah. It's my thing.
BEN KISSEL
He's just attached to 30 people who happened to die.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he's not a serial killer. He's a person who has no problem killing in the pursuit of crime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a mass murderer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's a crazy person. He's a professional murderer and bad person.
BEN KISSEL
Parsing hairs, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not parsing hairs.
BEN KISSEL
Parsing hairs.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not parsing hairs because it does not fit the definition of a serial killer.
BEN KISSEL
So did he kill 30 people?
MARCUS PARKS
But he did not do so out of a compulsion or out of a sexual compulsion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're talking about this is a long FBI conversation. It's true.
BEN KISSEL
It's interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as how Ron Launius spent his time in Wonderland, you could usually find him on a lot of heroin, sharpening his massive and ever growing knife collection.
BEN KISSEL
Ah yeah, the knife collection. Always kind of a warning sign.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, Ronnie. You got a lot of people calling you aggressive these days. Have we thought about like Lego?
BEN KISSEL
Legos, yes indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is there something we could get in there, maybe softer, getting into baking.
BEN KISSEL
Check out my knife collection.
MARCUS PARKS
I got the Lego Nintendo set over the break and it's so much fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See, that's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
It's really fun.
BEN KISSEL
That's really great, Marcus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See, that's better than a giant growing knife collection and being in the center of a web of murder and deceit.
BEN KISSEL
He doesn't have a knife collection, I don't think.
MARCUS PARKS
I had a knife collection.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I brought it down and I decided it wasn't the best thing to have around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You know, people get nervous when they walk in your house and they see a bunch of knives.
BEN KISSEL
He's learning.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Depends on how you keep them.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They were just around.
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If they were in a nice display, like a big flower of knives, that'd actually kind of nice.
BEN KISSEL
A bouquet of knives.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Well that's good, Marcus. I'm happy that you realized that people were scared when they walked into your home and decided to deescalate the knives.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have a very warm home.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Of course he does.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you, yeah. We cultivate our home to be a warm home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Physically warm.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Oh very physically warm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well they're a cold people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're cold people.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even if it's 100 degrees outside, our thermostat never goes below 78.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well you do a good job of doing it for the rest of us.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, 78?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does a good job of letting us be cool though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we turn it down, when people come over we turn it down and put on hoodies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Mama, that's a hot house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
I love the climate out here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, see?
MARCUS PARKS
It's wonderful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're getting there.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, shocking news, LA has good weather.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Good for us lizard people. Well Ronnie Launius also had a stint as an actor. He had a walk-on role in a Sylvester Stallone movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's nice. So did my father.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I told you my father got caught on a day break.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, that's right.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His one line to Sly was 'Hey, don't go in there!'.
BEN KISSEL
That's incredible.
MARCUS PARKS
But they didn't let Ron act anymore because he stole like half the props on the set.
BEN KISSEL
All right, there you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, hey, listen. We have to have a conversation about this Ronnie.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And these were the people that John Holmes was associating with every single day.
BEN KISSEL
So just a bunch of crooks and thieves, felons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And murderers.
MARCUS PARKS
Murderers.
BEN KISSEL
Murderers, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, straight up murderers. Now the Wonderland Gang liked having John Holmes around the house because his presence made the party kind of cool. And also Ron liked to force John to pull out his dick and show it to everyone at the party.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Which John didn't always want to do but always did anyway.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He became their like jester in this circle of crazy people.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And it would be that sort of very aggressive like John, pull out your dick. Show it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Show these people your fucking cock.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Just shitty shit all around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
See by this point in time when John Holmes started spending a lot of time at Wonderland, he was effectively homeless. He had left Sharon and the cottage behind, he took his underage girlfriend with Sharon's beat up Chevy Malibu, and when they couldn't afford a cheap motel room, they just slept in the fucking car. I mean from millionaire to sleeping in the car in like two years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And so to help pay for both his habit and Dawn's, John became a cocaine and heroin delivery boy for the Wonderland Gang.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna say this is a note to the audience. If you're at one of these cruxes, it's never a necessarily good idea to double down on the cocaine like business part of it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
When you're losing that roulette, just stand up and go. It's all right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You've got to go.
BEN KISSEL
You gotta break the cycle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You got to go.
MARCUS PARKS
Let's just say that freebasing cocaine has an effect on your decision making skills.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's next episode's entire theme.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. And be very careful out there. And also if you do do those sorts of things, get a tester because this fentanyl thing is very dangerous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I still feel like freebasing cocaine is a bit too far. I will never recommend it. I'll never recommend it!
BEN KISSEL
I'm not recommending. Be safe please.
MARCUS PARKS
Well codenamed 'Betty Crocker' because of the cook kit he carried everywhere, John-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They also think they're all so cool and they're all so full of shit.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate cocaine people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So it's Betty fucking Cracker or Betty Coker. Just come on. Get better with it.
MARCUS PARKS
John had to earn $1000 a day to pay for a single nugget-sized rock he could freebase.
BEN KISSEL
Man.
MARCUS PARKS
While he was out on these runs, gone for hours or sometimes days, he'd leave Dawn in the Chevy Malibu with their chihuahua Thor.
BEN KISSEL
I mean I do like that. That's a funny name for a chihuahua.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had nothing to do with this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he didn't.
BEN KISSEL
The chihuahua?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had nothing to do with this.
BEN KISSEL
I love that name for a chihuahua.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he treated this girl like shit though.
BEN KISSEL
Right, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
He'd leave her a can, a soda can. He's like yeah, you can piss in this.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And every once in a while he'd come back with a freebase rock if he thought to bring one. But even though John was constantly committing sloppy felonies on a daily basis, his connections to the LAPD vice squad as an informant kept him out of jail for the time being. So he really had no reason to be careful.
BEN KISSEL
But is there any indication that the LAPD, did they ever give him drugs?
MARCUS PARKS
Nah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean this is one of those-
MARCUS PARKS
He's with the pornography section of the vice squad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't know because he's using his porno connections and all that. Yeah, they're just busting porno. They're not talking about the drugs.
BEN KISSEL
I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're just busting people making movies.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's a whole different wing.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And it's also very possible, I mean it's just like any fucking police organization. It's possible that the porno vice squad kept John away from the drug vice squad because like no, no, no, he's our informant, you can't bust him. We need him for porno, you can't have him for drugs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he wasn't good at crime.
BEN KISSEL
Did he think at all, like did he fantasize about being undercover?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
And so did he maybe just like, I'm just doing this as part of my, did he think he was a character? Because it seems like he dissociates himself almost.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's just a giant asshole.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He's a massive asshole and a huge drug addict.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean he's just a massive cokehead.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The thought process is gone.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now when John Holmes wasn't earning cocaine by making runs for the Wonderland Gang, he bought cocaine from a lunatic named Eddie Nash, which we mentioned earlier, the guy that Alfred Molina is based on.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Loves Jesse's Girl. And while Eddie Nash was not quite as scuzzy as the crew at Wonderland, he was nevertheless just as dangerous, just as unpredictable, and just as murderous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Probably more so.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
MARCUS PARKS
John Holmes would soon find that his recklessness, addiction, and cowardice would all come crashing together in a bloody mess involving both Eddie Nash and the Wonderland Gang. And that is where we'll pick back up for part two of John Holmes and the Wonderland Murders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man.
BEN KISSEL
Whew. It's been fascinating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We learned a lot.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very interesting to hear the history of it and where he comes from, kind of see what this fucker is. Because then next week you're gonna kind of see like...
BEN KISSEL
Just how horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because the jury is still out on this entire crime.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No one was ever convicted, you said.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Not convicted.
BEN KISSEL
So this is I think maybe the first time we've ever covered a story like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it is, how do you put it?
MARCUS PARKS
Solved.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We know who did it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's solved, we know who did it, but there just wasn't enough evidence.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
There were two different trials trying to convict people of these murders and both of them led to acquittals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a whole thing. But we'll get into it, we'll unpack it.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We can't wait.
BEN KISSEL
We'll figure it out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna do a new thing, I wanna introduce people to this thing because I forgot to promote it and I want people to go to it.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So in Atlanta I am hosting a dinner at an incredible restaurant called Ammazza. It's on October 11th.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's called The Donner Party. We're going to have an extremely awesome, this chef is making a bunch of high end food in the shape of human body parts.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. And we're certain they're not human body parts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean well I don't know. I actually don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. All right. Very great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know but I wanted to promote that before we get outta this.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And No Dogs In Space is back this week, we got a new series that started up. We start off with an introduction to Krautrock for all those of you who don't know anything about it. And then we're moving on to one of the coolest, heaviest psych bands out there, Amon Düül II in the same episode.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome. Well thank you all so much for supporting all the shows here on the Last Podcast Network.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh and check out Murderfist, we got new dates. 9/22, we've added a new show at Dynasty Typewriter. Come and check it out.
BEN KISSEL
Nice. All right. Well thank you all so much for supporting the network. We appreciate you, hail yourselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail me, fuckers. Hail me, you fuckers.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh and don't forget to watch our Twitch channel this Monday for the return of the No Dogs In Space stream.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very good.
BEN KISSEL
The return.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. We're gonna be doing a record haul, we're gonna be talking about the Flaming Lips concert that we went to a couple of weeks ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's great.
MARCUS PARKS
Showing a couple of clips from that and just having generally good music nerd time. That's twitch.tv/lastpodcastnetwork. That is Monday at 7pm PST.
BEN KISSEL
They say don't meet your heroes but everyone with The Flaming Lips, they were so unbelievably sweet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were incredible.
BEN KISSEL
And Marcus, thank you and Carolina for your great work on No Dogs.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bye!
MARCUS PARKS
Bye!