Absolutely amazing. Kenny “Kenji” Gallo’s book about his colorful life of crime and his time as a producer in the adult industry is just that. To the extent that at the end of Gallo’s credibility-defying narrative titled Breakshot: A Life in the 21st Century American Mafia, there’s a statement from the publisher, Phoenix Books, attesting how Gallo passed a polygraph administered by some renowned expert, drawing the conclusion that the contents, therefore, are authentic.

No doubt what Gallo’s saying is all true. You just wonder how one guy in a relatively short life span managed to network with all the cretins, misanthropes, junkies, lawbreakers and sociopaths he writes about and hasn’t wound up face down in a gutter himself.

Only just to point out, too, that what Gallo is saying in his reflections about the underbelly of the adult beast – which he gets to about a third of the way into the read – is nothing I’m familiar with in my close to 25 years of writing about it. Maybe I’ve been sheltered. So I wouldn’t know things like if Amber Lynn was the No. 1 fuck of all time like Gallo swears. Or if mob guys run unfettered throughout the grim hallways of porn offices.

Then, again, what Gallo conveys are things you’ll never read on XBiz or AVN.com, either, both of which tend to serve the industry sunny side up like some merry diner in Disneyland. Which makes you also wonder just how proud Sunny Lane’s parents would be of her association with the kind of enterprises Gallo describes.

For that, alone, Gallo’s book should be required reading for any parent who’s got a kid in or with aspirations to the business. Especially if Gallo believes coke dealing is “glamorous” compared to the “sleazy” aspects of porn. Upon reflection, Gallo who was attracted to the business because of easy money, really nails one essence of the whole thing when he says:

“As a criminal with plenty of experience with segregated lives, I was intrigued by the heightened psychological compartmentalization of the porn women: how could they perform the most debasing acts imaginable in front of dozens of strangers on the set and then, when the scene wrapped, still act with the undiminished hauteur of a movie superstar?”

[Future posts on this site will offer more anecdotes and details from Gallo’s provocative memoirs.]

Ron Jeremy calls Gallo’s book “an accurate portrayal of life in the adult industry” which begs the question of just how accurate and honest a book Jeremy’s actually is. While interesting, fun, and a lark, Ron’s book is soft peddling in the strict PG-13 sense. Not like Kenny, who when he goes on the attack, can be as vicious as some of the sadistic gang retributions he describes.

Ask Peter North who Gallo calls “a suppressed, self-loathing homosexual” then offers chapter and verse to support his contentions. This is the mild stuff. Considering the fact that Gallo’s reputedly in the witness protection program, if I were North I’d be wondering, too, how thick my dossier was with the Feds with that chummy group picture with Kenny and his crew seeming fairly choice under the circumstances.

Then in describing long time friend Cal Jammer’s suicide, Gallo comes real close to putting Chuck Martino in Jill Kelly’s bedroom at the time it happened. He doesn’t, in the strict sense, although, I’m sure Gallo heard the same stories I did. To which you can draw your own conclusions.

What put Gallo, who was formerly married to Tabitha Stevens [they met on a Buck Adams set], in the middle of all this insanity is what makes Breakshot so mesmerizing, Breakshot being the code name assigned him as a Federal undercover informant.

Gallo’s Japanese-American, his father, interred during WW II, is Japanese but Kenny adopted the Italian surname [probably to look better on his crime resume]. According to Gallo, who calls himself an aspiring Pablo Escobar, violent crime always made him giddy and from that he made a conscious decision to become a predator and not on the basis of some pseudo-psychological bullcrap.

“There was nothing in the world funnier to me than a weeping hood wetting his pants and pleading for mercy as I held a gun to his head,” Gallo explains bluntly. “I need chaos to feel calm; violence to feel safe.”

Self-described as a volatile, irrational, raging beast, Gallo also learned from an early age that guys carrying cop badges could get away with almost anything. So again you wonder how this Sunny Crockett-like “Teflon cop,” who Gallo socially and criminally ran with, is apparently still active in the Irvine police dept. and how he continues to get away with it. Gallo wonders as well.

Likewise, Gallo’s ability to manipulate people is well detailed and examined. He compares mob bosses to models, porn stars and actresses for the ability to manipulate them if you know how to push the right buttons. That he could certainly do, and maybe Gallo’s manipulating his entire reading audience for all we know. If so, it’s still one masterpiece of story telling.