Porn Valley- Friday, the Sports Swami interviewed Las Vegas man about town and Talk of the Town strip club owner, Ray Pistol who’s also owner of Arrow Productions, www.xxxdeepthroat.com

Describing Pistol as a cross between Hugh Hefner and William Shakespeare, Swami, also slightly prone to school boy exaggeration referred to Pistol as the “inspiration behind the whole movie of Boogie Nights”. But he certainly was pretty much on the mark calling Pistol, a former football player and baseball player, one of the most influential people in the adult industry.

Swami’s first question out of the box was asking Pistol how much the adult industry has changed in the last 15 years.

“Tremendously,” answered Pistol. “We’ve gone from the era of the film and the quickie to the gonzo era. Now, technologically, we’ve moved from the video into the DVD era. And we’re rapidly approaching HDTV. There have been style changes, changes to the equipment that we use, the medium that we display it on and even the girls have changed. You’ve got less of the classic blond look. We’ve gone now to the teeny bopper look. There’s changes in every way but that’s not unusual for our industry.”

One thing that hasn’t changed with the industry, as Swami was quick to point out, is the mainstream’s fascination with the business. To wit, Brian Grazer has wrapped up a documentary of Deep Throat which, by all accounts, will have theatrical distribution this year. Swami wanted to know from Pistol how much was there fact vs. fiction behind the scenes of Deep Throat.

As far as the actual documentary goes, Pistol says he has yet to see it. “I can’t say to much about that. But as far as the history and the stories floating around Deep Throat, there are many varied. And probably most of them aren’t truthful. But the Linda Lovelace saga has added a lot to the histrionics- I think that’s the best word- as to the making of the film. As best we can tell it was a pretty happy set. There was a bit of serendipity to it. We didn’t realize Linda’s capabilities. But once we did, Damiano re-wrote it and we shit it a little differently. But everyone seems happy about the whole thing.”

Swami noted that Pistol’s Talk of the Town is one of the best gentlemen’s clubs in Vegas. Whipping out the Hefner and Shakespeare analogies, Swami observed, “You are somebody who has that flair, that intelligence and everybody knows you as the man who smokes the pipe.”

We suspect that Swami didn’t quit mean it the way it came out. Swami then went on to describe Pistol as a political activist and “a decent fellow compared to some of the other characters in the business.” Pistol conceded that it was a business built with flair and characters.

“No doubt about that. I would have to say being compared to Hugh Hefner is an honor,” Pistol went on to say. “I’m not sure I can live up to it but he certainly moved this complete industry forward into the modern era with his magazine, his lifestyle, his bringing in great writers, beautiful girls. I only hope I can do half as well.”

Swami went into Pistol’s resume, noting that he was Vietnam Vet and a college athlete. “Why the war?” he asked Pistol. “What was that like? How much b.s. was going on in the front compared to what people were reading back then. Is it sort of like our war right now in Iraq?”

Pistol said there were similarities of coverage. “I’ve talked to some of the guys who have come back from Iraq, and I don’t think war changes from the first guy who picked up a rock. If you’re in combat, you’re trying to stay alive and kill the other guy to stay alive. But keeping yourself and your buddies alive is numero uno. And Vietnam was somewhat similar to that in that we were plagued by booby traps and now they have their roadside bombs and car bombs. That’s the most difficult to fight against. Because it’s inanimate, disguised and you don’t know what happens until it hits you. It’s not like assault troops or two-units banging together and fighting it out. It’s just a hidden, deadly killer.”

Pistol was asked how much the conflict changed him as a person with experiencing carnage and mayhem. For his part, Pistol said he was fortunate in that he wasn’t permanently injured in any way.

“Psychologically, my father taught me a great deal,” says Pistol. “I was very fortunate there. He was a marine who was captured on Wake Island and spent more than four years in a Japanese prison camp. He basically gave me a couple pieces of advice: you can survive far more than your ever dreamed that you could, and to keep a sense of humor about the whole thing because if you don’t laugh, you’ll go crazy. I took those two thjings to heart and they’ve got me a long way down the road.”

Pistol said his combat experience was positive in that he knew he was a survivor, an no matter the situation, he always knew to keep your head cool and figure out the best possible solution. “And keep on plugging- it’s amazing how you seem to walk away from things,” Pistol says. “With that knowledge of my capabilities, it gave me a great deal of confidence for the rest of my life. I guess I grew into a man out there on the battlefield.”

But it was on the gridiron that Pistol’s balls almost wound up in his chest thanks to Mean Joe Greene. “You played at North Texas State University and took on Mean Joe Greene,” said Swami. “Most people said you were a pretty good football player. Next thing you know you have 275 pounds running right at you. Unfortunately you ripped up your knee and your ribcage.”

Pistol said it was whole new level for him in size and speed. “I had never seen a middle linebacker that fast before much less one that looked like a charging bull,” he added. “It made me realize that my future lay in baseball where they couldn’t come running at you and tackle you. A 90 mph fastball is bad, and a knee buckling curve is bad but not nearly as bad as Mean Joe Greene. I have to say – I’d rather take one aimed at my head at 95 mph than Mean Joe Greene again.”

Swami suspected there are a lot of other players who might feel the same way. “He was probably one of the meanest players ever to step on a gridiron.”

Pistol said Greene tossed him around like a set of pick-up sticks. “That was my bones!” he laughed. Swami described Pistol, at 21, as a finesse pitcher who was looked at by the Dodgers but passed over. “The Dodgers wanted that high school kid.” Pistol was asked if he longed to be able to transplant his body in today’s generation of money ball players.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” said Pistol. “The athletes of today are just unreal. And money ball is a whole new game. It’s changed just as much as the porn industry has. The game that I played we were still chewing chewing tobacco and I was wrapping gum around mine so it wouldn’t make me thrown up. They throw pitches now that hadn’t even been invented then. So I wouldn’t know how to answer that one.”

But as the porn business goes, Swami observed that Pistol has been one of the most influential men in it. “How is it that the industry has been able to maintain a stronghold financially and culturally?” Swami asked. “We’ve seen everything from HIV epidemics to porn scandals, starlets coming and going in less than two years and yet everybody is still obsessed with porn.”

“I think the survival of our race depends on our desire for sex,” Pistol answered. “Having done a modicum of study, men like visual and most women like audio. So women read books and men watch pictures and there’s a whole new plethora of people coming in to make it for a whole new generation every time we turn around. I don’t think the game will ever end. It’ll just keep changing but it’s here to stay. I don’t even think Ashcroft can command the sea back into the ocean.

“It’s an overwhelming industry at this point,” Pistol went on to say. “We’re up there- like, for instance, gaming. I’m sitting here in Las Vegas and that’s another one that has come on and changed its image. You’re never going to put that genie back in the bottle, either. It’s here to stay and who knows what the future brings. Probably a complete online worldwide network or something.

“But the world is an amazing place,” Pistol continued. “It goes faster and faster the older you get, I’ve found.” Swami asked Pistol about a porn project titled Tarnished Knight wondering how ground breaking it was as far as the porn industry. Pistol described it as a protest piece.

“The basic principle behind it is if you do right and do it as best as you were taught, you’ll get screwed in the end,” Pistol laughed. “But at least it was literally as well as figuratively. That’s the only thing about porn. That particular one you had a young marine who was doing embassy duty and he realized that the ambassador was exchanging information for sex with a beautiful spy. At the same time it was in the Middle East and there was a great deal of upheaval around the embassy. So about the time the insurgents were taking over the embassy, the young marine still had a job to do and that was to save the staff and the ambassador and to get them out of the embassy safely. He did that but he also snatched the film canister that was being exchanged between the hooker/spy and the ambassador.

“But the ambassador at that time was pretty smart and so as they lifted off into the chopper and got airborne, he pulled a .45 out of the co-pilot’s holster and put it on the young sergeant and arrested him for espionage and took the film canister off of him as evidence that he was the spy. And so he was drummed out of the Marine Corps but they didn’t have enough on him to prosecute him for treason. But they had enough to drum him out and give him a bad reputation. And so he went into being a bodyguard and worked his way to the top at that. The next thing that happens is he’s called into a major studio to protect a star who has had a stalker and death threat. He wins her confidence that he can protect her so that she’ll finish the $150 m movie that she’s working on. Suddenly the Russian spy/hooker shows up on the set and he realizes that she’s the only person in the world who can clear his name. He asks her to do so. She says she’s the understudy for the star. If she were to have an accident she could pick up her big break.”

According to Pistol, the marine can’t bring himself to make a deal and do the wrong thing. “Bottom line is do the right thing and get screwed in the end.”

“On Boogie Nights a lot of people say your character was Burt Reynolds,” said Swami asking Pistol how much of Boogie Nights was helpful to the industry and how much it was detrimental. Pistol’s opinion was that the film was positive for the industry. “Boogie Nights was a big hit, and it showed the inside story to the extent that there’s good people and there’s bad people. But we’re just people, like everybody else,” said Pistol. “Maybe we’re a little hornier than the others but we’re still just people.”

Swami noted that Seka had been on his show a couple of months ago and stated that performers in the industry had become raunchier. Swami asked Pistol if, back in the day, the performers had been classier. Pistol noted that with porn in the Seventies you had a different kind of person in porn.

“A lot of those people were, first off, trained actors and actresses,” he pointed out. “They were working on and off Broadway, mostly off Broadway looking for a break. They had that going for them, and they were well-educated, kind of revolutionaries. So they added an element to the pictures that really isn’t available today because we don’t have that same type of person coming into the industry. Generally a girl coming into the industry now is more or less pulled off the street. She’s never acted and she’s not doing it for any revolutionary purpose. She’s doing it either for the fame, the glory or the money. So it’s all different- with different elements and different motivations. They’re different but that doesn’t mean that one is better than the other, although, of course, being an old gray beard, I prefer the old style with plot, storyline and a reason for the sex.”

Pistol was asked who in his mind was the best spokesperson for the industry. “If there was one adult film star right now who could make the jump to the mainstream and bring porn maybe to the next level who would you say is that person?” Swami wanted to know.

Pistol said that was a unicorn. “There really isn’t one any more than anyone could speak for the black community or the sports community,” he replied. “I don’t think anyone person can speak for the adult film industry, either, because there’s such a disparity of views.”

But if Pistol had to choose one woman to speak for the industry it would be Nina Hartley. “She’s been there; she’s done that. She’s got a good head on her shoulders and she’s got firm opinions. But I also could find someone that would have views that would be totally different from hers and there would be followers to that one, too. I don’t think we’re that homogenous but Nina Hartley would be my choice.”

Pistol also noted that he was pitching a mainstream script and looking at doing a small film on the foibles of the Vietnam War. “I am looking to moving into that R-territory,” he said.

An entrepreneur who has strip clubs, video stores and production companies under his belt, Pistol said he came into the adult business in 1971 driving a ’66 Chevy and a thousand bucks in his pocket.

“When you got only one chip you can only put it in one basket,” he chuckled. “But everybody’s out there taking a swing. I love to see the kids taking a swing and seeing what they’re made of. I try to help them anywhere I can because I was in the same position once.”

Asked about porn’s mainstream crossover, and will there be one, Pistol said he predicted, once, that it would happen but now is not so sure.

“Hollywood was getting sexier and the adult films were getting better,” Pistol observed. “I thought they would meet somewhere around NC-17. But since that time, adult films have fragmented into fetishes; and, at this point in time, I don’t see that happening any time soon unless there’s something that happens that I don’t foresee. No, I don’t foresee it happening. I see smaller films out of the adult industry and larger films out of Hollywood. I don’t see the two meeting.”

story in progress