Legs McNeil Interview

Since we're currently deep in the middle of Legs McNeil's amazing oral history of the American porn industry, "The Other Hollywood", we almost didn't want to read this interview at Sex Wrecks today for fear of finding out how it all winds up—although it turns out that tidy endings aren't part of the tale at all: "The story just could have gone on forever. There were a lot of people I did talk to that didn
t make it into the book. At a certain point their stories became, I
m not going to say redundant, because that
s not fair to them. But it was just sort of like, 'Where do we stop?'" (Our favorite detail so far: Sharon Mitchell describing herself stripping to Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" at the Melody Burlesque in New York City in the mid 70s. Why did we have to be born so late?)

Legs McNeil (interview @ Sex Wrecks)
Order: "The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry" (Amazon)

Previously: "The Other Hollywood", "Strippers: The Untold History of the Girlie Show", A History of Sex in Film