An Interview with 42nd Street Pete (42P)
(Feb. 2009)

42P, I’d like, if I may, to begin this interview with a few personal and background questions regarding your experience on 42nd Street .  First off, “the Deuce” and “grindhouse theatre” are terms that are now used nostalgically in such recent books as Sleazoid Express, which you have reviewed in your blog. To what time, place and type of movie do these terms refer?
 
I would say the time was from the early 1950's to when it shut down.  The term “grindhouse” movies sort of replaced the term “bad movies”. In the mid 1980's, people started referring to 42nd Street as "the Deuce".  It had also been called The Minnesota Strip because supposedly all the runaways came from the midwest and became prostitutes.  Basically grindhouse films were soft & hardcore porn, horror movies, women in prison films, biker films, spaghetti westerns, cheap euro crime & spy films, drug & exploitation films, Kung fu & Samurai films, etc.  Even some of your bigger budget mainstream films, like Death Wish fell into the grindhouse category.
 
I understand you were a regular sight on 42nd Street during its heyday.  Would you please describe the Deuce and its environs at that time – if one walked down that area, what would one encounter? 
 
If one walked down that street in the daytime, you would get propositioned by street walkers, beat drug salesmen, derelicts, etc.  There were movie theaters , sex shops, peep shows, and massage parlors every two feet.  Don't make eye contact or talk to strangers was the rule.  Lots of muggers worked in pairs.  Bottom line was they knew who belonged there and who didn't.  I rarely drank at any bar on “the Deuce".  My watering hole was Club 44 on 44th street.  It was a little more sedate than some of the other places.  The barmaids were cool and provided $10 blow jobs in the back room.

Being that I am 6' 2" and weighed 285 at the time, assholes didn't want to fuck with me.  Don't get me wrong, I got held up in the Anco theater, a real shithole, got stabbed by a crazy right in front of The Lyric, protecting one of my hooker friends, got my ass kicked in a brawl that started in a massage parlor and wound up on 8th avenue, so yeah, I took a couple of beatings. People tend to romanticize bar fights.  They are usually quick, brutal, and someone gets hurt. Night time was pretty dangerous. The corner of 42nd & Broadway was infested by pimps, hookers, and junkie scam artists. You pretty much had to be a tough guy or very alert to hang out there.
 

Considering it had such a sleazy reputation in New York City, what appeal did the Deuce have for you?  What did you find there that has made such a lasting impression into your later life?
 
Actually NYC had a sleazy rep back then. I was drawn there because this country was in a war with Vietnam and I was classified 1A which meant I was going to go die in a fucking jungle.  So, figuring my life was about to be cut short, I had started going to the Village for some underage drinking.  One day I made a left on 8th Ave and was on the corner of 42nd Street & 8th Ave. I looked up 42nd Street and saw the marquee beckon to me with titles like Night of the Living Dead, The Ghastly Ones, Payment in Blood, Curse of Her Flesh, The Devil's Angels, and more.  Looking down 8th Ave, there was a twisted netherworld of porn theaters, massage parlors, titty bars, book stores and the short stay hotels.
 
Being a huge movie buff, I was in heaven. Back then movies changed on Wednesday, so I could catch a lot of good stuff before the weekend and avoid the crowd. Weekends I bar hopped all over the Deuce in a feeble attempt to get laid. I just lost myself in a world of shitty movie theaters, booze, pot, hookers, etc. The neon from the marquees could give you a sunburn.  I just dug how insane the whole scene was.  There was a place that sold weapons & fake id's.  One liquor store stocked nothing but the finest 69 cent wines.  The longer & the later you stayed, the weirder it got.  Some places were open 24/7.  Weekends all the movies ran late.  And you could always find an after hours joint to hang out in until dawn.

ENDURING GRINDHOUSE CLASSIC:
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

The original Night of the Living Dead (for which the recent Land of the Dead is the third sequel) is a now-cult ultra low-budget film that was shot in grainy black and white.  The director, George A. Romero, made the film around the Pittsburgh area near his home (and indeed has remained a local filmmaker there) but drove to New York City with a print and showed it to Columbia Pictures.  The hope was to secure a major distribution deal for the fledgling horror film.  However, the bleak, graphic and pessimistic nature of the movie baffled the studio who three months later decided the film was unmarketable, especially not being in colour.  Even though they apparently had little interest in the project, they nevertheless asked the director if he was willing to go back and film an optimistic ending: just in case the studio relented and felt it marketable after all.  Romero did not film an alternate ending.  Eventually the film was released as he intended it, without commercial studio backing.  The film became one of the defining genre events of the late 1960s and is now considered one of the finest films in its genre, with one of the most downers of an ending in film lore.  read more

I understand that you are in the process of writing a book about your experiences and the people you associated with.  As a preview: please describe some of the regular grindhouse crowd that you associated with during your time there.  What backgrounds did they have, what type(s) of people were they and what commonality and even community, if any, was to be found on the Deuce?

Sad thing is that I'm about the only one still alive.  I attribute that to dumb luck and not getting into hard drugs. Out of maybe 30 people I hung out with, most are dead. Overdoses, car wrecks, murder, etc.  I met a lot of weird people.  This guy Leon, was a career sex worker.  He didn't have sex for money, he just was the guy who patted you down for weapons at the massage parlors.  Since I was a regular, we ran into each other often. You met a lot of petty crooks and hustlers.  I was a hustler, alway wheeling and dealing something for a buck.  Stag films were a hot item and so were bootleg 8 track tapes.  You met quite a cast of characters in that racket. I met my future best friend and boss, Norman, over there and remember some of the stuff 20 years later.  Ran into Al Goldstein a lot.  People don't like Al, but he was always cool with me. There was not a lot of comradery (sic) on my part , I minded my own business.  After you see a couple guys die for being assholes or doing dumb shit, you choose your associates carefully.  I was tight with a few guys, but it was more business than anything else.  It wasn't like we exchanged Xmas gifts.
 
I got tight with two call girls that I met at an impromtu bachelor party in the middle of an afternoon.  I was the only one with weed.  Lisa & Candy were their names.  Candy was Asian, Lisa was white.  They told me to give them a call one day.  I did, the next day.  We got along and it wasn't just about the pussy.  These two had their acts together.  One was going to school.  They didn't work out of their apartment, so I was more than welcome to stay over when ever I wanted. I also used to walk them to their clients when needed.  If it was a regular client, no problem.  If it was a new client they would want me to walk them right to the door and make sure the client saw me.  That way he understood that when I came back in an hour, she'd better not be crying or marked up.  Never had a problem until some street psycho went after Candy. Lost touch with them many years ago.  Last I heard was that Lisa married a lawyer and Candy was working in Vegas.

There was a lot of terminology that attended the showing of sex and exploitation films on the Deuce circuit: jargon like “roughie”, “storefront feature”, “stag film”, “loop” and “one day wonder” proliferate in discussions about this generally disreputable era.  Please explain these terms and the circumstances that led to their standard use on the grindhouse circuit?
 
People coin phrases and they creep into our culture. A "roughie" was a film that featured violent sex. In the 60's it was films that had women getting "roughed up" by the guys.  Some of these pushed the envelope.  Stuff like the "Olga" series were that type of film.  A real softcore sickie was San Francisco Ball by Jack Genero. Two women are snatched and held for ransom by three thugs.  They are raped and sliced up with switchblades.  The guys don't get hard, just stand around with no pants on. The bloody girls lay on the floor & moan.  It's all pretty unsettling.
 
Avon films were the ultimate roughies.  Shot in a day or so, hence the "one day wonder" term, these were probably some of the most depraved films ever made. Torture, rape, abduction, slavery, etc.  Custom made for the times. Storefront Features were films that ran about an hour long and were outright purchased from a distributor.  A lot of reel I picked up had "house print" written on it. Storefront Theaters were un-rentable stores on places like the Deuce. They could get away with a lot of shit legit houses couldn't because of their size. Films were shot in 16mm, sometimes without sound, specifically for that market. Most of the theaters advertised "Three Continuous Features" which was about 3 hours worth of film. Stag films and loops are the same thing.  They were also called “smokers” because they were usually shown in a VFW bar full of cigar and cigarette smoke. I don't know who coined the term stag film.  Loops could have come about as the way these things were set up.  One system had an endless loop, usually two films spliced together in an 8 track type cartridge.
 
Where were the sex films / loops screening in peep show booths and as storefront features made?  How were they made, who made them and what distribution chains existed to supply the demand for these films?

A lot of the NYC stuff was shot on 14th Street in NYC by a guy named Bob Wolfe. Other stuff was made on the West Coast. Nick Phillips shot all of his storefronts in and around San Francisco. Some stuff was shot in LA. Wolfe used a lot of recognizable stars like Jamie Gillis, Eric Edwards, Vanessa Del Rio, Tina Russel, and Linda Lovelace. Wolfe shot the infamous dog loops also. Chelly Wilson's Avon Films shot all of their stuff in various locations in the city. Chelly's distribution arm was Variety Films, which supplied all of her theaters in NYC.  Other storefront films were sold outright to the theaters.

Three things killed the "Deuce": home video, AIDS & crack. With the advent of home video, you didn't need to venture into a dangerous theater or peep show to rub one out. You could do it in your living room.  And there was no more threading film into that noisy 8mm projector.  You just popped in the tape, drop your pants, and break out the baby oil. Considering the plethora of drugs in the 70's, crack was the most fucked up thing to ever come down the pipe.  Stoned out Romero-esque pipe-heads were everywhere. As dangerous as things had been, crack just amplified them.  Then the AIDS epidemic.

Many of the films you release on your DVD collections are rare, obscure and hard-to-find examples of vintage erotica and pornography, the type of material one imagines of interest to such as the Kinsey Institute.  How do you now locate the stag loops, roughies, nudie flicks and porn features that comprise such collections.  In other words, what has become of these films today and why do you think it important to release them with such archival care as goes into your releases through After Hours Cinema?
 
A lot of the 8mm stuff I had stashed years ago and forgotten about it. I had a few customers from back in my peddling days who switched to VHS then traded me their collections.  You can buy stuff from people on Ebay, but it's a crapshoot at best.  The storefront stuff I get from collectors or at estate sales. I sort of know what sells, I just have that knack for it. I hand pick the loops to go with a certain theme I come up with for each collection. We restore them as best as possible.  Bear in mind that some of this stuff is like 50 years old.  A lot of it was not stored properly and it's deteriorating.
 
I always felt that people wanted to know how it started.  People born into the video & DVD era hadn't a clue where it all came from.  I know other companies had put stuff out, but there was no history, no back story. I had a hard time selling my vision to After Hours.  I wanted to present the loops in a format that hadn't been done before.  I put twice the amount of loops in a package, I gave a history, a back story and some humor.  I think I did a good job.

What copyright situation exists for these films?
 
On the 8mm stuff, Lasse Braun, Swedish Erotica, and Diamond films may have a copyright on them. I don't use them.  All the other stuff is not under any copyright to my knowledge.  16mm stuff is different.  Some of it is, some of it isn't.  We have a legal dept. to make sure.  A lot of stuff that is out on certain DVDs isn't copy-written.

I had a huge argument that led to an internet fight, that led to a bogus cease & desist order over a title I released.  I was in the right.  Someone said that I didn't understand that the stuff was illegal in the 70's and couldn't be copyrighted.  My answer is that is was legal in the 80's, so you had like 28 years to file on it and they didn't.  Why?  Because most porn people are just cheapskates.  They did this to make a quick buck and never thought the stuff would survive.  Now they rattle sabers whenever one of their films gets released.
 
I’ve said this before and I'll say it again, I'd be more than happy to include a star, a director, etc in anything I release.  I'll pay you for your time, and give you your props, but that's it. I'm the guy shelling out the money for color correction, replication, advertising & copyrighting this version of the film.  I respect the people who did this, but it's not my fault that you didn't think these films would be in demand again.
 
What is your selection criteria?  In other words, why do you choose the specific material you anthologize and release?  Are there films which for whatever reason(s) you consider unsuitable for DVD release or archival collection?
 
Like I said before, I seem to know what people like.  I screen each film before I decide to transfer it or chuck it.  If the film is too washed out, if it's too scratched up, or just boring, it doesn't make the cut.  If I have something really rare, but in poor condition, I'll use it as a bonus loop.  Sometimes you have to take what you get.

Many of your releases through After Hours Cinema feature detailed and illustrated collector’s booklets exploring the films and the people involved in them.  This type of film and its makers has rarely been given such historical perspective.  How do you find biographical information about the performers and makers of these films when so many of the films either had no credits or used pseudonyms?  
 
I have been lucky enough to meet and become friends with people like David Friedman, Nick Philips and others. Working in the business, I also met quite a few folks.  Being that this stuff was illegal for many years, you have to filter out a lot of information.  People lie, plain & simple, it isn't like we are dealing with members of the clergy here.  I was blissfully ignorant of a lot of stuff.  I used to collect movie stills from a big store next to the Venus Theater.  Little did I know that this was the epicenter of the porn biz . I read a lot as opposed to surfing the net.  You'd be surprised what you can find in the old copies of Screw and other magazines from that era.  A lot of guys are coming out of the woodwork with bullshit stories.  Shaun Costello said that Forced Entry wasn't distributed by Avon, but right in the credits it says distributed by Variety Films, which was Avon's distribution arm.

For many of these stag loops, the women involved were strippers and former burlesque artists.  At what point (when and how) did burlesque and the stag film merge, how did this change the sex film as a genre and what influence did this have on the future development of the American narrative feature film porn movie?
 
Don't have an answer for this. I have never seen any of the burlesque stars go hardcore.  Hookers and junkies appeared in the loops.  Then in the 60's with the sexual freedom & "free" love scene, girls just wanted to experiment and porn guys took advantage of that.  A lot of these chicks were stoned to the eyeballs when they fucked on film.
 
Surrounded by stag films, loops and porn as you seem to be: does this material still turn you on and, if so, what type of material out of the range you release onto DVD do you find personally the most stimulating and rewarding (though the title “Busty Stags” may give something away here)?

None of this stuff "turns me on".  You get desensitised.  I look at it this way, if you own a liquor store, you shouldn't be an alky; if you sell candy, you shouldn't have a sweet tooth.  You become your own best customer.  Same with this stuff.  I've dealt with "sex addicts" over the years.  These are the people who "have" to see everything. It is an addiction. I'm not emotionally involved with the product.  It's a business, and it's something I'm good at.  I know what people want and I give it too them.  People don't want to see 4 hours of the old cock in cunt stuff.  They want to see the bizarre, the forbidden, real stars, stuff from Europe etc.  I tap into that psyche and fill that need.  My picks are never boring.
 
Years ago I was desensitised.  We didn't have sex education back then.  I used to watch every loop before I sold it.  That's how I learned, then the stuff became mundane to me.  Men think I have the greatest job in the world, women despise me for it.  Try dating when you do what I do.  You’re judged right away.  Considering I did a screening where more than half the audience was women, it's a double standard. Women are into this stuff, but won't admit it.  I had a lot of women customers in my video store because it was safe & low keyed. There is no set type of woman that turns me on, but I really don't like BBWs.
 
On the introductions to your DVDs, you openly display and use a bong / water pipe.  What was the relationship between sex and drugs in the 42nd Street scene and how do you feel that the moral clampdown on both drugs and porn affects America’s Constitutional freedoms?  What is your personal view on marijuana specifically and the American War on Drugs in general?  Do you support decriminalization?

Sex & drugs went hand in hand on the "Deuce".  You could buy almost anything there.  Pot was all over the place, then coke.  PCP was a big 70's drug that induced psychotic behavior.  Then crack.  People openly smoked in theaters and sometimes bars.  Cops back then just gave you a ticket if you got caught.  They had more important fish to catch. As far as I know, there is no crackdown on porn.  Oh, there would have been, if 9-11 didn't happen.  Bush allocated billions of dollars to wipe it out because of a promise to the Religious Right.  That douchebag Ashcroft had one airtight case and lost it.  Right now I don't think anyone gives a shit.
 
I advocate the legalization of weed because it's less harmful than alcohol.  Look at the tax revenue you could raise if it was legal.  The plant itself is beneficial.  You can use it for rope, oil, clothing etc.  Reason it's illegal is that the drug companies know of its many uses and don't want you growing something beneficial in your back yard.  They would rather sell you on any chemical crap they come up with.  Look at the side effects of all these supposed "wonder" drugs: headaches, nausea, internal bleeding, blurred vision and , this ones the best, the overwhelming urge to have sex or gamble. The worst thing that pot will do is give you a cough, dry mouth or an empty refrigerator.
 
Look at what happened to Tommy Chong for selling a bong on the internet!  The laws suck, the "drug war" is a waste of time, money, and ruins innocent people’s lives.  For all the supposed "intelligent" people running things, they are pretty fuckin’ stupid.  You make anything illegal, people will want to try it.  If you banned the sale of peanut butter tomorrow, you would create a black market for it.  It's human nature to want to try something forbidden.  When it's illegal, it's more fun.  Porn was more fun when it was illegal.  Legalized it's boring.

How has AIDS and the advent of safe sex changed the perception of erotica and pornography from its Deuce heyday?
 
AIDS led to the demise of the "Deuce".  When AIDS surfaced in the porn biz, there was a panic.  Rubbers became the rule of the day.  A lot of directors screamed foul over that, but it is common sense to protect your performers.  Unfortunately a lot of performers were IV drug users.  Many big names, Mark Stevens, John Holmes, Lisa Deleeuw, and others were both drug users and had unprotected sex. Those were the first of many to die from it. Now everyone in the biz is tested.  Former star Sharon Mitchell became a doctor and opened a clinic where sex workers can get tested with no pre-conditions. A lot of crack-heads contracted HIV because when you’re that fucked up, you don't care who you screw.  These are the people that haunted the "Deuce" right up to the end.

Other releases by After Hours Cinema include biographical details of sex film makers.  This attention to the pornographer as, if not artist, then at least filmmaker worthy of archivist (and potentially critical) scrutiny implies that there is just as much a creative force in pornography as there is in mainstream film, albeit surfacing to vastly different ends and budgetary restrictions.  Do you feel that pornography and the type of vintage erotica you release and offer as video on demand offer anything besides nostalgic stroke fantasies?  Why should someone specifically view this material when there is so much high-quality, new contemporary pornography to get off to?
 
The stuff After Hours put out has historical relevance, plus our feature films actually have a plot as opposed to 7 scenes on a DVD.  People view this stuff because it is different and some of the stuff you couldn't get away with filming today. As for creative forces behind the camera, some guys were really good, others didn't have a clue.  It was and will always be about the money.  Vanessa Del Rio told me that she shot and was paid for doing two loops.  Those two loops were cut into 8 loops.  I did a shoot for one DVD.  That shoot was cut into two and appeared on two DVDs.  It's the nature of the business.

Pornographer Roberta Findlay

Husband and wife exploitation filmmakers Mike and Roberta Findlay, who had worked in pornography, shot a cheap horror movie inspired by the infamous Charles Manson case.  They called it Slaughter.  However, it remained unreleased until distributor Allan Shakleton found it and added a fake cinema-verite type ending that played off contemporary headlines about a particularly nasty type of movie phenomenon.  He also re-titled it, the new title soon becoming a buzzword for an illicit movie thrill, Snuff.  The film quickly became a controversy, denounced and picketed in its early urban releases by angry women’s groups who considered the film the absolute moral worst that modern cinema could become.  The film became an excuse to virtually demonize all American film pornography (though it wasn’t a porn movie) as inherently violent.  However, the scenes that they were objecting to and taking as real were in fact a make-up special effects joke.  With Shackleton gleefully playing up the supposed authenticity of the footage and cannily avoiding admitting his hoax, the film made headlines and continued to be protested and denounced.

I don't take any responsibility.  A woman directed Dear Pam (Roberta Findlay), so fuck those feminists.  Three other companies released this film, illegally, prior to myself.  What one says acting in a film is in the script, not a personal view.  There is much implied and shown child molestation in mainstream films.  The last Rambo had a scene where a brutish prison commandant took a young boy to his cabin.  The implications were more than obvious, but this is a Rambo film, so it's "acceptable".
 
On the subject of kiddie porn, I hate those fuckers with a passion and I have scars on my fists to prove it.  Dear Pam is a comedy, the dialogue is outrageous, that’s why I put it out.  I never saw any connection between what someone said in that film, and molesting kids.  It's one thing to say that you think a 14 year old has a tight pussy.  It's another thing to show that same pussy getting fucked.  That's the thought police, plain & simple.  Dworkin & company never had the impact they hoped.  The booth girls used to laugh at the fatties when they protested the places.  Fat, ugly, chicks on a mission: now that should be censored.

Censorship and pornography have long been related.  Now that the US Supreme Court has dismissed the Dworkin-MacKinnon argument of pornography as harmful to women as unconstitutional and upheld it as free speech, what (and who) do you feel is behind the continued moves to censor pornography and erotica?  What would those who advocate censorship gain from banning the type of material you release?
 
The Religious Right wants to ban the stuff now, not the feminists.  Maybe they actually learned that when you picket a place, you draw more attention to it than it deserves.  Business doubled when these manatees did their little Time Square Smut Tours.  One porn store owner invited them back and offered to buy them coffee next demonstration.  He told me he tripled his sales that day. My stuff has been banned and one title (Super Stars of the 70's Stags) was pulled off an adult website for "improper content".  Go figure!  Me and the RR don't get along at all.  As for a "victory" by banning my shit, go ahead and ban it you ignorant assholes. All you achieve by banning something is creating an underground economy that will just triple the price.  So yeah, ban it and make us more money in the process.
 
What are your future plans as host, archivist, prospective author and representative degenerate for After Hours Cinema?
 
I'm just going to keep doing my thing.  As long as the fans are happy with my work, I'm happy.  It's never been about the paycheck, it's always been doing something creative and doing it right.  I will always be a fan and, in being a fan, I give my fellow fans stuff I think they would want.  When people get tired of my stuff, I'll call it a day.  I'm hoping that day is really far off because I enjoy my work and enjoy meeting people who appreciate and respect the grindhouse culture.  Thanks to all that have picked up my discs.  I hope the fans have enjoyed them as much as I've enjoyed making them.
 
42P: thank you for your time.