Penthouse In Purgatory

A hilarious episode of South Park about the entire internet crashing mentioned erotic Brazilian flatulence videos. Within a minute of googling, I saw a clip of the reference: women, naked and sexy, farted in each other’s faces. It was actually funnier than South Park. There was nothing erotic about it. The site may have qualified as porn, but it was the opposite of sex (and sexy).

This was the state of smut, a world he helped make, when Bob Guccione’s soul finally left his cancer ridden body. His demise was long and painful, documented in the media along with the publicized loss of his empire. Penthouse, at one time the most profitable magazine in the world, was sold in bankruptcy court for pennies on the dollar. As his body deteriorated, he witnessed the loss of everything he built. One can’t help but feel some sort of retribution was at work, a cosmic justice being delivered to this king of smut. He was a well known celebrity, but not especially likeable, incredibly self absorbed, and incredibly smarmy. Who doesn’t mind seeing an un-likeable big shot take a fall.

But, I come not to praise this guy from Bergenfield, New Jersey, but to bury him. Okay, maybe to praise him a little. Penthouse is fascinating. Permit me to offer some thoughts that might make worthy of consideration the removal of a few days off of what I assume will be a lengthy stay in Purgatory.

I believe that Guccione, along with Hefner and Flynnt, while not great men, achieved great things. Sleazy, greedy publishers. No doubt. Porn mongers? That’s obvious. But while the results of what they wrought may include some unsavory, unwanted aspects, these men did two things that have made America a better country.

1) Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press. Our freedom to say and print what we want, a first in the history of humankind, is both fragile and the foundation of our entire society. Without it, our society will crumble and die. How do we sustain it, how do we keep it alive? Constantly testing and expanding freedom by constantly testing ourselves and our ability to tolerate speech and images we dislike. The 1950s, the era when these men came of age, was particularly repressive and paranoiac. They tested the accepted boundary of taste, made us question the negative role that taste can play in freedom of expression. We are a freer nation because of them. If you see this as a bad thing, you just don’t love freedom.

2) Sexuality, nudity, sex itself, being able to talk about it, admit to thinking about it, depicting it more freely in art, film and literature. With the Internet, it’s pretty hard to remember when openness was not the case. I hate to think what repression on a day to day basis is like to live with in hard core Islamic nations. But aside from the kicks available from access to sexual material, magazines like Penthouse being sold, and the sexual revolution that accompanied it, has meant that the health concerns involved with sex are also openly discussed. Teenage pregnancies, sexual transmitted diseases, the physiological ramifications of both bad and good sexual experiences are all topics anyone can discuss. Not only can we all can, we all do. The taboo is gone. The jobs of healthcare and other professionals are easier and more effective. So, it’s still not appropriate to talk to your parents about your lover over dinner, but at least the safety concerns can be discussed in an open setting. The birds and bees talk may come sooner than most parents prefer, but I have feeling that was always the case and at least the talk, on average, is less fraught. This was not always the case. I’m not sure if Penthouse caused more STDs than it prevented, but at least there is less hesitation and more honesty when discussing such issues with families, friends and healthcare providers—and sometimes, law enforcement officials.

Even though I acknowledge that magazines like Penthouse, Playboy and Hustler helped usher in more freedom to our crazy country, they also helped commoditize sex, which has been sad. Unfortunately, I don’t see how that can be avoided in a free country that encourages the pursuit of wealth. I’m not talking so much about the selling of sex in terms of buying nude pictures of women, but the context in which those pictures appear. The photo shoots themselves are almost always in luxurious settings. As these magazines became more accepted, attracting advertisers who wanted to reach that Mount Olympus of consumers, the male market of 18 to 35, primer earners and spenders in our society, photo spread and other stories about the products appeared, like GQ, the latest jeans or watches or cars. It’s not like GQ or Cosmopolitan is pure or lack prurience in their advertising and fashion photography. We select clothes so we look attractive, sexiness should be part of the aesthetic. But within the context of magazines like Penthouse and Playboy, which purport to celebrate sex and heterosexuality, seeing our consumer culture on blatant display always unsettled me. The message is that you need these products in order to get sex; or if you get sex you should also have these products. No matter how much I esteem sex, desire, the whole nine yards, and appreciate the erotic sensibility of the photography and some of the writing, this incessant linking of eroticism with materialism, cheapened the former and justified the banality of the latter.

Titillation magazines, like FHM or the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue , which feature just scantily clad women, achieve the same goal, yet without the graphic sexual content, seem a little less troublesome, although not more morally defensible.

The demise of Penthouse magazine is a contemporary drama about the irrevocable force of irony. My day job is in trade magazine publishing, has been for decades, and although the dollars are lower and the politics and mission of business to business magazines are vastly different than consumer publications, the game is the same: Assembling a magazine for a target audience, selling advertising space to reach that audience. That’s the business I and my colleagues know. We scrutinize what takes place in what we call the consumer world. Penthouse was a beautiful magazine, a mix of sexual material and consumer culture. Like Playboy and even Hustler, well known authors appeared too, like Gore Vidal or William S. Burroughs, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth. You know, Playboy now publishes more short fiction than Esquire. It recently serialized the not bad noir by Denis Johnson, Nobody Move.

I read Penthouse for the articles was the joke, but you could tell the editors wanted that not just to be a cliché. Say what you want about Guccione, or the content, the magazine was impressive.

Stereo Equipment, clothing companies, even mutual funds, began to advertise in the skin magazines, accompanying the cars, cigarettes and alcohol ads. So what if Levis and Samsung were in the same magazine as ads for sex toys, XXX videos and 900 numbers. The ads worked. The Readership responded and spent money.

Penthouse always played with the line separating Soft Porn from Hard Porn. Playboy never crossed the line—it was not until the 70s that Hef featured pictures with playmate’s pubic hair, pushed by the popularity of Penthouse, who always showed the bush, shocking us with the reality of vagina. Hustler, always the pioneer, never shied away from the aesthetic of complete and clinical gynecological examination.

Skin magazines can only be sold to 18 years or older; the regulations about what constitutes pornography are not really vague, but sort of inexact, like the difference between R and N-17. I don’t remember all the particulars, but no depictions of direct penetration, or genital contact, like if there is space between a tongue and a clitoris, then the magazine can be displayed and sold at a 7-11 or the Hudson Newsstand, but if that tongue touches that clitoris then the publication must be under the counter or relagated to the adult book store. Penthouse always played around that line, got that tongue closer to that clitoris than Playboy dared.

Then along came the Internet. The world changed. People who wanted hard core but had too much self respect to journey to the adult book store (or to the adult section of the neighborhood video store), no longer had to settle for the soft core at their local 7-11. Penthouse may have had reasons to read it other than the sexual imagery, but few of those reasons alone were good enough to buy it. The success of the scandal of Vanessa Williams was long past. To compete, Penthouse crossed the line more and more. The material was pornographic, devolving into showing women going to the bathroom (it’s impossible to capture the full splendor of face farting in still photography). Mainstream advertisers fled in droves, fewer newsstands were willing to risk carrying the magazine and the audience who wanted that sort of thing could find more and better examples with a click of their mouse.

Magazines have had a rough time of it these past ten years. Daily I negotiate the worlds of online and print trying to figure out what to do. It’s day by day, no silver bullet exists, there is no panacea. We can only see what is in front of the headlights, everything else is shrouded in darkness. We may not know what to do, but we always have Penthouse to use as a case-study and example of what not to do.

Lastly, Guccione must be recognized for two contributions to writing and cinema, while they may not be crucial, are without question, memorable. Their degree of merit, well, that’s for you to decide.


Penthouse Forum. You don’t have to have read one to know the reference. Supposedly written by readers, these were true life sex stories. But they were actually the world of porn-utopia, where all problems and concerns are solved by feeling and giving into amoral lust. Maybe it was harmless sexual fantasy, but the real fantasy was the porn-utopia world, where sexual desire and fulfillment of that desire are the only things that matter. Sex never has consequences in porn-utopia. At its height, not only was Penthouse Forum—and its similar section—Penthouse Letters—major selling points of the magazine, the concept was spun off into additional monthly magazines, just with the stories. He was a brilliant publisher in his day, Guccione.

In the real world, a teenager is bitten by a radioactive spider, you expect illness and even death to result. But in the pulp world, you get super powers, save the world and fight for the good of mankind.

Now, in the real world, if the night time janitor is caught masturbating by a young beautiful woman, that woman would likely call law enforcement or at least the man’s employer or supervisor. She would probably scream and run away. In the world of Penthouse Forum, however, that woman is so overcome with passion that she invites her best friend to have a threesome with the janitor.

Unabashedly ludicrous and relentlessly consistent—climax by third graph—Penthouse Forum was always intensely readable magazine writing. Don Diello in White Noise has a funny scene with a couple reading these stories as a turn-on. Penthouse, although truncated, is still being published, and so are Penthouse Forum letters. The magazine now eschews hard core porn photo shoots, but Penthouse Forum remains. You have to admire the ability to produce and edit this work—hack prose takes talent too—even when the writing itself maybe less than admirable.

Who knew that a volcano could be used as a metaphor so often and in so many ways?

By the 70s and 80s, the great mystery and science fiction pulps had ceased publication, even the salty, spicy and often sleazy reality magazines like True Detective were gone. The only magazine pulp writing left was the sex stories in Penthouse, and Guccione was the best at it. In the “erotica” sections of major book stores like Barnes & Noble, collections of Penthouse Forum are to be found. I bet that, just as Black Mask stories are now heralded as works of literature by academics, the value of these examples of pulp writing will soon be recognized. I am positive more than one PHD thesis is out there waiting publication. Best pulp writing of the 1970s and 1980s—that would be Penthouse Forum!

Then there’s Caligula, the greatest movie ever made. Just kidding! I happened to love ancient films, from sword and sandal epics of ancient Rome to bible Stories. Yes, they are among the cheesiest films, but they are always entertaining. Sex Films, even the best of the genre like Last Tango in Paris and 9 ½ Weeks, are always cheesy, at least in spots.

When it comes to cheesy films, Caligula is Wisconsin. We’re talking humungous formage.

Cheese doesn’t mean it’s bad—there is greatness in spots and moments that actually feel true to what Ancient Rome might have been like. Malcolm McDowell has some great moments, but still. Cheese! Curds & Way. Picture the Grand Canyon filled with Velveeta! A three DVD box set, with great liner notes was released a few years ago, with the uncut, the uncut, commentaries, lost scenes, making of documentaries. It’s great, but I have to admit, it’s a guilty pleasure. Not because of the graphic sex scenes, because of the cheese.

For more on this film, visit this fun website: http://www.caligulathemovie.com/

This film was initially released as an unrated special showing for adults only. Theaters across the country would show it, charged extra, it was hip for a weeks. You had to check it out. I went to see it with my girlfriend and another couple. They weren’t a couple really, the guy was still in the closet and the gal just a friend. He told her it was a comedy. I was into Roman history, the 12 Caesars was a favorite book. My buddy’s friend was freaked out. My girlfriend and I had a great night… after the film.

It was a wild, raucous sold out crowd. I’ll never forget the booing when two men kissed. Besides the sex stuff, it is a violent and gory film. At one point, they tie a string around a man’s penis, pour gallons of wine down his throat until he dies, rip open his stomach with a sword so the wine can gush out, then a woman urinates on his corpse. But two men kissing, the horror!

Here’s a short version of the making of this film. Guccione had invested in films, like Chinatown, and was eager to do a well done, respectable porn movie Deep Throat made a ton of dough and indicated there might be an audience for this sort of thing. He got Gore Vidal, who wrote for Penthouse, to do a screen play. Vidal of course wrote the great novel, Julian about the Roman Emperor who tried to revive paganism after Christianity took over. Guccione solicited the work of Italian Director, Tinto Brass, a poor man’s Fellinni, known for his “pink” films.

According to legend, Guccione, a photographer before being a publisher, felt that the Brass footage wasn’t sufficiently sexual enough, and using his Penthouse Pets and extras, filmed hard core, pornographic scenes that were then spliced into the films. This may sound crazy now, and it was crazy then, just not as crazy. Remember, Deep Throat. Everyone went to see that, mainstream folks. A cultural moment appeared that glimmered with the hope, or so Guccione apparently thought, that hard core pornography would be accepted as art.

Indeed, the scenes are wonderfully filmed; I mean they are prurient and pornographic and all that means and if you are offended by such things, don’t see the film. If you despise porn, this will not make you like it. That said though, in terms of film aesthetic, explicit, actual sex has never been filmed this well; no other example is even close. X rated porn however, no matter how well done, doesn’t diminish the cheese factor of Caligula one iota. It only adds Ricotta and Brie to the Cheddar.

You have to admire a guy so devoted to his prurience that he would spend millions to make this happen. He also broke Italian law. Apparently, it is illegal in Italy to edit a Director’s work wihtout permission; the DVD has the original film with out the porn. The Brass is not as good as the original. Guccione had a vision, no question about that. He made a big budget Porno. The film lost money and has been trailed by scandal ever since its release. Pets sued Gioccione. Peter O’Toole claimed he was drunk during his scenes and didn’t remember them—he staggers through the film, a lecherous, syphilitic ham chewing the scenery. There are shots of him stunned, gawking at the crowds of nude men and women on the sets, which were enormous and stunning. McDowell, riding high after Clockwork Orange, killed his career. He went on to murder Captain Kirk and be the voice of Metallo, the Superman foe with a kryptonite heart, in the Bruce Timm animated DC Universe. Mirren is finally getting new roles after being relegated to British television work. She has sometimes said that the threesome in the film with her, as Mrs. Caligula, Caligula and Caligula’s sister, got very close to being real. Vidal sued to have his name removed—there was a novelazation of the film, entitled Gore Vidal’s Caligula. At least he got out of the screenwriting business and went on to write his greatest work, Burr, Lincoln and 1876.

Needless to say, porn may have proliferated, but it stayed out of major film houses. Caligula is a train wreck of a film; one of the best sword and sandal genre, but still a train wreck. Yet, it has aged well and grows increasingly watchable with every viewing. One of the most unique films ever made, a singular cinematic experience.

I’m not sure I’ll miss Mr. Guiccione. It’s odd to feel admiration without one drop of esteem. Nonetheless, he deserves his due. His era ended long ago, he finally caught up with that demise.