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ARTSETC.

No titillation, ‘Jeremy’ blows

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Also by Jed Moore:

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HBO film leaves viewers 'Thinking XXX' (September 28, 2006)
Mosley past prime in mystery release (December 4, 2006)

by Jed Moore

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

What a disappointment.

The title was a tip off to the bloviation: "Ron Jeremy: The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz." One can only hope that given the choices Mr. Jeremy has made, his life has been more interesting than his autobiography reads. It must have been.

Ron "the Hedgehog" Jeremy is the star of more than 1,700 adult films, having performed with some 4,000 partners in a career that begin in the October 1978 issue of "Playgirl." In the late '70s and early '80s, pornographers were arrested under the pandering laws, and screenings were set in select movie houses like the Pussycat Theater in Hollywood.

"Back then, it meant something to be a porn star," Mr. Jeremy says. "Everybody knew your name and you felt like you were part of an extended family."

It was a time when the industry was coming out of the dark. It's material that could make for a very good story.

Yet, Mr. Jeremy's telling of his careening career is skin-deep. The emotional scars inherent to the sex-trade are never undressed. He claims a Norman Rockwell youth, an oversexed libido and a supportive father put him on his path to underground fame.

That's as close as the reader gets to the inner man. It is hard to believe Mr. Jeremy has been untouched by pornography: the stigma, the broken relationships, the drugs and the financial highs and lows. What little emotional outpouring that does exist feels flat, like, well, bad acting. The biography is not a tell-all, but a tell-what-the-agent-wants-told.

The main topic is Jeremy's lifelong pursuit of acting legitimacy through walk-ons — or more appropriately, almost walk-ons — in mainstream films. He sounds like every downtrodden actor who talks loudly and at length to everyone he meets about how he got the part and nailed the scene, but was left on the editing room floor.

Maybe this reviewer is jaded. Perhaps the target audience is the 16-year-old male who never dates. Talk of fluffers or bukkaki or 9 Â

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