TALENT has a reputation as being the scorchedearth document that got Jerry Butler ostracized from the adult film industry, But if his behavior on set is anything like the way he comes across in this book and Butler frequently suggests it is, the XXX biz had surely grown weary of him long before this manuscript saw print.
Recalling his life and career Butler comes off alternately whiny, arrogant, maudlin, judgmental, pretentious, hypocritical, and when discussing his early sexual experimentation more than a little gross.
When discussing the various performers and directors he's worked with, Butler at best can only muster backhanded compliments and details of how his presence has enriched their lives.
It grows tiresome very quickly, Not nearly as tiresome as his incessant proclamations of his love for thennewlywed spouse, the former child star Lisa Loring yet despite passage after passage of schmaltz poured over their relationship, the memoir ends with Butler going off in secret to make the porn film RAW TALENT III a pretty good skin flick, actually, and along with RW I and II a better look at Butler's career than this book.
Last year paperback copies of thePrometheus edition were selling on the collectors' market for, A few weeks ago I nabbed a nicecondition hardcover for a fraction of the price boy am I glad, because if I'd shelled out like I'd originally planned I'd have been PISSED.
This book bummed me out,
Me and porn, we have a history, For what its worth, its a pretty good history,
I just wrote about,fucking words on it and accidentally deleted it when trying to copy it to notepad, so maybe Ill get to it later.
At the core, Ill just say that porn was always circulating, being discussed, being watched behind the scenes in my area,s porn is a part of my adolescence, which means I am now nostalgic fors porn like I am about Super Mario Bros,
At the same time porn isnt all it is cracked up to be, and I already knew that before reading this book, but holy shit take anything and everything negative about pornincluding how it can impact your expectations about people, sex, love, especially when you start watching it when really youngturn it up to, and therein you will have Jerry Butler.
The short of it is, this guys life was tragic as fuck, He was pretty harsh on his female coin here, and I feel terrible for his wife at the time who had to listen to him hash out all this shit but also wanted to help him sort through it.
They ended up getting divorced after he published this book, He ended up being almost completely blacklisted from porn,
The industry fucked his outlook on women, sex, love, and trust, He dished on some big secrets people trusted him to keep, He did some slimy shit and doesnt seem apologetic about any of it unless it impacts his wife or her kids, Fuck everyone else, seems to be his predisposition, One of the bestlooking guys in porn to this day, and ugly on the inside, But I feel bad for him, Because there are these glimpses of self awareness throughout the book, He realizes how porn fucked his ability to love and commit up, And he really seemed like he wanted to, But you can see that in the end he couldnt make it out, He went back to porn when he could, and eventually just disappeared into relative obscurity, This is a pretty runofthemill kiss and tell, but the tone is incredibly selfdeprecating, This guy was well aware of both his talents and his considerable flaws, and he is honest about his experiences and his thoughts on other "performers, "
I learned how porn deal with yeast infections, Pretty decent read, if for nothing other than the "tell all" section where he spills the beans about various actresses, Gets a little hokey here and there, but the humor offsets it, I think, Worth a look. This is the DOSTOYEVSKY of porno culture literature, A masterwork! As shloch, sleazy, shit, entertaining, sad, emotional, and TOTALLY MENTAL as you would expect from a porno actor,
Take no substitutes! This is an "as told to" biography of late's/s porn star Jerry Butler, I think this was put out in the late's and by that time Butler was more or less washed up as a porn star, He gets started in this by telling us his real name isn't Jerry Butler, it's Paul Seiderman, Also the very Aryan looking Butler is a Jew whose Grandfathers half Brother was Leon Trotsky, He then talks about his childhood which mainly consisted of youth league hockey and dry humping inanimate objects,
His adult life begins with him trying to make it as an actor and being sexually harrassed by homosexuals who had the power to get him parts.
He soon thereafter moves into doing porn, He really critiques the female porn he worked with in a nasty way and he names names, A few examples are he says performing oral sex on one was like cleaning out a dirty birdcage with your tongue, another smells like a fishtail, one looks like Bozo the Clown, etc.
There were few he didn't have something bad to say about, I think this book was Butlers way of giving the middle finger to everybody he had issues with in the porn industry, Overall this isn't that entertaining or interesting a book and Butler comes off as a shallow bitter person to me,./
This is one of those books that have always heard about, so it was nice to finally read it, It caused a huge controversy when it was released, which seemed strange to me since what could be said about the porn industry that could be so shocking Ends up that this is one of the most batshit bonkers autobiography's you will read.
He sets up the book talking about his life preporn, and how he got into the industry, Then, in what has to be one of the most epic lapses of good judgement ever laid to page, proceeds to spend I'm guessing at least half the book criticizing all the cohe worked with in the most brutal way.
"Working with XXXX was always a chore since her pussy had the worst smell in the industry", that kind of brutal way, All in the name of being truthful and honest,
This version of the book has an updated last chapter in which Butler is shocked to find that he's been blacklisted by the industry after the first pressing of the book.
It's staggering in it's egomania, but oddly touching since Butler is obviously an open wound of oversensitivity,
Due to it's madness, this might be the best porn bio ever committed to page, I had wanted to read this book for years but now that I have I come away from it feeling grim and depressed, I was saddened by how Jerry was so overtly sexualized from age three, He never mention any kind of sexual abuse as a child but I believe that it either must have been a case of that or some sort of hormone imbalance because thats distinctly abnormal.
Jerry also paints an incredibly sleazy, distressing picture of almost the entire porn industry, I always knew it could never match up to the glossy image the industry portrays but did not know it was that bad, I hope things have improved somewhat for the sakes of all those involved in it today, Even though he had negative things to say about many of his costars, Jerry comes off as a sincere ,open guy constantly struggling with a lot of demons that you can't help liking in some way.
I appreciated his mostly compassionate observations on Shauna Grant and her suicide, I'm sad that his addiction to sex and the seeming conviction that he could do nothing else but porn ultimately cost him his much wanted marriage to the beautiful Lisa Lorning.
I have read that he left the industry for good in the early's so I hope he has found some peace in his life,s porn and pornmake for interesting subject matter, so the book gets points automatically for that, Lets face it, there arent a lot of old school porn star biographies out there,
This book is rarely sexy: Butler talks frequently about Drugs in the industry, Aids, and porn starlet hygiene or lack thereof, He seems to be very open and honest, but really comes off as an obnoxious jerkwad, Much like fellows star Ron Jeremy, Butlers sense of humor is on the rough and gross side, Just like ol Ron, I dont get much sense of charisma from this dudejust a sense of weird, jokey sadness, When this book came out in the earlys, I remember seeing Jerry Butler on Geraldo or Sally Jessie or something like that, along with his child actor wife Lisa she played Wednesday Adams on The Adams Family.
On that appearance he seemed creepy and unfunny despite his sense of humor one comment I remember from back then was him saying that a porn birthday cake said “Herpie Birthday” instead of “Happy Birthday” ha ha ha, way more sick than funny.
Much of the book is sort of a love letter to Lisa, I heard she divorced him a year or two after he wrote the book, Im glad for her.
One thing you have to admire is his honesty, A lot of what he wrote got him blackballed in porno when he tried to make a mids comeback, Now I understand that he is a bus driver in New York these days, Good riddance.
Boring. I found myself skimming the first/and jumping to everyth or so page after that until the end, There are many other more interesting porn bios out there, Leave this one on the shelf Okay, so I was a student in Ames at ISU and would regularly go to the public library, And when I went back for a visit in, I did what I usually did before the internet, checked the reference sections, the biography sections, and the entertainment sections to see what was new.
This was in the biography section, Intrigued I sat down and read it, He was married to Wednesday Addams portrayer Lisa Loring, Had been on Geraldo a lot, Seemed like a trainwreck. Figured it would be an interesting read, Read part of it right there in, Then went back again inand finished the parts I had skimmed over, Long story short, the man's an idiot, who thinks highly of himself, Offered up no real insight into the industry he was apart of, Unbelievable. I went back to the Ames Library inand checked on the book once more for snits and giggles, . . But it was no longer there, Strange. The Ames library used to have a lot of different magazines periodicals like the National Inquirer, TV Guide, Starlog Magazine, stuff you didn't normally find in a library.
I got the impression early on they were catering to a large science fiction crowd But those titles were gone as well The first publication of Raw Talent created an extraordinary flurry of publicity.
Jerry Butler appeared on dozens of talk shows, capturing audiences with his intensity and charm, s of the book lauded Butler's honesty and remarked on the double standard that permits explicit violence on film but not explicit sex, The book sold out
four printings nonetheless, reactions within the adult film industry included heated debate and an unofficial blacklisting of Butler,
The former star of Xrated films and winner of many awards, Jerry Butler wrote the book that many warned would "finish him" in the business that had rewarded him with money and fame.
But it is characteristic of Butler that these warnings didn't prevent him from producing this devastatingly honest appraisal of the adult film trade and of himself, For while Butler is frankly critical of an industry that treats actors and actresses like throwaway props, and allows unprotected sex in the age of AIDS, he reserves his most candid commentary for himself.
Raw Talent tells the story of Butler's erotic voyage from average child to sex star, The epilogue added to this new edition answers the question: Where will Jerry go from here,