BEFORE: We made it through this terrible thunderstorm yesterday, maybe you've seen footage about parts of NYC being underwater, which is true, and NOT A.I. This just happens a couple times a year now, especially if rain comes down too fast for too long, or nobody makes sure that all the drains in the city are free of debris. We had a little bit of water in our basement, not as much as some other people who got totally flooded. When there's a big storm now, we go into panic mode where she clears the drain outside in the backyard while I stand by in the basement with a mop. Look, I've seen worse - we've got the dehumidifier going today so we should be all right, just over time we're ruining a few bookshelves and possibly creating a bad mold situation.
Anyway, Sandra Bernhard carries over from "Madonna: Goddess of Pop". I'm still in the section of the Doc Block that was added at the last minute to reach the fifty-film total, it will be a couple more days before I return to the original plan. As for a U.S. state to profile today in the "Get to Know a State" segment, this one's a real head-scratcher, I mean Robin Byrd is a New Yorker, through and through, it's too bad she wasn't born somewhere else and came here. I've already profiled New York, and Sandra Bernhard is, like Madonna, from Michigan, so that's out too. I could just choose Delaware, which is first on the list of states that are NOT lined up with any film, but that feels like punting. There's a part of this film that shows Byrd's battle for free speech, and her foes are Newt Gingrich and Jerry Falwell - Gingrich is from Georgia, which I already covered, but Falwell is from Virginia, so there it is. It's a small, tenuous link but better that then no link at all. So here's the skinny on VIRGINIA:
Date admitted to the U.S.: June 25, 1788 (the 10th state, which seems high - I mean, sure it's one of the original 13, but you'd think "The Mother of Presidents" would have jumped right on board.
Nickname: Old Dominion, Mother of Presidents
Prevalent language: Appalachian, if that's a thing. And politics.
State Motto: "Sic semper tyrannis", which means that tyrants always fall, but since this is also what John Wilkes Booth shouted out when he shot Lincoln, it's not really a good look. Jerry Falwell was born in Lynchburg, that name's not really a good look either.
State Flower: American dogwood
State Bat: Virginia big-eared bat
State Bat: Virginia big-eared bat
State Pony: Chincoteague pony
State Snake: Eastern garter snake
State Dog: American foxhound
State Insect: Tiger Swallowtail butterfly
State Beverage: Milk. Really? Not whiskey or cheerwine?
Notable Sports Teams: Surprisingly, no major league teams in any sport. I mean, the Washington DC teams are like right there, but nobody's going to claim Virginia? They've got college teams like Virginia tech and VCU, but that's small consolation. Get your head in the game, Virginia.
Fun Fact: Virginia has the mostest history, like if you go back to Jamestown and Roanoke there's stuff that even pre-dates the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock. American Revolution, Civil War, that state was front and center for a lot of it. It might be named after Queen Elizabeth I, the "Virgin Queen", and yeah, I'd like to see the paperwork on that. If you're a fan of "Hamilton" then you know some of the big issues in Virginia becoming a state - slave labor, and the three-fifths compromise, and there's just no way that slavery issue isn't going to come back and bite you in the ass someday. The big ad campaign in the 1990's to promote tourism was "Virginia Is for Lovers", but they don't say lovers of what - as seen in tonight's film, the place was a hotbed of conservatism for a very long time, so the slogan probably should have been "Virginia Is for Lovers, but Only If We Approve of Who You Love and How You Love Them". The whole state just seems a little too Evangelical, just saying.
Yes, I've been to Virginia - as a kid there was a family trip there and we went to two theme parks, Busch Gardens and King's Dominion. I don't remember much except for eating German food at the European-themed Busch Gardens. My first wife wanted to drive down there and see the famous ponies in Chincoteague, but the most exciting time to do that is when they make them swim across the river from the island they're raised on, so of course we were there off-season, and they were all just standing around and eating grass. Lately it's just been a drive-through state on the way to North Carolina, so I know where all the best rest stops and Waffle Houses are. So my record is still great, 16 states visited out of 19.
THE PLOT: A cable TV trailblazer and sex-positive advocate who inadvertently became an AIDS-era hero and free speech defender looks back on her groundbreaking career spanning 600 episodes and decades of cultural impact.
AFTER: It's only been about six weeks since the Tribeca Film Festival, and there was a screening of this film during that event, and I did work the event that day. So this film was a big deal, Robin Byrd was there, producer Sarah Jessica Parker was there, meanwhile on the same day we had Daft Punk appearing and Laurie Anderson and that documentary about Burning Man, so yeah, a lot going on. The Burning Man doc has been turned into an HBO mini-series, so I've labelled it as ineligible for the Doc Block, I wouldn't have been able to link to it anyway. But I'll take pride in the fact that we got the whole theater filled for "Bang My Box", no incidents, everything went smoothly, people were just there to have a good time and celebrate sex-positive programming. And it was Pride Month, so a great tie-in there.
To understand tonight's film we have to go back to a different time - New York City in the late 1970's. Cable TV was just getting started, and it was important in NYC to get it, because the tall buildings tended to interfere with the signal to TV antennas, so if you lived in certain buildings you couldn't really enjoy TV shows until they put the cable wires underground. Also there was this thing called the sexual revolution happening, and that meant if you were in the mood you might head to Times Square to see a porno movie with other people, or in a booth by yourself if you weren't a people person, but who knows, you might meet someone there who also likes dirty movies or seeing naked people and you might strike up a connection. There were gay bars and straight bars and gay strip clubs and straight strip clubs, you just kind of had to state your preference and that would determine where to go, Show World or Show Palace. Giuliani cleaned up this whole district in the late 1990's so Disney could come in, so it went from being an indie porn cesspool to a large corporate cesspool, but one that was more family-friendly.
At the same time people who didn't want to go out or didn't feel safe going out wondered why they just couldn't see the nekkid people at home on TV. Eventually there were video rental stores, but before that there was public access cable stations, and then Channel J. Public access meant that anyone who applied could get a 30-minute TV show to talk about wine or music or gay stuff, or anything really, and Channel J was similarly rented out to people who wanted to produce adult-themed shows, and I'm sure there were plenty who started out with ambition, but really only two stuck with it for the long haul, Al Goldstein and Robin Byrd. Robin kind of fell backwards into it, she was hosting "Hot Legs" for a producer named Bobby Hollander, and they would show a 15-minute porno and then take phone calls from the viewing public for another 15. They might discuss the movie, they might talk about something else, they might be completely insane, but hey, that's NYC. When Hollander couldn't make his payments, Robin stepped up to produce her own show, the Robin Byrd Show.
Hmm, taking a producing job nobody else wanted, becoming the conduit for up-and-coming young stars to be on TV, dealing with all the production issues and working without a script or a net, she was kind of like the Lorne Michaels of porn, right? And she hosted that show for a long time, to the point where she kind of maybe got good at it. But the world is a giant fish-tank and so eventually the tank needs to be cleaned or the fish die off or nobody's doing fish-tank maintenance, so eventually the show had to end, but 600 episodes was a great run, now Robin faces the ongoing problem over what to do with the shelves full of video-tapes in her apartment, like they're all 3/4" tapes, which nobody even uses any more, she's literally a video-tape person in a digital world, and yeah, some of us are still out there.
This led to appearances in some porno films, most notably "Debbie Does Dallas", because she was hanging around in that world, sleeping with porno stars on the side, and figured, why not just do that but ALSO get paid for it? Makes sense. Keep the day job, make a few films on the side, try to put some money away, but also, don't forget to have a good time along the way. Robin married Shelby Byrd in 1983, but all along he seemed pretty OK with watching his wife enjoy the company of other people, men and women. Some people just don't get jealous, you know? Like if you marry a famous person and they're any kind of stage or screen actor, it's going to happen, you might need to watch them kissing another person or being in bed with another person and if you're not OK with that, there are going to be issues. Some relationships just seem to have evolved past that, or people are able to make some separation between work sex and leisure sex, maybe after a while it just becomes one big muddle, I don't know.
Robin made deals years ago to have a phone chat line, after her show became popular they still had the free call-in line, but she linked up with companies that gave her a 970 number, one that charged people $4.99 a minute to chat with random girls about sex stuff. Look, I don't even want to know, but if that's a legal way to make money, sure, go for it. People were horny, and nobody had invented the internet yet, and you want people to have an outlet for their pent-up desires, as long as nobody's getting hurt. Thankfully she made some money that way, and at some point she was able to buy a beach house on Fire Island, which is a community off the south shore of Long Island that is extremely gay-friendly, and Robin found her people there. Robin had come out a long time ago, as someone who liked both men and women and also had access to a wide variety of both of them.
But the time came when she had to do something with the tapes, and that led her to the possibility of archiving her collection. This also makes perfect sense, like why are you still paying the monthly fee for TWO storage spaces when you can have someone set up an archive for you at a college or institution, they will do that in the interest of education and cultural preservation, and you get the knowledge that your life's work will live on beyond your life. Also you'll get some space back in your apartment for the first time in years. For that matter, why does Robin still have the apartment when she's got an entire HOUSE out on Fire Island? Why not just live in the house full-time, even when it's not beach season, and then you're not paying rent any more, basically throwing your money away and making some landlord rich? The apartment might be rent-controlled, sure, but still. I get it, she likes taking walks in Central Park, and being able to go to Katz's Deli or Serendipity's whenever she wants, but once you hit 70, it's just not worth it. I say archive the tapes, clear out the storage spaces, make the move to the beach house and just try to be happy with whatever time is left.
And take care of Shelly, who, as people at the screening constantly reminded me, has dementia. Relax, I just told him where the men's room is, he'll be fine as long as he remembers the way back to the theater from there. Oh, right, he has dementia. OK, I'll go escort him back, he won't get lost on my watch. Poor guy, he's been married to a celebrity sex activist for 40 years, and they were even in a thrupple for a few years, and now I wonder if he remembers any of that.
By all means, come for the nekkid people, but stick around for the free speech arguments and lawsuits that were filed to keep New York weird and sex-positive. I sure don't want to live in a world where the government is telling me what I can and can't watch on the internet or cable TV, it's my right as a person to watch porn, whether it's on VHS or DVD or internet or streaming. Really with every technical innovation that's come along, porn has gotten better and better - and now there's AI porn, so really, there are no limits on what you can see. Just keep it to yourself and don't use it to hurt anyone else, OK?
Directed by Jyllian Gunther & Stephanie Schwam
Also starring Robin Byrd, Shelby Byrd, Joe Bruno, Lou Cass, Ceyenne Doroshow, Kirsten Fleming, Marjorie Heins, Sean McKenna, Bob Morris, Michael Musto, Daylon Orr, Nadine Strossen,
with archive footage of Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Big Miracle"), David Burrington, Johnny Carson (last seen in "Lorne"), James Chladek, Vladimir Correa, Coca Crystal, Phil Donahue (last seen in "Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print"), Jerry Falwell (ditto), Samantha Fox, Newt Gingrich (last seen in "Join or Die"), Al Goldstein, James Goodale, Bobby Hollander, Heather Hunter, Ron Jeremy (last seen in "I Am Sam Kinison"), Porsche Lynn, Lou Maletta, Barry Manilow (last seen in "Love to Love You, Donna Summer"), Lili Marlene, Ed Meese, Cheri Oteri (also last seen in "Lorne"), Angie Prindle, Dan Rather (also last seen in "Big Miracle"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Being Eddie"), Harry Reems, Joan Rivers (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Candida Royalle, Ken Sander, Tree Sequoia, Annie Sprinkle (also last seen in "Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print"), Betsy Superfon
RATING: 5 out of 10 protest signs
