Book Review: Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star

Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star sounds like the kind of book you would read with one hand in your lap. But this is not the case - for better or worse, depending on your expectations. It is the autobiography of Rich Merritt, better known in xxx-rated circles as Danny Orlis. Rich initially ended up in the news as the anonymous source for a New York Times cover article that made big waves when it was published in 1998. It illustrated the difficulties of being a gay marine with the American navy, forced to live a double life due to their 'don't ask, don't tell' policy.
His real identity wasn't too hard to figure out for people who knew him personally and when The Advocate discovered that Rich had starred in a couple of porn movies while in the service, they did not hesitate in making it public knowledge, causing another scandal.
The book starts at this point in time and then regresses to Rich's childhood, suffering under a highly religious regime at the Bob Jones University. Rich has plenty of material to pick from: a masturbation virgin until his twenties, in denial about being gay until his mid-twenties, his double life with the marines, ill-advised outings into the worlds of stripping and porn, clinical depression, suicide attempts and an addiction to pills and booze.
While there are too many uninteresting details in the book, and a fair amount of pages should have been culled, his story is fascinating even if the style in which it is written won't blow you away. Rich shows himself to be impulsive and eager to please, sometimes arrogant but at other times charmingly open, like when he admits to having had a premature ejaculation problem. By the end of the book he seems to think he now has his life well and truly back on the rails, but as a reader you are left wondering if he could not go off-track again in the future. For the moment things are going well, however: in January he published his first novel: Code of Conduct. Making use of his insider knowledge, he tells the love story of two marines circa 1993, when Clinton was promising to abolish the army's 'shush' policy on gays. It looks to be an interesting and historically accurate read.

Book Review: A Star is Porn

If you get bored in the summer and regular hobbies like reading, crochet, animal husbandry and churning butter fail to provide adequate relief, why not round up a group of people to make your very own porn movie?

As Victoria Coren and Charlie Skelton discovered - it can be quite an adventure. Paired up to review porn videos for the periodical The Erotic Review, they decided they could do better and would make the best porn movie EVER!! One with a real plot and everything: ‘telling a story to people who just want to watch sex, and are sitting through the narrative bits under duress, is truly ambitious.’ Ultimately this lead to The Naughty Twins, a celluloid gem about, well, twins who go on a quest to find a mystical artifact and discover the world – especially its sexy parts – as they go. Victoria and Charlie went on a parallel journey of naughty exploration making the movie, being pretty much wide-eyed and naive at the beginning. What will their families think? Especially Charlie’s dad, the vicar?

To distance themselves from friends and family they decide to shoot in Amsterdam, even though they feared that they ‘might get stabbed and thrown in a moonlit canal’. After agreeing on what’s ‘hot’ and what’s ‘not’ (‘boredom’ and ‘death’ are both ‘not’) they decide to write the script in Las Vegas, because “Porn needs to be written in a porny place.” They talk to some veterans from The Biz for advice on their project and come face to face with the realities of the large-scale porn industry – which has a habit of chewing people up and spitting them out.

Then there’s assembling a crew and cast, finding locations, and all the technical hoopla; no mean feat for two directors who don’t know the difference between a ‘boom’ and a ‘gaffer’. They mingle with a variety of oddball characters as they enter a new and morally ambiguous realm. To add to the confusion, Vicky has a dalliance with the bi-sexual, strongly religious, Yugoslavian rent-boy who stars in their movie.

Once More with Feeling is an open, sweet confessional that oozes charm and is drenched in very British irony. Light and entertaining, it makes for perfect summertime reading while containing plenty of funnysophical musings on the topics of morality and sex. Does porn have to be soulless and exploitative?

By the way, the word ‘porn’ only appears on the cover in small letters so you can read it in a train, on the beach, or on a plane without blushing. To read it without laughing out loud is more of a challenge.

Once More with Feeling: How We Tried to Make the Greatest Porn Film Ever - Victoria Coren, Charlie Skelton