THE GOLDEN AGE OF EROTIC CINEMA: 1959-1972 by Wiilliam Rotsler

Author:Wiilliam Rotsler [Rotsler, Wiilliam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-05-19T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13: Vincent Osbourn, the Distributor

"Only fantasy has eternal youth. What happened nowhere and never can never age."

—Schiller

* * * *

The name has been changed to protect the guilty. Vincent Osbourn has a string of porno houses, big and small, from Seattle to San Diego, plus one lonely "gay" house in New York. He operates in a "grand style" and it has been said by his detractors that he imagines himself a sort of hard-core mogul thinking big, ordering vast, sweeping reorganizations and changes of policy on trivial grounds. Those who dislike him are legion, yet many grudgingly admit his "genius" in promoting his films and in various censorship breakthroughs.

There are few, if any, king-makers in the porno field —so far. If the development of pornography follows the historic development of regular motion pictures—and so far it has—there will be big studio complexes, a star system and "movie moguls." In the field of simulated films there are reasonably authentic "biggies," such as Harry Novak, Bob Cressy, Dave Friedman, and Dan Sonney.

In the hard-core field most of the biggies are filmmakers, rather than studio heads or "executive producers," who finance but do not make the films. Just about the only one who qualifies under those terms is Vincent Osbourn.

The interviews were conducted over a two month period in telephone-equipped Cadillacs, screening rooms, hallways, offices, and once in a parking lot at an airport.

* * * *

W.R.: You have, perhaps, the biggest string of sex theaters in the country. Are you attempting to become the Loew's of sex?

V.O.: If you don't grow, you die. But I don't think of them as sex theaters. Next week I could just as easily be showing The Sound of Music or westerns. I go with the market demand. I've already converted several theaters to low-cost-ticket houses showing double bills of regular films. But only in places where I already have a sex house.

W.R.: You think the sex films will continue to be popular?

V.O.: Oh, yes, definitely, as long as they are good. It is the shit that drives people away. They see a bad one and it kills it for them coming again. That's why I went into production myself.

W.R.: You have your own production staff?

V.O.: It was the only way I could get what I wanted. I've been in the theater business for years and I think I know what the public wants—at least I hope so. The trouble with so many of these so-called filmmakers is that they don't know the market. They come in here with their epics and haven't the faintest idea of the market at all. They have ego-trips and they're always too expensive. They think they have a Gone with the Wind and they demand this and demand that.

So to get around that I started my own production. I converted a theater that was in a bad location into a studio and hired people to make the sort of films I think we need.

W.R.: Do you supply the ideas?

V.O.: Yes. The basic idea.

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