Mysterious Wonderland

As August draws to a close, blogland seems to be on hiatus, leaving us with re-runs. But repeats can be rewarding. For instance, LA journalist Rodger Jacobs posts a 1999 article about his experiences writing a documentary about porn legend John Holmes. How could you not love an essay that begins with:

"A soul-siphoning conveyer belt leading to nowhere" is how I described the adult film industry in a an essay written only a few days before accepting the job as writer and principal interviewer for Wadd. The ambitious documentary project, nearly two years in the making, was funded entirely by Russ Hampshire’s porno monolith VCA Pictures and helmed by Captain Ahab incarnate Cass Paley, a cheerfully demented commander whose monomania would become the gargantuan task of interviewing every person on the face of the earth who ever encountered blue screen icon John C. Holmes in the flesh.

Jacobs includes an encounter with Paul Thomas Anderson in which he plans to confront the director about the fact that Boogie Nights features scenes and dialogue appropriated from Julia St Vincent's documentary about John Holmes, called Exhausted.