- Because several of my one-day wonders, usually of the S&M variety, played at the Avon Theater there is a myth that I made them for the Avon people. This is not true. I made them for the boys downtown, who were the porno unit for the [Carlo Gambino] crime family. They had an arrangement with the Avon owner, a guy named Murray something, to play them at the Avon. I never worked directly for the Avon people, and didn't really know them.
- [on why so many of his films had S&M themes] The [Carlo Gambino] boys had an ongoing deal with Murray who owned the Avon theater. Murray would call them with some specific needs, and I would include them in a picture. I was not into S&M on any level. I had a knack for working with rigs, and could figure out how to mechanically photograph several shots that were completely faked, and edit them in such a way that when the scene played back it was difficult to sit through, unless you were into that kind of thing. If you saw how it was done, it would seem very mechanical, maybe even comical, but the finished product would make you squirm. It was actually a satisfying process.
- [on how his most notorious film, Water Power (1977), came about] In the fall of 1976 I got a call from Sid Levine, an elderly, gentle, grandfather type, who was the front man for the porno unit of the [Carlo Gambino] crime family. As I sat across Sid's desk he says, "I'm ashamed to have to say this, but I need an enema picture". He had been given an audio cassette called "The Enema Bandit", and some articles about a guy who was convicted of going on a cleansing spree at the University of Illinois at Urbana, and forcibly giving enemas to coeds. I had recently seen Taxi Driver (1976), and thought that Jamie [Jamie Gillis] would make a great Travis Bickle, but on foot rather than driving a cab, and bent on a quest to cleanse evil bitches in order to save their souls.
Then a strange thing happened. Sid was ashamed of his involvement in this, the goombahs were too macho to participate, and DB, their boss, didn't want to see it. "Just make the thing", I was told. At this point I realized that my position was unique. I could make this ridiculous enema movie without any interference from any of the people who were paying for it. "Just make the thing", they said, so that's exactly what I did. I wrote what I thought was an absurd story, hired my favorite actors--Jamie, Marlene [Marlene Willoughby], Rob Everett [Eric Edwards], Al Levitsky [Roger Caine], C.J. Laing, etc., and set about making a movie about a tortured soul who was so demented that he truly believed that his quest to cleanse evil bitches of their vile humors was the answer to all of his problems.
Without adult supervision, I turned the movie into a parody of itself. Of course there was always the chance that the boys would catch on to what I was doing and I would sleep with the fishes, but I didn't think so. The picture played to empty porno houses. The theater owners were afraid of it, and the audiences didn't know what to make of it. So on the shelf it went, and after a few years someone came up with the idea of distributing [it] in Europe. Bingo . . . cult smash. I guess the Germans and the Dutch are a bit kinkier than their American cousins. The picture opened in Germany under the title "Schpritz".
[To] this day I think it's the funniest movie I ever made.
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