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American Gangbang: A Love Story
A thoughtful, hilarious, and compulsively readable memoir by an Ivy League graduate-turned-pornographer who sets out to bring sophistication and equality to sexual cinema—only to find that he can’t change porn, but porn can certainly change him.American Gangbang heralds the arrival of a profound and gifted new voice in narrative nonfiction. In 1999, after four years of studying at Brown University, Sam Benjamin heads to California in a twenty-year-old Volvo, dead set on turning himself into an artist, despite his complete lack of talent. There, stoned, he has an epiphany—he will make progressive porn. And so begins his turbulent journey... In whip-smart, lyrical prose, Benjamin traces his three-year immersion into the world of Hollywood’s bleak, screen glow–lit the southern California sex industry. His rapid ascent from the dingy storefront rental of a starving artist to the multimillion-dollar Malibu villa of a full-fledged porn producer confronts him with the uncomfortably alluring realities of America's strangest gun-toting actors, high on terrible, drug-induced potency; giggling actresses battling internal demons in wobbly heels and pink fishnets; the insatiable consumer demands to sink ever lower, more exploitative, nastier. The result is the titillating, dramatic chronicle of a young man who invites the deepest, most troubling parts of himself to rise to the surface in order to get a good look at them—only to find that what he sees makes his world seem suddenly very small. A provocative, universal coming-of-age story, American Gangbang explores with unflinching honesty the darkly rich junction of sex and self-discovery.
322 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 18, 2011
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368 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
May 3, 2012
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
So before anything else, let me get a big disclosure out of the way: that about a decade ago, I did some writing and design work for the website JewishCheerleaders.com, online home of the now defunct alt-porn production company once owned by Sam Benjamin, although let me make it clear that I've had no contact with him since those days; and that's important when it comes to this review, because his hilarious, filthy and touching new memoir on the subject, American Gangbang: A Love Story, is not really about Jewish Cheerleaders per se (although bizarre stories about its formation make up the bulk of the book's first third), but rather how this quest to make smart alt-porn eventually led him to working full-time in the legitimate mainstream porn industry, waking up one day to realize that he was now living in one of the bedrooms of a Malibu mansion that served as a 24-hour drug-filled shooting location for the production company he was now making tens of thousands of dollars a month from, his personal life by definition now becoming complexly intertwined with the abusive interracial group-sex scenes he was now in charge of organizing and shooting on literally a daily basis.
And indeed, in a larger sense what this book is really about is the grand tragedy of the entire "alt-porn" industry of the early 2000s in general, and the dispiriting lesson that nearly all of us who were involved with it back then eventually learned -- that no matter how noble your intentions, no matter how refined your pedigree (Benjamin, for example, had studied semiotics at Brown before getting involved in the industry), the combination of drugs and cash and douchebaggery and exploitation and desperation that automatically comes with any instance of sex being exchanged for money is bound to dirty and sully anyone who comes into contact with it, no matter how peripherally they're involved or how little that person thinks they're being affected. And so in Benjamin's case, as he found himself surrounded more and more by the kinds of deeply dysfunctional fringe dwellers who normally populate the trillion-dollar adult industry of southern California, he also found more and more of his hipster postmodern high-mindedness slipping away from him, slowly turning more and more into the kind of person he used to make fun of and with there being an increasingly blurry line between his fantasy life, the outrageous concepts being created for his porn shoots, and the way he dealt with women on just a day-by-day nonsexual basis.
I mean, not that this is a dour book by any means; in fact it's laugh-out-loud funny for nearly its entire length, with Benjamin having the courage to cast himself as the self-deprecatory foil of most of his own anecdotes, whether talking about his disastrous night while young and broke as an unpopular go-go dancer at a gay club, starring in a strap-on reverse-bisexual shoot for revered San Francisco company Good Vibrations simply for the hell of it, or later darker stories of becoming obsessed with ultra-abusive "gonzo" porn and having it bleed into his non-porn love life. And make no mistake, Benjamin puts his college degrees to good use here (he also has an MFA in Critical Studies from the California Institute of the Arts); this is not only one of the best-structured personal memoirs I've ever read, but Benjamin pulls off the neat trick of giving his stories a general appeal precisely by making them so specific, making this not just a naughty tell-all about sometimes some fairly famous people in the industry (although it's that too) but also a bigger and grander examination of an entire sorry little era in Generation X's history, when literally thousands of spoiled, overeducated young intellectuals thought they could change the very essence of exchanging sex for money simply because they were determined to, only to have the entire effort mainly end up biting them in the ass. I'm obviously too personally associated with the proceedings in this case to give anything even close to an "objective" review, which is why American Gangbang is neither receiving a score today nor will be eligible for CCLaP's best-of lists at the end of the year; but it nonetheless comes strongly recommended, one of the best historical documents out there to help future generations understand (for example) how a place like Suicide Girls could go in a single decade from a darling of third-wave feminist hipsters to a nearly universally reviled codeword for misogyny and cruelty. When read in this spirit, I'm confident that most people will find it utterly riveting.
Out of 10: N/A
So before anything else, let me get a big disclosure out of the way: that about a decade ago, I did some writing and design work for the website JewishCheerleaders.com, online home of the now defunct alt-porn production company once owned by Sam Benjamin, although let me make it clear that I've had no contact with him since those days; and that's important when it comes to this review, because his hilarious, filthy and touching new memoir on the subject, American Gangbang: A Love Story, is not really about Jewish Cheerleaders per se (although bizarre stories about its formation make up the bulk of the book's first third), but rather how this quest to make smart alt-porn eventually led him to working full-time in the legitimate mainstream porn industry, waking up one day to realize that he was now living in one of the bedrooms of a Malibu mansion that served as a 24-hour drug-filled shooting location for the production company he was now making tens of thousands of dollars a month from, his personal life by definition now becoming complexly intertwined with the abusive interracial group-sex scenes he was now in charge of organizing and shooting on literally a daily basis.
And indeed, in a larger sense what this book is really about is the grand tragedy of the entire "alt-porn" industry of the early 2000s in general, and the dispiriting lesson that nearly all of us who were involved with it back then eventually learned -- that no matter how noble your intentions, no matter how refined your pedigree (Benjamin, for example, had studied semiotics at Brown before getting involved in the industry), the combination of drugs and cash and douchebaggery and exploitation and desperation that automatically comes with any instance of sex being exchanged for money is bound to dirty and sully anyone who comes into contact with it, no matter how peripherally they're involved or how little that person thinks they're being affected. And so in Benjamin's case, as he found himself surrounded more and more by the kinds of deeply dysfunctional fringe dwellers who normally populate the trillion-dollar adult industry of southern California, he also found more and more of his hipster postmodern high-mindedness slipping away from him, slowly turning more and more into the kind of person he used to make fun of and with there being an increasingly blurry line between his fantasy life, the outrageous concepts being created for his porn shoots, and the way he dealt with women on just a day-by-day nonsexual basis.
I mean, not that this is a dour book by any means; in fact it's laugh-out-loud funny for nearly its entire length, with Benjamin having the courage to cast himself as the self-deprecatory foil of most of his own anecdotes, whether talking about his disastrous night while young and broke as an unpopular go-go dancer at a gay club, starring in a strap-on reverse-bisexual shoot for revered San Francisco company Good Vibrations simply for the hell of it, or later darker stories of becoming obsessed with ultra-abusive "gonzo" porn and having it bleed into his non-porn love life. And make no mistake, Benjamin puts his college degrees to good use here (he also has an MFA in Critical Studies from the California Institute of the Arts); this is not only one of the best-structured personal memoirs I've ever read, but Benjamin pulls off the neat trick of giving his stories a general appeal precisely by making them so specific, making this not just a naughty tell-all about sometimes some fairly famous people in the industry (although it's that too) but also a bigger and grander examination of an entire sorry little era in Generation X's history, when literally thousands of spoiled, overeducated young intellectuals thought they could change the very essence of exchanging sex for money simply because they were determined to, only to have the entire effort mainly end up biting them in the ass. I'm obviously too personally associated with the proceedings in this case to give anything even close to an "objective" review, which is why American Gangbang is neither receiving a score today nor will be eligible for CCLaP's best-of lists at the end of the year; but it nonetheless comes strongly recommended, one of the best historical documents out there to help future generations understand (for example) how a place like Suicide Girls could go in a single decade from a darling of third-wave feminist hipsters to a nearly universally reviled codeword for misogyny and cruelty. When read in this spirit, I'm confident that most people will find it utterly riveting.
Out of 10: N/A
April 16, 2012
This sorry excuse for a memoir should be given a wide berth not only because the author is a vile misogynist but also because it’s horribly written. The semi-highbrow assertion that he wants to make an artistic, higher-quality sort of porn is belied by the fact that his greatest accomplishment is shooting racist, abusive films for a sleazy website.
The purported "love story," a relationship with someone he refers to as ”White Liz,” ends when, much to his surprise, she throws him out after he hits her during sex. We’re supposed to feel sorry for him, I think, as a poor misunderstood kinkster -- when actually, he’s just a low-life creep.
The book ends with his retreat to a hippie Thai resort that promises spiritual and physical cleansing via daily high colonics. If enduring enemas and a resulting plague of boils is meant to symbolize some sort of journey or emotional growth, then I suppose he has matured. For me it felt both ham-handed and empty -- much like the chapters that had preceded it.
As someone who doesn’t have a problem with smut or its manufacturing, I found the book to be amateurishly constructed, with a prose style that should make his alma mater reconsider having granted him a degree. (The author's favorite words -- usually employed to describe women or their body parts -- appear to be ”tiny” [46 uses in 270-odd pages] and ”little” [152 uses]). I only wish I could give it less than one star. Avoid at all costs.
The purported "love story," a relationship with someone he refers to as ”White Liz,” ends when, much to his surprise, she throws him out after he hits her during sex. We’re supposed to feel sorry for him, I think, as a poor misunderstood kinkster -- when actually, he’s just a low-life creep.
The book ends with his retreat to a hippie Thai resort that promises spiritual and physical cleansing via daily high colonics. If enduring enemas and a resulting plague of boils is meant to symbolize some sort of journey or emotional growth, then I suppose he has matured. For me it felt both ham-handed and empty -- much like the chapters that had preceded it.
As someone who doesn’t have a problem with smut or its manufacturing, I found the book to be amateurishly constructed, with a prose style that should make his alma mater reconsider having granted him a degree. (The author's favorite words -- usually employed to describe women or their body parts -- appear to be ”tiny” [46 uses in 270-odd pages] and ”little” [152 uses]). I only wish I could give it less than one star. Avoid at all costs.
August 28, 2018
In all honesty, I'm really shocked at the 1-star, 2-star and 3-star reviews on here.
I've literally gobbled the book up in the last 5 hours.
Blunt, graphic and humorous -- Sam Benjamin courageously pens his journey through the porn industry.
I wouldn't call him a misogynist as such -- just really HONEST about what he experienced and how he felt/acted at the time. All part of the fabric of great memoirs.
I am pro-porn....and learnt a lot from reading his book.
I particularly enjoyed his commentary on different eras of porn and how men felt universally about porn.
Definitely worth reading!
I've literally gobbled the book up in the last 5 hours.
Blunt, graphic and humorous -- Sam Benjamin courageously pens his journey through the porn industry.
I wouldn't call him a misogynist as such -- just really HONEST about what he experienced and how he felt/acted at the time. All part of the fabric of great memoirs.
I am pro-porn....and learnt a lot from reading his book.
I particularly enjoyed his commentary on different eras of porn and how men felt universally about porn.
Definitely worth reading!
November 4, 2011
I'm pretty much the target audience for a book like
American Gangbang
, or so I thought. I have certainly watched my fair share of pornography (don't tell my mother!) and this novelization of the author's true experiences producing porn was definitely something that intrigued me. Sadly, this book was not only poorly executed, but portions of it were irredeemably vile.
It started off OK - the author was a graduated from an ivy league university, and after a few soul-searching sessions, he decides that his true calling is to produce 'a different kind of porn.' He felt (correctly) that most porn was cheesy, not particularly exciting and downright bad. He vowed to do something about it.
The first 1/3 or so was not great, but it wasn't awful. This book just reeks of a first novel: clumsy wording, awkward dialog (there was a lot of people saying each other's names all the time, which is a huge red flag to me that the author doesn't know much about writing realistic dialog), and just really obvious attempts to illicit feeling from the reader. Of course, an author should try to illicit feelings - but good writing requires these manipulations to be done subtly enough that the reader doesn't notice.
Then the main character takes a fancy porn-producing job, moves into a mansion and basically loses his hold on reality - and the book takes off downhill at Mach10.
This new studio he's working on focuses solely on interracial porn, and, more specifically, black men on white women. The author handled the situation somewhat awkwardly, and said things like:
How lucky for Sam, to come across one of those harmless black people! I certainly don't have a problem with interracial porn, but holy shit there were many, many problematic issues like that.
Then we get into how the men treat these women. Again, I watch porn. I support sex workers. I also believe in fantasies, and I support other people's kinks. Consenting adults, and all that. The problem was that much of the shit that went on at this place was less than consenting.
Of course eventually the author has this girl start laughing, because apparently this is just extremely hilarious! Later in the book, his girlfriend leaves him because he decides to just slap the hell out of her while she's giving him a blowjob. That is his kink, and I don't begrudge him that kink. There are girls that like to be hit while they're giving you blowjobs, but god damn you do NOT get to just haul off and slap someone in the face without having a god damn sober conversation about it!
By the end of the book, Sam does decide to leave the porn business, and he does feel sorry...sorry that he had to deal with consequences, that is. At no point does he appear to actually understand what he's been doing is wrong. He only understands that it had a negative impact on his life. Though, not nearly negative enough, from where I'm standing.
Overall, the first 1/3 of this book I would rate 2 1/2 stars. Interesting material, clumsily written. I almost felt bad for the guy. The last 2/3 gets 0 stars - unless you enjoy reading graphic details of a man participating in sexual assaults - both passively and actively.
p.s. I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. I have a feeling that won't happen again.
It started off OK - the author was a graduated from an ivy league university, and after a few soul-searching sessions, he decides that his true calling is to produce 'a different kind of porn.' He felt (correctly) that most porn was cheesy, not particularly exciting and downright bad. He vowed to do something about it.
The first 1/3 or so was not great, but it wasn't awful. This book just reeks of a first novel: clumsy wording, awkward dialog (there was a lot of people saying each other's names all the time, which is a huge red flag to me that the author doesn't know much about writing realistic dialog), and just really obvious attempts to illicit feeling from the reader. Of course, an author should try to illicit feelings - but good writing requires these manipulations to be done subtly enough that the reader doesn't notice.
Then the main character takes a fancy porn-producing job, moves into a mansion and basically loses his hold on reality - and the book takes off downhill at Mach10.
This new studio he's working on focuses solely on interracial porn, and, more specifically, black men on white women. The author handled the situation somewhat awkwardly, and said things like:
"Lucky Starr came as promised: he was black, and yet he wasn't threateningly black. In fact, he was basically harmless."
How lucky for Sam, to come across one of those harmless black people! I certainly don't have a problem with interracial porn, but holy shit there were many, many problematic issues like that.
Then we get into how the men treat these women. Again, I watch porn. I support sex workers. I also believe in fantasies, and I support other people's kinks. Consenting adults, and all that. The problem was that much of the shit that went on at this place was less than consenting.
"Tony Eveready was not opposed to being a malevolent sadist, either, and so after he felt Juliana had taken enough gulletizing, he dragged her by the hair out the bay window and hurled her stringy body onto the lawn and dragged her slowly down the set of brick steps, one brick step, two brick step, three brick step four, down to the pool, and he shoved her head into the green waters. . . she sputtered, choking, and Tone dunked her once again, his hand never leaving the back of her head where he'd clamped a death grip over her hair and Billy Banks laughed his forced, sycophantic laugh - heh heh heh, that's a white girl for you. I huffed with a pro's impatience and shouldered past all of them to get a great shot that would lure subscribers to spend another month's membership. . . the fat man danced, turning from one outturned instep to the other, snapping off a roll of photos . . . popping flashbulbs in Juliana's soaked, ruined, and crying face.
Stick that big ole dick up in her grill dog . . . came the chorus. . . I'm going to Rodney King her! . . . Yeah . . . beat that dick on her head like a baton!"
Of course eventually the author has this girl start laughing, because apparently this is just extremely hilarious! Later in the book, his girlfriend leaves him because he decides to just slap the hell out of her while she's giving him a blowjob. That is his kink, and I don't begrudge him that kink. There are girls that like to be hit while they're giving you blowjobs, but god damn you do NOT get to just haul off and slap someone in the face without having a god damn sober conversation about it!
By the end of the book, Sam does decide to leave the porn business, and he does feel sorry...sorry that he had to deal with consequences, that is. At no point does he appear to actually understand what he's been doing is wrong. He only understands that it had a negative impact on his life. Though, not nearly negative enough, from where I'm standing.
Overall, the first 1/3 of this book I would rate 2 1/2 stars. Interesting material, clumsily written. I almost felt bad for the guy. The last 2/3 gets 0 stars - unless you enjoy reading graphic details of a man participating in sexual assaults - both passively and actively.
p.s. I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. I have a feeling that won't happen again.
October 16, 2011
just write a blog like everyone else
October 14, 2013
When I picked this book up I was desperately trying to get myself out of the dark, disturbing and deeply depressing place I was in after reading The Porning of America. The book was pro-sex and did it's best to end on a positive note but I remained fixated some of the darker chapters. For instance, the chapter on how the Abu Ghraib incident was greatly influenced by violent, racist and extremely dehumanizing hate porn that is just click away on the internet for children or anybody else to easily find. After all this, I felt scarred, dirty and desperate for some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. Have you ever started watching a really bleak, horrible movie where all you want to do is turn it off, but you know if you do it stops right there? Horribly. So you keep watching it hoping that if it doesn't get any better for the characters, at least, it won't get any worse, that the horror evens out a bit. But your gut feeling proves to be true and things just get more and more morbid. Well, I kind of went that route. I decided to research porno (yes, I know how that sounds) even more. I watched a couple depressing documentaries from my library and put American Gangbang on hold. The two documentaries took a pretty serious anti-porn stance and with good reason from what they presented, but they also seemed a bit stodgy and, unlike Porning, anti-sex. But where they all came up short is getting at root of the problem. I say “short" because when I say Porning talks about the hijacking of our desires I'm either paraphrasing them or directly stealing it, but they don't get to the root of this problem and that that's capitalism. I felt the book didn't get into the fact that the commodifying of desire is what brings on the violence and oppression in pornography.
So, with that in mind when I saw Benjamin's book at the library with its premise about a wealthy Brown art student graduate who sucks at art and decides to make artistic, ethical porn only to get caught up in the game after he starts making a lot of money. It sounded like exactly like the perfect middle ground. An honest, humane and perhaps progressive, regretful tell-all might drag me from the horrified, lingering terror to, at least, a dull feeling of disgust allowing me to move on.
About that premise...don't fall for it. Dude's a fucking maggot from jump. In the very first chapter, he desperately tries to convince us he's a good guy, working everything from the I'm-just-being-honest angle to the self-stereotyping, self-deprecating, skinny, nerdy Jewish boy angle to excuse bad behavior. I have to admit, it works for the first chapter or so. He keeps it up throughout, but anybody with a lick of sense and a lick of kindness will see right through it. Myself, I've defended books with some pretty sleazy behavior in it because I've found some value in them, one of them being Neil Strauss' The Game, but Benjamin is just a perfect example of entitled slime. Thing is, he's completely obtuse to it, so sure that he's an alright guy, he reveals too much.
He's nothing but a tissue-spoiling, chronic masturbator who has the privilege to go pro. That's it.
The first time I felt truly disgusted by this shitpig - and I mean disgusted, not just the this-guy's-a-jerk notions I'd been picking up along the way - is when he starts throwing the word poverty around. "Poverty was back, stronger than ever," he says. The nerve of this guy! A rich, father's-a-psychologist, Brown graduate throwing the word poverty around. Not broke. Not even poor. POVERTY! And just because he feels he can't ask his parents for money because they know he's starting a porno career. Sorry, hon, that ain't poverty. Poverty isn't refusing to ask your parents for (more) money because you're making porno. Poverty is being coerced to make porn after you ran away from home because you were being assaulted by your parents, or maybe you're a very desperate mother trying to be a good parent. And if anyone should know this its Benjamin because these are the exact sort of women that he exploits throughout the book. Well, not throughout so let's get back to the beginning.
In the first chapters, he does a few shitty jobs, lives in a few shitty places in "poverty" before quickly breaking into the biz by making racist, violent, degrading pornography. Immediately, he's a john paying actresses to sleep with him and picking up "dumbass" porn actresses in a limo, describing how ugly, stupid and crazy they are in as much detail as he describes diddling them as soon as they get in the car ("sleazy, I know", is his detached way of describing this abuse of power). Quickly after establishing himself as a entitled rich kid he comes across as a complete misogynist on top of that, ascribing value to women by their bodies and judging them harshly for the PTSD brought them to the porn industry and, by proxy, anywhere near his repressed, well-fed pig ass in the first place.
From there it gets worse. He starts making bank off his racist gangbang movies and his true self emerges, that is, unless you believe him that it was the porn industry that changed him. The story gets sicker as the actors start beating up women on the set to make it more “raw”. He talks about how they all just yuck it up after they drag a woman down the stairs and beat her up. Then there's the time an illegal Czech actress and mother is injured during a gangbang. Out of fear of deportation, she refuses to go to the hospital. He blames his boss after asking him what should be done and being told have everyone cum in her face ("that way there would be something they could use"), then to pay her and dump her off somewhere. He watches as porn actors pick up barely legal runaways from the Greyhound station and bring them to the set. He blames it all on the people and industry he's around with an obtuse denial that he's just as much of a dirtbag. He starts wacking it and obsessing over "extreme" hate porn where proud psychopaths slap around teenage runaways and drug addicts. He loves the shit out of that porn, but judges the directors harshly even though physical violence is common on his sets. He gets so worked up about this "extreme" porn that he smacks his astoundingly dim girlfriend around during sex without permission or discussion. None of this does he take responsibility for.
Yep, dude's scum. And unlike the uneducated and animalistic porn actors who got into the biz because they have a big dick or love fucking or are ignorant, he at least knows better. So he feels it's his job to describe what's going on from a loftier height, a sneaky way of excusing himself.
The epilogue is him in Thailand getting some colon cleanse in a hut with a bunch hippies. It's supposed to be symbolic of him washing the stink of the industry that took advantage of him forcing him to make all that money oppressing and abusing women so he can back to his real, ethical non-hardon-for-smacking-women-around self and live a normal life, leaving anyone with a lick of sense wondering how his deep-seeded misogyny will find an outlet in the future and what creative ways he'll come up with to justify it.
In the end, what really sickens me about this book is how it was a sham. It wasn't a tell-all true story about a good guy who gets in over his head. I wanted a memoir by an enlightened but regretful screw-up learning from his mistakes. If it was marketed as a story of a violent beta male who uses the porn industry to take out all his aggression towards women while making fat cash on the side I wouldn't have read it.
So, with that in mind when I saw Benjamin's book at the library with its premise about a wealthy Brown art student graduate who sucks at art and decides to make artistic, ethical porn only to get caught up in the game after he starts making a lot of money. It sounded like exactly like the perfect middle ground. An honest, humane and perhaps progressive, regretful tell-all might drag me from the horrified, lingering terror to, at least, a dull feeling of disgust allowing me to move on.
About that premise...don't fall for it. Dude's a fucking maggot from jump. In the very first chapter, he desperately tries to convince us he's a good guy, working everything from the I'm-just-being-honest angle to the self-stereotyping, self-deprecating, skinny, nerdy Jewish boy angle to excuse bad behavior. I have to admit, it works for the first chapter or so. He keeps it up throughout, but anybody with a lick of sense and a lick of kindness will see right through it. Myself, I've defended books with some pretty sleazy behavior in it because I've found some value in them, one of them being Neil Strauss' The Game, but Benjamin is just a perfect example of entitled slime. Thing is, he's completely obtuse to it, so sure that he's an alright guy, he reveals too much.
He's nothing but a tissue-spoiling, chronic masturbator who has the privilege to go pro. That's it.
The first time I felt truly disgusted by this shitpig - and I mean disgusted, not just the this-guy's-a-jerk notions I'd been picking up along the way - is when he starts throwing the word poverty around. "Poverty was back, stronger than ever," he says. The nerve of this guy! A rich, father's-a-psychologist, Brown graduate throwing the word poverty around. Not broke. Not even poor. POVERTY! And just because he feels he can't ask his parents for money because they know he's starting a porno career. Sorry, hon, that ain't poverty. Poverty isn't refusing to ask your parents for (more) money because you're making porno. Poverty is being coerced to make porn after you ran away from home because you were being assaulted by your parents, or maybe you're a very desperate mother trying to be a good parent. And if anyone should know this its Benjamin because these are the exact sort of women that he exploits throughout the book. Well, not throughout so let's get back to the beginning.
In the first chapters, he does a few shitty jobs, lives in a few shitty places in "poverty" before quickly breaking into the biz by making racist, violent, degrading pornography. Immediately, he's a john paying actresses to sleep with him and picking up "dumbass" porn actresses in a limo, describing how ugly, stupid and crazy they are in as much detail as he describes diddling them as soon as they get in the car ("sleazy, I know", is his detached way of describing this abuse of power). Quickly after establishing himself as a entitled rich kid he comes across as a complete misogynist on top of that, ascribing value to women by their bodies and judging them harshly for the PTSD brought them to the porn industry and, by proxy, anywhere near his repressed, well-fed pig ass in the first place.
From there it gets worse. He starts making bank off his racist gangbang movies and his true self emerges, that is, unless you believe him that it was the porn industry that changed him. The story gets sicker as the actors start beating up women on the set to make it more “raw”. He talks about how they all just yuck it up after they drag a woman down the stairs and beat her up. Then there's the time an illegal Czech actress and mother is injured during a gangbang. Out of fear of deportation, she refuses to go to the hospital. He blames his boss after asking him what should be done and being told have everyone cum in her face ("that way there would be something they could use"), then to pay her and dump her off somewhere. He watches as porn actors pick up barely legal runaways from the Greyhound station and bring them to the set. He blames it all on the people and industry he's around with an obtuse denial that he's just as much of a dirtbag. He starts wacking it and obsessing over "extreme" hate porn where proud psychopaths slap around teenage runaways and drug addicts. He loves the shit out of that porn, but judges the directors harshly even though physical violence is common on his sets. He gets so worked up about this "extreme" porn that he smacks his astoundingly dim girlfriend around during sex without permission or discussion. None of this does he take responsibility for.
Yep, dude's scum. And unlike the uneducated and animalistic porn actors who got into the biz because they have a big dick or love fucking or are ignorant, he at least knows better. So he feels it's his job to describe what's going on from a loftier height, a sneaky way of excusing himself.
The epilogue is him in Thailand getting some colon cleanse in a hut with a bunch hippies. It's supposed to be symbolic of him washing the stink of the industry that took advantage of him forcing him to make all that money oppressing and abusing women so he can back to his real, ethical non-hardon-for-smacking-women-around self and live a normal life, leaving anyone with a lick of sense wondering how his deep-seeded misogyny will find an outlet in the future and what creative ways he'll come up with to justify it.
In the end, what really sickens me about this book is how it was a sham. It wasn't a tell-all true story about a good guy who gets in over his head. I wanted a memoir by an enlightened but regretful screw-up learning from his mistakes. If it was marketed as a story of a violent beta male who uses the porn industry to take out all his aggression towards women while making fat cash on the side I wouldn't have read it.
November 1, 2011
“American Gangbang” by Sam Benjamin, published by Gallery Books
Category –Biography/Memoir
This book is getting a lot of ink, and a lot of it is very good. The reader, though, must be able to handle frank, and sometimes brutal and graphic sex.
Sam Benjamin was born in New York and graduated from Brown University. He graduated with a degree in Art, although he freely admits that he had no talent for “drawing, painting, sculpting, or any other artistic pursuit”.
He told his mother and father that he hated New York and wanted to pursue a career in California. Sam, upon arriving in California, becomes involved in the pornography industry, an industry that generates millions of dollars in revenue every year.
Sam, in his “artistic pursuit” claims that he would like to change the pornography business by making it a better “art form”.
Instead of uplifting the business, Sam is pulled under into the mire that the industry lives in. One day, Sam realizes he can no longer handle the sleaze (I really think that he became bored) that is so apparent in pornography that he decides to quit.
Although Sam does quit the industry, he does not indicate that he despised the industry, nor does he admit to the carnage that he left behind in the ruined lives and degradation of those he hired.
I have to admit that I could not admit to the things Sam attests to in his memoir, even if it was to become a best selling novel. The book is an eye opener into an industry that is very profitable but at a great expense to human dignity.
I found the book interesting, but also very tiring after about 200 pages. The ending is also very inconclusive and wanting.
Category –Biography/Memoir
This book is getting a lot of ink, and a lot of it is very good. The reader, though, must be able to handle frank, and sometimes brutal and graphic sex.
Sam Benjamin was born in New York and graduated from Brown University. He graduated with a degree in Art, although he freely admits that he had no talent for “drawing, painting, sculpting, or any other artistic pursuit”.
He told his mother and father that he hated New York and wanted to pursue a career in California. Sam, upon arriving in California, becomes involved in the pornography industry, an industry that generates millions of dollars in revenue every year.
Sam, in his “artistic pursuit” claims that he would like to change the pornography business by making it a better “art form”.
Instead of uplifting the business, Sam is pulled under into the mire that the industry lives in. One day, Sam realizes he can no longer handle the sleaze (I really think that he became bored) that is so apparent in pornography that he decides to quit.
Although Sam does quit the industry, he does not indicate that he despised the industry, nor does he admit to the carnage that he left behind in the ruined lives and degradation of those he hired.
I have to admit that I could not admit to the things Sam attests to in his memoir, even if it was to become a best selling novel. The book is an eye opener into an industry that is very profitable but at a great expense to human dignity.
I found the book interesting, but also very tiring after about 200 pages. The ending is also very inconclusive and wanting.
November 29, 2011
A mediocre pornographer becomes a mediocre writer. I'm too annoyed with this sexist and misogynistic crap to even review it now. I'll do so in a few weeks maybe.
November 4, 2011
I'm pretty much the target audience for a book like
American Gangbang
, or so I thought. I have certainly watched my fair share of pornography (don't tell my mother!) and this novelization of the author's true experiences producing porn was definitely something that intrigued me. Sadly, this book was not only poorly executed, but portions of it were irredeemably vile.
It started off OK - the author graduated from an ivy league university, and after a few soul-searching sessions, he decides that his true calling is to produce 'a different kind of porn.' He felt (correctly) that most porn was cheesy, not particularly exciting and downright bad. He vowed to do something about it.
The first 1/3 or so was not great, but it wasn't awful. This book just reeks of a first novel: clumsy wording, awkward dialog (there was a lot of people saying each other's names all the time, which is a huge red flag to me that the author doesn't know much about writing realistic dialog), and full of really obvious attempts to illicit feeling from the reader. Of course, an author should try to illicit feelings - but good writing requires these manipulations to be done subtly enough that the reader doesn't notice.
Then the main character takes a fancy porn-producing job, moves into a mansion, basically loses his hold on reality - and the book takes off downhill at Mach10.
This new studio he's working for focuses solely on interracial porn, and, more specifically, black men on white women. The author handled the situation somewhat awkwardly, and said things like:
How lucky for Sam, to come across one of those harmless black people! I certainly don't have a problem with interracial porn, but holy shit there were many, many problematic issues like that.
Then we get into how the men treat these women. Again, I watch porn. I support sex workers. I also believe in fantasies, and I support other people's kinks. Consenting adults, and all that. The problem was that much of the shit that went on at this place was less than consenting.
Of course eventually the author has this girl start laughing, because apparently this is just extremely hilarious! Later in the book, his girlfriend leaves him because he decides to just slap the hell out of her while she's giving him a blowjob. That is his kink, and I don't begrudge him that kink. There are girls that like to be hit while they're giving you blowjobs, but god damn you do NOT get to just haul off and slap someone in the face without having a god damn sober conversation about it!
By the end of the book, Sam does decide to leave the porn business, and he does feel sorry...sorry that he had to deal with consequences, that is. At no point does he appear to actually understand what he's been doing is wrong. He only understands that it had a negative impact on his life. Though, not nearly negative enough, from where I'm standing.
Overall, the first 1/3 of this book I would rate 2 1/2 stars. Interesting material, clumsily written. I almost felt bad for the guy. The last 2/3 gets 0 stars - unless you enjoy reading graphic details of a man participating in sexual assaults - both passively and actively.
p.s. It is my duty to inform you that I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. I have a feeling that won't happen again.
It started off OK - the author graduated from an ivy league university, and after a few soul-searching sessions, he decides that his true calling is to produce 'a different kind of porn.' He felt (correctly) that most porn was cheesy, not particularly exciting and downright bad. He vowed to do something about it.
The first 1/3 or so was not great, but it wasn't awful. This book just reeks of a first novel: clumsy wording, awkward dialog (there was a lot of people saying each other's names all the time, which is a huge red flag to me that the author doesn't know much about writing realistic dialog), and full of really obvious attempts to illicit feeling from the reader. Of course, an author should try to illicit feelings - but good writing requires these manipulations to be done subtly enough that the reader doesn't notice.
Then the main character takes a fancy porn-producing job, moves into a mansion, basically loses his hold on reality - and the book takes off downhill at Mach10.
This new studio he's working for focuses solely on interracial porn, and, more specifically, black men on white women. The author handled the situation somewhat awkwardly, and said things like:
"Lucky Starr came as promised: he was black, and yet he wasn't threateningly black. In fact, he was basically harmless."
How lucky for Sam, to come across one of those harmless black people! I certainly don't have a problem with interracial porn, but holy shit there were many, many problematic issues like that.
Then we get into how the men treat these women. Again, I watch porn. I support sex workers. I also believe in fantasies, and I support other people's kinks. Consenting adults, and all that. The problem was that much of the shit that went on at this place was less than consenting.
"Tony Eveready was not opposed to being a malevolent sadist, either, and so after he felt Juliana had taken enough gulletizing, he dragged her by the hair out the bay window and hurled her stringy body onto the lawn and dragged her slowly down the set of brick steps, one brick step, two brick step, three brick step four, down to the pool, and he shoved her head into the green waters. . . she sputtered, choking, and Tone dunked her once again, his hand never leaving the back of her head where he'd clamped a death grip over her hair and Billy Banks laughed his forced, sycophantic laugh - heh heh heh, that's a white girl for you. I huffed with a pro's impatience and shouldered past all of them to get a great shot that would lure subscribers to spend another month's membership. . . the fat man danced, turning from one outturned instep to the other, snapping off a roll of photos . . . popping flashbulbs in Juliana's soaked, ruined, and crying face.
Stick that big ole dick up in her grill dog . . . came the chorus. . . I'm going to Rodney King her! . . . Yeah . . . beat that dick on her head like a baton!"
Of course eventually the author has this girl start laughing, because apparently this is just extremely hilarious! Later in the book, his girlfriend leaves him because he decides to just slap the hell out of her while she's giving him a blowjob. That is his kink, and I don't begrudge him that kink. There are girls that like to be hit while they're giving you blowjobs, but god damn you do NOT get to just haul off and slap someone in the face without having a god damn sober conversation about it!
By the end of the book, Sam does decide to leave the porn business, and he does feel sorry...sorry that he had to deal with consequences, that is. At no point does he appear to actually understand what he's been doing is wrong. He only understands that it had a negative impact on his life. Though, not nearly negative enough, from where I'm standing.
Overall, the first 1/3 of this book I would rate 2 1/2 stars. Interesting material, clumsily written. I almost felt bad for the guy. The last 2/3 gets 0 stars - unless you enjoy reading graphic details of a man participating in sexual assaults - both passively and actively.
p.s. It is my duty to inform you that I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. I have a feeling that won't happen again.
October 5, 2011
(NB: I'm a hard grader, so 3 stars from me is good.) This was a memoir about an Ivy League college graduate who moves to California after graduation and enters the world of pornography as a young filmmaker. (I read it as an ARC giveaway.) It was a surprisingly gripping read - it drew me in more quickly and kept my attention more handily than any of the fiction I've read lately. There were also quite a few places where it made me laugh, too, which is big - being funny in a book is not so easy, so I'm always excited to come across a writer who can pull it off.
A person's views of this book will undoubtedly be shaped by their opinion of porn, so to get that out of the way, I don't have strong views about porn one way or the other. I have no moral objections to it as long as it only involves consenting adults, recognizing that "consent" can be a murky concept. My objections are more likely be on aesthetic grounds than moral ones, e.g. absence of storyline, nonexistent acting, lack of originality, general tackiness, etc., and in this I share the views of the author, at least initially - he starts out by wanting to do porn "artistically," from the standpoint of college-boy postmodernist irony.
I think the author does a good job of bringing sincerity and honesty to his subject. He doesn't pretend he's aloof from all the sex and sleaze or that he's not getting turned on by it, but he brings enough critical distance to it that you can feel and believe his frequent bouts of disgust and revulsion. We share his ambivalence and get alienated right along with him. By the end of the book, like him, the reader is grateful not to be a porn mogul. And somehow while treating the subject with humor and frankness, he humanizes people who otherwise might easily become caricatures. In some good ways, the book reminded me of David Foster Wallace's highly amusing essay on the porn industry, "Big Red Son." The difference being that Wallace keeps a much greater ironic distance as a nonparticipant, while Sam Benjamin wades right into the muck and splashes around in it, sometimes gleefully.
Benjamin (and presumably his editor) also deserves credit for keeping the narrative focused and avoiding the trap memoirs often fall into, viz., wandering boringly through real events without shaping them into a well-formed dramatic arc. There is detail without dullness; porn itself is often dull, but this story about making porn is not. There was enough tension to keep me engaged as a reader, wanting to find out if and how Sam would ever leave the porn world and how his relationship with a "normal" girl would turn out.
So what kept me from giving the book four or five stars instead of three? I guess just that after a while the subject matter was a little depressing, and none of the characters were all that likeable. (Sorry, Sam. After White Liz you were the next least unlikeable, but you still kinda creeped me out.) I just got tired of all the grossness and vulgarity - the ick factor was not to be denied. But on the whole, I liked the book because because it was interesting and funny and highly educational, which is most of what a nonfiction book should be.
If you don't have a strong stomach, I don't recommend this book. But for those who do, and who enjoy humorous tales of the weird and wacky, or simple human interest stories, this could merit a place on your shelf. And obviously all the more so for anyone who's curious about the porn industry's strange, slimy underbelly. I think those concerned with women's issues and gender relations could find a lot worthy of discussion here, too - Benjamin succeeds at drawing a complex, if sometimes heart-wrenching picture of both men and women who may or may not be exploited and may or may not enjoy it.
A person's views of this book will undoubtedly be shaped by their opinion of porn, so to get that out of the way, I don't have strong views about porn one way or the other. I have no moral objections to it as long as it only involves consenting adults, recognizing that "consent" can be a murky concept. My objections are more likely be on aesthetic grounds than moral ones, e.g. absence of storyline, nonexistent acting, lack of originality, general tackiness, etc., and in this I share the views of the author, at least initially - he starts out by wanting to do porn "artistically," from the standpoint of college-boy postmodernist irony.
I think the author does a good job of bringing sincerity and honesty to his subject. He doesn't pretend he's aloof from all the sex and sleaze or that he's not getting turned on by it, but he brings enough critical distance to it that you can feel and believe his frequent bouts of disgust and revulsion. We share his ambivalence and get alienated right along with him. By the end of the book, like him, the reader is grateful not to be a porn mogul. And somehow while treating the subject with humor and frankness, he humanizes people who otherwise might easily become caricatures. In some good ways, the book reminded me of David Foster Wallace's highly amusing essay on the porn industry, "Big Red Son." The difference being that Wallace keeps a much greater ironic distance as a nonparticipant, while Sam Benjamin wades right into the muck and splashes around in it, sometimes gleefully.
Benjamin (and presumably his editor) also deserves credit for keeping the narrative focused and avoiding the trap memoirs often fall into, viz., wandering boringly through real events without shaping them into a well-formed dramatic arc. There is detail without dullness; porn itself is often dull, but this story about making porn is not. There was enough tension to keep me engaged as a reader, wanting to find out if and how Sam would ever leave the porn world and how his relationship with a "normal" girl would turn out.
So what kept me from giving the book four or five stars instead of three? I guess just that after a while the subject matter was a little depressing, and none of the characters were all that likeable. (Sorry, Sam. After White Liz you were the next least unlikeable, but you still kinda creeped me out.) I just got tired of all the grossness and vulgarity - the ick factor was not to be denied. But on the whole, I liked the book because because it was interesting and funny and highly educational, which is most of what a nonfiction book should be.
If you don't have a strong stomach, I don't recommend this book. But for those who do, and who enjoy humorous tales of the weird and wacky, or simple human interest stories, this could merit a place on your shelf. And obviously all the more so for anyone who's curious about the porn industry's strange, slimy underbelly. I think those concerned with women's issues and gender relations could find a lot worthy of discussion here, too - Benjamin succeeds at drawing a complex, if sometimes heart-wrenching picture of both men and women who may or may not be exploited and may or may not enjoy it.
October 11, 2011
The first quality of this book that stuck out to me would be the brutal honesty. When I say brutal, I mean brutal. The author holds nothing back...sometimes the reader wants to reach in and stop him from talking and other times the reader will avidly wait for the author's next thoughts and actions.
The author goes from an Ivy League college graduate to a pornographer...by choice. It was an interesting, but surprisingly well-thought out decision. He goes on to get deeper and deeper into porn, one might say he obsesses about a couple of things. The weird quality of this book would be the odd feeling of alienation and an overall feeling of almost being in a dream-where you don't care about your own actions. The reader can almost see how many of the events in the book could take place without anyone stepping in and saying "enough."
This book actually held my attention the whole time. The plot is, of course, a tad dramatic and unusual; however, the author tells his story so realistically and candidly. The events are fast-paced, the reader doesn't dwell overly much on some of the more odd events in the memoir. The ending is interesting, ends with one heck of a good analogy. This book is recommended to adults.
October 19, 2014
My review is a bit iffy because by the end of the book I was feeling like Sam did about his time as a pornographer-- I just wanted it to be over. The metaphors between pornography and the reading experience are numerous and I think that's an asset because they are naturally occurring, not manufactured literary tropes. The books is honest and explicit, so it's not for the faint of heart. As a professor who often touches on the subjects of pornography and obscenity, it was a good read. As a human being, it was a difficult read.
January 25, 2016
10. American Gangbang by Sam Benjamin
It took me 3 months to finish this book and I tend to read rather quickly. If you're looking for an anger inducing misogynistic view of the patriarchy that existed in the adult industry during the 90s, check this out. If you have any sense at all, take a pass. It was terrible. Like really terrible.
It took me 3 months to finish this book and I tend to read rather quickly. If you're looking for an anger inducing misogynistic view of the patriarchy that existed in the adult industry during the 90s, check this out. If you have any sense at all, take a pass. It was terrible. Like really terrible.
February 27, 2013
Misogynist crap. If you think this book is hilarious, let alone thoughtful, I do not want to be your friend.
January 29, 2021
I liked it. Interesting read throughout
February 7, 2015
This could have been really interesting. It wasn't.
I think an important thing for the writer of a memoir to have is charisma. Also, I'm not entirely sure that under about 50 years old, a person has the wisdom, life experience and sense of perspective about themselves to write a really good memoir (unless they are I dunno, say Micheal Jackson or Shirley Temple who had an eventful childhood. Somebody who was cosseted by happy, normal parents through school, college and then pootled off in a Volvo with his graduation money from Mummy and Daddy to hit the porn industry for a couple of years, before running of to Thailand with his tail between his legs - doesn't really have anything much to write about yet...
There are things you think are a FABULOUS idea between 20 - 30 years old. I think this memoir was one of those moments. Sam just comes across a pretentious, narcissistic prat with zero charisma and there is too much of that to make this a really good read.
Tacking 'a Love Story' on to the title is ridiculous, there is no love story, not between him and another human nor with his work. The only person / thing I would say that Sam Benjamin is in love with is himself.
I have no idea what constitutes a spoiler in this kind of book, but if you are anti-porn or don't like bad language, drug use or descriptions - this is not a book you would enjoy.
The porn stuff was nowhere near as revolting as the detailed description of his colonic irrigation sessions, something he takes up at the end in a quest for spiritual enlightenment. I wasn't aware that was something one could find with help from a Thai enema...
Sam has a degree in art and wanted to move to California and be an artist, despite having no artistic talent. (also known as the type of person that gives art a bad name!)
How the heck did he manage a degree in the subject was my question. Maybe American degrees are different?
Because Sam has no talent he has to find some other way of becoming an artist. One that requires no talent. He takes a job at a juice bar and waits for inspiration to strike. This leads to him having an epiphany while stoned and picking up a whole bunch of dated porn tapes at a car-boot sale - he will re-invent porn and make it 'artistic'. Facepalm.
Instead of doing over time at the juice bar to fund his 'dream' Sam calls his parents to loan start-up money. His parents are not delighted with his plan, but Sam is not the type to consider anyone but himself.
So, he sets off in his quest, his 'artistic' movies fail badly, he eventually hooks up with a source of funding and the artistic element goes out of the window and he is making exactly the same cliched, OTT porn staples he was going to revolutionize and never make...He seems shocked to find the industry is on the sleazy side...
Much of the book seems to be overly worried about how, he - Sam, a camera man / producer looks and whether the endless parade of girls would be interested in servicing him and if they should be paid for doing so. And whether or not he, Sam looks like a black man. And excruciatingly dull descriptions of cameras used for filming...And how he has almost no friends.
Because- you, Sam come across as a bit of twat and nobody wants that in a friend...And based on the cover picture it looks like Sam dresses like Howard Wolowitz; nobody wants that in a friend either...
Sam meets a nice girl and screws it up by being a selfish, possibly abusive idiot, then realises he doesn't like what he's doing with his life and drops the rest of his production team in the mire, ups, leaves and heads off to Thailand to 'find himself'.
The thing is, I don't think he writes particularly well for a graduate of the arts. He writes like a high-schooler trying to get into the Penthouse forum.
All the girls are 'little' or 'tiny' but of course have 'impressive' breasts. He comes up with some fairly imaginative euphemisms for the various physical acts and male equipment, sadly that imaginative streak does not extend to the rest of his writing, which leads me to believe he did not in fact create them but picked them up on set or something.
There are some genuinely funny moments, however, they are circumstantially amusing - not because of the brilliance of the writing.
The bits that could have been interesting - like the actress who liked to perform following a brain injury, or some production companies deliberately selecting less attractive actresses - were not developed. Possibly because Sam didn't want the attention away from him and telling us about how he does yoga?
I think an important thing for the writer of a memoir to have is charisma. Also, I'm not entirely sure that under about 50 years old, a person has the wisdom, life experience and sense of perspective about themselves to write a really good memoir (unless they are I dunno, say Micheal Jackson or Shirley Temple who had an eventful childhood. Somebody who was cosseted by happy, normal parents through school, college and then pootled off in a Volvo with his graduation money from Mummy and Daddy to hit the porn industry for a couple of years, before running of to Thailand with his tail between his legs - doesn't really have anything much to write about yet...
There are things you think are a FABULOUS idea between 20 - 30 years old. I think this memoir was one of those moments. Sam just comes across a pretentious, narcissistic prat with zero charisma and there is too much of that to make this a really good read.
Tacking 'a Love Story' on to the title is ridiculous, there is no love story, not between him and another human nor with his work. The only person / thing I would say that Sam Benjamin is in love with is himself.
I have no idea what constitutes a spoiler in this kind of book, but if you are anti-porn or don't like bad language, drug use or descriptions - this is not a book you would enjoy.
The porn stuff was nowhere near as revolting as the detailed description of his colonic irrigation sessions, something he takes up at the end in a quest for spiritual enlightenment. I wasn't aware that was something one could find with help from a Thai enema...
Sam has a degree in art and wanted to move to California and be an artist, despite having no artistic talent. (also known as the type of person that gives art a bad name!)
How the heck did he manage a degree in the subject was my question. Maybe American degrees are different?
Because Sam has no talent he has to find some other way of becoming an artist. One that requires no talent. He takes a job at a juice bar and waits for inspiration to strike. This leads to him having an epiphany while stoned and picking up a whole bunch of dated porn tapes at a car-boot sale - he will re-invent porn and make it 'artistic'. Facepalm.
Instead of doing over time at the juice bar to fund his 'dream' Sam calls his parents to loan start-up money. His parents are not delighted with his plan, but Sam is not the type to consider anyone but himself.
So, he sets off in his quest, his 'artistic' movies fail badly, he eventually hooks up with a source of funding and the artistic element goes out of the window and he is making exactly the same cliched, OTT porn staples he was going to revolutionize and never make...He seems shocked to find the industry is on the sleazy side...
Much of the book seems to be overly worried about how, he - Sam, a camera man / producer looks and whether the endless parade of girls would be interested in servicing him and if they should be paid for doing so. And whether or not he, Sam looks like a black man. And excruciatingly dull descriptions of cameras used for filming...And how he has almost no friends.
Because- you, Sam come across as a bit of twat and nobody wants that in a friend...And based on the cover picture it looks like Sam dresses like Howard Wolowitz; nobody wants that in a friend either...
Sam meets a nice girl and screws it up by being a selfish, possibly abusive idiot, then realises he doesn't like what he's doing with his life and drops the rest of his production team in the mire, ups, leaves and heads off to Thailand to 'find himself'.
The thing is, I don't think he writes particularly well for a graduate of the arts. He writes like a high-schooler trying to get into the Penthouse forum.
All the girls are 'little' or 'tiny' but of course have 'impressive' breasts. He comes up with some fairly imaginative euphemisms for the various physical acts and male equipment, sadly that imaginative streak does not extend to the rest of his writing, which leads me to believe he did not in fact create them but picked them up on set or something.
There are some genuinely funny moments, however, they are circumstantially amusing - not because of the brilliance of the writing.
The bits that could have been interesting - like the actress who liked to perform following a brain injury, or some production companies deliberately selecting less attractive actresses - were not developed. Possibly because Sam didn't want the attention away from him and telling us about how he does yoga?
Read
June 28, 2015It's a book about a privileged twentysomething thinking about his life while gawking at people he frequently refers to as "damaged." The writing style makes it somewhat interesting, and it's not challenging to read -- I barrelled through it in a day. But it's not terribly enjoyable either.
By the end I found the author generally repugnant. And we're supposed to; by the end of the narrative he finds himself repugnant. By the end he just comes off as arrogant, gross, and a cog in the system that he initially wanted to change.
You know, like any twentysomething in their first job. It's just that his job is Internet porn.
I appreciate that the memoir covers a lot of the problematic aspects of porn (exploitation, mental illness, instability, etc) -- as sex-positive and generally pro-sex-work that I am, I still think it's important to look at when the system fails. I also appreciated seeing the mundane side of it, like having to buy all the lube and baby wipes in the universe.
But the narrator becomes grating. He details how fat or thin he finds every woman he meets, describes their bodies in significant detail. He has an unbalanced view of sex, skewed by the porn he shoots. He eventually gets really into some rough sex and slaps his girlfriend without getting her consent first, and she rightfully kicks him out.
I think I'm supposed to sympathize with this artsy white kid from the east coast, but by the end I basically just want to roll my eyes and tell him to get over himself.
It's not the worst book you'd kill in the afternoon, but it doesn't offer anything challenging or enlightening to one's view of porn.
By the end I found the author generally repugnant. And we're supposed to; by the end of the narrative he finds himself repugnant. By the end he just comes off as arrogant, gross, and a cog in the system that he initially wanted to change.
You know, like any twentysomething in their first job. It's just that his job is Internet porn.
I appreciate that the memoir covers a lot of the problematic aspects of porn (exploitation, mental illness, instability, etc) -- as sex-positive and generally pro-sex-work that I am, I still think it's important to look at when the system fails. I also appreciated seeing the mundane side of it, like having to buy all the lube and baby wipes in the universe.
But the narrator becomes grating. He details how fat or thin he finds every woman he meets, describes their bodies in significant detail. He has an unbalanced view of sex, skewed by the porn he shoots. He eventually gets really into some rough sex and slaps his girlfriend without getting her consent first, and she rightfully kicks him out.
I think I'm supposed to sympathize with this artsy white kid from the east coast, but by the end I basically just want to roll my eyes and tell him to get over himself.
It's not the worst book you'd kill in the afternoon, but it doesn't offer anything challenging or enlightening to one's view of porn.
May 6, 2019
This book could have been amazing based on the preview I read before I bought it. It seemed like it would be about his experiences in the industry while talking reflexively about the industry. Instead it was essentially Bay Area navel-gazing with fairly basic porn explication thrown in the mix for middling shock value.
I understand the desire particularly when working in or around porn to constantly check yourself to see how you feel, both about yourself and the work that you do. You want to be self-aware so that the bubble around the industry doesn't erode your sense of self. However, this book turned self-awareness up to 13 because it is so painfully self-aware past the point of self-sabotage; you can't actually follow any real narrative because this is the narrative:
Why am I making porn? fuck scene. fuck scene. Why am I making porn? fuck scene. Why am I making porn? fuck scene. fuck scene. fuck scene. Why am I making porn? Why am I making porn?Why am I making porn? Colonics*.
Can you tell I just finished reading the book 10 minutes ago? Maybe I'm being hasty but seriously Mr. Benjamin if you ever happen to read this, please get an editor. An honest one. Because I'd like to read your real story, the honest and funny one when you get out of your own way.
Tl;dr: If you're interested in the porn industry, read an autobiography from Traci Lords or jenna Jameson or Asa Akira or read Stoya's articles on Vice and Slate.
*I love that autocorrect doesn't recognize colonics as a real word.
I understand the desire particularly when working in or around porn to constantly check yourself to see how you feel, both about yourself and the work that you do. You want to be self-aware so that the bubble around the industry doesn't erode your sense of self. However, this book turned self-awareness up to 13 because it is so painfully self-aware past the point of self-sabotage; you can't actually follow any real narrative because this is the narrative:
Why am I making porn? fuck scene. fuck scene. Why am I making porn? fuck scene. Why am I making porn? fuck scene. fuck scene. fuck scene. Why am I making porn? Why am I making porn?Why am I making porn? Colonics*.
Can you tell I just finished reading the book 10 minutes ago? Maybe I'm being hasty but seriously Mr. Benjamin if you ever happen to read this, please get an editor. An honest one. Because I'd like to read your real story, the honest and funny one when you get out of your own way.
Tl;dr: If you're interested in the porn industry, read an autobiography from Traci Lords or jenna Jameson or Asa Akira or read Stoya's articles on Vice and Slate.
*I love that autocorrect doesn't recognize colonics as a real word.
October 18, 2011
This is a book I received as part of the Goodreads: First Reads Giveaway program.
I'm not sure how to explain how I feel about this book. I both really like it and think its weird. American Gangbang is the memoir of Sam Benjamin who graduated from Brown University and went into the porn business. His intention is to make movies and art, but finds that to be a hard goal to achieve.
The book has an easy, humorous feel to the writing that I really enjoyed. Even when giving the lowdown on the business and the chaos surrounding him, I was never bored while reading the book. Some of it can get pretty hard to read since he pulls no punches when relating things that happened. That is also one of the best parts of this book, at no point did I feel that Sam was keeping anything back. It was all very truthful which I appreciated. He wasn't afraid to seem like an asshole either and that was refreshing.
The descriptions of the porn was hard to read, but that may just be my reaction to an industry I don't really like or understand.
Overall, I really liked this book. It was a quick, fun read and the issues I had with it were minor.
I'm not sure how to explain how I feel about this book. I both really like it and think its weird. American Gangbang is the memoir of Sam Benjamin who graduated from Brown University and went into the porn business. His intention is to make movies and art, but finds that to be a hard goal to achieve.
The book has an easy, humorous feel to the writing that I really enjoyed. Even when giving the lowdown on the business and the chaos surrounding him, I was never bored while reading the book. Some of it can get pretty hard to read since he pulls no punches when relating things that happened. That is also one of the best parts of this book, at no point did I feel that Sam was keeping anything back. It was all very truthful which I appreciated. He wasn't afraid to seem like an asshole either and that was refreshing.
The descriptions of the porn was hard to read, but that may just be my reaction to an industry I don't really like or understand.
Overall, I really liked this book. It was a quick, fun read and the issues I had with it were minor.
August 16, 2012
Despite constant feel of "braggery," I have to say I liked Sam Benjamin's memoir. However, there are times in the book where it feels like he's trying to paint himself as a nice guy. There are times when he repeats almost like a mantra that he's going to quit the job, but continues to pick up the camera. Then there's the whole lust for the complete and utter degradation of a female. It's hard to see him as anything other than what he really is/was, a pornographer. Also, a lot of the dialogue feels scripted. I understand that he was working off memory and paraphasing, but at times it's like he's writing for a sitcom rather than something honest. His cautionary tale isn't anything new - man goes into porn thinking he's going to change the way it's done, but it changes him instead. I'm not surprised by the story in linear, but it's very much worth the read. Ignore the negative comments by readers who couldn't look passed the ugly to see the story for what it is. Read it yourself, instead. Make your own opinion about it. Read my full review here.
August 22, 2011
I'm really at a loss as to what to think of this book. It is fascinating, gritty, highly readable and yet incredibly repulsive. Benjamin does a great job taking behind the scenes of an industry that most of us would much rather remain ignorant about. Porn is a multi-billion dollar business and the author had aspirations of making money while transforming the industry. What he found was that porn changes people rather than the other way around.
What bothers me about the book was that Benjamin's redemption seems half-hearted. For all of the momentary pangs of guilt for the continued oppression and victimization that is implicit within pornography there seems to be little to no ownership of lives further damaged by his actions. Sure, he gets out of the industry and moves on, but what of the other countless lives left behind in his wake. For me, Benjamin's deliverance was too personal and not global enough. He escaped but the mentality seems to linger.
What bothers me about the book was that Benjamin's redemption seems half-hearted. For all of the momentary pangs of guilt for the continued oppression and victimization that is implicit within pornography there seems to be little to no ownership of lives further damaged by his actions. Sure, he gets out of the industry and moves on, but what of the other countless lives left behind in his wake. For me, Benjamin's deliverance was too personal and not global enough. He escaped but the mentality seems to linger.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 27, 2014
Humorous, riveting even.
It was so beautifully written, I could marry it. This book is weird in a beautiful way. It's been a long time since I came across something profound and compelling such as this memoir and all I could think of was, I wish I could write that way. His writing was not ambitious, everything just fits perfectly. I wouldn't lie that I liked it, everything about it, it was a breather, I mean something out of the usual for me. It was the kind of book that will leave you with something to think about and will stay with you for a long time. Maybe I saw the beauty in it that not everyone bothered to dwell into. Kudos to Sam Benjamin! I wish he would write a novel too.
February 21, 2015
This book was a pretty disturbing read. It illustrates the damaging effect of the pornography industry on both how women are treated and viewed, and the way it slowly warps the mind of the male viewer, especially those involved in the production and distribution of porn. Since it's a memoir you see the industry from a male directors point of view. While bias is certainly present in this book, Sam Benjamin does good job at not holding back. He does not write with the intention of making people like him. He holds nothing back and in doing so provides a real portrait of himself that makes the reader like him and despise him at different points during the book. Engaging and revealing, this book is definitely a worthwhile read.
October 2, 2011
I was lucky enough to read an advanced copy of this book, thanks to first reads.
Let me start out by saying it is disturbingly graphic at times, so it's probably not for the faint of heart, or those who would be repulsed by rather graphic sexual detail.
But if you can get past that, it's a rather engaging read. In fact, I found that once I started, I just had to keep reading to what happened next.
At times it was disturbing, at times it was slightly amusing. The author is a good story teller, and the inside look into the porn industry was rather interesting.
All in all, I'm glad I read it.
Let me start out by saying it is disturbingly graphic at times, so it's probably not for the faint of heart, or those who would be repulsed by rather graphic sexual detail.
But if you can get past that, it's a rather engaging read. In fact, I found that once I started, I just had to keep reading to what happened next.
At times it was disturbing, at times it was slightly amusing. The author is a good story teller, and the inside look into the porn industry was rather interesting.
All in all, I'm glad I read it.
April 30, 2012
Rich Ivy League-educated straight white boy relocates from the East Coast to the West Coast to fulfill his dream of making "arty" bi-racial porn because...well...because he is a rich Ivy League-educated straight white boy & thus has the privilege to do pretty much whatever he wants with his life. The writing is perfunctory at best & the accounting of his experiences (if they happened at all--I am left more than a little skeptical of the veracity of his tales) is tedious and repetitive. Like a bad porn film, I was left completely unsatisfied.
January 9, 2012
I don't know what to say about this book. I was excited to read it, enticed by the illicit topic and the promise of a well written foray into the world of pornography. What I got was certainly gritty enough, but so gritty I felt like I needed to hug a puppy afterwards.
Some people will probably enjoy it a lot, it has a certain tawdry appeal to it and it obviously kept me reading until the end, but I felt more than a little dirty afterwards.
Some people will probably enjoy it a lot, it has a certain tawdry appeal to it and it obviously kept me reading until the end, but I felt more than a little dirty afterwards.
March 31, 2013
This wasn't the best memoir I have read, but it IS the best book I have ever read with gangbang in the title. The book is an education in modern pornography for those of us in whose time porn was only seen at stag parties on 8mm film projectors and Playboy magazine was considered porn. The content is probably about the same as ever and no more hardcore than when we would buy the films at the Wabasha Bookstore in St. Paul.
April 11, 2012
If you ever wanted to read about a frat-boy-slacker who, for lack of any artistic ability or career options, goes into pornography, then this is the book for you. I'm not sure how it ended up on my Kindle - it must have gotten some praise from some journal I read - but can't say it was a must-read. A fly-on-the-wall view of a rather pathetic group of people.
December 19, 2013
Why did I read this? I hate myself for reading this. The author is smug and gross about his exploits. The only emotions that Benjamin manages to convey consistently are petulant ennui and a raging sense of entitlement.
There is no heart in this book, there is no love story, and there is no redemption. There is only the sexual abuse of a banana peel.
There is no heart in this book, there is no love story, and there is no redemption. There is only the sexual abuse of a banana peel.
November 3, 2011
Advanced readers copy received from Goodreads. Big fat kudos to Sam Benjamin! I laughed til tears ran. American Gangbang: A Love Story was incredibly witty, insightful and just plain fun to read. Brings to mind Hunter S Thompson's hallowed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. More please Mr Benjamin!!
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