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Raw Talent: The Adult Film Industry as Seen by Its Most Popular Male Star
The first publication of Raw Talent created an extraordinary flurry of publicity. Jerry Butler appeared on dozens of talk shows, capturing audiences with his intensity and charm. Reviews of the book lauded Butler's honesty and remarked on the double standard that permits explicit violence on film - but not explicit sex. The book sold out four printings; nonetheless, reactions within the adult film industry included heated debate and an unofficial blacklisting of Butler.The former star of X-rated films and winner of many awards, Jerry Butler wrote the book that many warned would "finish him" in the business that had rewarded him with money and fame. But it is characteristic of Butler that these warnings didn't prevent him from producing this devastatingly honest appraisal of the adult film trade - and of himself. For while Butler is frankly critical of an industry that treats actors and actresses like throw-away props, and allows unprotected sex in the age of AIDS, he reserves his most candid commentary for himself. Raw Talent tells the story of Butler's erotic voyage from average child to sex star. The epilogue added to this new edition answers the Where will Jerry go from here?
323 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 24, 2020
The good news is that this is a rambling, fascinating, high-energy look at the life of a pornographic star of yesteryear, which will answer many of the secret questions people have about what it's like to make a living having sex in front of a camera. The bad news is that it is also kind of disgusting, which is not a surprise, and that the "high-energy" part of the book may exhaust and bewilder the reader. The wife of the book's subject once remarked that he "used up other people's energy" and this is as valid a criticism of Jerry Butler as anyone has ever made. He's a manic man-child, and following his life story is like being his governess: an exhausting task.
Butler, whose real name was Paul Siederman, was a poorish kid from Brooklyn whose career as a semi-pro hockey player in the mid-70s gave way to a desire to become an actor. Handsome, well-built and extremely talented, his first breaks into the business came at a terrible cost: he was continually harassed by gay casting directors and actors who, in the (very) pre-#MeToo era, felt entitled to dangle the bait of success before him...provided he was willing to give in to their desires. Unwilling to do so, Butler, like so many other frustrated actors of yesteryear, ended up in pornography, a career which was to both define and in some senses destroy his life. In the later 70s, when Butler made his porn debut, the medium was on the near-verge of respectability -- porn films had scripts, plots, fairly respectable budgets, and were shown in theaters. Thus, acting ability actually played some role in a porn performer's job, and Butler had it, to the point where Warren Beatty supposedly commented that Jerry Butler was one of the best actors he'd ever seen. This fact, however, only served to highlight the central tragedy of his life, that he "coulda been a contendah." For porn, like the Mafia or the IRA, is a "once in, never out" proposition. Having taken off his clothes and banged for bucks, Butler (who was acutely conscious of the schizophrenic effect of using two names) could never go back to "legitimate" acting. His disappointment and bitterness were blunted by mountains of cocaine and a never-ending pursuit of romantic love, which, given his profession, sexual predelictions, drug use, immaturity and so forth was never a truly realistic proposition.
When it was published, "Raw Talent" was something of a bombshell, because Butler pulls absolutely no punches in his expose of the porn industry: the drugs, the 20 hour days, the exploitative companies, the veneral diseases, the disgusting hygiene of some of the actors and actresses, the awful emotional struggles, the physical and egotistical pleasures vying against yawning emotional emptiness. He calls out too-numerous-to mention stars of his era (70s/80s) in often scathing attacks, likening one actor to an unflushed toilet and sex with one actress as "like f------g a rubber glove." He discusses the AIDS crisis and the industry's refusal to combat it. He also digs deep into his own childhood, his marriage -- everything. The book's authors, Robert Rimmer and Catherine Tavel, had in Butler/Siederman a subject who put the "all" in "tell all book." It makes the work fascinating, but also exhausting and sometimes repulsive. If anyone harbors secret fantasies about a career in porn, "Raw Talent" will most likely leave them in smoking fragments...just as the business left Jerry, who ultimately left it to work as a New York City bus driver.
When Siderman died unexpectedly in 2018, at the age of 57, he left many grieving friends and relations behind, but -- I stress this fact -- not one person from the porn industry appeared at his funeral. While I doubt Paul would have cared -- he turned his back on the business first with few if any regrets and a lot of anger-- the absence simply underscores the heartlessness of the business Paul (and I use his real name very deliberately here) felt he'd been forced into. "They were the ringmasters," he says at one point. "And we were the animals."
An interesting companion to this book is the interview The Rialto Report (an online archive of so-called "golden age" porn, conducted in a very journalistic manner) conducted with Paul not long before his death, which is available free online via their website and various podcast providers. He expands on what is written and fills in the blanks about his post "Raw Talent" life. Like the book, the interview is upsetting, gripping, gross, and somewhat exhausting, but it's impossible to turn off. Paul Siedermann wasn't just raw talent. He was a human being who, but for some bad experiences and questionable choices, might have been a terrific comedian...even if he was mostly crying on the inside.
Butler, whose real name was Paul Siederman, was a poorish kid from Brooklyn whose career as a semi-pro hockey player in the mid-70s gave way to a desire to become an actor. Handsome, well-built and extremely talented, his first breaks into the business came at a terrible cost: he was continually harassed by gay casting directors and actors who, in the (very) pre-#MeToo era, felt entitled to dangle the bait of success before him...provided he was willing to give in to their desires. Unwilling to do so, Butler, like so many other frustrated actors of yesteryear, ended up in pornography, a career which was to both define and in some senses destroy his life. In the later 70s, when Butler made his porn debut, the medium was on the near-verge of respectability -- porn films had scripts, plots, fairly respectable budgets, and were shown in theaters. Thus, acting ability actually played some role in a porn performer's job, and Butler had it, to the point where Warren Beatty supposedly commented that Jerry Butler was one of the best actors he'd ever seen. This fact, however, only served to highlight the central tragedy of his life, that he "coulda been a contendah." For porn, like the Mafia or the IRA, is a "once in, never out" proposition. Having taken off his clothes and banged for bucks, Butler (who was acutely conscious of the schizophrenic effect of using two names) could never go back to "legitimate" acting. His disappointment and bitterness were blunted by mountains of cocaine and a never-ending pursuit of romantic love, which, given his profession, sexual predelictions, drug use, immaturity and so forth was never a truly realistic proposition.
When it was published, "Raw Talent" was something of a bombshell, because Butler pulls absolutely no punches in his expose of the porn industry: the drugs, the 20 hour days, the exploitative companies, the veneral diseases, the disgusting hygiene of some of the actors and actresses, the awful emotional struggles, the physical and egotistical pleasures vying against yawning emotional emptiness. He calls out too-numerous-to mention stars of his era (70s/80s) in often scathing attacks, likening one actor to an unflushed toilet and sex with one actress as "like f------g a rubber glove." He discusses the AIDS crisis and the industry's refusal to combat it. He also digs deep into his own childhood, his marriage -- everything. The book's authors, Robert Rimmer and Catherine Tavel, had in Butler/Siederman a subject who put the "all" in "tell all book." It makes the work fascinating, but also exhausting and sometimes repulsive. If anyone harbors secret fantasies about a career in porn, "Raw Talent" will most likely leave them in smoking fragments...just as the business left Jerry, who ultimately left it to work as a New York City bus driver.
When Siderman died unexpectedly in 2018, at the age of 57, he left many grieving friends and relations behind, but -- I stress this fact -- not one person from the porn industry appeared at his funeral. While I doubt Paul would have cared -- he turned his back on the business first with few if any regrets and a lot of anger-- the absence simply underscores the heartlessness of the business Paul (and I use his real name very deliberately here) felt he'd been forced into. "They were the ringmasters," he says at one point. "And we were the animals."
An interesting companion to this book is the interview The Rialto Report (an online archive of so-called "golden age" porn, conducted in a very journalistic manner) conducted with Paul not long before his death, which is available free online via their website and various podcast providers. He expands on what is written and fills in the blanks about his post "Raw Talent" life. Like the book, the interview is upsetting, gripping, gross, and somewhat exhausting, but it's impossible to turn off. Paul Siedermann wasn't just raw talent. He was a human being who, but for some bad experiences and questionable choices, might have been a terrific comedian...even if he was mostly crying on the inside.
December 27, 2018
So crazy. So raunchy. Full of filthy details about the porn industry.
December 23, 2019
I enjoyed the reading of this bio, I enjoyed it so much that I started to hate Jerry Butler when I finished the last page. However now I understand that him and the person who helped him to wrote the book were so honest about his flaws that it allows us to see him as an human being and not a fetishized body empty of a brain or a personality.
April 7, 2016
Porn, cocaine and bad hygiene. Nothing overtly shocking in the book, which was narrated by a narcissist on cocaine.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews