Al Goldstein

From Philosopedia

Goldstein, Al (10 January 1936 - )

Goldstein is a fat, angry, vulgarian.

(That's how Goldstein has described himself.)

Contents 1 The Early Years 2 Screw 3 Some Views 4 Some Quotes 5 Some Memories of Goldstein 6 Some Trivia 7 An Alan Colmes Interview 8 Also . . .

The Early Years

The son of a New York Daily Mirror worker, Alvin Goldstein was once a licensed New York City taxi driver, a student at Pace University in Lower Manhattan, and co-founder with Jim Buckley of a sex newspaper, Screw.

His first sexual experience occurred, he has stated, when he was sixteen. His mother had told his uncle to take him to a prostitute.

Goldstein has been married at least three times (Gina, whom he divorced but they had one son, Jordan; Patricia Flaherty, whom he married in 1989 and divorced in 1994; and Christine Ava Maharaj, whom he married in January 2004). Some claim he either had two other wives or married some of them twice.

Screw

In 1968, he and Jim Buckley started Screw, the underground magazine with an investment of less than $300. In weeks, its circulation jumped to 150,000 copies per week. Not only did it have smutty photos and what most would call obscene and saucy satire but also it had some in-depth interviews: former Beatle John Lennon; Blondie's Debby Harry; actor Jack Nicholson. In Goldstein's words, it was "the first newspaper to have a gay column. We accepted sex ads, we used four-letter words, we’ve never been euphemist - and that’s my pride in the paper.”

A 1969 issue of Screw included a picture of two men having sexual intercourse.

A 1973 issue (#206) included a picture of Jacqueline Onassis on vacation and in the nude. It sold over half a million copies.

He was arrested at least nineteen times and charged by federal prosecutors on obscenity charges. In 1974 when he insulted then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in print, Goldstein had to face charges in Kansas. When police came to his office, they might find him already dressed in a striped prison outfit, humorously dealing with his threat of being jailed. “I march to my own drummer," he has explained, "and my drummer talks about the one absolute, which is freedom. None of us can be sure what is right, so let’s have all voices be heard.” In short, Goldstein claims not to be defending pornography per se but defending its right to exist. To Media Life (8 August 2003), he explained,

• I'm a crusader. I really believe in the First Amendment, and I use it fully, and I pay a price for that. I keep attacking the villains, the know-nothings, the people who want to take our freedoms away.

Some Views

In one journal, Goldstein is quoted as saying, “I always read Stuart Mill to [my son, Jordan]. I brainwashed him like they do in Catholic school, but instead of reading him the Bible I read from the humanists and the liberals. The real liberals - not the phony New York liberals.”

In another journal, however, he is quoted, “I actually see myself as a thoughtful cerebral intellectual. . . . I am very conscious of being a Jew named Goldstein. And I am very proud that my son, who went to Georgetown, a Jesuit college; [of its] 781 students - he finished first. He won the two-year Oxford scholarship. He’s there now, and he’s accepted for Harvard. So there’s a Jewish word, kvell - ”to be proud.” I am so haimish and so bourgeois, and so proud of my son.” This shows, Goldstein insisted, that he exemplifies family values.

Some Quotes

"I'm a big fat Jew who doesn't pay retail!"

"Death Before Marriage!"

"I should be an old Jew retired in Century Village, but here I am, with a passion for eating pastrami and eating p*s*y."

"I've always loved food more than sex, so this is really my first love. I've gone from broads to bagels."

"My life has turned to crap. To go from a being a millionaire and then living in a homeless shelter and being rejected by 98% of your friends is horrendous, but I'm a survivor."

"She must be clean. I wash a chicken before I boil it!" (commenting on oral sex)

He left numerous phones messages to a former former secretary, Jennifer Lozinski. "I'll take you down! You loathsome turd. You're a piece of sh*t!"

When asked about his downfall: "The Internet made pornography available for free and I couldn't compete."

"I have the courage of my convictions - all 19 of them."

Some Memories of Goldstein

According to Bill Winter,

• Technology also caught up with Goldstein. In November 2003, he ceased publication of Screw magazine and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He said increased competition from the Internet had made magazines like his "an anachronism; we are elephants going to the bone cemetery to die." However, Goldstein promised to relaunch the magazine and focus more attention on an affiliated website. As he planned for the future, his words echoed from the past. "You need fighters like me to battle, because frankly The New York Times and the Washington Post are not going to fight the fights that I do," he told Media Life magazine. "I refuse to be silenced."

Some Trivia

He once ran unsuccessfully for Sheriff of Broward County in Florida.

He was paid $1,200 to be filmed in I Wanna Be A Porn Star 1.

In 1985, he was a witness before the Meese Commission that was investigating pornography

In several movies, he acted as himself: Inside Deep Throat (2005); Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy (2001); Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2001); Sex: The Annabel Chong Story (1999); Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes (1998).

In 2004, he was arrested on November 28th, allegedly having stolen three books from Barnes & Noble. Bankrupt from numerous lawsuits stemming from harassment charges (started by one of his then-four wives), he lost everything and lived for part of a year in a homeless shelter.

In 2004, Jack Lebewohl, owner of the 2nd Avenue Deli in downtown New York City, gave him a $10/hour job, that of greeting customers. As for trading sex for salami, Goldstein claimed in Greenwich Village's The Villager that turning people on to the joys of chopped liver, gefilte fish, and brisket of beef is far more pleasurable than selling the more decadent forms of cheesecake. His duties included greeting customers and showing them to their tables.

He was fired, according to Times reporter Andy Newman (6 January 2006), but not before going on record:

"I have not eaten so well since I lived with my mom," said Mr. Goldstein, who was fired after he was found sleeping in the restaurant's basement. Mr. Goldstein, a noted gourmand until a recent stomach-stapling operation, declared the deli's shuttering "almost as sad as the closing of Chock Full O' Nuts," though he added, "I never thought Jack's pastrami was as good as Katz's. It's kosher. It was bland."

When he was 69, his I, Goldstein (2006) was published, Library Journal wrote, "Though amusing and titillating, this memoir isn't much more than another stab at fame and fortune from a selfish, angry and intermittently funny man." Mike Tribby of Booklist wrote, This book, written with former Screw associate Friedman, invokes familiar names from Jacob Javits to Mad publisher William M. Gaines as it summarizes and justifies a life lived on the cultural barricades. Details about genuine sixties characters, such as porn star John C. Holmes ("Johnny Wadd"), add fascination."

The Times reviewer of I, Goldstein was one of Goldstein's former employees, Steven Heller, who is the former art director of the newspaper's book review section. For full disclosure, he explained that he had turned down the job of reviewing the book because of the newspaper's cardinal rule that reviewers must not know well the authors they will write about. But he was talked into it because it had been over three decades that he had worked for two years as the magazine's art director. His review included glimpses of the author:

Goldstein, in addition to being a porn king, made an art of self-loathing. It pervades I, Goldstein and was his most driving and destructive force. Despite his aggressively funny writing style, Goldstein doubted he was truly intelligent. A self-described “bed-wetting stutterer from Brooklyn” and a punching bag for neighborhood toughs, he feared he would become a milquetoast like his father, a photojournalist who exhibited courage in World War II, working alongside the likes of Ernie Pyle, but addressed elevator operators as “sir.” (He later toiled in Screw’s mailroom.) Goldstein, forever self-conscious about his weight, compensated by making voraciousness the cornerstone of his identity. He describes, touchingly, how as a teenager he was treated by a diet doctor — with whom it turned out his mother was having an affair, because “my father was so inadequate.” Thus he entered manhood primed to defy all who crossed him, and he fulfilled this wish, metaphorically flushing hypocrites and incompetents from President Nixon to his auto mechanic in a ceremonial toilet bowl.

Above all, Goldstein really wanted to be somebody. His memoir chronicles the improbable rise of a guy who each year renewed his taxi license just in case he hit the skids, and who was deeply in debt (his Jane Street apartment was stuffed with electronic gadgets bought on credit) but later owned a town house in Manhattan, a mansion in Florida, cars with drivers and millions of dollars’ worth of watches. Then came the spiraling downfall: the costly lawsuits, criminal battles and divorces.

Heller also says that Goldstein in 2006 resides in Staten Island

in an apartment paid for by the comedian and magician Penn Jillette. The one-time pariah, the host of the pioneering cable TV show “Midnight Blue,” who enraged feminists like Andrea Dworkin, now wanders the Manhattan streets: a porn king without a crown, throne, or Screw. Goldstein was never as presentable or culturally palatable as Hugh Hefner, and Screw was never a beautiful and expensive production like Playboy. But had Al Goldstein not dared to create his “sex review,” the floodgates of a more expansive and liberating publishing culture might never have opened. As for me, had I not been Screw’s art director, and been given the freedom and encouragement to learn my craft, I would not have gotten my job at The New York Times.

An Alan Colmes Interview

Lyle Stuart, who was once an editor for Mad and was the noted American independent publisher of controversial books, for years was a special friend of Goldstein. They socialized often and were interviewed several times by Alan Colmes, a liberal radio and television journalist admired by both because of his fairness to those he interviewed.

On one occasion, Stuart took Warren Allen Smith along to the Colmes show for a late-night interview also with Goldstein, who is included in the book. Stuart had published Smith's 1,248 page Who's Who in Hell, the thesis of which is that Hell is a theological invention and does not exist, but that if it did his book listed over 10,000 from ancient to contemporary times who would be there. Smith made notes of what transpired:

• Lyle and I arrived early and sat in the station's lobby area, one that had glass doors and allowed us to see who was exiting from the elevator. I didn't know what Goldstein looked like and knew only that he had bought six copies of the $125 book, one for himself and the others for his son - I listed both as atheists, along with Stuart.

• It wasn't my first radio or TV interview, but I was nervous about meeting Colmes, who was such a noted interviewer. Lyle left briefly to the men's room, during which time the elevator doors opened, a man exited, saw me inside, dropped his pants, and mooned me. Pulling open the door, he said, "Are you the old fag who's on the program with me?"

• Lyle arrived almost at the same time, and because Goldstein was his friend and hadn't heard the insult I said to Lyle, my publisher, as if befuddled, "And is this the handsome buyer of six of my books?"

• After that introduction and being rushed into the studio, harnessed by a technician with what it takes to be televised, seated before a microphone, and hurriedly greeted by Mr. Colmes who said we'd be "on" in minutes, I let the two of them talk and didn't cut in until asked something specific. Colmes expertly guided Lyle and me in our explanations about the book, and I tried to be concise but also be a salesman for the book. It was when Goldstein chimed in about other subjects that the interview suddenly focused on Goldstein, not on my book. It was my introduction as to how, when interviewed, one must remain on camera and stay in the spotlight even if it means being New York pushy. Afterwards, it was too late for me to join them for drinks, although they have thought I was irked. As we departed, Goldstein, with Lyle nodding yes, made me promise to come to his place and be interviewed again.

• With much trepidation, I showed up at his suite of Screw rooms on the appointed day. He had a cluttered desk, a high-back and regal-like chair, and a beautiful girl sitting nearby. I'm not sure if it was his wife or his secretary, but she phoned for someone in the art department to give me a tour of the many-roomed place. The rent must be humongous, I thought to myself. The employee showed me around each room, particularly a large one in which he as an artist worked. Dildos, penises, teats, erotica of all kinds! In one nondescript room, another employee arranged a microphone, camera, and a chair and made preparations for the interview. Goldstein, "Uncle Al" the artist called him, arrived with a big smile, a pleasant greeting, apologies for the looks of the room, and then, "Well, old faggot, let's get going!" It wasn't clear if Lyle had told him I am gay or if this was his usual manner of speaking, so again we got off to a bad start. "You like old faggots?" I asked. Whatever he answered, I responded by asking how long he'd had these symptoms. But he went on and on with questions. I was an English teacher in New York? ("Yes, and in Connecticut.") How many students had I had sex with? ("None, whatsoever!") Faculty? ("None, ever, and no administrators.") Married? ("No.") Children? ("No.") Gay? ("Are you? Is this a proposal?") Then it must have been 45 minutes of questions about my education (U of Northern Iowa and Columbia U), experiences with religion (I emphasized being a Unitarian), atheism (upon first hitch-hiking from Iowa to Manhattan, I had met Charles Smith, editor of Truth Seeker, and had talked to him about his atheistic journal). When the time was up, I was given some free copies of Screw, told I'd be on their mailing list and would get a year's free subscription, and I got out of there as fast as I could.

Also . . .

Goldstein's company, Milky Way Productions, home of Screw and his long-running cable show, Midnight Blue, went into bankruptcy in 2004.

Before Screw went out of business, Goldstein and Lyle Stuart had a falling out. In one issue, a photo of Hitler and Eva Braun was doctored by putting a photo of Lyle's head on Hitler's body and a photo of the head of Lyle's wife, Carole, on Eva's body. The Stuarts were shocked and angry, and some subscribers reacted by objecting strongly with letters and cancellations of subscriptions.

Goldstein's mansion in Pompano Beach, Florida, with the 11-foot statue of a raised middle finger out back, was sold in June 2004 to pay debts.

A documentary was made by James Guardino about Goldstein, titled Goldstein: The Trials of the Sultan of Smut.

His will specifies that the son may not inherit the father’s pornographic business. In short, on the one hand Goldstein comes across as a nontheist and activist atheist, on the other, a cultural Jew.

{CA; E; Paper, January 1997; New York, 10 February 1997; Spy, September-October 1997}