Now that the John Travolta rumors are again out of the closet thanks to www.radaronline.com www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=45355 let’s take a walk down Paul Barresi Boulevard, shall we?
from Wikipedia- Paul Barresi (born 12 January 1949 is an American film director and media personality who has appeared in and directed pornographic movies under his own name, as well as under Jason Thorpe, Joe Hammer and Michael Franco.Barresi has also been involved in various capacities in several high-profile celebrity scandals.
Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, when Barresi was 12 his family moved to Annapolis, Maryland for his father’s job at military installations. Barresi has told reporters he attended the University of Maryland on a wrestling scholarship but left to enlist in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War.
Barresi served at bases in the United States and the Philippines, and he was honorably discharged as a sergeant in 1973 after completing his tour at March Air Force Base. He soon began working at a gym in nearby Riverside, California.
During filming in Riverside, Barresi worked as an uncredited production assistant for Raquel Welch and had an uncredited role as a bartender in The Wild Party, released in 1975. In March 1975, Barresi appeared with a pre-Elvira Cassandra Peterson in a Playgirl pictorial. Barresi was selected by Rip Colt as an early Colt model, and was featured with other Colt men on the cover of the November 1975 Mandate. He was also on the cover of Hustler in December 1978.
The print modeling led to a number of appearances in film as a pornographic model and actor. He appeared in a straight scene with Becky Savage in the 1979 gay classic L.A. Tool & Die, and his first role in a straight feature was in 1980’s Co-Ed Fever, where he is credited as Jason Thorpe.
He played the minister and performed in a straight scene in the breakthrough 1983 transsexual film Sulka’s Wedding, starring Ron Jeremy with the eponymous bride.
Barressi appeared in dozens of straight films after that, including Hollywood Confidential 3: Secrets Of Stage Five (1983), Nasty Nurses (1983), Diary Of A Sex Goddess (1983), All American Girls 2: In Heat (1983), Bad Girls 2 (1983), and Miami Spice 2 (1986), among many others.
His roles in films for the gay market are straight or solo performances, and they frequently involve him playing a domineering straight acting authority figure punishing submissive younger males without explicit sexual contact with male performers.
Classics such as Men of the Midway (1983), Falconhead II (1984), and What the Big Boys Eat (1985)are often listed among the best in the history of the genre.
In 1992, Razor Close, a Joe Hammer fetish video, won AVN and Gay Video Guide awards as “Best Specialty Video.”
Barresi has been nominated for several other AVN Awards, including 8 nominations for the 1998 gay mafia epic which he wrote, directed, and produced, titled GoodFellas/BadFellas, and featuring him in a non-sexual role. Barresi earned a 2003 GayVN Awards nomination for “Best Non-Sex Performance — Gay or Bi” for Long Strokes [starring Michael Brandon (porn star) ], noting he got the nod “just for taking my shirt off; if I knew they wanted more, I’d have done more.”
Barresi has continued to direct adult films, including several popular titles for the gay market, often with military or discipline themes. Adult Video News has said Barresi’s directorial efforts make him “undisputedly the king of military-themed videos.”
In 2005, Barresi directed a straight feature under the name Michael Franco.
In addition to his work in pornographic film and video, Barresi toured in a 1980 summer stock suite of scenes from Neil Simon plays, headlined by Paul Lynde.
Barresi told Entertainment Tonight of the difficulty crossing over into mainstream film: “No one really takes a porn actor seriously … and no one really respects a porn actor.”
Barresi had a speaking role as a member of the former West Hollywood Sports Connection gym in the 1985 film Perfect, directed by James Bridges and starring John Travolta.
According to an investigative report by Mark Ebner, “Barresi moved sharply higher on the Hollywood notoriety scale in 1990 when The National Enquirer ran a front-page story showcasing his claim that he’d had a two-year love affair with John Travolta.
Barresi told the tabloid he’d met Travolta in 1982 when the actor followed him into the shower room of an L.A. health club.”
According to Jim D’Etremont of The Guide, Barresi said his relationship with Travolta continued through the filming of Perfect, but had cooled by 1990, when Travolta passed over Barresi for a personal trainer job.
Barresi asked for and received $100,000 from The Enquirer in exchange for the details of his relationship with Travolta.
The issue was published on May 8, 1990, but several months later, Barresi retracted his story, saying in a letter to Travolta’s attorney that he’d never engaged in homosexual activity with Travolta.
Barresi told The Guide’s Jim D’Etremont that he did so with assurances from Travolta’s attorney that the affair could be brought “to a soft landing” if he issued a retraction and an apology: “I was having a nervous breakdown… I just wanted it to be over. But when the dust settled, I regretted the retraction a lot more than I regretted that initial call to the Enquirer.”
After making the rounds on the talk show circuit, Barresi became a self-styled private investigator.
In the wake of 1993 child sexual abuse accusations against Michael Jackson, Barresi attempted to sell tabloid gossip in 1994 after secretly taping two accusers in order to scoop them.
Barresi claimed he met and dated Stella LeMarque, then surnamed “Marcroft,” before she and husband Philippe married. The LeMarques tried to cash in on their story after being dismissed in 1991 as workers at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, claiming they had witnessed Jackson inappropriately touching Macaulay Culkin.
When their asking price was $100,000, Barresi said “‘the hand was outside the kid’s pants’ … As soon as their price went up to $500,000, the hand went inside the pants.”
Barresi appeared in a PBS Frontline documentary about the incident and described his involvement:
Barresi: So I called the editor at The Globe and I said, ‘I have a tape, I’m on the way down town to hand it to the District Attorney.’ And his words were, ‘let us come with you.’ And then I knew I had him. The next thought in my mind was I’m going to ask for $30,000. You always ask for twice as much as what you hope to get. He put me on hold, and within less than a minute he came back and he said ‘well, we can’t give you thirty, we’ll give you ten.’ I said ‘make if fifteen,’ he said ‘you have a deal.’
Reporter: Could you see the headlines coming?
Barresi: Oh yeah, sure, and I could see that money coming too.
According to Maureen Orth of Vanity Fair, Barresi had arranged the $15,000 deal with The Globe, but he got impatient and contracted tabloid broker Kevin Smith of Splash News Service, who placed it with The Daily Mirror for $2,400.
When the Globe deal came through, Smith couldn’t undo the Mirror deal, and the Mirror scoop kept Barresi from getting paid by The Globe. Smith claims Barresi came to his office “with a gun and a huge bodyguard,” and Smith arranged for Barresi to get $1,000.
In the end, the DA decided that the stories of the LeMarques and that of the Quindoys (who also sold their story to the tabloids) could not be used. Barresi ended up making $30,000 in total on the Jackson story.
Following a 1997 incident involving Eddie Murphy and a transgender prostitute, Barresi attempted to collect sworn statements from other sex workers alleging encounters with Murphy. Ebner notes some received as much as $15,000:
“[Barresi] offered them payoffs to reverse their stories and coached them to give false testimony. He personally squired two of them to [Murphy lawyer Marty] Singer’s law office, where they declared under penalty of perjury that they’d lied to the tabs about having sex with Murphy.”
With the exception of the person with whom Murphy was found, Barresi said, “In less than 10 days, I got them all to sign sworn, videotaped depositions, stating it wasn’t Murphy himself, but rather a look-alike, who they’d encountered.”
In a review of Ebner and Breitbart’s book, Publishers Weekly notes “when Murphy’s lawyers didn’t compensate Barresi, he turned all his records over to the authors.”
Barresi began working with private investigator Anthony Pellicano around the time of the 1994 Jackson incident. According to Barresi, Pellicano would purchase tabloid reporters’ celebrity gossip before it became public. He then would offer to do damage control for $25,000 or more.
“He says these people pursue him to hire him, when in fact, he pursues them,” said Barresi. Barresi says he also assisted Pellicano in a 1994 investigation of paternity claims involving Barry Bonds and a porn actress.
Barresi told ABC News about his work with Pellicano, “Whenever there was a damaging story involving a celebrity client that involved sex, then I was involved.” Barresi said that Pellicano hired him to “get dirt on” Pellicano’s former client Sylvester Stallone. The actor’s phone was allegedly bugged by Pellicano during a lawsuit over Planet Hollywood.
Barresi told Vanity Fair that Pellicano had a vendetta against Stallone after the two had a falling-out: “Pellicano hired me on two occasions to find dirt on Stallone.The first time was in 1995 or ’96 and then again in late 2001.”
Barresi told LA Weekly that Pellicano hired him when Arnold Schwarzenegger was considering running for governor in 2001, “to look for information that may be of good use to Schwarzenegger’s detractors,” so Schwartzenegger’s team could prepare for any damage control. Barresi submitted 27 pages but could not say who requested the probe.
Barresi told tabloid journalist and biographer Andrew Morton that he arranged for a pornographic performer to meet with him and Pellicano in June 2001 to discuss selling a suspected story about an alleged London sexual encounter with Tom Cruise.
Barresi now claims that even though Pellicano pressed the issue, he always felt the story was not credible.
The New York Times reported that Pellicano informed Cruise’s lawyer, Bertram Fields, who warned the performer in a letter to drop the matter. Barresi said the performer fled to Europe on his advice, and Barresi received $5,000 for his efforts.
Barresi was bequeathed illegally taped phone conversations made by Jim Mitteager, the Los Angeles bureau chief of tabloid The Globe. after Mitteager died of throat cancer in 1997.
Barresi told reporter Drew Griffin “[Mitteager] indicated to the person who gave them to me that I would know what to do with them,” and Barresi arranged for KCBS-TV to air them in a multi-part series in 2004.
The tapes aired by KCBS include a conversation where Pellicano offers Mitteager a story about his new client Jean-Claude Van Damme in return for Mitteager’s dropping one about client Whoopi Goldberg.
In 1999, Barresi says he was assigned by Pellicano to investigate a model who named Chris Rock in a paternity suit. Barresi also says he was hired to look into the sexual orientation of Gavin de Becker, a successful security consultant of whom Pellicano was jealous.
Barresi also claims that he has been sought out for comment by the press as the 2002-2008 Pellicano criminal-defense case unfolded. Barresi told the New York Times he has been aiding the defense team for entertainment lawyer Bertram Fields, a long-term client of Pellicano’s who is now under investigation, in hopes of a later payday.
Barresi also reportedly worked with attorneys for producer Jules Nasso in 2006. As part of a lawsuit, they seek Pellicano’s wiretapped calls for any evidence that Steven Seagal ordered Pellicano to terrorize former Variety reporter Anita Busch.
In May 2006, Barresi turned over tapes from Mitteager with transcriptions to the FBI.
Pellicano was sentenced in December 2008 to 15 additional years in prison for wire taping and racketeering. He had previously served for illegal firearms and homemade grenades. Pelicano was further ordered (with two other defendants) to forfeit $2 million. The relationship between PI Pelicano and PI Barresi is therefore on hold indefinitely.