An adult industry legend in his own right, Bill Margold remembers the time he went down to Cordoba St. in Los Angeles at 7 in the morning to meet with the late skinflick mogul David F. Friedman.
“He asked me why I was there so early,” recalls Margold.
“I told him I was there to kiss his ass.”
Margold at the time figured it would be a coup to induct Friedman, the former chairman of the Adult Film Association of America, into the fledgling XRCO.
“You know you’d be the first to go in,” Margold reminded him.
“In that case, I’ll make sure of it,” Friedman replied, always with that naughty boy twinkle in his eye.
Friedman, an industry pioneer, passed away this week at the age of 87 www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=46790
“He was the first X in Triple X. We got along well, and it saddened me to hear of his death,” intones Margold, realizing that today’s porn generation probably never even heard of Friedman.
“It’s sad,” Margold mutters.
“These people just don’t realize where we came from. It’s frustrating that the history of this business is being brutalized.”
To be fairly honest, Margold’s seduction of Friedman to the XRCO had as much to do with Margold’s abiding dislike for the AFAA as anything else.
“That was an incredibly corrupt organization,” continues Margold, remembering being in the famous Musso & Frank’s Hollywood eatery one evening and overhearing conversation from another table where a top ranking member of the AFAA was apparently heard to declare that the 1st XRCO Award Show would never take place. A statement, which you might imagine, got Margold’s goat, and so he he was compelled to make Friedman his Golden Fleece in this growing feud of mythological proportions.
“I knew XRCO was going to rattle some cages,” says Margold,
“And it made all the sense in the world to bring Friedman into it.”
Margold figured that XRCO, his and Jim Holliday’s brainchild, would at least take the path of noble resistance and intentions – to avoid, if nothing else, scandal and embarrassing situations. Like the time Seventies porn director Carlos Tobalina, who was also owner of the Mayan Theatre in Hollywood, received an award from the AFAA for a film he had no recall of making.
“Votes would always get conveniently lost,” laughs Margold, knowing how a situation like that could thwart anyone from calling the AFAA on the carpet. So you could see why Friedman kind of became a political hot potato.
“Friedman was a very interesting man,” Margold continues.
“And a very modest man though he was a real P.T. Barnum…and a con man…that’s the best kind of filmmaker.”
Unfortunately, the hardcore era was something Friedman, whose films always left something to the imagination, was diametrically opposed to.
“He wasn’t happy about that,” says Margold.
Stacey Walker, a runaway from Texas who Friedman met on the Santa Monica Pier and later cast in a couple of his pictures, was apparently more than just his leading lady.
“I remember Friedman showing me pictures of her, saying he was in love with her,” recalls Margold. “I told him I jerked off to her.”
And Walker disappeared just as quickly from Friedman’s life which must have broken his heart. That and hardcore.