WWW- Few people ever think to themselves, “One day, I’d really love to write the sequel to Butt Crazy, and to visit porn sets where I can watch naked guys with enormous cocks recite dialogue that I wrote.” Eric Spitznagel certainly never held that ambition, but life’s funny that way. One day you decide to compromise your standards so that you can have money to buy food, and the next thing you know, your mom’s sobbing on the phone because your name appears in the opening credits of anal gang-bang flicks.
In Fast Forward: Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter, Spitznagel details his reluctant descent into the swarthy, San Fernando Valley world of silicon tits, money shots, and one-legged porn queens. “Spitz” was a struggling Los Angeles screenwriter who couldn’t sell a script to save his life-until one of his friends convinced him to turn a quick buck by writing a porno. The promise of $500 for 20 pages of pizza delivery boy dialogue won out over artistic integrity, and before he knew it, Spitz was a cog in the X-rated industry. Soon enough (and to the dismay of his wife) he was hanging out on movie sets, whooping it up all night at movie-release parties, and watching dozens of videos a day.
As you can expect from anybody who’s spent time on the sets of hardcore films, there are plenty of good stories: Upon entering the industry, Spitz dreams of writing the world’s most literary porno. His boss, a slimy producer, has his own dreams of creating a full-penetration version of Rashomon. At one point, Spitz is called in to convince an NBA star to fulfill his fantasies of starring in his own porn.
Ultimately, though, Fast Forward is the kind of book that’s better heard than read (like at an author event, conveniently enough). The prose is pretty unspectacular-all the dialogue sounds the same, the sentences lack any literary zip. (Imagine that-flat writing from a guy who penned pornos.) The strength of the subject matter carries the book enough to make it a quick summer read, but like its triple-X subject matter, the pleasures of Fast Forward are fleeting at best.