Porn Valley- There are two Roy Karch’s in the porn business, and one of them was there for the Rude TV launch party Monday night.
I could tell the two Roy’s apart if they were to stand side by side. But if someone said to me, you know Roy Karch is rationing baloney and swiss cheese sandwiches on his sets again? I’d be stumped to guess which Karch they were referring to.
The Roy Karch I’m speaking to at the Rude party has been in the business forever. And because Rude is basically doing tit TV, Karch can relate to a similar show he started back in Manhattan in the early Seventies.
Otherwise, Karch is always a presence at the porn premieres and grand openings. So much so, you’d think he was a giant pair of scissors.
“You gotta be there and gotta represent,” Karch says.
“You were the original guy- you did this before anybody,” I’m telling him.
“Seems to be,” says Karch.
“1974 we had a cable access television show. It was on Manhattan Cable TV and Teleprompter, Channel C, Channel D. You got the show by subscribing to Cable TV and turning to your public access channel at 10 o’clock Friday nights. We heard that there was a channel that could not censor you. Mandated by Federal law, no censorship. So my partner and I said we’ll try and see if that’s true. Rather than do little tapes we scheduled a weekly show live."
The first year Karch broadcast was from singer Richie Havens’ niteclub in front of a life audience. In the second and third year he was at the cable station. Karch had just finished teaching school and was going for his Masters Degree at night while tending bar on the Upper East side.
“My friend and I got into this discussion about cable,” Karch recalls. “Let’s test the airwaves- do they really belong to the people?”
Karch remembers teaching high school gym in the Bronx and how he got into porn.
“My girlfriend the dental assistant came home one day with an ad from the Free Press,” says Karch. “Someone was shooting scenes for the loops- Bob Wolfe- 8mm, no sound. Three minute loads in the Brownie camera.”
Karch said couples were being paid $700 at the time to fuck on film.
“This was 1970,” he says. “That was a lot of money.”
And Karch thinks some of the loops he appeared in might be available from Blue Vanities.
“I knew then that if this guy could pay us $700, he’s making more. That was the seed. And four years later I had the Underground Tonight Show and I was directing.”
Karch said he’d shoot on videotape.
“It pre-dates the adult industry but it’s the first X-rated stuff shot on videotape,” he declares. “We were using Sony black & white half-inch reel-to-reel portapack. You used to carry it on your shoulder.”
According to Karch the first show featured Screamin’ Jay Hawkins as a musical guest.
“He brought his own coffin,” Karch laughs. “And we had Darby Lloyd Rains and one other guy. We also had Betty Dodson the Feminist writer who brought five women with her. They masturbated live. And the cable company pulled the plug on us. One cable company let it go and one company pulled the plug. We went black on one station. We took the case to the FCC, and the FCC took the case to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that public access couldn’t be censored.”
Karch also remembers having Marilyn Chambers on one of the shows.
“We were politics, music and sex,” Karch states. “We had Abbie Hoffman on. We had Jerry Reuben on. We had Patti Smith on. It was ahead of its time.”
Karch eventually came out to LA in 1977 with all his tape. He made two 90-minute comps and Karch figured he’d make his world in Hollywood somehow.
“I had done some work for John Cassavetes,” he notes. “I was the p.a. on The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. And I’m an extra in that too when Ben Gazzara gets in the cab coming out of a club.”
On another occasion, Karch went to Bill Margold’s office.
“Margold had heard of me and said you want to work on a movie, they’re doing a movie called Dracula Sucks and need a production manager. That was just a great way to break into LA porn. It was Seka’s first movie.”
The cast included just about every great name in porn of that generation.
“I was there with all of them,” states Karch.
“Then I see that everyone is shooting film and no one is doing what I did in New York- video. Maybe I ought to rent a camera. I rented a Phillips 80 video system at a Hollywood equipment house and with Margold and Maria Tortuga I directed a movie shot on videotape called The Reincarnation of Serena. I put it on my shelf because there were no VCR’s yet. This is 1979.”
Karch recalls going to his car dealer’s house and meeting someone who knew him from high school in the Bronx. The guy told Karch he was working for an adult video company and suggested Karch meet his boss.
“I walk into a company called Gourmet Video,” Karch says relating what happened next.
“I met the boss Howie Wasserman who remembers me. He said, ‘I was your babysitter when you were 8 years old in the Bronx.’”
So without knowing it, Karch had built-in connections in the industry.
“Howie says what are you doing? I said I got this shot-on-video movie. He said I want it, and he bought it from me and gave me a job as a salesman. I had a job selling porn. Here I had the official first porno movie shot on tape.”
A few people will dispute that fact, including someone named David Jennings who in his book titled Skinflix claimed he was the first to do it.
“And Margold says he shot one first,” concedes Karch who’s early history in porn included producing movies for Svetlana, David Marsh and Philip Marshak.
“Between those jobs and Dracula Sucks I got plugged into every major player right away,” Karch says.
