Inside Little Oral Annie
Interview by Timothy Snarr
“New porn!” I exclaimed rather jubilantly.
Moments earlier, my co-worker Robert, an experienced filmmaker and Video Production Specialist here at AEBN, had wandered into my office to discuss some of the details surrounding an upcoming project. Almost immediately, his eyes drifted to the non-descript white box sitting on my desk. The flaps of the reinforced cardboard container pointed skyward, its jagged edges and severed strands of still-attached packing tape the remnants of an epic struggle.
“What is it?” he replied curiously, inching closer to grab a quick peek at the contents.
Without hesitation, I reached inside, carefully wedging my fingers between the box and the merchandise, and pulled out a stack of classic DVDs. On top was the Joe Sarno-directed Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle. Underneath sat the Amero Brothers’ wonderfully crafted Blonde Ambition. In the center, bookended by both films, was Radley Metzger’s Sexploitation masterpiece Maraschino Cherry. Having seen Annie assume the bottom position so many times throughout her film career the image of her smiling face and large, bare breasts on top of anything, even a diminutive pile of DVDs, was a pleasant irony not lost on either of us.
All three movies were part of a care package that had arrived the previous day, a very generous ‘thank you’ from Steven Morowitz, Head of Production for Video-X-Pix. Steven had graciously agreed to an interview a few days earlier to discuss his company’s latest undertaking: a High Definition DVD transfer of the XXX classic, Inside Little Oral Annie. The first HD transfer of its kind, he and his current staff of two were feverishly putting the final touches on the project when I caught up with him. Somehow I didn’t feel as if my hour-and-a-half intrusion into his tight schedule merited any kind of reward, let alone a gift of this magnitude. After all, it was he who should be thanked for spearheading the preservation of an important legacy, one seemingly glossed over and forgotten by all but the most cliquish legion of die-hard retro porn fans and film historians. But, somewhere down the line, Steven had discovered that I shared his affinity for history and he insisted that I see first-hand some of the amazing reissues that his company had already released.
The company’s own history stretches back to 1965 when Steven’s father, Arthur Morowitz, a pioneer in both the video rental and home video markets, started Video-X-Pix. Originally called Distribpix, the company produced and distributed adult-themed features to premier movie houses coast-to-coast, during the height of the Exploitation and Sexploitation film eras. At the time, their roll call boasted a who’s who of future porn royalty. Ron Jeremy, Vanessa Del Rio, John Holmes, Seka and others called the label home. Their stable of pre-eminent filmmakers was no less formidable, housing such directorial visionaries as Joe Sarno, Ron Sullivan, Radley Metzger and The Amero Brothers. It was a neatly assembled entertainment collective unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Together, their vast output of films pushed the boundaries of good taste and irreversibly altered society’s perceptions of sex during the decade of free love. Their early forays into implicit soft-core skin flicks and well-timed bouts of pre-meditated rebellion also laid the foundation for the Golden Age of porn, clearing the way for movies like Deep Throat nearly a decade later.
Though film production at the company ceased in 1989, the lure of new technology and the growing demand for classic porn films spurred a Video-X-Pix renaissance in 2002. The recent discovery of a vault containing original 35mm Distribpix negatives certainly helped fuel their inevitable rebirth. By hitching the immediate fortunes of the company to Blu-Ray, HD and Video On Demand formats, Steven hopes to share the Distribpix legacy with a whole new generation of film lovers.
It is impossible to put a numerical value on hope, but Steven readily admits to spending way too much on a few of his releases. He’ll be quick tell you it’s a labor of love, and throughout our interview, as he recalled his father’s and grandfather’s stories of drugs and guns, of mob rule and public relations shakedowns, and of sitting of Seka’s lap as a young child, unaware of who she was at the time, the tone in his voice did not betray that sentiment. Yet, in a time when adult video producers and retailers are scratching and clawing just to survive thanks to the glut of free porn and Tube sites that permeate the internet, many might wonder why any business savvy entrepreneur would chance running a company from the red, even for art’s sake, for history’s sake…for goodness’ sake.
“Holy shit!” blurted Robert, a look of utter amazement crossing his face as I removed the semi-glossy slipcover from the Annie Sprinkle film, cracked open the heavy-duty case and let the 24-page booklet and Annie Sprinkle finger puppet spill out onto my desk.
Wonder no more.
(more…)
Zuckerbrot und Peitsche is a German idiom, which loosely translated means “carrot and stick”. It refers to a system of reward and punishment that is often associated with training a mule. Mules are very stubborn creatures and require a lot of coercion to do what is requested of it, which is why the term is also a perfect metaphor for human behavior within the S&M world. Subs can be exceedingly stubborn too, meaning a well-thought-out methodology is necessary to get results. And if that fails, try a horse head.
