We Did Porn: Memoir and Drawings

Visual artist and recent alt-porn star Smith—known in the adult film world as “Zak Sabbath”—takes readers on a frenetic journey from the New York art scene to pornography-saturated Los Angeles. Interspersed with his drawings, which have been displayed at MoMA and the 2004 Whitney Biennial, Smith’s memoir is more a series of linked vignettes than a chronological account of his foray into alt-porn. As distinct from mainstream hardcore porn, alt-porn tries to do with sex “the kinds of things ambitious young filmmakers might try to do after graduating from art school.” It was Smith’s collection of illustrations for Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow that first attracted the attention of “pirate porn” director Osbie Feel. As Smith puts it, “I ended up in porn because one day I sat down and decided to draw one picture for every page of a very thick book no one I knew had read.” In addition to attending the Porn Film Festival Berlin and the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas—and having sex with countless women with names like Tina DiVine and Trixie Kyle in countless warehouse sets—Smith is also a cultural critic, dissecting everything from Valentine’s Day to the grammar in antipornography laws. Just as porn, alternative or otherwise, has its fans, Smith’s memoir is an acquired taste and will appeal to those who like things a little kinky. (July 1)