Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy (2001)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

Scott J. Gill

Writer:

Scott J. Gill (writer)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography

Tagline:

The Story of America's Most Unlikely Sex Star

Plot:

Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy offers audiences a penetrating look inside the world of Ron Jeremy...

Plot Keywords:

Porn Star | Sex | Pornography Documentary | Nudity | Pornography

Awards:

3 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Ron Jeremy	...	Himself
William Margold	...	Himself
Al Goldstein	...	Himself
Al Lewis	...	Himself (as Al 'Grandpa' Lewis)
Seymore Butts	...	Himself
Sharon Mitchell	...	Herself
Larry Flynt	...	Himself
Chris Cannon	...	Himself
Tabitha Stevens	...	Herself
Veronica Hart	...	Herself (as Jane Hamilton)
Anita Cannibal	...	Herself
Phoebe Dollar	...	Herself
Susan Yannetti	...	Herself
Samantha Stylles	...	Herself
Troy Duffy	...	Himself

Also Known As:

The Legend of Ron Jeremy (Canada: English title) (DVD title) (USA) (short title)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong sexual content including dialogue.

Runtime:

80 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Canada:R | USA:R | Australia:R

Company:

District Films

Quotes:

Al Lewis: That is the worst act in show business! He has no material, he has no presentation, he has no timing - forget it.

Movie Connections:

References Fascination (1980)

Interesting and fun

The very first time I ever saw people having sex was in my friend's basement on a VCR when I was 14. Ron Jeremy was sitting at a desk talking to someone, I didn't know what to expect, and then he rolls his chair back from his desk and there is this girl fellating him like a human piston. Of course, being a normal 14 year old boy, this made quite an impression on me, and for a lot of guys my age, Ron Jeremy is memorable simply because at a time when none of us had ever had sex and thought about it all the time, we'd seen Ron have it with a bunch of women, and Ron is, as he puts it, an ordinary "schlub."

One thing that struck me about Ron is that he's very intelligent, but he's not normal. I think his whole family seems to know it. It's hard to put your finger on it, but it's sort of like ADD or something. The guy doesn't sleep normal and never did, he's always nodding off at odd moments like a narcoleptic almost, and he's got this book filled with scribbled names and telephone numbers with arrows pointing to and from other people in this crazy hodge podge like you would expect from Russel Crowe in A Beautiful Mind (he's not THAT bright though).

The thing that sticks out the most is that he's basically a kind of addict. The main thing that distinguishes him from your run of the mill addict is that his addictions are or have been food, sex, and attention, not drugs or alcohol. And he doesn't seem to care if the attention is positive or negative. He just needs it like a junkie needs heroin.

All in all, although Ron is pretty one-dimensional (as was mentioned) in a lot of ways, he's less one-dimensional than I would have expected based on what his career has been.

I also was somewhat impressed by the fact that there is a subset of porn stars beyond just Ron who seem brighter than average, along with the dumb and mean types that you would expect. There's this gargantuan knuckle-dragging moron who hammers Jeremy with insults in a hallway and segments of his tirade are interspersed with the rest of the movie. The guy is just a big dumb mean ox with a chip on his shoulder and obviously jealous of being 1/100th the star Jeremy is and not being able to figure out why. Some of the women too failed to surprise me in any way with their shallowness and that small meanness that goes with being deficient in intelligence and poorly brought up. Ron in some ways is a bit of a bastion of halfway-normalcy in that industry. Hell, he's Jewish, his family accepts him and still is happy to see him when he's around. That's probably more than most of those people have.

Anyway, well worth watching both to find out about a big porn star and a little bit about what the industry looks like from a documentary point of view.