nyone familiar with his other work “Hardcore” will know that this will be a hatchet job on our industry and on porn fans. Schrader is a self loathing lump of shit who likes to sensationalize porn to try and cram his morality down our throats.
Ridley99 writes on RAME:
I am very angry right now. I just read a article about Bob Crane, the former Hogan Heroes star who had a sexual addiction that makes Ron Jeremy look positively celibate. I can’t quite figure out where the writer is going with the article. The article is entitled provacatively enough:
” First came the sitcom. Then came the murder, then came the pornographic web site. Now here comes the Hollywood Biopic. ” by Lynn Hirschberg. Title is longer then all the dialouge in Brandon Irons last video.
To make a long story short, she begins with a sad lament for the tragic Mr Crane, who Starred in the CBS hit Hogans Heroes from 1966-1971. Mr Crane led a secret life of sexual addiction. In 1970 while Hogan was still going strong he bought state of the art home video equipment, and using John Carpenter ( not the director ) as his camera man, began to record his sexual exploits. Kind of his own version of Dirty Debutantes. 20 years before Ed Powers got going on a similar vent. The relationship between Crane and Carpenter is the center piece of Paul
Schraders latest movie. the Biopic : ” Autofocus ” which tries to tell the story of these two men, kind of the bonnie and clyde of underground porn. By all accounts Bob Crane was a talented pornagrapher, he had a large dick and he knew had to use it, and he had good taste in women. I lament, a lost master of the art of pornagraphy. A man whose life, if the breaks had gone just right, may have beat JohnStagliano to the porn hall of fame
His second wife patty, the Blonde bombshell secretary , from Hogan Heroes ,appeared in some of his vids. Bob, too keep up appearences, lived a lie. to America he appeared the handsome witty colonel Hogan, american Icon. In real life he lived a shadowy existence of strip club and swing parties, and orgies. He was fond of saying. ” a day without sex is a wasted day.”
This was a talented pornagrapher who was shackled by his own fame. It would have been best for him to give up Hogans heroes, shoot sargent Shultz and bust out and join the Mitchell brothers in San Francisco ,who were just getting going at this time it would have been the perfect marriage of creativity, that could have sired all the great porn that was never made.
But it was impossible, fame had trapped him and shackled him to the world of Donna Reed and My Mother the Car. Once a man has walked in Olympus, it is not for him to evermore walk in the shoes of mortals. I mean what are we to tell the kids. Colonel Hogan is a pervert, thats like saying Mike Brady is gay, its just not possible. So Crane lived his wierd quasi-life, a kind of reverse clark kent. By day superman-Colonel Hogan- by night the perverted Clark Kent.
Its a very interestin story, a film should be made of it. But not the one Schrader has made. He comes not to praise Crane but to bury him. He states he has no real interest in Crane and is only using his sordid story to make apoint.
Schrader:
” this film ripples with ideas ; evolution of american male sexuality, the corrosive effect of celebrity, and the rise of home pornography. He was a so-so sitcom actor. As a person, he wasn’t much better. But he was perfect in lack of awareness. so he can become an emblem without doing great insult to history.”
How the hell are you going to direct a biography of a man without any understanding of what makes him tick. This man Schrader is a ex-minister with a holier then thou air who is forever making movies abouit Pornography. Whats that all about. Talk about living a lie.
The writer of the article seems to lose all interest in Cranes life. she never tells us about Cranes years as Los Angeles # 1 drive time radio king, in which he interviewed the like of Marilyn Monreo and Ronald Regan. How CBS groomed him for sitcom stardom. First giving him parts on the Dick Van Dyke show, then a major role on the Donna Reed show, of all things. he was removed when his character was percieved as too sexually intimidating. His big break came with Hogan, but the show was removed from CBS lineup along with Green acres and all other fantasy type entertainment for Norman lear’s bitter ideal of America. Schrader percieves Crane as some sought of freak, an oddball much like Ed Wood. But Crane is not a freak, he is in fact a troubled man, but we never find out why, what made him the person he was, or to be more apt, what broke him, to be the man he was. Schrader only takes the parts of Cranes life that he wants ,and throws away the rest. He Cherry Picks a very complicated life. The writer of the article spends the rest of the piece talking about Schrader and his movie, as well as the fight between Schrader and Bob Crane s youngest son. . Scotty Crane runs a website that sells his dads pornagraphy. on Bobcrane.com.
She tells us that Crane was killed but never goes into detail about the Vicious attack that left Crane beaten to a pulp. The whole thing drives me crazy and addresses a bigger problem in America. namely :American propaganda. America wants so hard to believe that the America of today is the America of ” Everybody loves Raymond “and all the similar sitcoms that pollute broadcast television. I’d rather watch the most putrid
Brandon Irons video then any of the self serving dishonest bullshit that passes for the ideal of America. The happy, pretty, smiling wife and the loyal lunkhead of a husband , and the adorable super smart children. Even the kids are smart, how many kids do you know who are smart, how many wives do you know that retain thier slim figures after a couple of years of marriage, and how many husband don’t cheat, or drink, or gamble or are loud mouthed racist idiots. I don’t know such flawless people. I love America but i can’t understand the damn hypocrisy. Thats why all arepoliticians lie and cheat. They are us.
We don’t mind if our politicians cheat, we just hate to find out about it. America is a country that does not deal with problems. America likes to solve its problems in one way: it likes to put people in Jail, and it likes to put people in Jail for a long time. This is how America deals with its problems. Junkies belong in Jail, so do people like Bob Crane. If they ever caught him in his nocturnal pursuits there are about five crimes there that they could have charged him with. And they would have.
Bob Crane was not a criminal, he was a sick man with a addiction, but for all its talk of self-help and helping the sick, America could not care less about sick people, America likes people it can easily label. America, is all about making money and getting rich and everybody loves Raymond. America is comfortable with the vacous faces it sees smiling out at it form its 60 inch TV sets: these are the people that America wants representing it .The smiling, happy face, is the Face That America Broadcasts to the world. There is no room in this idealized vision for, addicts and alcoholics, or Homeless people or the mentally ill .Any problem is treated the same way, they try to throw you in Jail.
We are in the bussiness of building Jails, we build them quicker than Hospitals, All the money in the war on drugs goes to indictments, little goes to treatment.
When the fuck are we going to wake up and figure out what we truly are. when are we going to start dealing with our problems instead of sweeping them under the rug. Because in the end its people not problems that will come to rest there.
Some say Bob Crane got what was coming to him. All pornagraphers should get the same treatment. If it happened to Ed Powers or John Stagliano…….one less. I see it different, i see Bob crane as an infinitely salvagable human being. But hypocrisy kept him in the shadowy world of lies and secrets, dwell to long in those shadowy land and it is only a matter of time before something wild and uncontrollable follows you out. Pornagraphers are just people doing what they want to do and ,more power to them i wish i was with them. Children, not adults, should put labels on everything. Labels are dangerous, anything simplified is dangerous. The mob thinks in simplified terms.
And so it was with Crane. America loves its sitcom Fairytales. It love Ray Ramona and nice affable people like that , people with limited problems. The problem with America is that it wants all problems solved in 30 minutes or less. Just like in the sitcoms. The people in the sitcoms are heroic and good hearted. they are perfect human beings.Yessir America loves its heroes. people like Ray Romano…………….and people like Colonel Hogan.
