The Birth of the (Blue) Movie Critic

I’d never sat and watched an X-rated movie in my life, when I was asked to be Penthouse’s erotic film critic. Naïveté can work in your favor.

I quit my day job the same morning I was hired by Jack Heidenry in 1986 to write for Penthouse Forum, a pocketbook-size sex journal that porn mogul Bob Guccione published during his heyday.

I had no idea that Heidenry’s plan was rather experimental. All I knew, was that I’d never been paid professionally to write before, though I’d worked tirelessly on underground newspapers and cult magazines since I was a teenager.  I was suspended for distributing birth control information in high school. I got familiar with “free speech” being the prelude to “getting arrested.” My first magazine column, in my twenties, was written for On Our Backs, an 80s underground magazine dedicated to “entertainment for the adventurous lesbian.”

But I had never watched an X-rated movie.

From “Angry Women.” Portrait of Susie and Christian Mann by HL Cottrell.

I didn’t tell Jack either of my secrets. It was such an amazing opportunity; I wanted him to think I wrote for piles of money all the time and knew everythin…