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The Devil and John Holmes : And Other True Stories of Drugs, Porn and Murder - Mike Sager

The Devil and John Holmes

And Other True Stories of Drugs, Porn and Murder

By: Mike Sager

Paperback | 19 June 2020

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Now with new cover, new interior art, and vintage movie posters added.


"John Holmes was every man's gigolo, a polyester smoothie with a sparse mustache, a flying collar, and lots of buttons undone. He wasn't threatening. He chewed gum and overacted. He took a lounge singer's approach to sex, deliberately gentle, ostentatiously artful, a homely guy with a pinkie ring and a big dick who was convinced he was every woman's dream." -from "The Devil and John Holmes."


John Curtis Holmes had the longest, most prolific career in the history of pornography. He had sex on-screen with two generations of leading ladies, from Seka and Marilyn Chambers to Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn, and Italian Member of Parliament Cicciolina. The first man to win the X-Rated Critics Organization Best Actor Award, Holmes was an idol and an icon, the most visible male porn star of his time.


Holmes started in the business around 1968 and made more than two thousand movies. But after descending into a world of drugs and crime, he became the central figure in one of the most publicized mass murders in L.A. history, the 1981 Wonderland Avenue killings in Laurel Canyon, in which four people were brutally bludgeoned to death. Holmes was tried and acquitted of the crimes in 1982. He died from complications of AIDS on March 13, 1988.


Read the story that inspired the movies Boogie Nights, with Mark Walhberg, and Wonderland, with Val Kilmer and Lisa Kudrow. Now with restored edits, updated information, new cover and interior art by Austraila's famous illustration team WBYK, and photos of old Holmes movie posters. The collection includes three bonus stories. "Little Girl Lost," about the life and death of beautiful porn starlet Savannah, among the first of the Vivid Girls; "Deviates in Love" about swingers and amateur porn; and "The Porn Identity," about a divorced man's search for retired porn starlets in an effort to get his mojo back.





Industry Reviews

"The Devil and John Holmes" is one of the most terrific sagas we have ever published."- Jann Wenner, editor and publisher, Rolling Stone


"I can recognize the truth in these stories-tales about the darkest possible side of wretched humanity. Sager has obviously spent too much time in flop houses in Laurel Canyon."- Hunter S. Thompson, author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hells Angels.


"In his audio commentary on the New Line DVD release of Boogie Nights, P.T. Anderson cites as a major influence

reporter Mike Sager's article in the June 15, 1989 Rolling Stone, 'The Devil and John Holmes'."-Stephen Lemons, Salon.com


"Mike Sager writes about places and events we seldom get a look at-and people from whom we avert our eyes. But

with Sager in command of all the telling details, he shows us history, humanity, humor, sometimes even honor. He makes

us glad to live with our eyes wide open." -Richard Ben Cramer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of What It Takes: The Way to the White House and Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life


"Mike Sager writes with uncommon grace and, always, with respect for those who give him their time. His stories cut to

the bone of our common humanity." -Paul Hendrickson, author, Hemingway's Boat and Sons of Mississippi,


"You know those engrossing books that keep you up all night? Don't pick this one up if you have somewhere to be the next morning."

-E Online.com.


"I once described Mike Sager as "the Beat poet of American journalism." The title is still apt. For decades, he has explored the beautiful and horrifying underbelly of American society with poignantly explicit portrayals of porn stars, swingers, druggies, movie stars, rockers and rappers, as well as stunning stories about obscure people whose lives were resonant with deep meaning-a 92-year-old man, an extraordinarily beautiful woman, a 650-pound man. He became a journalistic ethnographer of American life and his generation's heir to the work of Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson. His imposing body of work today is collected in more than a dozen books and eBooks, including the best sellers Scary Monsters and Super Freaks and Revenge of the Donut Boys" -Walt Harrington, author, journalist, and past head of Journalism at the University of Illinois.


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