|  Al
Goldstein has been called a fat, angry, vulgarian -- and that's by Goldstein
himself. He's also been called a First Amendment outlaw and a free-speech
hero. Goldstein's life proves that it's possible to be all of those
things, and more.
A photographer by trade, Goldstein and partner Jim Buckley invested
$300 in 1968 to start an explicit, underground magazine they provocatively
entitled Screw. Within three months, New York City readers
were snatching up 150,000 copies a week.
Under Goldstein's guidance, Screw was more than a magazine
with smutty photos. It printed barbed political commentary, saucy satire,
and in-depth interviews with notables like former Beatle John Lennon,
Blondie's Debby Harry, and actor Jack Nicholson. The magazine also had
a sense of humor. "I think Screw is really a MAD comics
for sex," Goldstein told the Palm Beach New Times in 2001.
"We make fun of sex."
New York and federal prosecutors weren't amused. Over the years, Goldstein
was arrested 19 times on obscenity charges. The arrests reached a climax
in 1974 when he insulted then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in print
-- and had to face federal pornography changes in Kansas. Goldstein
handled the constant threat of incarceration with humor; he kept a striped
prison outfit in his office, and put it on every time the police showed
up with an arrest warrant.
Why did Goldstein stay in a business that constantly threatened to land
him in jail? In an August 8, 2003 interview in Media Life magazine,
he explained: "I'm a crusader. I really believe in the First Amendment,
and I use it fully, and I pay a price for that. I keep attacking the
villains, the know-nothings, the people who want to take our freedoms
away."
As the years passed, other magazines -- and then videos and DVDs --
eclipsed Screw in outrageousness, and Goldstein became something
of a (still boisterous) elder statesman in the adult industry. In 1996,
a critically praised documentary movie about him, Screwed: Al Goldstein's
Kingdom of Porn, was released. In 2000, Goldstein, a resident of
Pompano, Florida, was named by the Palm Beach City Link as
"Best Celebrity Who Lives in South Florida." No other celebrity,
opined the magazine, "has succeeded quite so shamelessly and with
so little compromise as the politically incorrect Goldstein."
Technology also caught up with Goldstein. In November 2003, he ceased
publication of Screw magazine and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
He said increased competition from the Internet had made magazines like
his "an anachronism; we are elephants going to the bone cemetery
to die." However, Goldstein promised to relaunch the magazine and
focus more attention on an affiliated website. As he planned for the
future, his words echoed from the past. "You need fighters like
me to battle, because frankly The New York Times and the
Washington Post are not going to fight the fights that I do,"
he told Media Life magazine. "I refuse to be silenced."
-- Bill Winter |
