Fate screws Al Goldstein

[BurtWorm]

I bet John Waters would put him in a movie.



http://www.nypost.com/seven/10292004/gossip/pagesix.htm

October 29, 2004 -- DOWN-on-his-luck smut sultan Al Goldstein has finally hit rock bottom.

The former Screw magazine publisher, who has lately faced destitution, legal woes and homelessness, called us from a shelter at Bellevue Hospital yesterday and said he was fired from his job as a greeter at the Second Avenue Deli.

"I got fired Monday night, after I slept there on Sunday," he said. "The owner got mad at me. I feel terrible. I loved that job. It kept me out of the shelters. Now I have nothing. Last night in the shelter, a homeless guy actually gave me $5. He said, 'Don't have pride. Take the money.' I'm humiliated. Everyone who hated me should be gleeful because my life has become a true horror. Like T.S. Eliot, I'm one of the empty people. I once was Al Goldstein, now I'm a pathetic homeless person."

Goldstein, 68, once a multimillionaire porn pioneer, is now penniless. His company, Milky Way Productions, which published Screw and ran his cult classic cable show "Midnight Blue," went bankrupt last year....

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

1. I remember midnight blue - wow - he didn't make out well

[Crankie Avalon]

2. Wow..I wondered what happened to him...

...the first time I ever heard about Russ Meyer was from secretly watching an interview with Meyer conducted by Alex Bennett and broadcast on Midnight Blue when I was about 13 years old.

What a reversal of fortune!

[BurtWorm]

4. Remember Channel J?

There was a golden age of pornographic TV in the 1970s and 1980s, when producers actually gave a damn about the crap they put on public access TV: Midnight Blue, In and Out with Dick, Robin Byrd... She's still on the air, but...maybe it's just my age or THE age, but, she seems to have lost a lot of her spice. Even the ads used to be more interesting. O tempus, o mores!

[Crankie Avalon]

5. HAH! DO I EVER!!!

What about Ugly George? When I was a 12 or 13 year old kid I actually used to see that guy walking the streets with his film equipment strapped to his back, looking for willing women.

P.S. And, yes, even at that age, I knew who he was--I used to watch his show on the TV. My folks never knew. Such a sneak I was!

Memories...:evilgrin: O8)

[BurtWorm]

8. Oh yeah! Ugly George!

He was in the news for soemthing in the early 1990s--I don't remember why. Was it a First Amendment case? I used to get him confused with Stuttering John.

[Crankie Avalon]

9. I lost track of him once I stopped watching his show...

...so I can't say.

He was a hoot, though. Always referring to the audience as "students," himself as "the Ugliness," and doing his best to get the "mo-dels" to accompany him to "the Polish Penthouse" after the shoot. :7

Check this out (don't worry, safe for work): http://www.amiannoying.com/2002/view.aspx?ID=4400

[mark11727]

3. I blame the internets and all the free porn...

[amazona]

6. well maybe but WTF ?

I don't understand why everyone who has assets doesn't buy a home in Florida or another homestead state before declaring bankruptcy. O.J. can't be the only celebrity who realizes that if you are going to become bankrupt, you need to have a house in a state that protects the homeowner. There is no reason for an older man to have his damn home taken in a bankruptcy. It seems to me that Goldstein must have seen millions pass through his hands, even $200,000 set aside for a modest home in Florida would have kept him out of the shelters. I know several people who have declared bankruptcy and kept their homes, with way less opportunities in life than Goldstein.

So is the story even true...or is it another publicity stunt like the Mike Tyson article claiming he was homeless and it turned out he had a perfectly nice home in Arizona?

[gratuitous]

7. A lethal combination of greed, ego and hubris

If this has truly happened to Al Goldstein (and I don't rule out a publicity stunt by the old whore), then it's too bad, but in some ways quite inevitable. He has been on an decades long ego binge, humiliating and demeaning people who get in his way, or who he thinks are in his way.

From articles I read about him, his business interests simply had no controls. There were no green-visored folks to say, "Al, you just can't do this or that. It's wasteful of company money." He has long banked on a seemingly limitless human appetite for smut and garbage, and it served him well for a long time. Unfortunately, even the basest urges can't keep up with an out-of-control megalomaniac. Goldstein homeless? Sounds like a cosmic "Screw You" and a karmic "Fuck You" for Al.