SEXIS WRONG

the Park Miller. Phil’s last picture and one and only all-male
movie premiered there. It was an idea that had been festering
in Phil’s mind for at least two years. He dictated the script
to the Bryant projectionist, Brad, who recalls, “It seemed to
be yet another reflection of Phil’s life. The story was about a
young boy who runs away to New York and winds up at the
Port Authority Bus Terminal, giving Phil lots of excuses for
location work. The kid gets abused working as an 8 th Avenue
hustler. He meets an old man who takes care of him. The old
man is a member of NAMBLA. The police arrive at the end,
breaking up the romance. It was obvious that the whole thing
was a dramaturgy of Phil’s life with, and affection for, Pat.”
The movie was made as Johnny Boy Blue and bore scant resemblance
to Brad’s original script. Many disgusting scenes
were thrown in, like fistings with wriggling fingers displayed
through stomach lining.
The End
In the mid-1980s, Times Square was being dismantled. Mrs.
Wilson had one of her Haitian handymen, Nelson, carry prints
like Confessions of a Psycho Cat out of the Venus Theater
attic and over to the Cameo. The prints were her property.
She knew that the video scavengers were hunting for them,
and she wanted them safeguarded before the Venus doors
got padlocked. One of the last acts Mrs. Wilson performed
before her death in the 1990s was to remake the Cameo into
her all-male palace named the Adonis, which had been originally
located on 50 th Street and 8 th Avenue. When the Board
of Health belatedly shut the all-male theaters, the Cameo’s
space was converted into an Indo-Paki peep scumatorium
called the Playpen.
The roughie theaters had become lethal due to AIDS. The
audience attendance rapidly declined, leaving only the insane
behind. The police turned up at the Venus, stated that the
theater was being shut by the City of New York, and quietly
and gently told the audience and staff to leave. No arrests
were made, but Danny, the projectionist, and Wayne, who
was the cashier, were out of the careers they had held around
the Deuce since the 1960s. Mrs. Wilson died, and her daughter,
Bondi Wilson, took over the reins of the operations. Bondi
sold the Venus to developers who immediately razed it and
turned it into an after-theater Italian tourist trap, the Daniella
Restaurant.
Johnny Boy Blue premiered at the Park Miller
and played only three days in November 1984.
By the end of those three days, Phil was psychotic,
strapped to a gurney, and in jail for a
laundry list of crimes. Armed robbery, attempted
murder, illegal possession of a firearm, possession
of controlled substances, resisting arrest.... The list
went on and on. Phil was the patsy that led upward to the
Times Square hierarchy. At this point, his insanity made him
of little use to anyone. He was cut loose from operations,
although Stella kept tabs on him, and George Payne forlornly
missed him.
Inviting his victims to his church,
he hears their confessions, drugs
their wine, and holds court over a
sadistic orgy.
The Big Apple and the Capri bit the dust at the outset of the
1990s when the city authorities padlocked their doors. As did
all the adult houses. Their spaces vacantly sat with neon-orange
legal notices plastered to their front doors. It was like a
postapocalyptic Last Picture Show of AIDS.
The World Theater eventually became another tourist trap
bar/restaurant. The Lincoln Art went through various names
and permutations, showing art films and Hollywood revivals.
At one point it was a showcase for Hindustani musicals,
showing how much New York had changed. The Rialto One
turned into a Cineplex Odeon. It’s now been transformed into
a virtual-reality family entertainment center.
By 1996 all traces of the roughie grindhouses were wiped off
the face of the earth. But the films, which were the life force
of those houses and the blood that ran through their veins,
remain. Hate springs eternal.
BLACK AND BLUE 163