SEXIS WRONG

connection.” Had Marvin truly been in deep with organized
crime, he would have solicited funds from his “courtesy connections”
to fuel his rapid expansion, and he might well have
succeeded in his grandiose plans, as Reuben Sturman did.
Marvin was a rogue maverick; there’s no way he would have
jeopardized his independence in that manner.
at least the editorial pages—of every newspaper in the country.
He finally had his day in court. The Supreme Court. And
for the first time in its history, the Justices were in unanimous
agreement on a legal issue, judging it impossible to
determine a national standard of obscenity. Their agreement
ended there.
Marvin’s dream of skin-flick
moguldom via production and
exhibition through theaters, cable,
closed circuit, and videocassette
played a major role in his undoing.
Marvin’s dream of skin-flick moguldom via production and
exhibition through theaters, cable, closed circuit, and videocassette
played a major role in his undoing. He suffered from
classic entrepreneur-osis, a condition all too common to visionaries
with gold in their eyes. He expanded far too rapidly
in too many directions without adequate cash flow to finance
his dreams. A primary reason seems to be that porn-theater
owners were/are experts par excellence at underreporting
box-office receipts, working every con imaginable to shortchange
producers. Marvin worked every angle there was in
negotiating terms directly with theater owners. With Man
and Wife, he “four-walled”—bought out theaters for a fixed
time at a flat fee, then exhibited and kept all the proceeds.
But with Man and Wife’s success, distributors begged for
his movies. And then robbed him; the theater owners were
certainly robbing them. He was, according to William Landes,
owed money from everyone, was selling off this to pay for
that, constantly juggling his various bank accounts to make
payroll, was seriously overextended; too big, too fast, and
way too far ahead of the marketplace.
Ultimately, Marvin’s dream collapsed because he didn’t grasp
what 1960s porn magnate Milton Luros and 1970s-1980s
porn emperor Reuben Sturman so keenly understood in establishing
their empires’ own distribution infrastructures and
becoming fabulously wealthy: Distribution is everything. You
stand in the middle of the money river and let it flow into your
pockets. But distribution is a dull, plodding business; a restless
spirit like Marvin would have gone nuts.
Another reason Marvin’s hopes evaporated was most certainly
because his legal fees were astronomical. Since his
bust in 1969, he had been supporting Burton Marks and an
army of legal eagles full-time while the case wended its way
through the appellate process.
On June 21, 1973, Marvin Miller made the front pages—or,
After four years in the appellate process, Miller v. California
had come to that august body for final adjudication. Marvin
had been charged with violating California Penal Code
ss311.2(a): “Every person who knowingly: sends or causes
to be sent, or brings or causes to be brought, into this State
for sale or distribution, or in this State prepares, publishes,
prints, exhibits, distributes or offers to distribute, or has in his
possession with intent to distribute or to exhibit or offer to
distribute, any obscene matter is guilty of a misdemeanor.”
The trigger had been the five brochures featuring
explicit ads for Miller books sent to the
mom-and-son restaurant in Newport Beach.
Carolyn See was present in Washington for
the argument phase. She reported that Associate
Justice Rehnquist asked questions of
each attorney, then asked to view the obscene
material in question. He fell quiet. Preternaturally so. “He
seemed to be hypnotized by smut,” she recently recalled to
me. Thank goodness for long robes and high benches! It’s
all rather comical, and it was only because it’s forbidden that
laughter didn’t spontaneously burst forth in that historic chamber.
The Justices themselves had a difficult time restraining
themselves during the arguments. (There were actually three
obscenity cases decided by the Court, collectively known as
Miller.)
See wrote: “The case was The Entire Respectable U.S.A.
Against Twelve Films. One of the learned justices had opened
the brief and read the name of the first of the films: ‘____ing
and ____ing.’ The learned justice broke out in a delighted grin
and nudged his colleague who rolled his eyes, who nudged
his colleague who glowered and flushed, and so on! The brief
zipped down the bench and back; the justice’s chairs began
to rock—and stopped. But with a couple of exceptions, the
faces of these wonderful old men looked more clear, more
merry and bright, if you will, than they had the minute before.”
43
High comedy had, in fact, been an everyday occurrence during
obscenity trails throughout the era. See, who attended
many such trials during that time as an observer and witness
for the defense, recalled: “[B]y late afternoon the judge,
defendant, witnesses, attorneys and jury find themselves
increasingly possessed by vagrant gales of laughter as the
most harmless statements in the language are discovered to
248 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG