Freddy, The Porn Producer and The Outfit Guy by: Cat Bentivegna Adami

The Subterranean world of America is a mixed bunch, but for the most part, it's a group of people who don't earn a living "on the square." In perhaps the more golden age of cinema, when X-rated films were shown in a theater, my father's backer happened to be a porn producer from San Francisco (for you pool newbies, the backer puts up the money for a pool hustler's bets.) I remember him sleeping on our couch with his eyes open. He certainly had that Burt Reynolds, "Boogie Nights" look going for him, mustache and all, cigarette holders even, but as I remember, he was a "proper" business man, nonetheless, in that he knew "how to count." He dressed well, spoke even better, and could get approved for a loan from any bank at a decent interest rate but he slept on our couch, in our apartment upstairs from Kiyo's restaurant next to the pool room, between two methadone clinics, behind the bus stop, and loved it. He loved my father's life and was enamored by it. He would sleep on the white leather sofa, just like every other hustler did when they came to town. Anyway, from his many visits to see my father, this backer became interested in buying a theater in Chicago where he could distribute his films directly, and receive a bigger piece of the porn pie. Back in the seventies, not surprisingly, these theaters were owned by the mob. In Chicago, we call it "The Outfit" as it's not purely Sicilian or even purely Italian. The backer asked my father to get him a meeting with the mob, and a kid he grew up with, set it up. My father was reluctant to meet with the guy he knew, because as he remembered from growing up, he was an "extra tough" guy, and someone everyone feared, but he set the meeting up, anyway, thinking it was just business for his backer and he was the middle man. When the meeting began, the neighborhood kid was not alone. Not only was he not alone, but he was quiet and being deferential to the man he was with. He actually appeared...scared. The man he was with did all the talking and must have checked him for a wire or something and was asking outrageous questions to feel my father out. Finally my father said "This is a legit inquiry, and I'm from the south side, and I don't rat." My father said he kept looking over at his friend, that he grew up with, who may or may not have been trembling, and figured out something wasn't right. If his friend, the toughest son of a b*tch" he knew growing up was scared of this guy, he must really be a monster. My father just coalesced the rest of the conversation as his laid back San Francisco backer just didn't have the Sicilian intuition that this was not the right set to do business with. There's enough danger just signing a lease with a mobster - but this was on a whole other level entirely. They ended the meeting, and my father never called his friend again, and he convinced his backer to give up on the theater idea. It was a few days later that he was told just who the guy was that made his friend so scared - Frank "The German" Schweiss.

My father had a lifetime of learning how to "dodge traps" and this was certainly one of them.

 


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