Roger Earl, Superhero of Leathersex Video Pt. 1: Born to Raise Hell

This week, we're reprinting Joseph W Bean's illuminating interview with legendary S/M filmmaker Roger Earl from the Oct-Nov 1997 issue of International Leatherman magazine. Earl and his collaborative partner Terry LeGrand were behind many of the most influential classic gay S/M films and videos, including Born to Raise Hell and the Dungeons of Europe and Bound for Europe series.

We're breaking this interview up into installments, so stay tuned in future weeks for its continuation!

Roger Earl: Thinking about this talk, I decided to start by telling you about a time when I was around 25 years old. I went to a party in the Hollywood Hills and, at that party, I met a great looking guy who was about 50 years old, six feet tall, with good body... and before the party was over, we were in the basement, on the cement stairs. I had his pants around his ankles, his shirt off and I was whipping his ass and his shoulders with my belt. It was his first experience ever in this sort of a scene – not mine, but his. He was a carpenter at the National Broadcasting Company and he was the one responsible for getting me a job at NBC. I say that was his first experience. It certainly wasn't his last.

After I joined NBC and was working there, George came to me and said he had been approached by a group of people who wanted to do a heavy S&M film. They wanted him to direct it. (George is the carpenter that I met at the party.) He said the only way he would do it is if I would co-direct with him and work with him on it, and I said, "Sure, why not."

Well, I went to the first meeting. George was supposed to be there. Needless to say, George never showed up at any meetings. George never participated. He dropped out and really didn't want anything to do with it. He wanted me to do it. This is where I met Terry LeGrand. The meeting was with Terry LeGrand and company, to do this heavy SM film. On the way home from the meeting that day, my mind was racing. I was thinking about all this stuff that needed to be done, thinking about the motorcycle men and the tattoos and all, and the tattoo "Born to Raise Hell" came to mind.

Right then and there, I knew, on the freeway, that was going to be the name of the film. They had no title. They had no script. All they had was, "Make us a heavy SM film. OK?" I knew that in order to do this film, I needed this dynamite top, this man that was always in everybody's mind as the Hot Top, and I had no idea where I was going to find him.

RE: Exactly! And, I even considered... there was this guy who was a Colt model, Ledermeister was his name with Colt. I forget his real name, but he hung out at the baths, and I was going to approach him. But he also was not into the scene. He really wasn't quite right. So I was haunting Larry's bar at the time in Los Angeles.

Joseph W. Bean: Larry's, the bar with the famous Full Moon Parties by invitation?

RE: Yes, and, one day when I went in there, there he was. He was the man that I knew would make this film what I wanted it to be. I knew I had to ask him to be a part of it, and can I tell you something: I was scared shitless. I figured he would knock me right through the fucking wall if l even approached him. I stood there on one foot, and my stomach turned and, finally, I said, “Hey, go for it, if he knocks you on your ass, he knocks you on your ass and we're done, we're finished.” So, I approached this guy, his name was Val Martin – of course, as we all know now, I told him what I wanted to do and he said, “Give me your number. I'll call you tomorrow.” And he did. Val turned out to be one of my dearest and closest friends, one of the sweetest men in the world, and totally made the movie, as we all know.

JWB: He went on to make Drummer and, in a sense, to make, or at least radically change, the whole scene as we now know it.

RE: Without Val there was no movie. He was the key to that whole movie. And, as I said, he became a very dear friend afterward. His was one of the first panels I made for the AIDS Memorial Quilt. I did his name in black with little silver studs, and, at the bottom, I put "A Leatherman and a Gentleman." To me, that really explained Val. He was really a gentleman and a hell of a leatherman. I admired him so much and miss him so much. I really miss Val.

RE: Anyway, that's how Born to Raise Hell all came about and, from that, Terry LeGrand became a business partner and a friend. We were never interested in each other sexually or anything, but we became very dear friends Terry will always be my friend through thick and thin, and hell and high water.

In all the films that I've done with Terry, I will say that all the real production values in these films are Terry's responsibility. I mean, he's responsible for that because he's the one that has the guts to go ask the Queen of England to let us shoot a fuck film in the palace. That's the kind of person Terry is, and that's why we got the great locations, the great people and the rest of it. I mean, had Terry been with me that night when Val was in the bar, Terry would have walked right up to him without any problem. I squirmed and carried on and went through six deaths, but Terry would have walked right up to him. So, Terry is really responsible for Marathon Films having the production values and having some of the great models. The two of us were able to work together so well because he has this wonderful chutzpah that created what I wanted, and every time I said, “Terry I need, I want," Terry would bend over backwards to make sure I got what I needed and wanted. We made a good tape – a very good tape.

There are a couple of things I would like to tell you about. This was during the making of Born To Raise Hell, when we were in the dungeon, and I had a guy tied up to the cross and all...

JWB: Where was that?

RE: That was a place in Hollywood called the House of Dominance, where all the Dominatrixes charged the guys anywhere from $200 to $500 to tie them up and beat their ass. They had lawyers, executives from film studios... everyone. And they were great gals. I really enjoyed them and they were terrific. They wanted to be there when I shot. They said they never allowed anybody to be there when they weren't present, and I said, "Bullshit! You will destroy everything I'm doing. You can't be here. These guys don't work well with women." Anyway, that was all solved, and they were very pleased with what we had done in their facility.

RE: But we were shooting this one scene with Tiger on the cross and tied up, and Val and Bob were whipping the hell out him and all this, and he was screaming bloody murder. I mean just screaming, wide open, screaming bloody murder. I finally just stopped, "Wait, wait," and I asked Tiger, "Are you OK?"

He said, "I'm fine. I was just acting."

I was so pissed off. I went back to Bob and Val and said, "Beat the shit out of that motherfucker. I don't like acting. I want to hear real fuckin' pain." I almost flipped. That's something I have never forgotten.

When we shot that last scene with the two cops out in the woods, I don't remember who I went through to get these two guys. But, anyway, I told them I needed their sizes to go to Western Costume to get the uniforms, and one of the guys said, "You don't need to get a uniform for me. I've got one." So, he showed up in his LAPD uniform, and it turned after I shot the whole thing, that he really was an LAPD – on the reserve unit.

JWB: I heard that from Val later.

RE: I told him I wished he had told me about all of this, and he said, "You wouldn't have used me if I had." I admitted he was right. Anyway, it was in the can, so I just went with it.

RE: Dale... yes, was the name of the guy we used in the opening scene, the guy that sat in the toilet and they pissed in his mouth, and they took him in and beat the shit out of him on the pool table and put the dildo up his ass. They really worked the kid over pretty roughly, and I was very pleased with all that he took, and I thought he was terrific. Then, when we finished that scene, I put my arm around him and said, "Man, you were terrific, you really were." And he asked if that was all. He asked if they weren't going to hurt him any more. "I love pain," he said, "I really was hoping there would be more." I said, "Hey, you want to do more, give me a few minutes." And that's when Val got out the alligator clips and we shot that extra scene, because the kid just hadn't had enough. As long as Val was willing... So, it's funny how these things happen in a shooting.

RE: Also, the kid whose head we shaved, the long-haired guy? What happened was, the first day we shot, I was so tired and so horny, I stopped by Larry's on the way home from the shoot and I met this guy and thought, “Well, I'll take him home, play with him a little bit and then go to bed and get a good night's sleep.” I brought him home, started playing with him, and I said something like, “I'm going to shave this long, fucking hair off." And he said that would be fine, "Go ahead." I went to get my stuff and I asked myself, "Am I fucking crazy? I want to do this on film." And I asked him if he would do it on film, and he said he would. I showed up the next morning with him and Terry said, "You told me that... You were very emphatic that we weren't allowed to bring tricks and friends to the shoot." I told him this wasn't a trick or a friend, this was a new actor. He said we didn't have the money. "Well, we'll have to find it," I said. He said the only way would be to take the money out of my money. I agreed, and that's how he came about.

JWB: Can I ask a couple questions about Born To Raise Hell while we're here? In the '70s, when you made Born, there were sex films sort of in the mainstream, and sex films were being shown in big theaters. It was all pretty different, but how different was it? Did you think, when you were making it, this is has to be a secret, this can't be thought of as part of my career, that kind of stuff?

RE: Absolutely, because it was a porn film... everything about it, I could not have been known as having done this. For years and years, it was very hush-hush that I had anything to do with it, and I actually denied having anything to do with it. Of course, Born to Raise Hell was shown on film and 16mm. It was edited on my dining room table in my apartment.

JWB: Movieola and canvas bag at the end of the table?

RE: Well, it wasn't even a Movieola, it was a reel-to-reel crank-through called the Moviescope, and I cut original. There wasn't enough money to do a work print, so I cut original.

JWB: Who cut the negative? Did you have to do that yourself?

RE: No. The original was...

JWB: Oh, you didn't have any kind of print at all?

RE: Nothing, I cut original, right out of the camera to my table. But I had enough confidence in myself that I could do it. And I said, "I'II do it. Don't worry about it. I know what I'm doing. I know the film. I shot it, I can do it." And I did. It didn't turn out all that bad. I made a couple little mistakes that I could certainly see, but most people don't see them. And it was very interesting.

Another little tidbit about Born To Raise Hell: the cameraman that we used was a cameraman for Jacques Cousteau, a straight man, of course. The action that went on never once bothered him. He never mentioned anything about what we were doing or anything. He just kept going on about, "God these guys have such dirty feet, I keep smelling those dirty feet, I smell dirty socks all the time, all these dirty feet." They're sniffing amyl one after the other. [Ed. Note: At the time, poppers were amyl nitrate in glass ampules, and spent amyl smelled powerfully of dirty socks.]

JWB: How much of a crew did it take to do Born To Raise Hell?

RE: We had a lighting director, a camera man, our still guy, myself, and I had an assistant, and Terry was there of course.

JWB: So, six or seven people?

RE: We had a gofer, too, who was running around getting food for the actors...

JWB: And how does that compare with the crew you needed to do the European shoot?

RE: About the same.

JWB: Really? So things didn't change that much in 20-plus years.

RE: When I started shooting in Europe, I switched to a two-camera shoot.

In the next installment, Roger Earl gets into his later work: the shoots in Europe with the Palm Drive Video photographers, Christian Dreesen, Marks of Pleasure, and more.