Screwed

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
1996

Screwed
Alexander Crawford
USA, 1996
85 minutes Colour/16mm
Production Company: St. Dympna Productions
Producer: Andrew Gurland, Todd Phillips
Cinematographer: Alexander Crawford
Editor: Alexander Crawford
Sound: Sal Levin
Music: Todd Phillips, Tom Hazelmyer
Principal Cast: Al Goldstein, Ron Jeremy, Tianna Taylor, Leena, Big Bob

Al Goldstein is a legend. Publisher of the notoriously grotty Screw Magazine, New York City’s longest-running X-rated weekly, and host of New York’s raunchiest cable-access show, “Midnight Blue,” Goldstein is the archangel of modern porn. He is also a monster, equally repulsive and compelling, a fascinating figure of modern sleaze and manipulative politics. Director Alexander Crawford seems to have complete access to Goldstein’s world. We go on the set of a hard-core shoot in L.A.; we sit in on a “story” meeting in Screw’s New York office; we see a lot of images, most displayed by Goldstein, which (literally) straddle the border of titillation and disgust. Lording over it all is the obese, extremely funny, horrifyingly misogynistic Goldstein himself.

It’s hard to relate how powerful Goldstein’s presence is. He rips the camera from Crawford’s hands as he twists the filmmaker’s intentions to suit his own agenda. He turns his honest, if disingenuous, spite for his ex-wives into big bucks and hours of cable time for massive audiences. We get sucked in by his ability to objectify everyone around him and make them love him. Humanity has never seemed so base.

Crawford tries everything to counterbalance this force of nature. He profiles heavy porn consumers—including a one-legged, obsessed collector named Big Bob—who see Goldstein as a saviour. He talks to the leader of the Guardian Angels, whose anti-“filth” rants seem much more perverse than Goldstein’s measured judgement of porn’s place in the world. Skin trade stars give Hollywood-style interviews, and the proceedings are constantly interrupted by Goldstein TV spots, paralleling his current life obsessions.

Watching Screwed is a deeply unsettling, even slimy experience, yet it is an utterly fascinating example of how money, politics and morality shape the American Dream.
—Noah Cowan