Luke's Kehilla

Prominent members of the LukeFord.net kehilla (community) include Lynne Lopatin, Nice Jewish Girl, Cindy Plenum, Chaim Amalek, and Marc Putative..

5/16/00

Luke: Please write this reporter and tell her what's up with our community... if you feel like it.

Subj: Your Story?
From: rickispencer@the-enquirer.net (Ricki Spencer)

Dear Mr. Ford:

I am considering doing an article on you and your community of readers and contributors. I know that you have been profiled numerous times, but not alongside your readers, which would be the angle of the story. Do you think this is a good idea or not? What can you tell me about the people who regularly contribute to your web site? Are they worth writing about?

On a related matter, so far as you know, has anyone written a script for film or television based on your life?

Sincerely, Ricki Spencer.

Putative Jew Marc Putative writes Ricki: ricki ... i wasn't sure if "the-enquirer" was, y'know, THE enquirer, but my pal luke suggested i tell you "what's up" and the URL led to nationalenquirer.com, so i'm happy to volunteer myself. then again, i'm probably something of a dilletante in the lukeford world ... but i will confess to being enthralled by the antics of nice jewish girl, chaim amalek, lord peter luther christian OBE, lynne lopatin, curious in modesto, j.d. considine (like myself, a grown man who gets paid to write about teenage music) and all the rest. it's an amusing cast to be sure, but my correspondence with mr. ford has been limited by comparison, it seems. for me, the biggest draw that has emerged on the site has been his addressing of jewish issues--a seemingly absurd appeal for a site that's ostensibly about porn news, but there are perspectives on lukeford.com that i haven't seen addressed anywhere else in the media. this no doubt comes from mr. ford's own personal evolution, listening to dennis prager's daily dose of moral fortitude during years of being bedridden, and ultimately converting to judaism. i actually regard mr. ford's ability to weave awareness of the jewish people as a significant influence on my own work, life and beliefs over the past year or two. i am a freelance writer who contributes to a couple of major canadian publications (national post, saturday night), a couple of american websites (radiodigest.com and the just-debuted inside.com) and the occasional piece for the village voice (about the aforementioned teenage music). i'm also a shameless hack and media whore, so am certainly intrigued by what you have up your sleeve; which will then feed into my own anticipated writing about mr. ford, navel-gazing media business that we are in nowadays.

Concerned writes: I smell danger Luke! This Enquirer thing sounds like a hoax to me. Someone is appealing to your inflated ego (your self-admitted Achilles heel) inorder to get a bunch of ridiculous quotes from your readers. Then they'll publish them out of context to make you look even more foolish than usual. What evil genius could concoct such a devilish scheme to publicly humiliate our hero? Hmmmmmmmm ... here's a three word clue ....whip...cord...thighs [Gene Ross].

Rumdar@aol.com writes: Luke.... I would like to respond to Nice Jewish Girl if you could spare me a line or two.

I was recently in Bali not Thailand. My trip was fueled by curiosity, wanderlust, religious fervor and psychedelic mushroom milkshakes...also cheap massages. No, I did not boff any 13 year old locals although the young girls are quite attractive. Thailand is the place for that. I am wracked with Jewish Guilt (the most lethal form of guilt) over my last E submission suggesting you were menopausal. I looked at your shots on Luke and you are obviously quite capable of having our love child. I would like to send you my pic..I wonder if Luke could facilitate the transfer? And I would like to commend you for not abbreviating your Hebrew Honker. It seems that you still have 100% of the nose you were born with. Believe me when I tell you that there are plenty of men out there who love that Semitic frizzy haired look. Even Asiaphiles like myself. Why is it so many Jewish girls insist on butchering their Yiddish shnozolas to achieve the phony Irish Pixie look? It is quite unbecoming.

Now Luke....I was chagrined to read you are now spending your idle time at Heb Hops. Say it isn't so. I think you are going to be making love to your right hand for many a moon if you keep that up. WHY? For one you are not a real Jew...never will be. Number two, even if you charm some Princess into leaving the mixer with you what do you have to offer? Do you believe any sane Jewish woman is going to step into that wreck of a van you drive? It conjures up images of Charles Manson. And where do you take her? To the Luke Hovel? Forays of this sort will only leave you with more calluses on your palm.

Now as a veteran I know that mixers of that sort are great places to meet women. But you have to be selective. My advice is to go Asian. Try the "Vietnam War Was A Huge Mistake, Let's Be Friends" Mixer. Asian woman will love your good looks and spiffy suits, especially if they are in desperate need of a greencard. Undocumented Asians are the best. They will love the van because they can ultimately fit their mother, father, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and your children into it for weekend drives to Tijuana. Don't worry about the dump you live in. They will be glad to organize and clean it for you. You will be amazed how many relatives she will be able to fit into one room once you tie the knot.

Of course Luke, all your loyal fans who are aware of how disreputable you are know you are never going to say "I Do." You will dip the imitation Hebrew Shmeckela and move on to the next one. Great, that is what being single is all about. In short buddy you are absolutely on to something with the singles mixers. You are just dipping your pole in the wrong pond. Get a firm grip on yourself, take my advice and start over. From the front lines. rum

Chaim Amalek: Tell her to talk to Mossad.

And when do we get the first-person account of your journey into the land of Jewish Singles Events? Please tell us what lines you used on these stoney-hearted hebrews that failed to melt their crystaline hearts. Did you attempt discussions of a genuinely jewish nature - Shatnes, Maimonodes, the Holocaust? What were you wearing to this event - a tallis gadol? A suit? Casual? That you have yet to post any detailed account tells me that either:

1. You are still so depressed from the experience that you cannot bear to relive it just yet, or

2. You WERE NOT THERE!

Nice Jewish Girl writes Ricki: Anyways, I found Luke through a gossip newsgroup on the internet, either alt.showbiz.gossip, or alt.gossip.celebrities. I have always been a fan of gossip, ever since I worked in Thrifty's on Pico Blvd. (ironically close to where Luke lives!). The net gossip was about Jenna Jameson and Joe Montana, and that Luke Ford had the hot gossip about it. I knew about Jenna through Howard Stern. Well, I just had to check it out. And I did! I got addicted to the gossip and the site.

I read Luke's bio and fell for this poor misunderstood artistic guy who called himself a Jew. I started writing him. Amazingly, he wrote me back and was encouraging me to write him. He called me Nice Jewish Girl, even though I wrote him as more of a Jewish girl with attitude.

I shortened it to NJG, and now I am forever known as NJG on the net. I spoke to Luke a couple of times today, and I asked him what did he say about me to you, and he said, that I was Jewish and a girl. "And...??"....I inquiried of him ... he said "..and I told her you were the love of my life."

Needless to say I was in shock hearing him say that, given our history. For about the first six months of knowing Luke I was enthralled with him even though he's a rogue to women really. I got over it though and now it seems that Lynne Lopatin (whom I met and liked a lot) is enthralled with him. And I no longer feel the "love thing" for Luke, though I do "love" him, but more as a friend.

I've met Luke a couple of times in person. He lives near my grandmother's house, and when I come and visit LA I definitely see Luke too. I love Luke. He's wonderful, loveable, kindhearted, sensitive, just really bad boyfriend material. But as a friend, and if you take him with a grain of salt, well then, he's a pretty cool guy :-)

But enough about Luke, more about me. Well, I take ballet and am an administrative assistant in San Francisco. I've had a punk rock/anarchist past with acting/writing/poetry thrown in there. I find that now I consider myself more of a republican (sometimes) like Luke. I'm in love with the net and the net revolution. I'm pro-choice, love gossip, and consider myself quite smart. I love art and independent movies. If you check the past archives with my letters to Luke you will see that it's sort of like a great indie movie. The archives from late April to December are where I am featured a lot.

Thoughts on Books and Love and Luke

Luke: Dear reader, I would like the following essay to touch your heart, and provoke you to examine your feelings for me. When did we first meet? And how did our relationship progress? And wasn't I always there for you in your times of distress?

Lynne Lopatin (BDWLCL@worldnet.att.net) writes: Good Morning:

I know I'm scary. I read it on lukeford.com. Everything on lukeford.com is true.

After I get through the term, we can work on the book(s). Do the one on the performers first. Evolve criteria for selection. As many as possible? Or more in depth on selected individuals? Or based on their "importance" in the scheme of things. Decide on an order, i.e., alpha, chronological, cup size. Include Asians, blacks. Save some room for "new girls." However the information is most useful. Decide on how much information on each "chick." (Obviously varying a bit, depending on importance). Videography?

How much stuff do we need to make a good presentation? Then I start somewhere and keep on editing until we have enough. It should go extremely quickly. You figure out how much in total and find a publisher, preferably one which will use lots of photographs. Why write about beautiful women without photographs?

We practice "arguing" via e-mail until you are comfortable with it. You do not like arguing. And I'll fight for hours over a word. Not for the above, obviously, but in dialog or anything meaningful. There shouldn't be too much arguing here -- just a little over who is included and perhaps over the introduction.

I'll take them one by one off the site and clean up the material you already have, format it into paragraphs, while you dig up info you don't have.

My reasoning is that this is the material that is expected on porn, and would be easier to pitch. Less political. Easier for us to do. Learn to work together in a serious way.

The other one (filmmakers) is highly political, needs to be more academic in tone, with real intro and forward quoting "real books" on porn. Research. More in depth. Analysis of work. Re-interviews. Watching videos. Definitely some arguing.

By the end of this, you and I have to be able to get along on an airplane ride, so that we can go to book shows or conferences. The first book is a guy thing, but the second requires my gender to validate the subject matter ie that these women are important because they're doing something different than what men do which validates pornography as a valuable cultural medium and not just an exploitation and objectification of women.

NJG is so sweet. I would marry her in an instant. There are so many wonderful women, and so few admirable men. I don't get it -- it's like half the species is intent on making the world a good place to live in, and the other half wants to take us back to the dark ages by eliminating the good half.

She provokes me into an examination of my feelings for you.

Dear NJG:

Here is a little romance story for you. It's okay if you think I'm nuts. Most people do. And I've been accused of lots worse things than being in love with Luke Ford.

I did not fall in love with Luke Ford at first sight. He was wandering around my set in April, 1998, when my late husband, Bruce, and I were shooting a movie at Rob Spallone's Star World studio (where Bruce had worked for six years as sales manager for Gourmet Video). Luke was in his "yarmulke phase," and I'd never seen a Jew wearing religious headcovering at a porn shoot before. My curiosity was piqued. I asked who he was, and was given his name, and it meant nothing to me except that I'd seen the name in Adult Video News a few times. But I wasn't online at the time, and had far more important things to think about than pretty boys who were obviously odd. Besides, I was happily married and working hard with my husband to establish a production company and battle his prostate cancer.

The next time I heard of Luke was through the L.A. alternative weekly New Times, when they did a cover story on Luke and HIV within the industry. His attitude, intelligence and especially his ostracism from the porn industry interested me, as I had been previously ostracized by the same group of people who felt that only they should have opinions and denied the rest of us any right to free speech, or dissent.

I was sitting in VCA offices turning in paperwork on the movie I shot for Russ, when Stephanie Ross excused herself to go online and check out something posted at lukeford.com. I asked her to tell me about Luke Ford, and she said that he was a troublemaker who posted misinformation about the porn business on the Internet, for all to read, violating our unwritten policies about giving out information on the business to the general public. A real pest who needed extermination. Someone I could sink my teeth into, and fuck around with (not in the physical sense) and maybe make a little trouble for him and do some good. I do love a good fight.

So when I finally bought a new computer with internet access, I sought out Luke. And I realized that, rather than being a troublemaker, he was making public all the bullshit and pomposity of the porn industry that Bruce and I had spent years discussing in private. So I baited him -- wrote him a short note giving him a glimpse of our status as industry veterans and suggesting we might have information to share.

Two weeks later, Bruce had a stroke. He lost his memory, language skills and many simple things, like lighting a pipe or using a fork. It was really devastating, but I went ahead and set up an interview with Luke, hoping to recover some of the wonderful information that Bruce had been privy to over the years.

Instead, Luke ended up writing about me. It was very flattering after all the years of having my experience discounted. Luke was actually impressed when I hauled out my store of seventies porn and showed him some of the reader-participatory work I'd cut my teeth on, and which has always influenced my approach toward pornography. And, like any other pretty thing I see, I coveted Luke. He appealed to me aesthetically as well as intellectually, but he made it clear that he was unapproachable.

Meanwhile, I was having problems with Adult Video News. They had printed a review of a gay DVD, called it one of the best movies of the year, and neglected to include the name of the director, who happened to be my husband. They'd also printed a review of the movie that Bruce and I had hoped would lead to more production work, so that I would have a career after his death. Just a little black couples' video, non-exploitative and romantic, and very different than the usual black video. We thought it was important -- AVN dismissed it with a one-line description.

When AVN did the same to my VCA movie, I went to war with AVN. At the time, Luke was also at war with AVN. He posted my rants. AVN got pissed, and threatened to sue Luke over his hypotheses as to how reviews were generated. I went on to bury my husband and, on return, made news of my own when David Hardman refused to cooperate in finishing the movie we'd started before Bruce died and had me arrested rather than answer the door.

For the next three months, as I dealt with the repercussions of David's actions and edited the movie, Luke stood by me. I needed extra footage to replace what I would have shot on Dave, and Luke let me to send over a film crew to interview him for the video. We were in constant e-mail and telephone contact, as I sorted through my feelings about the industry, the movie and my future. Luke was loving, supportive and there for me, whenever I e-mailed, whenever I called. I gave him copy when I interacted with the porn industry. We played with his gun. I introduced him to my dog.

As soon as I completed the community service I'd been assigned over the arrest, I went to visit my family out of state to explore the possiblity of moving from Los Angeles, and leaving the porn business. I knew I would be off-line for the three weeks I planned to be gone, and wouldn't be in contact with Luke until we met up in Las Vegas for CES.

So I had to think about my feelings. That's when I realized that, based on our interaction for the past nine months, that he had become very special to me. And that I did indeed love him. That it wasn't just a physical infatuation, for we'd had no physical contact. But that the respect he'd shown me, my work, my profession was something I'd never gotten elsewhere. I felt truly appreciated, as I had in my marriage. And I loved Luke for it. And I told him. And he was okay with it. More than okay.

At CES I was surrounded by tens of thousands of men, and didn't actually see any of them. They were just bodies. Luke meant something to me. I accepted my feelings toward him as part of my reality. It felt right. I had casual sex with someone, which was disasterous, and determined not to do it again unless I was first shown the long term respect and devotion that I'd received from Luke Ford.

That was months ago. During Luke's visit to Australia, when he underwent massive psychological testing at the behest of his family (who wanted to know why he behaves so strangely and is so interested in pornography), when he was so far away and undergoing such criticism from people he loved, I couldn't even think of myself. I was in the middle of a 1,000-mile move, and I felt as if I could do it in my sleep, and that my energy belonged to my friend (because friendship is really the basis of love). I used words to fight on his behalf. They came easily, and helped me measure the depth of my love for him. It is very, very deep. And he earned it.

This is not an obsession nor an infatuation. This is something that started as a game for me, and deepened into friendship as we fought common enemies and explored a mutual agenda, and evolved into a real respect for each other despite some serious idiosyncracies and emotional problems on both sides. It's unconditional, and I have no expectations of it other than continued respect. I'm not looking for a husband or a boyfriend or a father for my children. I have no idea what Luke is looking for, but then, neither does he, and that's okay, too.

Some Nice Things About Luke

Lynne writes my mom for Mother's Day:

I understand you are moving back to Australia. So I thought it might be a good time to share some of the good things I've seen happening over the past year with Luke, who continues to be an amazing friend to me.

I met Luke about a year ago, right around the same time he posted the long letter you'd written about how truly awful his behavior was, and it was a very strange experience to be reading that and wondering who and what I was getting involved with. But, since the Australian adventure, when you mutually decided to keep the family off the site...well, he did. He has. I'm proud of Luke when he recognizes that others have needs and desires that are every bit as important as his own.

The other thing that I'm really pleased about is that he's progressed from telling me "never," as in "this can never happen" to "a long time." As in, "Things will be this way for a long time." I think that's a tremendous step for him to take. It opens up a lot of possibilitie to him, and gives him room to grow and change and become healthier mentally and physically. I don't care for absolutes. I think they are limiting.

I'm two weeks away from successfully finishing my first term back in college (I got my B.A. way back in 1983), looking forward to a new career (after lots more school), had an article published in the college paper! and am generally doing really well. NONE OF IT would have been possible without Luke's constant emotional support and encouragement. He believes in me, and in my abilities, and keeps me making good decisions, and I can't imagine what my life would have been like without his presence in it. Just giving me the impetus to get up and write for an hour every morning changes the way I approach school and term papers and such. He constantly expresses his appreciation, and he's such an intelligent man that it means a lot to me to have that from him.

Lately we've been practicing "disagreement." That it doesn't have to mean anger and temper tantrums, but can be worked through, and the emotions expressed, and that the underlying relationship can return to its usual high level of regard and respect.

Eventually we will work on the next step, which is "compromise." I'm in no hurry. Some people are slow learners. Some people are extremely slow learners. And then there's Luke.... But I'm very optimistic -- I think he's really doing very well himself.

In terms of the pornography, which I know you dislike terribly, Luke is doing something absolutely unprecedented. He is allowing open debate. I'm currently taking a Sociology & Gender class, and doing a term paper on pornography, which may just be the first few baby steps toward dealing with the misogyny that is so deeply embedded in the American Culture. Luke gives me a platform for my views. They upset people, and he doesn't see that as a problem. I got thrown out of the Free Speech Conference in Sacramento because I am Luke's friend, and I have never been more proud of my relationship with him than I have been since -- they are a horrid bunch of hypocrites, and Luke, in his willingness to hear (and post) all sides of an issue, stands head and shoulders above any of these people. If there is ever any change in the way this country deals with sexually explicit material and the misogyny that runs rampant through our culture, it may well start with the work Luke lets me do. Maybe he's foolhardy, maybe he's fearless, maybe he just wants attention (well, we know he does, but there are lots of ways he can get attention that bring nothing to society). But he's also very brave -- he catches a lot of criticism from his audience for associating with me, being that I'm not a young, submissive porno bimbo, but he continues to show me the utmost respect in our professional dealings when no one else has the courage to think for themselves.

I want to wish you the best in your relocation. I hope some day to visit that part of the world to study advanced sheep husbandry and genetics. My dream job is me, my dogs and a few thousand sheep out in the middle of nowhere. And if anyone wants me, they can e-mail me. What a glorious life.

Hands Off, Luke Ford!

Chaim Amalek writes: Luke, lay off the syrupy emotional onanism and rejoin the rest of the world. One way for you to return to the land of the living is by going to jewish singles events EVERY WEEKEND for a few months. Then tell us all about your return to your Christian roots and your lovely blonde shiksa bride. And by the way, doesn't the thought of a porner writing to and emoting on your mother seriously spook you? Otherwise, if you want to bait me, get better bait.

Luke: What's the matter Chaim, are you afraid of strong emotions?

Chaim: If I want strong emotions I'll move to Miami, LA, or some other part of the Latin world. Do not revel in the shameful weaknesses of others!