- This was written and posted on my blog in 2009, which feels like a lifetime ago.
I can't recall exactly how it came up, but I recently mentioned that I'd once worked in a movie with Ron Jeremy. This revelation was met with some interest and a look that sort of goes like this: O_o so I thought it would make an entertaining (to me, at least) post.
The movie was called Mr. Stitch. It was a weird science fiction retelling of the Prometheus myth. I play the title character, a creature who was sewn together from the parts of 44 men and 44 women. It was written and directed by Roger Avary.
Roger did Mr. Stitch right after the massive success of his film Killing Zoe, and on the heels of his Academy Award for Pulp Fiction. Everyone in the world wanted to work with him then, and he assembled a mostly incredible cast[1]. He got Ron Perlman and Nia Peeples for major roles, Taylor Negron for a small but important role, and a guy you may have heard of called Ron Jeremy for a cameo.
While Ron is very well known for his … other work … he had also worked on a few indie movies at the time, including Killing Zoe, where he played the bank manager, who was shot in the face before he could deliver a single line. Roger liked him, so he hired Ron for a scene in Mr. Stitch that I don't think made the final cut, as a military medic in a flashback.
Ron came— you know, I'm going to go ahead and rephrase that. Ron arrived in Nice about a week before his scenes were to be shot, and he hung around on the set the whole time. He was incredibly funny, very friendly, constantly falling asleep, and when asked about pretty much any porn starlet from the time would reply, "Oh yes, I've had sex with her many times." I don't know if that was actually true or not, but it always made me laugh when he said it.
Ron told me that I could visit the set of one of his … other films … when we got back to Los Angeles, and though a certain part of me thought that would be hurr hurr hurr awesome, a more rational part of me thought it would just be weird and uncomfortable, so I never availed myself of the opportunity.
I grew so much as an artist and person during the end of 1994 when I lived in Nice and worked on that film, even though many aspects of the production were miserable, it remains one of the most fondly-remembered times in my life.
[1] I say "mostly" because the other lead actor, Rutger Hauer, was an absolute nightmare to work with and almost single-handedly ruined the film.
