Paul Raymond Biopic

[fritzhoth]

Hello
The late Paul Raymond was a UK businessman who made a fortune from adult entertainment. (I believe he's responsible for many of the pictures on this site.) For anyone interested, the article below is from the (UK) Sund*y Tim*s, 14/Apr/2013, in response to a new biopic of the man.


QUICK, LADS, GET THOSE SEX TOYS OUT OF SIGHT - THE PRUDISH PORN BARON'S AT THE DOOR

A new biopic gets him all wrong. Paul Raymond was an uptight, lonely figure, says Stephen Bleach, who worked for the King of Soho

I still remember the call. I was looking at nude photographs - well, that was my job - when the phone rang. There was a gasping, choking sound on the line. It was only when, in between sobs, I caught a single word - "Debbie" - that I knew for sure who was calling: it was my boss, Paul Raymond. His daughter had died the previous day, and "the King of Soho" was incoherent with grief.

It's a moment that sprang back vividly to my mind as I watched The Look of Love, Michael Winterbottom's new biopic of Britain's most famous pomographer. Unfortunately, that's no tribute to the acting skills of Winterbottom's leading man, Steve Coogan. Debbie Raymond's death from a drugs overdose in 1992 was the defining tragedy of her father's life, but in my view Coogan looks more like a man who's lost his keys than lost his daughter.
)
The Paul I knew is almost absent from the film. Coogan plays him for laughs, as a skin-trade Alan Partridge. The truth was darker. I worked for Paul for a decade and knew him pretty well. He was a polite and gentle man, consumed by addiction. Unlike Debbie, though, he wasn't dependent on drugs. Paul was addicted to money.

When I met him in 1987, his wealth was already the stuff of legend. He was routinely referred to as "Britain's richest man". It was a title he scoffed at but, I think, enjoyed - in fact The Sunday Times Rich List calculated his wealth at £650m, a hefty sum but way short of the title. His granddaughters are now worth £329m, according to the new Rich List, published next week.

I knew something of his story - the early risque stage shows, the acquisition of the magazine Men Only, the Soho property empire built on vast publishing profits.

I was expecting a showman and, from my experience of publishing tycoons, a bully. In fact he was courteous and rather formal. He had a pronounced stammer (something that's been written out of the firm completely), a self-effacing charm, a hint of shyness. I liked him.

He gave me a job, first as an editor and later as publishing director overseeing all his top-shelf magazines. Fancy job titles, but I was under no illusion: it wasn't exactly like running Faber & Faber. Still, I soon found out that he was surprisingly prudish. The magazines ranged from the pseudo-glamorous to the cheerfully brazen: the latter comprised mainly readers' own pictures, which they sent in by the bulging sackful.

Paul could hardly bear to look at them. "Why do people want this?" he asked, recoiling from Polaroid photos of grinning, generously proportioned wives. They didn't fit with the pouting beauties in his Revue Bar shows, but the magazines were hugely popular. He looked the other way, and banked the cheques.

At one point the gloriously titled Razzle was planning a naked slapstick series, based on the TV show Tiswas. All manner of daftness was proposed: "We'll have models
throwing custard pies, dressed as nurses and nuns..." Paul hit the roof. "You will not have nuns in Razzle!" he boomed. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

Some aspects of office life had to be hidden carefully from the boss. It was a relaxed place, and when deadlines weren't pressing, we'd fill in idle moments with the sport of vibrator racing. We were sent plenty of free samples of exotic and often puzzling appliances. Some, when placed on a desk, would make a buzzing, grinding progress from one end to the other. Bets were placed. Money changed hands. But when a lookout signalled that Paul was on the prowl, all would be cleared away in seconds.

He took the business a great deal more seriously than his staff did. I recall spending an hour in his office solemnly debating the merits of the proposed cover line of Club International. It read: "Wobbly buttock frenzy!" I couldn't laugh until the door closed behind me. I got the cover line through, though.

He was never comfortable around the staff, dismayed by their blasting acid house music and scruffy T-shirts. Even in the 1980s he was rather out of touch. He cut a retro, almost camp figure around Soho, with his flowing locks and man bag.

Even the word "porn" was banned: Paul would almost quiver with indignation if I inadvertently used it. He maintained that we were publishing "adult entertainment".

It wasn't that he shied away from the reality of what made him such vast profits. He certainly had a sexual appetite - though "he was always more of a voyeur than a participator", says a close friend. He was notorious for his taste for threesomes. But his real passion lay elsewhere. "He was only really interested in money," says Carl Snitcher, who was Paul's chief executive and right-hand man for 30 years. "He was a great entrepreneur, and honest - his word was his bond - but he didn't care much about people in the end. Everyone was dispensable."

I'm not sure it's as simple as that. Though I never had any doubt that, as Paul's employee, I was one of the "dispensables", we became friends, after a fashion. He could be kind, almost fatherly. The first time we went drinking together, I made the mistake of trying to match him, round for round. Two hours in, I was a wreck. He poured me into his Rolls,-Royce and had Charles,
his chauffeur, drive me safely home.

Unlike Coogan, he was no gag merchant, but he had a nice line in self-deprecating anecdotes. "My favourite was the monkey story," Snitcher says. "Diana Cochran, his girlfriend at the time, had installed her pet monkey in his flat in Arlington House, behind the Ritz. It was full of art deco figurines and these priceless chandeliers. The monkey used to swing on them and shit all over the place. He told me what he'd said to her, imitating his own stutter, 'D-D-Diana, it's either me or that f-f-f-f****** monkey!'" She chose the monkey.

He loved that flat. It looked like a 1970s nightclub, with lashings of mirrored glass and red plush, complete with a padded bar at which he'd open the champagne or brandy. The football-pitch-sized roof terrace overlooked Buckingham Palace.

In business he was ruthless. When I pressed for a pay rise for the staff (the models were decently paid but our designers were on a pittance), he refused point blank, despite .the
millions rolling in. "No," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "As my old mum used to say, 'Much wants more.'"

It felt to me as if there was a good man trying to get out, but every relationship was tainted by his vast wealth. He suspected the motives of anyone who tried to get close to him. It left him desperately lonely. He would sometimes call me at home, late at night, ostensibly to discuss a new project or a weak sales figure - but in fact, I suspected, because he wanted someone to talk to.

The one bright spot in all this was Debbie. There was no doubting the bond between father and daughter. In The Look of Love she's played by Imogen Poots, whose winsome, fragile portrayal is by some way the strongest performance in the film, but it's not Debbie. I knew her as a fellow editor, and she was ballsy, brash and entertaining. She was great company, but there was an unsettling edge to her, and high spirits could easily tip over into anger or bitterness. I knew she used cocaine - she would occasionally offer me a line - but I had no idea how much.

The film has one heartbreaking detail bang-on. In one scene Debbie asks whether her chest is convincing. "I had them chopped off, you see," she says."Breast cancer." She said exactly the same to me, complete with that brutal phrase - "chopped off. At the time, we were talking shop, and she was expounding her strategy for the French edition of Club International: "I'm going to fill it with big tits!" she proclaimed defiantly. She had tremendous guts, but the bravado was unconvincing, the self-destruction painful to watch.

Of course, she was trying to prove herself to her father, as she had all her life. It didn't work. Porn is not an art form, but there is a knack — it isn't as simple as throwing outsize body parts onto the page. The magazine didn't perform as well as had been hoped.

Her death left Paul deprived of the one human relationship that had ever really mattered. He withdrew into his own addiction, poring endlessly over the empire's balance sheet in the privacy of his penthouse until his death at 82 in 2008. He would hold meetings in his dressing gown - still courteous, still charming, but infinitely sad. He had everything and nothing. It's a picture that, as with so much else in Paul's life, The Look of Love utterly fails to conjure up.

Does it matter? Matt Greenhalgh, screenwriter for the film, told me: "You have to accept that it's not a documentary. It's my truth; it's Michael's [the director Winterbottom's] and the actors' truth. We set out to make a film in the right spirit ... but as a writer you have to make a character in your own head and make it come alive. It's a fictional piece at the end of the day."

Perhaps - though it seems to me that those who commandeer the recently deceased owe a duty of care. For all his many faults, I liked Paul - the real Paul, that is.

[visionmaster]

I met him once in the mid 80s at the bar of the revue bar. I knew one of the girls in the show.

Seemed a nice chap, but a bit lonely.

Film should be good, I hope its not too 'carry on' eque.

[fritzhoth]

Here's a review of the biopic, again from the (UK) Sund*y Tim*s, 28/Apr/2013

ALL RAZZLE AND NO DAZZLE

Steve Coogan is a turn-off as the porn king Paul Raymond in a dull biopic, says Cosmo Landesman

America had Elvis, Britain got Cliff. America had Monroe, Britain got Diana Dors. America had Hugh Hefner - and Britain got Paul Raymond. He was a sextrepeneur who made a fortune from the display of female flesh and property investments. The name Paul Raymond was once redolent with 1950s notions of West End sophistication - then, in the 1960s, with Soho sex'n'sleaze.

In this film, the fourth collaboration between actor-comedian Steve Coogan and director Michael Wintcrbottom, Raymond (Coogan) is presented as a quintessential British figure: a man so self-deluded and self-aggrandising, he becomes endearing (yes, think Alan Partridge).

The film has Raymond looking back over his life in the wake of the death of his daughter, Debbie (Imogen Poots). It begins in the 1950s, with the businessman presenting topless girls in tableaux vivants, then moves on to the strippers at his club, the Raymond Revuebar. There's the abandonment of his wife (Anna Friel) for a sexy young showgirl (Tamsin Egerton); the relaunch of Men Only after he bought the magazine; and his attempt to make a star out of the talentless Debbie.

Raymond is a curious choice as the subject of a film - who's next, Peter Stringfellow? He was essentially a boring, uncultured and self-satisfied businessman, always patting himself on the back for having made it from nowhere. That's all very well, but Matt Greenhalgh's screenplay fails to show why his story is worth telling. A life full of women, sex and cocaine, in a setting of louche Soho exotica, with a spot of tragedy, doesn't automatically make for an interesting film: it makes for a good glossy-magazine feature.

In fact, remove Winterbottom's eyecatching tricks - lots of naked girls, the hip easy-listening soundtrack, the low-life lyricism of Soho at night, the manic montages of coke-sniffing orgies - and you're left with a shallow tale of a rich bloke who spoils his daughter rotten.

Winterbottom and Coogan have given us a Raymond we can laugh at and feel superior to: the middle-aged lothario with the comic combover hair-do; the vain vulgarian with James Bond-style interior decor and gold bracelets. But what are we meant to admire, or like, or even be interested in? His money? His property portfolio? He's meant to be an endearing dork who enjoyed the kind of life most men only dream of: beautiful women, sex, drugs, fast cars and champagne on tap.

What is harder to swallow is the film's contention that Raymond was a sexual liberator who bravely fought the forces of censorship and puritanism. Britain was a more liberal and tolerant place thanks to him, or so we are meant to believe. Yet Raymond was not a catalyst of change - he was, until this film, a forgotten footnote in the history of British onanism.

The film has nothing to say about its subject, sex or the changes in Britain over the decades. For something resembling a storyline, and to give it some heart, we have the death of Debbie. Because, if there were lots of lovers in Raymond's life, he _had only one true love: his daughter. But what is the real nature of this relationship? Something beyond paternal love? The film never really goes there. Its emotional core is as fake as a hooker's orgasm. Poots is wonderful as the deluded Debbie, but Coogan can't move beyond caricature to give us a real person. His Raymond is a hollow creation, Alan Partridge on cocaine. The worst thing about this movie is that it's not fun, sexy or imbued with a stylish sleaziness. This is a flaccid, incompetent piece of film-making that is so insipid, it's not even bad - it's just a work of tedious mediocrity.

The Look of Love, 15/15A, 81 mins, **

[Norvik_1602]

The film is much better than the Sunday Times review above would suggest.

Clearly, Cosmo just disliked the notion of anyone daring to think a porn baron's life was worthy of a cinema film.

There have been many biopics of forgettable & rightly forgotten musicians, or obscure toffs, or scummy criminals/terrorists - Raymond is at least as worthy as any of those.

The real objection, I think, is just the usual mixture of prudishness, feminist dogma, and snobbery - the 'uncultured' dig, perhaps some Fleet Street payback for Coogan over Leveson mixed in?

In the first post Mr. Bleach thought the film didn't capture that he had 'everything & nothing' - one wonders if he saw the same film because in my view it portrayed just that.

Is his first wife's (Jean) spread in 'Men Only' on here?

[barbiedolls]

did his real ex wife actually appear in men only magazine if so are the pictures on the site

[Scott T]

Originally Posted by barbiedolls

did his real ex wife actually appear in men only magazine if so are the pictures on the site

Yes and Yes

http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...&postcount=297

http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...&postcount=177

[Meini Again]

Two very good
reviews ^ ^ ^

~ and, judging by the dates, one poster got a clue.

Coogan was castigated whenever wherever he appeared in print/media
~ because he was a 'front-runner' in the campaign again "hacking" in the UK.
One Brit newspaper - biggest sales - closed down..... 'News of the World'.....the Murdoch Empire set aside billions for perceived payouts.
In that process, and in those years, ANYTHING Coogan / McPherson (model)/Grant... etc did publicly was denigrated in the "Murdoch Press".

Those two reviews, both printed in the "Murdoch Press" are probably true
~ as opinions ~

- but BOTH are denigrations of Coogan, which was the point.

He was a lead "Anti-Hacker" against the Murdoch Empire at the time.
I doubt any other UK media spent that amount of time or space on reviewing or commentating on that film.



Hindsight Is Brill

As per the film...... ?

Yep, in my opinion... it is "Alan Partridge" with a comb-over. Nothing substantial/dramatic/visual/active/enticing... 'bothered'
I watched it for Anna Friel.....

But those anti-Coogan quotes above are really over-the-top.

BASICALLY.... IT's A "CARRY ON PARTRIDGE" film... with better Production values.

[Historian]

I have to admit, I still haven't seen it, but...

Originally Posted by Meini Again

I watched it for Anna Friel.....

...sounds like as good a reason as any- I'm very partial to Ms Friel, ever since the famous lesbian kiss in Brookside all those years ago- and she did look very tasty in the film's recreation of Jean Raymond's MO shoot