You probably saw the movie The People vs. Larry Flynt, but that didn’t come close to describing the day-to-day reality that is Hustler Magazine. Allan MacDonell spent 20 years at Hustler and during that time rose to the rank of editor-in-chief, so if you were ever curious about what really went on behind closed doors, here’s your chance. Prison of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine is an unvarnished tale from the man who evaluated thousands of XXX nude photos, and witnessed drug-induced stunts unlike anything you will ever see.

Hi Allan. Thanks for doing this interview with SpaceCadetz and congrats on your book. Would you like to take this chance to briefly introduce yourself to the readers?

I am a guy who dropped out of a college creative-writing program in the late 1970s because he was sure that the brand-new punk rock explosion would rocket him into an orbit of wealth, ease and constant, fascinating diversions. Punk rock did just that for me – except without any wealth and very limited ease – for about eighteen months. I’ve spent the intervening years piecing my life back together.

You worked for about 20 years at Hustler Magazine. How did your tenure there begin? What kind of a job did you have in the beginning and how did you find yourself applying for a position at such a notorious mag?

I’d had a crap job in a department store’s advertising department, proofreading newspaper ads and checking prices. This position, I felt, was beneath my three years’ of creative-writing education. Larry Flynt Publications ran an ad seeking an assistant copy editor at a ‘men’s sophisticate’ magazine. Sophistication was then a goal of mine; so I phoned them up and wheedled my way into an interview. Believe it or not, I used my creative-writing expertise on my résumé and claimed a college degree.

I’d known about Hustler for almost ten years at this time, which was as long as the magazine had been around. I knew that the magazine had creepy aspects and tended toward lameness, especially in its continual self-promoting, but I also admired their bluntness. I was a fan of Hustler’s ‘Asshole of the Month’ column. And Larry Flynt was a fascinating guy. He’d been shot and crippled about five years before I applied to work there, and he was bigger than life.

I didn’t get the job right away. The copy chief hired a far more qualified person than me, who also happened to have a gigantic rack. A few months later, the hiring guy had something like a nervous breakdown and took a six-week leave of absence. While he was gone, two of the women who worked for him dug out my application and hired me. Then job number-one became not getting fired.

What was the atmosphere at Hustler like when you started in the mid 80s? Walk us through a typical day, if such a thing existed there during that time period.

We were in Los Angeles, California, but every day brought another blizzard alert. I spotted a managing editor flying out of his office with trails of white down the front of his navy sweater. We formed an alliance within a week or two. Almost everybody, including Flynt’s wife Althea, was fueling their creativity with intoxicants. Larry was the exception. This was in late 1983, early 1984, and Flynt had undergone his first lazar surgery to sever nerves in his spine. The operation greatly reduced the pain from bullet fragments lodged in his backbone. So the boss was suddenly drug free and completely manic.

Every morning on the way to work, you’d wonder what kind of stunt Larry would be pulling with the press. He somehow obtained an FBI-filmed tape of a drug sting with automaker John Z. DeLorean tossing around bags of coke as big as throw pillows. 60 Minutes ran this video, crediting Flynt with having supplied it, and suddenly news cameras were on hand every day. The attention went to Larry’s head, and he developed a habit of cursing local judges and also the justices of the Supreme Court. He ended up in a federal prison complex for insane criminals. Things calmed down in the office after that.

You parted ways with Hustler just a few years ago. Has the company calmed down from its early days of hedonism, or is it still as crazy as people might think?

My contact with the magazine has been very limited since they canned me. From the few issues that I have seen, the place is being run by ruinous incompetents. Any inspired craziness has been replaced by an insipid lecturing tone and constant, unconvincing reminders of how great Hustler is. What I see in that magazine is a near-death experience. I doubt that the editorial pacemakers would survive any interesting flash of hedonism.

What was the craziest thing to ever go down in the Hustler offices?

Larry’s wife Liz, assuming she ever went down on him there at the office.

What was one of your favorite pieces that you wrote for Hustler?

Probably the time we ran out of ‘Asshole of the Month’ candidates and instead appointed actor Hugh Grant to be ‘Hero of the Month.’ Hugh Grant had just been arrested for receiving paid sex from a Hollywood street hooker. The amazing thing is that Hugh’s girlfriend was Elizabeth Hurley.

We felt that Hugh was a beacon to all the rest of us who had ever made a stupid, tragic, illogical, insane decision and been forced to live down the consequences. Hugh deserved recognition and even praise for bearing in public the humiliation that so many of us had, through our own idiocy, endured in private.

Another favorite article was a made-up nonfiction piece entitled ‘Boning Barfers.’ This article was about guys who have a fetish for bulimic women and haunt Overeaters Anonymous meetings to prey on young ladies on the verge of going out to gorge and purge. The idea was that while the woman is throwing up, her pelvic contractions would greatly enhance her male partner’s erotic experience.

Obviously, this item was a parody. I recognize that it was completely insensitive to a serious issue that plagues many young women and causes untold grief both to sufferers and to the families that love them. I only wrote it because a real article had been killed, and we needed something to fill in. A better person might be ashamed. But for the next year, I was continually running into people who – when they found out I worked at Hustler – would quote passages from that article. No one, male or female, could quote those passages without doubling over in grossed-out laughter. “So that was a good experience.

You eventually rose to the level of editor in chief. In that position, you were responsible for picking the girls who would appear in each issue. What was doing that on a daily basis like, and did you find that that type of work affected you at all on a personal level?

My policy was to select these models through photographs only. Rarely did a talent coordinator or a photographer bring the girl herself into my office. Meeting the models in person tended to destroy my objectivity. My job was to judge how well the girls would photograph, and I am very susceptible to even the slightest flattery; so it was a good idea to keep these girls away from me. Otherwise, I’d be insisting on putting Godzilla’s daughter on the cover just because she’d given me a wink and a bit of play.

For the most part, I usually didn’t notice any effect on my outside life after I’d spent the workday reviewing up to 1,500 slides of naked women. However, toward the end of my reign, I routinely pictured every new woman I met nude.

Since I’ve been fired, I’ve done some research. I’ve discovered that seventy to eighty percent of all heterosexual men – even the ones who never worked for a men’s sophisticate magazine – routinely picture every new woman they meet nude.

I’m sure that Hustler was filled to the brim with models on a daily basis. Everyone from the top executives to the mailboy must have been trying to hook up.

Actually, most employees made no move to pursue the ‘talent,’ but there were always a few driven souls up to the challenge. Sometimes you didn’t know who to pity more: The guys who failed to hook up, or the ones who made the connection.

One nice, college-educated editor kid from a staid, traditional East Coast background started off chasing blue-screen performers at a smut trade show in Las Vegas. A year later, he married a full-blown porn star. It was not the most comfortable or nurturing union. Having a doctor insert a steel rod up your urethra to clear out viral organisms is only one potential side effect to hooking up with XXX talent.

To be fair, a few editors did manage to form friendships with porn girls that included occasional sex and did not descend into absolute madness or jail-quality drama. Many of these ladies have winning personalities and charming, slightly cynical perspectives. They can be fun company and sort of tomboyish, even when surgically enhanced to look like cartoon females. There are a number of porn ladies who to this day, if I ran into them on the street, I’d be very happy to say hello and have lunch.

You knew Larry Flynt very well. What do you think is one of the biggest misconceptions about the man, and how do you think the American public will remember him?

It’s not a given that the American public will remember Larry Flynt. His magazine has become entirely inconsequential, and his primary function is to finance and distribute hard-core sex DVDs. There seems to be a misconception that Flynt is a champion of the working man. If that were true, he wouldn’t force the people he employs to pay for parking in a parking structure that he owns when they come to work for him. The American public has no idea of the vast pool of former Flynt employees who learned to despise him while in service to LFP. I actually speak better of him than do most people who’ve worked for him.

In your opinion, how true-to-form was the movie The People Vs. Larry Flynt?

It was true-to-form in that it was something Larry Flynt was involved with that was in some part designed as a tribute to Larry Flynt. Much of the movie was shot on a floor of the Flynt Publishing Building in Beverly Hills. So with locations provided by Larry Flynt, you can assume that this was by no means an objective production. It seems that Flynt also had some input with the script. He certainly reviewed earlier drafts of the screenplay that differed markedly from what showed on-screen. The movie was entertaining and absorbing as a sort of fairytale morality play.

If a person wants a more true-to-form account, I would be forced to recommend Prisoner of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine. This is not to say that Prisoner of X is all about Larry Flynt. The book is more about me than about anything else. Think of Prisoner of X as that old John Carpenter movie The Fog. Larry is the fog, and I’m the Adrienne Barbeau character.

Why isn’t there a Hustler mansion? Or is there….?

The defining characteristics of the Playboy Mansion are the lavish parties that Hefner continually throws at great expense. This is an expense that Larry, evidently, is loath to incur. Thus, no E! Hollywood Story segments set at the Hustler Mansion.

Additionally, have you ever met Hugh Hefner or been to the Playboy Mansion, and what are your thoughts on the two?

I’ve never met Hefner or been to his house, but I guess you have to admire his commitment to the lifestyle. I mean, any other guy pushing eighty and toddling around town with three pneumatic blondes propping him up would be in danger of appearing absurd and pathetic. It’s a testament to Hefner and Playboy’s branding strategies that so much of America still eats up that shtick.

Now that you’re no longer at Hustler, what keeps you busy day-to-day?

Counting my blessings. Looking for friends on MySpace. Replying to emails, letters and phone calls from people who tell me how much they loved reading Prisoner of X.

What are your plans for the near future?

Next week I’ll be meeting with more executives and producers interested in bringing Prisoner of X to the screen. Especially with the success of The Devil Wears Prada, development people are sensing a goldmine in my book. So far, I have resisted pressure to change the Prisoner of X title to The Devil Wears Diapers.

I’m also forming up a concept for another book, this one tentatively titled (Fifty Is) the New Dead. I’m trying to trace connections between aspects of my life now and attitudes I had during the year and a half I spent writing for Slash magazine and hanging out in the early Los Angeles punk scene. I realized recently that at my core I am the exact same guy who stumbled down into the Masque nightclub in 1977, although now I am far less self-destructive and have almost 30 years’ more life to draw from.

As if all the info you’ve said in this interview isn’t enough of a reason to order your book on Amazon.com right now, why should people read it? Sell the skeptics.

The book is widely acclaimed as being very funny. There are plenty of raunchy parts to satisfy a man’s cravings, but also many sections of sensitive vulnerability that will gratify female readers.

Any shoutouts?

My sincere thanks go to Chuck Palahniuk and Evan Wright for the great endorsements that they gave my book (read them on the Prisoner of X MySpace page). Evan worked with me at Hustler. I’m grateful that despite experiencing me firsthand, he retains the grace to say something nice about my book. Chuck I have never met. The fact that he praised Prisoner of X went a long way to helping me realize that I’d done something right with this book.

Prisoner of X MySpace Profile Link

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