Busted! Yes, the tie Derek wears in this promo pic for Journey to Italy is the same Jim Bentley (of Falcon fame) wore in “Matinee Idol” (with Ken Ryker). My tie, in fact. I’d long had a crush on Jim and when I landed the Production Manager gig on Matinee Idol, that tie was my not-so-subtle way to tell him. Same goes with Derek, when I cast him in “Journey”: he remains, to this very day, one of the most beautiful faces in porn (if not the most skilled at deep-throating). Don’t you think?
Jim Bentley is 50 today. I can’t picture him anything but the blond kid in Falcon’s “Splash Shots”, all-American, forever young, forever sexual. I remember when I first saw him in “Tough Competition” (with Kyle Carrington) and “Getting It” (St. John’s seminal orgy movie). Jim embodied the ideal of the California ‘dude’ –and of sexual freedom. Fast forward to the mid 90s: I was the production manager on Colbert’s “Matine Idol” and Jim was scheduled for a big come back. We got to know each other, we became friends. He eventually moved in with me for a few months. To this very day, I don’t know whether I fell in love with his ‘baby blues’ or with the IDEA of falling in love. Here I was in Hollywood, producing porn and dating the boy of my earlier fantasies… could it get any better? Happy birthday, Jim