After attending Brown University, life led Sam Benjamin to Santa Cruz, California, where he first conceived of his pornographic destiny. He would create “feel-good” erotic films - adult movies that actually had some sort of plot - and sell them on eBay, garnering a modest fame for his efforts, revolutionizing a dying genre, and making a small killing in the process. Benjamin worked in porn for three years – became rich – spent a summer living inside a porn mansion in Malibu – found porno love – broke his heart – aged – burnt out – quit the biz – escaped to Southeast Asia – fasted – got boils all over his body – cleared his head – atoned for his sins – returned home – applied to graduate school. Now Benjamin has written and just published a memoir on the Simon & Schuster imprint Gallery Books, about his life in the porn business entitled American Gangbang: A Love Story. "In whip-smart, lyrical prose, Benjamin traces his three-year immersion into the world of Hollywood's bleak, screen glow–lit doppelganger: the southern California sex industry. His rapid ascent from the dingy storefront rental of a starving artist to the multimillion-dollar Malibu villa of a full-fledged porn producer confronts him with the uncomfortably alluring realities of America's strangest industry: gun-toting actors, high on terrible, drug-induced potency; giggling actresses battling internal demons in wobbly heels and pink fishnets; the insatiable consumer demands to sink ever lower, more exploitative, nastier. The result is the titillating, dramatic chronicle of a young man who invites the deepest, most troubling parts of himself to rise to the surface in order to get a good look at them—only to find that what he sees makes his world seem suddenly very small."
