I remember it was a very small picture the size of a postage stamp
and it fascinated me, it drew me in.
I wanted to get closer and closer and closer to it
like underwear catalogs when I was a child, you know?
All the photographs of himself
were shot by him.
He was the model, he was the photographer.
But again they're mesmerizing.
You can get lost in them. And I'm not a groupie.
There was something about him that delivered, came through on screen.
The Prince Valiant haircut, the bandana around the neck.
There were films that were unabashedly openly gay porno films
that he was the star in and you hadn't seen stuff like this before.
There were two that I'm aware of: Nights In Black Leather and That Boy.
Always skin-tight pants and they weren't jeans or anything.
They were like a cotton that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.
He really was not afraid to let his sexuality shine through
and that was huge for me,
to see that someone could be comfortable with his sexuality.
You wanted to be with him, you wanted to be touched by him,
you wanted to have an experience with him.
He rarely appears.
It takes now decision making
when I decide it's time again to get into that character,
to play my part.
Because mostly I am not Peter Berlin
but I am Armin.
Baron Armin Hagen von Hoyningen-Huene.
What a beautiful name.
Just hinting that I'm not coming out of the gutter.
I like to be in the gutter by choice.
And there are a lot of people I met in the gutter
famous, famous people,
all in the gutter.
Peter Berlin was an iconic
gay sex figure of the 1970s.
A guy who created a sort of image
that he lived, as near as I can tell,
24 hours a day
for the enjoyment of the rest of us.
Peter Berlin was a great porn star
... but even porn star... I think he was a great exhibitionist basically
that wore a signature haircut
that looked like the Dutch Boy on the paint can
and leather outfits
and a crotch that when you first saw it you thought it was like a joke.
It looked like that he had stuffed 50 rags in there.
He didn't seem to have a lot of irony about it. That was kind of the amazing thing.
He wasn't campy.
I didn't see him at art events. I didn't see him at The Cockettes
or any of the hip bars or anything.
I saw him
always in a sexual setting of some way
even if it was in the middle of the day downtown
walking around on Market Street or getting on a bus or something.
And he always was dressed... with this incredible crotch
that was like how you think of Jayne Mansfield walking down the street
in The Girl Can't Help It when the ice man looks up
and all the ice melts on the truck
and she's holding two milk bottles. It was similar to that.
He took an erotic fantasy and stylized it
almost as a choreographer
would with a ballet dancer. For example,
if I play a Western character in a film
I put on the cowboy hat and the jeans
and the chaps and the stuff.
He played a Western character,
it would be a half a vest with his chest exposed
with a stylized leather kind of a chap.
It was always one step further
so that you weren't supposed to accept this guy as somebody that was "home on the range."
It was a guy that was an extreme fantasy
that you might find in a surrealistic dream
or sometimes a nightmare.
He really stood out because his attire was very different
than the typical clone look of the time
sort of a plaid shirt, denim pants type look.
Peter's clothing was very theatrical by comparison.
How could I talk about Peter? I never said a word to him.
I fucked with him but I never even spoke to him.
I can tell you how good the sex was.
There's no one like him, there's never been anyone like him.
He's as strange as Garbo.
And in many ways to many people
as interesting as Garbo
without having been on the world stage in the same way.
He still has enormous fame
and luster.
Just very lustrous.
I just never was politically correct.
I said "I go all the way."
I include the cock into the picture.
But then you become a pornographer
and you are put on the lowest level
of that what society has provided for you to be, you know?
Oh, the first time I saw Peter
was the first time I was arriving in San Francisco
but unfortunately I was with my parents.
We were arriving in town for my brother's wedding
and for some reason we were driving up Third Street.
We probably drove right past The Tool Box,
the very famous leather bar,
which is probably where Peter was strolling from.
He was coming up Third towards Market and we passed him
and all heads swiveled to look out the window
and my mother absolutely gasped,
utter shock, and said, "What's he selling?"
And it just popped out of my mouth,
"Himself."
I saw Peter as a shining example
of self-creation and self-identity
and all the potential that a gay person could be.
And I was also totally unaware of hustlers at the time,
which is probably what my mother saw.
So when she said "What's he selling?"
she saw a monetary event occurring
whereas I saw the selling of identity.
When people tell me,
"Oh, Peter, you're so great, you look so good."
I say "Yeah, I know... Tell me something what I don't know."
"What? ...
"How can you say about yourself that you are good looking?"
I say "Yeah," and I look and I say "I like it, okay, big deal."
it's obvious. Don't give me the obvious.
Excite me. Amuse me.
Do something. But please don't bore me.
I saw images of Peter Berlin in After Dark magazine
and they were the most arresting gay male images
that I had ever seen.
And Peter Berlin is what I expected
gay males to be like,
What I expected once I went into this community
is that I would find this roomful of men looking like Peter Berlin.
And boy, was I surprised.
In a sense
Peter Berlin's photographs
are more like paintings than they are photographs
because the character is so embellished.
You can't really, at least I can't,
approach it as typical pornography at all.
I think he's an especially fine photographer.
For one thing his subject matter is rare.
There are certainly photographers who fetishize the male image.
None of them are fetishizing their own image,
so there's a double whammy in that.
But in creating the set and the look,
in sewing the clothes he's wearing
and in staging the photo-
it's a real one-man show that's rather impressive.
I was a product of my time
and he was an extension of the time.
I reflected a great deal of what was going on at that time.
He pushed the envelope.
And it made me then wonder what brought him to that.
He invented this persona.
My question that I don't know is
how he made peace with that persona and if he ever did.
I don't know if he was an escort or not, but I would imagine...
He was not ever?
He never had ads where you could come take his picture?
You couldn't even take his picture? So he had no money he made from that.
Well, was there a drug issue? I mean did he have it downfall?
Did he have a bad life? I don't know.
Did he have a regular job ever? I mean did he go...was he like Clark Kent?
Would he put on that outfit and then go by day and be a bank clerk
and then be Peter Berlin by night?
I still can walk and talk
and even people recognize me still as Peter Berlin,
what is sort of nice because
if you can as a 60-year-old man
get a compliment from a stranger en passant
on the street calling to you,
"You look cute." I never will forget that.
Now, who in the hell at 60 years old can look cute?
I said "My God, Peter, you are really good...
... in sort of making people not see a 60-year-old man."
Because actually I feel like 90.
And there's nothing good about old.
Old is old.
-- Nothing good? --No.
I first saw Peter...
I was in a bar in Berlin
on the Ku'dam and the bar
was called the K.C.
and this Dutch boy walked in.
Anyway that's what I used to call him
because he looked like a Dutch boy.
He looked like a little painter, you know?
And he had all this equipment with him.
The face, the body,
the tools, the jewels.
And I didn't know who Peter Berlin was at the time.
I just thought,
"He's somebody. He's one of a kind."
I remember I moved to San Francisco in 1986.
One day I was in a café or something
and all of a sudden Peter Berlin walked by.
My eyes bugged out of my head because
here was basically like a cartoon character
walking in front of you.
And I just remember-I don't even think I paid the check
-I just ran out of the café and just stared at him and looked at him
and I remember-the first time especially -I remember calling up someone
and I said, "Oh my God, I just saw Peter Berlin!"
The people I worked for bought the building I live in
and I moved in
and all of a sudden one day in the stairs
there he was.
I mean it was Peter Berlin because he still looks like Peter Berlin
with the same hair and the same pants nearly.
So I started talking to him.
I had to, being the manager of the building.
And it turned out he lived right below me, in the apartment right below me.
And I talked to him, not even mentioning that I knew who he was.
You know, it's funny. I was thinking about that the other day
when exactly did I tell him "I know who you are."
And it must have been the day
that he said "Well, let's have coffee"
and I went over to his place and of course
you can't not know who he is when you walk into his apartment.
For one thing it was for me like going back to the '70s and the '80s
because the whole place looks very much like back in the hippie days
with lots and lots of stuff all over the place
and all of his pictures everywhere.
So I acknowledged that I knew who he was
and I guess the more I got to talk to him, the more he started telling me
and the more I realized
that he really wanted to tell his story.
Whatever happened to him?
He is still not out there.
Anyway, we take this.
No, no, no, no. This is very valuable.
Am I still-How-
No, let the world decide. Should he have a lifting or
shouldn't he? Now look at the difference,
it's just very little. This has to go.
That is an Italian magazine I guess.
Because you see, I was this internationally famous person, you know?
lf one thinks about. It's true... and I was the first one who was amazed at
how little one has to do in order
to be picked up by the press
because I mean basically the world is quite boring.
So that little "of the edge"
is what people want to hear about and read about.
Let me see if I find something I can...
That picture here, I know my friend James
carried in his wallet.
That's sort of a self-portrait what I... Like everything is a self-portrait,
but that was you know,
when I was just young...or younger.
Well, I was at least 32. Looks younger, no?
I always looked younger than I am.
So he carried that. Now I carry it.
And here I found...
"James loves Peter."
You know, that little note I found.
So I kept all those little mementos, you know?
That is a Merry Christmas card
that Tom of Finland sent to me.
I remember I approached Tom of Finland a long time ago.
I commissioned five drawings from my photographs
and I remember, I paid $300 each.
That was a lot of money for me
but that was his rate.
So he worked on them and sent them to me at some point.
Such a nice man.
Once when I talked to him again,
I told him that it would be really interesting to film him
while he was drawing
and he said no, no, no.
When I draw, I'm all by myself.
And I knew what he meant.
lf somebody would have liked to film me when I was taking my photographs
I would have declined, too,
because it's such a private matter.
I needed for that work complete silence,
complete intimacy.
So then I did this whole series of double exposures
where I exposed the negative twice.
I put marks on the floor and on the wall
and sometimes you can see it in the picture
so I would know where to stand.
I did quite a good job because people would ask me
if I had a twin brother
and I always thought my God, it would be interesting to have had a twin brother
but I just didn't have one.
Sometimes I would underexpose a whole role of film
so I got very inferior prints
and in order not to throw them away I used oil color
or pencils to make them look good
and I did a good job.
I think they look sort of romantic and of course erotic.
You asked me and I told you
that I wanted to do my own documentary
because I see myself as a filmmaker,
in some capacity, because I made two of them.
But am I a filmmaker?
In 40 years I made two films.
More of my time I watch television
so I'm more a television watcher than filmmaker, right?
So since I didn't do anything
for 30 years,
you come along and you said. "Oh, Peter,
"it might be a good idea because you are so interesting
"and people want to know about it." So I said. "OK, do it"
because I have proven to myself I haven't done it.
I did an interview with him and later I did
a rather monumental size drawing of him,
which is in three parts. It's a triptych.
We did an interview on a Sunday afternoon in Soho.
At that time Soho was just a mass of warehouses.
There was nothing commercial here at all.
It was in a vast loft, a sparsely furnished loft.
I had never seen a space like it-
so raw and big.
And by the time he started talking,
I knew that one word or two words from me
were all that was necessary.
I didn't have to have questions.
I just had to have a good sense of where he wanted to go
and to just give him that energy.
Of all the interviews that I've done
and I've done dozens and dozens of interviews with porn stars
it's still my favorite
because it's the most individual
and it's the craziest.
And I'm using crazy in every sense of that word.
You know, it's just plain crazy
or it's wonderfully crazy,
Whatever. Crazy.
There was just one philosophical idea after another in it,
all very vain
but at the same time very human
in its vanity
because he was also presenting ideas
like young, beautiful men shouldn't go to war.
Only men over 40 should go to war
because after all, they're finished anyway.
People think you have to deal with punishment,
deal with weapons, dealing with pushing and shoving, forcing,
and that's where this idiot male comes in.
He goes to war and kills,
and why?
I don't feel I owe anyone to say
I'm living now in freedom because somebody died.
What bullshit.
What an insult, what an insult to humanity.
I wish they would all refuse to go to war.
I certainly never would do it.
They would have to kill me before I'd kill someone.
Did you set out to be famous in the beginning?
No, no. You don't set out to be famous.
You are setting out to be loved and wanted.
That's what we all want.
That's what is called looking for love.
I wanted to be loved
and I achieved it by just making the best of me, using whatever I had
and sure enough, it worked quite well.
Well, I think what makes it unique is its sexuality,
the up-frontness of it.
I mean, the thrusting basket,
the bare chest, the silky hair.
The Peter Berlin type to me
is very comfortable with his sexuality,
extremely sensual, somewhat androgynous
but more on the masculine side.
The hairdo and stuff, he wasn't -
He didn't try to be like that macho.
It was confusing. You didn't know what it was going to be.
It was like Dinah Shore with a hard on with the hair.
You didn't quite know what it was but he did look good in a way.
He did look great in a way.
I mean I get that he was a turn-on to people.
I don't know if he was a turn-on to me or not,
but I couldn't stop looking. I liked seeing him
and I marveled at this
especially just when I would be getting off a bus.
I mean... I used to think, "Jesus...you know, he goes out like that everyday?"
I give him great respect for living that extreme a lifestyle
and in San Francisco it is possible to live like that.
And it wasn't an image you forgot very quickly
because it was so specific and almost cartoon like.
Peter had a European image I would say,
a kind of a mix of a French sailor and a German rent boy
and a little bit of everything thrown in.
He would head out into the streets
in one of his incredible getups.
I mean they're beyond fashion
and I also think in many ways they've been an influence on fashion.
You know, this kind of bold display which we now see.
I think that he's got a hand in it in the same way that Tom of Finland
is almost as influential as Chanel you know, because
Tom of Finland taught gay men how they wanted to look.
They had no idea. They were wearing little suits and holding a martini, you know.
Peter Berlin was expressionistic.
What he was doing was an art form.
He was being defined as...
as a sculpture. Whereas that wasn't true with me at all.
I was hired to be the guy that you knew,
the guy that lived around the corner,
or was somebody's big brother or you saw in school or something.
I would have a hard time in all my images
to find the one and sometimes I fantasize about.
"Now, what would be the image look like what I want to see,
"that expresses that what I want to see in a man ?"
I disappointed a lot of people
who saw me as a caricature what I created.
You know, Marilyn Monroe was one thing,
but Norma Jean was a whole other story.
Being born into a blue-blood family,
With my grandmother's side
of philosophers and attachés
and then my other side were artists and photographers
You know, there's one very famous,
George von Hoyningen-Huene,
who was a photographer of Hollywood.
And so that's where my roots are coming from.
I was born with the pigs and the horses
and with land.
But my father was killed in the war, just at the end of the war,
so I never got to know him.
But he was beautiful and sensitive.
I have nice letters what he wrote to my mother.
These boys, like my father, didn't have the slightest idea
what Hitler was doing,
but then he was killed by trying
to get a comrade out of a minefield...
so he was dead
and my mother then with three children, young children,
was fleeing from the Baltics down to Berlin
where my grandfather and grandmother were living.
So we lost everything. I grew up very poor
and I'm so thankful for it because everything else was gravy.
And I'm even amazed how well I did
because my life was always outside the norm.
It was never like anyone else's.
As long as the gay issue is sort of somewhere else
then people either reject it or don't mind,
but if it hits home... I can see my mother still crying and crying
and in my heart I knew
that not only don't I do anything what I couldn't live with
but that there's no way that anybody
could talk me out of it.
The result of that situation was
that I basically had to leave
and so I lived for the first time by myself
and loved it from Day One...
to be completely free...
like not having to tell anybody where you go tonight
and when do you come home.
I think I was about 18 maybe,
so I learned very quickly that there was a lot of action
out in the streets, in the parks,
train stations
and all those underground places.
I had the greatest time with everybody else who was there.
But it was sort of the thing that people didn't talk about.
It was just not what was accepted in
the gay community.
They all had those double standards.
You know, on one hand being prissy and dressing up,
and on the other hand sucking dick
under a tree in a park.
Right? So these nights, these warm summer nights
and there were the...
...what is it? It's called der lindenbaum.
It's one of those big trees that bloom in the spring or somewhere
and they are so heavily perfumed
that you had that beautiful fragrance in the air
and the moonshine and the people.
I mean it was magical.
The first sexual feelings I had with another man
that was I think what I mentioned
the 13th of August, 1961.
I remember the date because of that very historical happening
of the building of the Berlin Wall.
And one of those East German boys picked me up,
took me over to the East.
I spent the night.
It was sort of good but I remember -
in my mind ... I already
I was looking for something specific.
My obsession 'til today...
I never have met anyone
who shared my obsession
from his doings.
The obsession would be if someone does something
on his own to get me going.
Now usually because of my attire
of my way of dressing and way of behaving,
I did that to people...
in person and on picture.
So my obsession would be to have a person approach me
looking like me...
and forget the face.
It could be black or blue or white,
could be any given attractive man.
So it's not that I'm looking for myself
but someone like me.
That would be heaven for me.
It never, never, never happened.
I always had to do the work
because whenever people wanted to take me on their hand
going where they wanted to go
and I tell you where most people want to go.
Three things.
They want to
get fucked,
the second thing is get fucked,
the third thing, get fucked,
and then the fourth thing is
sucking cock.
Right?
That is in itself nothing wrong with it, you know.
But that's not my obsession.
I can go without fucking,
without sucking,
without kissing...
and I wish I would
just want to kiss you
and I would feel all that what people seem to feel.
When I see a kiss on the screen
it's like
looking at a nice pork chop in a butcher's display.
It just doesn't get me. Right?
And yet in your films...
It's a lie.
I don't know exactly on what alley or what park
I met Sal Mineo.
I only remember that I liked his looks.
He was beautiful.
I met him and I went to his hotel
and I think it was in Paris
and I mean we had a good time
and he let me know that he just loved, loved
white Jockey shorts.
You know, I like the idea. I mean I have my own fetish
and white underwear
sort of fits very much into it.
I love to just take the naked body
and with all our refinement...
very late in my life,
I did my job
by using
the pantyhose
where you not only cover your body
but your ass and your crotch.
His thing was he wanted people to want to have sex with him.
Whether he ever did or not didn't seem to be part of the equation
of his success.
During the interview he described to me
a typical night of Peter Berlin cruising...
getting himself done
and hitting the street
and sort of choosing someone
and luring that person deeper and deeper and deeper
into his world of standing in doorways
just long enough to make the person feel he could approach him
and then skittering away and going to another doorway
and knowing the person would follow him. And this could go on for hours,
kind of luring and frustrating this person at the same time
and then just suddenly it was over.
You know, there was no human contact beyond the visual
and I suppose that he could probably be defined as being a great visual artist
because of his look
and the fact that he had boiled sex down
to a visual trip.
You know, that he turned people he came into contact with into voyeurs...
when all they were looking for was a little sex, you know,
a little hands-on stuff. I don't think they ever got that.
Foreplay starts
the second you lay eyes on someone
and of course out of experience
I realized the longer you draw out the time of talking,
that's where you are better off
shutting your mouth and you just observe from a distance.
lf you get close
and if one talks,
everything can be destroyed.
So rare, you know,
that it will enhance.
My experience is that silence is very exciting.
Drugs became very much a part of my sex game.
When I came to America,
the first night in New York,
I was introduced to drugs and I stayed with them
and I wish people would realize
that it is much healthier than for instance drinking and smoking.
Of course if you go off the wagon with heroin
and then shooting up, you know,
then you are as badly in the position like a drunk
who just can't stop
with some nice glasses of wine or a good cocktail.
Jochen Labriola...
lived in Wiesbaden at the time
where I was working as a manager of a movie theater.
And while I was putting these posters
for the coming attractions in my theater,
he said :
"Oh, you know, I see you sometime with a camera.
"You know, I have a camera, I have a Hasselblad
"and I don't know, can you maybe
"explain certain things about the camera to me?" I said, "Of course, yes."
So I went up to his room there... he had a room in that hotel...
and I explained the Hasselblad to him
and then I realized
he was not interested in the Hasselblad explanation but ...
in me.
At that time I was about 20 something.
I was always in need like I think everyone in that age,
of admiration
and, you know, attention.
So he wanted one thing, you know. Like all men want one thing,
And I gave it to him. And we became good friends.
And then,
he offered me to go with me
to live in Rome.
And I said "I don't have any money."
"Oh, money is no object, you know.
"Just come with me."
So we lived in Rome for about a year
and he became my best friend
for the rest of his life
and for my life 'til he died in 1988.
And he got me out of that
German kleine carrieux, you say in German.
like small checkered view,
you know, with a small German horizon.
He became a painter after we broke up...
successful painter because he had something what I've never had,
a good sense of selling yourself.
That was such a good time in Europe.
At that time in the 1960's Paris was so exciting.
So I lived there for a while with my friend Jochen
and I remember the whole program of the day
was to go to have a coffee in the Café Flore.
And if you didn't find a place there,
you went to the Deux Magots
and then there was a kiosk where you had newspapers
so everybody pretended to read while sitting there with their coffee.
And people were just cruising,
seeing and being seen. That was the only thing what people were doing.
I always lived so very well if I think back at that time...
like a millionaire,
not having a penny in my pocket,
but because of the friends I had, especially Jochen,
it opened up a beautiful world of great horizons.
Oh, yeah, then we went to Acapulco one day
and I made a stop in New York and I liked New York and I stayed in New York.
That's how I came to America... just loving it.
From New York then...after a couple of years, I stayed there...
I sort of got to California... to San Francisco.
In San Francisco then
I started then to become Peter Berlin.
No, I saw him around first and then
I heard about Nights In Black Leather.
That Boy, I don't remember,
I don't recollect seeing in the theater. Of course you know, that was the '70s
and the '70s is like
a big fog in my mind.
San Francisco in the '70s
was an incredibly exhilarating epicenter of
a social, political, economic, artistic whirlwind.
You could walk from O'Farrell to Jackson
and there would be guys in every doorway of every storefront
either giving it away or selling it
and it was truly like something out of Genet.
The first evening
I decided to have a look at the nightlife of San Francisco's Broadway.
It was a thrill to watch all different kinds of people...
prostitutes, hustlers, drunks and dope dealers...
all made up the picture of a Barbary Coast
that can have little faded from its days of past glory.
Peter Berlin was really just one in a long line
of interesting street personas
that have been invented here in San Francisco ever since the early days
when the Emperor Norton was walking around with his little dog
in his full regalia on
or earlier in the '70s there was a guy named Jesus Christ Satan.
He knew that he'd invented a personality
that was rather compelling
and he was very much a part of the landscape.
It's always happened here really. I don't know that
it was a special thing... that it was exclusive to the '70s,
although certainly the air of freedom made it easier for him to do what he did.
I started my film in '72
and that was exactly when I was 30 years old.
So I started my career...
even that people would say my God, the career's already over.
Peter Berlin was never young.
Yes, I mean he never was
But that image, thank God
it's there and I can die now and it's there.
You know, it will be hovering
in the annals of gay pornography
and will be there forever
and I can sort of gracefully get old.
I met a friend
like in 1970 when I came to America
who happened to go to the Art Institute here
and was making his Master's in filmmaking.
He showed me
his piece for the judges,
I guess whatever they have to submit to get their degree.
I told him you can show that to some friends and your mother
and they all will like it, but it's a bore
so why don't we make a porno film?
I always felt like
I wanted to present myself in that fashion.
There was always sort of the thrill of that exhibition element.
So we started to shoot when the sun was shining.
There was never a script and never a big idea.
He edited the film,
he was doing the sound
and I had nothing to do
with the making of the film.
I just was in front of it and telling him what to do
so I sort of gave him the idea,
do this shot here or make it all.
He went to Los Angeles to show it to a distributor.
They liked it, what was very good to hear
because I thought it was not a great piece of art there.
All I need to do is lie on the grass and just ignore the people.
Last week I met quite a few
and you know how it goes.
Conversation.
Hello, what's your name? Peter?
You have a nice accent, where do you come from?
Germany ?
Oh, how long you have been here?
Do you like it?
And after I go through this 20 times,
even the faces Look all the same.
I naturally get tired of it
because I know exactly what they really are interested in.
And it all happened in San Francisco.
The porn at the time was almost cinema verite
in the way it depicted gay men's lives
and the explosion of our sexual culture.
And Peter's movie is right in line with that sort of filmmaking.
It does depict the lives
of gay men and certainly the locations
and the look with great truthfulness.
You Like this ring?
Yeah, it's real neat.
I bought it in town, you know.
I think it's very nice these things here,
It looks good on you...
...why don't you have one, huh? - I don't know. I've never seen one before.
You must take it off from your boots, you know.
Or must buy some.
They're nice.
You Like leather?
Sure, what do you think?
I don't know. I was just asking, you know.
I have a Leather jacket.
Is that all?
No, I have some very nice Leather jeans.
You really should see them.
You know, the kind with a punch in front, you know.
With a punch?
I don't know how do you call it. My English is not so good.
A pouch?
Oh, a pouch!
Yes. No, you know, I mean, really it's...
Why are you laughing?
I think my English is pretty good.
You know, the dates for Warhol's movies
are definitely '60s and later '60s,
the Warhol anti-narrative movies someone once called it.
So that sort of filmmaking was definitely in the air
when Peter's first movie came along.
But in its casual approach to narrative,
in its almost refusal of having narrative
while it documents a long cruise
or the boring party
or just the elements of street life
that focused Peter's seemingly aimless existence,
his drift through society,
there's many elements of
the Warhol non-event, of the documentary feeling.
At one point-this really got to me
they go to a party
and unlike any other porn movie
where they try to have a good time at a party
and give the drag queen a couple of witty lines,
Peter announces as the scene starts like this was an exercise in Brecht.
Most of them turn out to be so boring
and this one was no exception.
He tells you before you even arrive that it's going to be a boring event
and in truth it is. It's very Warhol.
They sit on a sofa, they pass a joint,
you see too many beer cans in front of them,
nobody's saying anything witty,
the drag queen tries to have banter with one of the cuter fellows
and it's really tedious.
And you're kind of glad when, after only seven minutes
that seem like much longer, Peter leaves.
Although it really disrupts the sex, I really liked it
because it's as truthful as the rest of the movie is.
lf Peter is setting up a fictional character,
they've really very cleverly shored it up.
They don't take you to a fictional party. They take you to a real party.
They're very literary, his movies.
That's where they're different from mine.
I had no sound in mine.
I only had music.
Peter has a lot of talking in his movies.
It's usually he's writing a letter and so it's a voiceover
or he's telling a story to somebody.
I just met a young boy as I was wearing my Leather outfit
who took me to his place,
dressed himself up all in Leather,
put on a swastika armband and an iron cross
and we stood in the corner of his room
which he had hung with floor to ceiling mirrors
and told me, "We are both strong, we are equals,
"the world will bow before us."
I did not dare to tell him
that I voted for the socialists in the last German elections.
Peter's character...just walking through these scenes
like oh, this is what happens every day in San Francisco
if you happen to be standing around as a sexual icon.
His whole body is a sexual thing.
He's a full-body genital is what he is.
And then there's Peter narrating the soundtrack
and what does he say? "That was a pleasant diversion for a restless night."
Actually, the main thing that really
put me on the map was
the advertisement in The Advocate...
full page for weeks and weeks and weeks.
And that sort of,
that poster what I designed created a buzz
and then the film came out and the film did very good business.
It got my name known.
I already started to call myself Peter.
When I was asked many times:
"What's your name?"
I said, "Armin." "What?" I said, "Armin."
And I got sick and tired of this and one day somebody said,
"What's your name?" I said, "Peter."
When I made the ad,
I first called myself Burian
and then I got a big letter from a lawyer
accusing me of stealing someone's name.
I said I don't need that name and I changed it to Peter Berlin.
I realized then when the film made a lot of money
that of course the people who were supposed to give it to us
put it in their pocket.
I always, all my life, I worked without lawyers
and I never cared for money too much,
but if you don't care for money too much, then you don't get it.
But I didn't mind. I had a good time.
And my friend was very disappointed
with the financial outcome,
so he was not interested in making another film.
So the second film I made I did all my own.
I edited it and I was shooting it
and I was putting it together with the sound
and I never did anything.
I just sort of picked it up by looking at it
and it's not a big secret how to put something together.
As a filmmaker,
I would say that
Peter probably is closer to my style of making films
than anyone else that made films in my period.
And that's why I liked his films, I guess,
because they had some sense behind them,
they had some sensitivity behind them.
Of course again, the primary thing is the ego.
I mean it's a Peter Berlin film.
It's - You saw a film to see Peter.
You didn't see it to see him have sex with somebody else.
That was like dessert.
When he undoes his jeans and then he has on shorts
and he undoes the shorts and he has on something else
and then he undoes that and he has something else
and he gets down- I think he's got five layers.
You see it had a sense of humor there
It has a little levity in there to ease, you know,
the heaviness of the situation
and also to make it more palatable.
So I think again, that's who he is.
He's someone who
has that lightness in him
and all this darkness and all this ego and all this other stuff.
There's still that little levity that's there.
I was now knowing, okay, don't give it to some distributors,
so I gave it to a friend of mine
who happened to be a distributor
in New York
and the same thing happened.
That friend or not friend...
people just are not very good or very honest with money.
And I became very, very
famous. I was even surprised
that I got the fan mail.
Suddenly Peter Berlin... everybody has - I mean
I was always part of the talk.
Oh, and I heard stories about me,
lies, lies, lies because...-
Like what? What kind of lies?
People, first of all that they, oh,
yeah, I got fucked by Peter Berlin.
I know. I mean ... I already stopped fucking in the what, in the '60s.
When I came to New York,
when I came to America
there's not one person in America who got fucked by Peter Berlin.
Okay, now the stories were oh, yeah, I got -
And I listened to this. So it's sort of-
I mean I don't mind.
I always was a very private person
and that means people even if they would have liked to get in contact
would have been very difficult.
And somehow... I got offers
and I got inquiries.
I never would have been able to do it with someone else.
I think if- I don't know,
Alfred Hitchcock would have come to me,
I probably would have said okay, maybe there's something.
So I decided to not do any more.
But I didn't decide it immediately.
I said okay, maybe next year I'll make another one
and then I said okay, next year and the year passed and then another year.
So it went on and on and on
and then I just said to myself okay, Peter,
you just don't make another film anymore.
But I started to sell my film in parts and mail order
and I made some money with that.
I got bored with the whole thing and just stopped doing it.
But I kept on photographing myself
and then when the video came into fashion
I videotaped myself-
usually, exclusively by myself- because
I'm still a very shy person and I never could perform
like the porn stars do.
He had the definite potential to be huge, you know,
to be as big as a Calvin Klein ad or as big as a -
I mean he could be mainstream now.
He told me one day
that a spokesperson for Jean Paul Gaultier called him
and they said we'd like for you to be the spokesmodel for our line Gibo,
which is the moderate priced clothing.
And Peter Berlin answered the phone and said
"Ah, Peter is not here, I am the maid
"and he will be out of town for 8 months."
And that's what he used to do
and I looked at him and I said "Why did you do that?"
I said. "Why would you not want to be in these ads
for Jean Paul Gaultier?"
He goes "Oh, because then I have to call them back
"and they have to call me back
"and they have to come here,
"and I have to do the photo shoot and..."
And that's the way he lived his life.
You know, he just could not be bothered.
He's like the Greta Garbo of porn.
Hey man, can't you do anything else with your cock besides show it off?
Oh, I can.
So let's go fuck.
I don't want to.
What do you want?
If you don't mind, man,
I Like being by myself.
And when I lived in New York with my friend Jochen
who had a big beautiful loft there
and everything was provided for...
I didn't have to work.
So I went to the 54...
I went to all the clubs
and sure enough, Andy Warhol was always there.
And since he now knew me
because I became known as Peter Berlin,
he greeted me and I greeted him.
One day my friend Koos,
who is a designer in New York,
had an invitation
to one of his tea parties.
So I walked in
and then I heard him saying
"Oh, Peter, I like your pants."
So I had these incredible intricate things,
you know, crotch and ass,
and he asked me polite as he is
"Oh, may I take a picture of your pants?"
And I said "Yes."
And the picture... I will never forget...
I was sort of leaning against the table
sticking out my ass with the leather pants
and Andy with this little Instamatic or whatever,
you know, little camera,
snapped the picture. "Thank you, thank you."
But Andy turned to me and said "Peter, I'm so glad that you come
"and I think what you are doing is really great."
And you know, it sometimes makes a difference who gives you a compliment.
He offered me to,
to use his staff,
to use his studio.
You know, he had the equipment
and he said. "Peter, I think it would be very interesting
"for people to see how you do it.
"So please,
"I offer you to use it
"and I will be helpful, you know, if you need me."
And I said, "Oh, thank you very much."
Now do you think I picked up on that?
Never.
I spent a lot of time on Fire Island.
Now the reason I got to Fire Island in the first place
was because I met Robert Mapplethorpe...
where did I meet him?
I can't remember if that was sort of in a dungeon somewhere
because that was Mapplethorpe's world.
I mean our worlds collided quite often.
So he told me
that they rented this house on Fire Island
and if I have nothing to do- and I never had really anything to do-
I'm welcome to stay in that house.
I got there for the weekend
and the poor people like my friend Robert
on Monday
had to work
and I was sort of residing in that house by myself you know.
So I was on that bunk bed
with that big window and you just could look out on the beach,
you know, people cruising.
And I mean, fabulous, fabulous.
At that time Robert was not the big Robert Mapplethorpe.
He just was sort of starting to be recognized.
But Robert was
a very down-to-earth person
and driven to have success and mingling, you know.
In this business it's not just the photo or the painting what you do.
It's the people you hang out with-
that means the people with the money,
going to the dinner parties.
And then when they dragged me to those dinner parties, you know...
I couldn't wait 'til it was over
and then going in the underworld again.
Like everybody else I had seen Peter on the street,
so I was rather excited when I heard that he was going
to be a guest of the party that was being thrown by a Pacific Heights hostess.
Among the few other guests who were there
were Peter Berlin and Robert Mapplethorpe
and five or six of us had a lovely dinner table conversation
and I found him to be an interesting man
who had a lot of interests beyond what I might have imagined.
And I liked him very much.
But three days later I was out at Land's End-
the sort of cruising meat market of The City
and there was Peter
sort of posed in the crook of a weathered tree,
creating this sort of tableau, really.
And without thinking I just walked up to him
and said, "Hi, Peter, it's Armistead."
And there was no response whatsoever.
I had committed the cardinal sin of breaking that wall.
It was kind of like, I don't know,
like walking up to Minnie Mouse at Disneyland
and saying, "Hi, Suzanne," because you know the person inside the suit.
I had broken the spell,
so I walked away rather sheepishly and let him continue with the tableau.
Robert curated a show in New York
where he asked me to be part of it
and there were five or six photographers.
And then he photographed me-
one of the very few people who I felt comfortable
or actually obliged to say okay,
if you want to take a photo, take a photo.
So he made a photo, several photos,
one on Fire Island and several in his studio.
But I only can remember now that one what is still hanging on my wall
that was done on the boardwalk somewhere on the island.
And then there was another photo what he shot
in his studio
and I remember when I lived in San Francisco then,
it was hanging in the hall somewhere
and my friend James
just had a fight I think with someone
and everything was flying
including that framed photo of Robert's.
So I only have that one other photograph
what's still hanging on my wall
because no other fight erupted
and it didn't end up on the floor, you know.
That was my friend Robert.
And then of course he got sick-
after my friend Jochen got sick...
all my friends got sick.
They all acquired the virus.
And I was one of those people
who didn't acquire the virus
and I'm still negative.
I just meant at the beginning when all of your friends were dying,
I mean you must have felt,
"God, I'm not dying and they're all dying."
And I'll bet a lot of people out there
think or thought at one point, you know,
"He was a porn star in the '70s..."
Oh, yeah. No, that wouldn't have been a surprise
to have heard that Peter Berlin had it,
of course, the way he lived and the way his conduct was,
people wouldn't be surprised.
What they, of course, didn't know
is that by the virtue of
conducting my sexual life
basically as a safe sex proposition...
so I was spared that
and I can see it as being lucky.
On the other hand I have seen all my friends go away
and I ask myself now,
who in the hell is the lucky one?
In 1976, I was going to a nightclub
and somebody came to me and asked me to dance
and I never, I'm not a dancer.
So I rebuffed him
and then I was outside sitting in the car.
It was sort of already cool
and then that boy came,
saw me in the car and approached me again
and I said, "Sit down in the car
"because it's so cold out there, you know."
So we started talking and I took him home.
That was James,
my friend James.
He had problems with a roommate
and then I said. "Well, then stay here with me" and-
I lived in a studio apartment-
and he never moved out.
So he just stayed
and we had one bed
and he slept in my bed.
And at that time
I was doing a lot of
shooting myself with photos
so I said. "I want to take some pictures of you."
And he became a little strange.
I said, "What's wrong?"
And then he said, "Yeah, I don't know, but you know I have,
"I had polio as a child
"and I have a deformed leg."
So we did pictures by just hiding that
and even the videos, what you can see, you'd never know.
When we went to the beach
he knew how to have a towel there
and so he did a great job and most people didn't even know.
It was such
an awful thing in his head,
he never got to accept it.
I remember even before he died,
he just looked at his leg,
"I hate this leg, I hate this leg."
And that was part of my way to trying,
when he moved in
to give him a little support and you know,
to not, you know, because of that I wouldn't like him.
Those things don't bother me.
I stayed with him
about 20 years.
He said one day,
"You know what is today?" I said, "No."
"It's our 20th anniversary."
So then when he got sick and battled along...
he was sort of a person who loved living
and that's why I like him. He had the spirit of exuberance
and liked to buy stuff and give stuff.
You know, at some point he got paralyzed
and I had to wheel him in the wheelchair...
had to go to the hospitals...
but then he got these infections again and again
and one day he said,
"I will not take any..."
I remember the day when we went to his doctor.
She said,
"OK, James...
"then we just will snow you out."
I don't know how long after that,
maybe in that week,
one morning then he said
"Can you make me a pudding?"
And I knew what that meant,
because he told me...
"I will kill myself one day."
And I never believed it
because they all say, "Oh, I'll kill myself." but then...you know.
But he made his decision
and he talked about already having saved,
I think we had two bottles of morphine.
I was going in the kitchen
and doing the cooking of the pudding,
because I never believed in the instant stuff
so I was cooking there.
And I was so stunned, you know.
He was in his little room
waiting for me to bring him the pudding.
And I made a vanilla pudding
and a chocolate pudding because he liked...
he called it the swirlie... he liked the mixed thing with the chocolate and vanilla.
I brought him the thing
and he took that bottle-
and I was sitting there and he was sitting up
and he started to eat it.
I watched him and I already saw him
sort of responding to that overdose.
So I said,
"Scoot down a little bit, you know, get comfortable."
And his last words were,
"You always have to tell me what to do."
Scoot down and fell asleep...
and slept.
I called a friend of his actually.
I said, "Come on, can you come over?"
So she came over
and I was sitting in the living room
and he was snoring actually...
it was this open mouth snoring.
And we heard him sleep
and we talked and he slept for hours
and then slowly
we could hear the snoring getting weaker and weaker
'til it was only breathing.
And at some point
I told her...
I wouldn't even go in the room.
You know, like some people say
somebody died in my arms,
for me death is
sort of...all ready... it has nothing to do with the person.
It's gone.
So she went in and said, "He's already cold..."
But for 20 years... I mean...
we lived together.
We had fights.
I know one day he was sitting in the closet
and crying because unfortunately
he had a big drug problem.
So I guess if he wouldn't have died of that,
he would have died of drugs, you know?
And James...
I know he got a dog...
he wanted a little dog -a little Shih-Tzu
and I always said, "It's a living thing already... plants,
you know, you have to water,
but you know, a dog you have to go and...
And sure enough when we had him, he got sick
and I had to take care of him, you know
and then he said,
"So you have something...
"to love,"
when he's gone.
So I'm still poor and now old, so what's left for me?
Do you think you were a fashion influence?
No, no, no. Maybe one or two boys,
they dared to imitate me.
The main thing what I would like to have achieved
is being in the class of a Calvin Klein
or Armani
and would have given that what in France
that Gaultier has done.
Am I coming across as very bitter about that?
Maybe. And the inability
of me to have given
some kind of
an inspiration
to a young beautiful man
to just say okay,
"I have a dick and I have an ass.
"I don't think I should necessarily hide it."
I don't mean that he should display it in a naked fashion.
I think that's as boring
as being dressed badly.
But you know, there is a way of
using fashion and using fabric
to sort of enhance your personality.
And if you look good,
then you shouldn't hide it. I think it's even a crime.
Oh, I remember porn stars before him,
but there weren't that many that you knew their names.
There weren't that many that had a persona, you know,
that was so extreme and so really defined.
That was the thing.
You didn't ever hope he would do something else
because you knew he would not.
Was he the first porno star? I don't know.
I think the first one that would come to mind for me
would be Casey Donovan.
They're equally memorable.
I mean porn stars now have what?
A 15-minute shelf life... or is it 14 minutes?
And he has endured for all this time as have a handful.
I mean there's Casey Donovan,
Al Parker.
These people made a place in gay men's hearts,
you know, and they meant something. They were icons.
And Peter Berlin, who made fewer films
than any of the aforementioned,
is very powerful in that group.
He is one of the enduring stars of this genre
and I think that's amazing
because decades have passed and he's still remembered.
He was really thought of as an artist.
I was thought of as an actor
and they weren't quite sure about that.
Well, watching Nights in Black Leather
gave me such a strong feeling for Peter
that I strongly felt he should be
a grand marshal in the Gay Parade.
So I think he's certainly worthy of honor.
I don't think he'd enjoy that, would he?
That would be the last thing what I would do.
I don't know if he ever had more than one pair of those tight pants.
It's interesting...
And those should definitely go into a museum
with Jackie's pink suit, believe me.
'Cause many, many people have fantasized about those pants.
He should make a new movie... for gerontophiliacs.
I mean however old he is, there are people,
wrinkle queens, that like them older.
lf you would tell me
I could
redo my life...
I would do it in a split second.
Just a repeat, I would do the loop...
without any... because the pain what I suffered...
even the loss, you know.
I mean I wish only what I could redo is the happiness
and well-being of others in my life... I would like to have changed,
But me? My God, what a blast I had.
What, what a - my God.
The day I experienced sexuality.
My God... what a creator there is
to have that put in my life.
You think these pants make my ass look fat?