With a new “WTF Are They Doing NOW?” series Adult Industry News (AINews.xxx) seeks to find ex-Industry members and see what they are up to. Steve Nelson searched and found Jeff Coldwater in, of all places, East Texas. Jeff agreed to be the inaugural interviewee via phone for this series.
JEFF COLDWATER’S CAREER HAS GONE TO THE DOGS! …AND CATS!
Former long-time content provider, Jeff Coldwater, hasn’t shot a scene in five years. These days he is Majordomo to not just one, but two animal rescues in East Texas where he’s providing a forever-home for nearly eighty unwanted animals. We pick up here:
AINews: Jeff! You said something I find interesting; you have never done an interview before?
Jeff Coldwater: This will be my very first one.
AINews: I find that hard to believe.
Jeff: Believe it, the world was never clamoring to hear what I had to say.
AINews: We go back pretty far, do you remember when we met?
Jeff: I sure do, it was a group seminar thing in Lake L.A. for swingers. I don’t know why I remember that, but I remember driving across two dry lake beds to get there. It wasn’t my gig I was only auditing the class.
AINews: I’m sure you remember who came with you.
Jeff: Cherry Lawton.
AINews: Cherry LawSON. She had that big 1980s blonde hair.
Jeff: All six foot two of her. Jerry Butler referred to her as Big Bird. Which fit.
AINews: Yeah, that’s her, and Toni Chase and Mark Harder came with you too. After the seminar about the Industry by Bill Margold, and everyone else left, those three stayed behind and played with the wife and me.
Jeff: As you know I was one of Margold’s kids…
AINews: That’s when I first met you, it was February ’92. Everyone has a story of how they got started, back to you, when did you get started?
Jeff: The late 80s. Remember I went to Margold University in the late 1980s.
AINews: So that was before I met you.
Jeff: Yeah, I was one of Margold’s kids, with everything that it was cracked up to be. I hooked up with cameraman Titus Moody and started producing micro-budgeted features that, thinking back, were god-awful, really bad stuff. Each one worse than the last it seemed. But I did find a home at Arrow Film and Video and that too was everything it was cracked up to be as well.
AINews: [Laughs] I remember them. Did they give you a deal?
Jeff: Yeah, they created an imprint just for my schlock, their words, called, Flame Video.
AINews: You had your own division?!
Jeff: Sure did, they didn’t want my stuff near Stu Canterbury’s or Freddy’s [Fred Lincoln] AFV releases. No one remembers, but around that time Arrow had contract girls.
AINews: I don’t remember that.
Jeff: See? Well it didn’t last long, but occasionally a gal’s contract was about to expire, and she still owed The Boys a couple of scenes, they’d tell her, “Go over ther and shoot wit Coldwata” so the gal could work off a scene. They’d get Lorian to do a photoshoot and the art, and knew they would have a nice box cover. I mistakenly thought, wow! They really must have faith in my abilities to trust me with one of their valuable contract girls. But it wasn’t the case at all! (Laughs)
AINews: Were you still with the Margold cult?
Jeff: Not for long. I ran out of the temple as fast as I could and into the open arms of John Keeler.
AINews: Wait, did he go by Jane something…?
Jeff: Yeah, Jane Waters, lots of Chinese restaurants and breaking down scrips.
AINews: Your budgets were getting bigger then?
Jeff: Yeah, and by this time I knew which end of the camera to look though. The product started to get better quickly. Keeler was one, if not the best, hardcore cameraman in the 1990s, but he was difficult. We’d fight like crazy on set, but everyone fought with Keeler. He was good for at least two meltdowns on every production he worked on. His results were better than good, and the cable channels gladly started taking our stuff. That was a good sign.
AINews: So you started shooting features on film – I was an extra on a couple of your shoots.
Jeff: Yeah, for a few years everything was really good ’till this new format made the scene. Remember those early cameras that took those cute little mini DV tapes?
AINews: I still have two of those Sony 3-chip DV cams.
Jeff: Yeah, soon after all the cool directors started using those camcorders, the Spice Channels shut, and features were not in demand like before. It didn’t slow me down any, it was, “damn the torpedoes and check the gate!”
AINews: And how’d that work out?
Jeff: Not well. (Laughs)
AINews: But you were shooting big features for a while, weren’t you?
Jeff: Steve, even at my high water mark I was never anything but small potatoes. Happily ensconced in the Bottom third of the industry.
AINews: What do you mean “the bottom third?”
Jeff: I always saw things. All the companies in the Valley where there was the upper crust, the VCAs, Sin Citys, Vivids – then a large middle section which had everyone else plus on the wrong side of the tracks, and the bottom third – and the twain seldom met. I think it’s the bell curve model. The sections are not equal in size… Don’t you see it like this at all?
AINews: OK, “bell curve,” I get it! So you’re in this bottom third?
Jeff: It was home.
AINews: Who else was there?
Jeff: ‘Sides myself… well as someone can imagine there were the shady characters, your stereotypes…
AINews: Who for example?
Jeff: Figure typical bottom feeders, guys bringing their wives around to get them into scenes, that sort of sleazy stuff. Also, the fly-by-nighters, wannabe producers who’d shoot three quickie shows, find themselves broke and leave town owing people doe.
AINews: OK. Besides yourself, who were your compatriots in this bottom third?
Jeff: You want names, huh?
AINews: Well, yeah, no harm in saying who you were running with, is there?
Jeff: Well, let’s see… (long pause) Ya got your Bogus Brothers… Charley Biggs was one who could hopscotch back and forth… If you’re shooting scenes in motel rooms in North Hollywood you may be a candidate… Randy Detroit would qualify… and if you’re looking for the bottom third personified, Damian Michaels is your man.
AINews: Oh. You just included the dregs and scum with those last two. I get the picture.
Jeff: I should have just said them first and been done with it.
AINews: Give yourself credit, you were way above Damian Michaels.
Jeff: (Laughing) Maybe a pinch. Heck, we had our own talent agent.
AINews: Wait! What was his name? Reagan Senter?
Jeff: Very good. Beautiful Models Incorporated, I can see his brown corduroy suit now. Ol’ Reagan was an operator, worked harder than the other two agents at the time!
AINews: Nina Whett would always complain about him! I want to go back to Margold, are you glad you took that route?
Jeff: I’ve thought about this before, and if I had to do it again would I have done it any different? The answer is no. I would’ve done the exact same thing. It was just too much fun flying through the Valley by the seat of my pants dealing with guys with last names like Sinopoli and Esposito.
AINews: Do you miss the industry?
Jeff: I miss when Bobby Hollander and Butchie Perino were running things.
AINews: I remember Bobby. I interviewed him years ago. [AINews Exclusive: An InnerView of Bobby Hollander] What else?
Jeff: Well, I miss Newspapers and Magazines too, but don’t get me started. But I miss when we could fit the entire industry in Trac Trek Studios over on Canoga Avenue for one of those early HIV scares.
AINews: Hard to believe that was possible.
Jeff: There was a community back then that’s long gone. I’ll tell you what, I don’t miss being at Springboard [Studio] at 1:30 in the morning with another sex scene left to shoot!
AINews: I know what you mean. Moving on. What were you doing after 2000, how did you make out then?
Jeff: I got a great gig being the head shooter for Totally Tasteless Video. I should have made business cards with that title on them, Skippy and Dick Nasty were my male talent then.
AINews: Ya can’t go wrong there.
Jeff: Everything was going great again but as that song goes, “If the right one don’t get ya, then the left one will.” The internet was right over the ridge and caught most of us flat footed. It eventually caused a massive flood washing all the old ways away, things changed again big time.
AINews: What changed?
Jeff: You used to be able to shoot a scene and take it to K Beech or Peter Davy or several other places and sell it, make enough doe to pay your rent, fill your tank and go to a Dodger game. All that disappeared. If you did sell to Peter Davy, you would want cash on delivery. (laughing) It was before testing, before IDs were needed and about half of the studios didn’t care about releases. Soon things got more complicated.
AINews: OK Jeff, now how does someone go from shooting anal scenes to taking care of – what is it now – 80 animals? You have EIGHTY animals?!
Jeff: And I just acquired three new abandoned pups yesterday! If you count the strays that come around too, maybe more, I feed them, so I claim them. Eighty of the sweetest babies ever. The way things are going there may be close to a hundred by mid-Summer.
AINews: That’s awesome, but how did you go from cleaning up video footage to cleaning up poop?
Jeff: I was living in an enormous house in Northridge with a huge yard and I found myself going to the West Valley Animal pound on Plumber and pulling three cats at a time, that was the limit. No dogs yet cuz I was still shooting and couldn’t have barking on the sound. One day I looked up and I had twenty-some cats.
AINews: Wow. I remember you had a few, but over TWENTY?
Jeff: It got so I had to join the PetSmart rewards club! Now comes the pandemic and lockdown, Talk was no shooting allowed for three months and I needed a quick decision when I came to a fork in the road…
AINews: When you come to a fork in the road, take it!
Jeff: Yeah. Do I want to don my Albert Schweitzer cap or keep shooting the same scene for the rest of my life?
AINews: The animals won.
Jeff: So I packed it in, got a U-Haul, a whole bunch of cat carriers and pushed east never looking back. Settled in East Texas.
AINews: Texas is nice, but that was pretty random.
Jeff: I don’t believe in destiny or fate, I wish I did, but I don’t. However, where I landed, I call it “the animal dumping capital of the nation.”
AINews: Why? How come?
Jeff: These local shit-kickers refuse to fix their animals and eventually they all have babies and when the pups or kittens are old enough, they drive them to the next county and dump them on an off-the-way road and just leave them. I get phones calls that go like this:
“Ah gots three dawgs on mah pa’s property and ah don’t know wha to do”, and I say where ya at, and I go get ’em.
So it’s weird I ended up here, right where I needed to be, and I shudder to think what would’ve happened to all these sweet babies had life not thrown us a curve. And strange but true, our first rescues were pets from COVID victims. A local veterinarian would call and say, got another one if you can take it.
Here we specialize in animals that are hard to place. There are blind ones here, ones missing eyes and legs, refugees from puppy mills and senior babies. This pack we have wouldn’t’ve had a chance finding a forever-home around here! Also, my rescues are special because ninety percent of all other rescues kennel their animals in an 8×6 foot cages where they LAY there waiting for an adoption that may never come. Ya never want to knock another rescue but just warehousing animals doesn’t sit well with me. These sweet babies here are free-range. The twenty-three dogs that I live with have five acres to run, play and hunt – and I’m not crazy about them hunting but it’s interesting watching them organize a hunt among themselves. I root for the rabbit or squirrel out-running and getting through the fence alive. The sixty cats can be inside cats, outside cats, or inside/outside kitties, they have free-will here.
AINews: Bravo, thanks for helping those fur-babies, and before I forget, you do that accent well.
Jeff: My pleasure. I’m hoping I can get a third location in a year or two, with 30 to 50 acres and start rescuing horses, mules, and donkeys keeping them away from slaughterhouses.
AINews: Do you know much about those animals too?
Jeff: Only that you don’t walk behind them!
AINews: That’s funny! I wish I could add a rim-shot to that. Well, I’m going to wind this up. I know you probably have chores to do. What I want to ask is do you have any notable reflections on your long and colorful career?
Jeff: When I do reflect it reminds me that everyone that started out with me are no longer alive, it’s mind blowing, they’re all gone! (long pause) From those early-early days… someone must still be around or alive, let’s see… Joey [Silvera] is around, that’s good, and who else… I hear Don Hart [Mike Horner] is in a sanitarium up in Oregon “resting” – Can you see him in a tattered bathrobe staring off, someone reading Dr Seuss to him? But no one else comes to mind from my early circle that’s still vertical. In fact, my dear friend and lighting guy John Frady just passed last week.
AINews: Yeah, I heard he died from Jay Crew. I learned a lot from Frady. Do you know how he went?
Jeff: His sister said dementia! He went quick, he was fading but it was a shock when I got the news. A real loss for many.
AINews: Any career highlights you can recall?
Jeff: Maybe working with Jamie [Gillis] and Jack Baker. That still stands out for me… Oh wait, there is something I can mention. One day I was driving up Western and right after you cross Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, there was a Pussycat Theater right there on the right. I glanced at the marquee, it read, “JEANNE FINE IS VELVET.” [Explitive!] I’m glad I had both hands on the wheel. Wow! That was one of my features I DID shoot on film and sold, and THERE IT WAS! I’m barely able to get a VHS release and look at this! It was a thrill for me and a box I checked off.
AINews: VERY cool. The Pussycat Theater was the gold standard! Final thoughts; How do you want to be remembered?
Jeff: Steve, I gotta tell ya, you probe deeper than most doctors!
AINews: Hey, I’m not your proctologist, I just need to document some Industry history.
Jeff: The world will little note nor long remember what we do here…’sides wasn’t it Buck Adams or General MacArthur who said, “Old pornographers never die, they just fade away.”
AINews: MacArthur, and it was “soldiers.” When a girl said, “But I poop outa there.” Buck said, “Not right now you don’t!” but that’s a another story… You seem happy, Jeff.
Jeff: I can’t complain, I’ve had the best gigs in the world, I was the doorman at the Roosevelt Hotel, a referee at the Hollywood Tropicana, thirty years in hardcore and to cap it all off I’m the hero to scores of appreciative furry souls who all they want is to hang out with me. I haven’t had a day off in five years and don’t want one!
AINews: I guess you’re in this one for the long haul.
Jeff: On my very last day on earth, I hope to be picking up poo… and I want to hear that Buck Adams story.
Thanx to Jeff Coldwater for taking the time for this great update.
The post WTF Is Jeff Coldwater Doing NOW?! appeared first on Adult Industry News.
