Howard Ziehm

Howard Ziehm (born April 7, 1940) is a retired American director, director of photography, producer and writer of adult movies.

Ziehm is regarded as a pioneer in the porn industry. His 1970 film Mona: The Virgin Nymph was the first 35mm adult feature film that was nationally released in theaters. He was inducted into the XRCO (X-Rated Critics Organization) Hall of Fame for his work in 1986.

Ziehm's best-known film is Flesh Gordon, a 1974 soft sex spoof of the Flash Gordon serials. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for "Best Dramatic Presentation" in 1975 and is now celebrated as a cult classic. The film is also notable for providing the training grounds for several now-famous special effects artists like Rick Baker, Dennis Muren and Greg Jein; animator Jim Danforth also worked on the movie.

Ziehm grew up in a strict Lutheran family as the oldest of five siblings. He went to highschool in Monterey, California, before enrolling at MIT to study engineering and mathematics. He dropped out of college before graduation, however.

In 1961, he moved to Berkeley and opened a folk music club called The Cabale in September 1962. He encountered marijuana and even tried his hand at smuggling drugs, hitchhiked across North America and enjoyed the sexual revolution of the 1960s. He lost his co-ownership of The Cabale and moved to Los Angeles in 1967, where he briefly worked as a carpenter and started a rock band.

He met a business-savvy young man named Bill Osco, who became the manager of Ziehm's short-lived band. Osco wanted to get involved with the movie business, so he and Ziehm founded Graffiti Productions and started making porn loops. Ziehm would direct and shoot the films, Osco would produce and sell them. Since pornography, despite still being illegal, was quickly becoming an in-demand product, Graffiti was successful enough not only to become a sought-after supplier of films, but also to start producing longer, more ambitious films.

After two feature films (What Happened to Stud Flame? and Virgin Runaway), Graffiti made Mona: The Virgin Nymph, which became the first pornographic 35mm feature film to be nationally released in regular theaters and helped start the "porno chic" of the 1970s. Ziehm co-directed the film with Michael Benveniste and served as its director of photography. The film had no credits because the filmmakers didn't want to draw attention to themselves, and since Osco was the one travelling around and selling the movie to theaters, he was sometimes thought of as the director or sole creator of Graffiti's films.

...
Wikipedia