Joe Rubin
Episode description
Preservationist and co-founder of the company Vinegar Syndrome Joe Rubin joins us to talk about his restorations of classic sex films. Vinegar Syndrome can be thought of as the “Criterion Collection for porn!” And the quality of their restorations have garnered compliments from their peers who say that their work is better than what has been done on Paramount’s Hitchcock restorations! Joe also has encyclopedic knowledge about of the Golden Age of porn. This is what lead the Quad Cinema in New York City to ask him to program a series of classic sex films for their Erotic City series in the summer of 2017, where films like Bacchanale (1970), Bijou (1972), Both Ways (1975), the documentaries Changes (1970) and Not a Love Story (1981), Double Agent 73 (1974), Naked Came the Stranger (1975), Not Just Another Woman (1973), The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann (1974) and Scoundrels (1982) were screened. This is a wide-ranging interview covering Joe’s fascination with porn at a very early age, how he got into restoration while still in his teens, and why his company’s restorations are better than those VHS copies that you all covet so dearly. Joe fills us in on a lot of behind the scenes stories about a lot of the films screened in the series. And Joe discusses what bothers him most about the way porn studies is practiced by academics.
you can find out more about the series here: https://quadcinema.com/program/erotic-city/
New York Times article about Vinegar Syndrome: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/movies/smut-refreshed-for-a-new-generation.html?_r=0