LOS ANGELES — Adult director Roy Karch, one of the pioneering figures of the adult industry, passed away last Thursday morning, after a long illness.
In late 2019, his friend, caretaker and creative disciple Will Ryder informed the adult community that Karch was in grave condition. He had not left his bed since February of that year, becoming mostly paralyzed after having two strokes and being diagnosed with dementia.
Ryder, who has been paying his ailing friend's expenses since 2018, later organized a GoFundMe to help with the mounting medical bills, which quickly filled up with contributions from the community.
A very intimate memorial, not open to the public, is being organized by his friends to be held at the Mount Sinai Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles. Ryder told XBIZ a more festive event in Karch's memory will be organized at a later date, as soon as safety protocols allow it.
A Real New Yorker
Born in Boston in 1946 (as Roy Karchmer, sometimes misspelled as "Karchner"), Karch grew up in the Bronx, near Yankee Stadium.
According to close friends, Karch was working as a high school gym teacher in early 1970s New York City when he and his girlfriend decided to make some extra money by performing in "sex loops" shot in 8mm and shown in "The Deuce"-era Times Square.
That, according to Karch "opened up the world of pornography" for him, and, shortly after that, he became involved in production.
When the cable access phenomenon became popular in New York, Karch co-produced and directed the "Underground Tonight Show," a low-budget, Johnny Carson-style talk show that featured nudity and sex talk. Roy was the director.
"It was all about music, sex and politics," he told XBIZ in 2006. "It was for people who wouldn't or couldn't be on Johnny Carson. We had Marilyn Chambers, Debbie Harry before she became Blondie, Patti Smith, Jerry Damiano, Tina Russell." Karch told friends he and the pre-fame Harry dated at the time.
At the time he also created an early porn accolade, the Tonguy Award, which legend has it was handed personally to Mick Jagger. Karch has told friends of being hired by the Rolling Stones to direct and then edit live event footage for several months in Arizona, where he became friendly with Jagger and Keith Richards. He also did film and video work for Donna Summer.
But, Karch said, he eventually "gravitated towards porn because the work was more plentiful" in the late '70s.
A Key Figure in the Development of the Industry
His successful stint as a production manager in "Dracula Sucks" (1978), a high-profile porn parody from the film era, sped up his transition into filmmaking.
Karch told XBIZ in 2006 that he was a key figure in the transition from the film to the video eras of the adult industry. Karch said he was referenced in "Boogie Nights," when a producer tells director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) that the future of adult entertainment is videotape and “there's already a director out there shooting on video.”
"That's me," Karch said. "I'm that guy ‘shooting on video.’ They don't say my name, but people know it's me they're talking about."
Karch was referring to 1979's "The Reincarnation of Serena," a movie he made for Gourmet Video, where his official title was Head of Sales but where he also directed roughly 300 movies. His name, however, seldom showed up in the credits.
At the end of the ‘70s, Karch moved out to Los Angeles, where he worked in some mainstream productions, rising to Second Assistant Director in horror features "Cataclysm" (1980) and "Night Train to Terror" (1985) under his birth name.
The Original 'One-Day Wonder' and Porn Parody Innovator
Within the world of 1980s adult entertainment, Karch worked at Gourmet Video at a time when a young Rob Spallone was a sales employee. Karch was involved with Western Visuals and Gourmet Video, starting at the sales department and working his way into the director's chair. He later worked for Bo Kenney's SexZ Videos.
"Truth be told, I was the first to make a 3-D porno, the first to do an adult cable access show, the first to run an adult awards show, the first to get an X-rated video into the Adam & Eve catalog, and I opened up Tower Records to porn," Karch told XBIZ in 2006.
"He loved the business," Spallone told XBIZ. "He was a salesman for my father, and also a director. He would sell four days a week and shoot a movie one day a week. Funny thing is when he shot the movie that day he wasn’t the same person he was the other four days. He loved what he did — he really thought he was making a movie like 'Gone With the Wind,' and I would tell him 'Roy, a monkey could shoot a porno movie!'"
Karch became known in the industry as a "one-day wonder," meaning he could shoot an entire feature movie (both the sex and the dialogue) in one long, 22-hour workday. His films were generally scripted and he is known as one of the pioneers of the "porn parody" genre.
A Mentor to the Next Generation
He also mentored younger talent like his close friend, director Will Ryder.
"There wouldn't be a Will Ryder if there wasn't a Roy Karch," Ryder told XBIZ. "If it wasn't for Roy I wouldn't have relaunched and revolutionized the porn parody genre."
"I was in L.A. trying to be a musician, and Roy hired me, back in 1983, to write music for his movies. He was the first guy to hire me to do music. I had played in bands in Milwaukee but he was the first guy who hired me to make music for his movies."
"Roy would do loose parodies of movies and TV shows," added Ryder. "They were campy, funny, silly movies. He would call them 'takeoffs' instead of 'parodies,' as in 'I'm doing a ‘Cagney & Lacey’ takeoff.'"
Ryder, in turn, gave Karch production jobs on his projects like the "Not Married With Children XXX" parodies. Under Ryder's direction, he won an XBIZ Award for Non-Sex Performance for "Not the Jersey Boys XXX."
Karch later worked for Adam & Eve and Christian Mann's Video Team; for a period, he wrote an opinion column for XBIZ called "Don't Get Me Started."
In the late-2000s, Karch went into retirement. "Newer directors were coming out and he was pushed out of the business," Ryder recalled.
Industry Remembrances
"New York is in his blood at all times, although he lived most of his life in Los Angeles," said Ryder as he memorialized his friend. "But he was a New Yorker."
Agent Mark Spiegler told XBIZ he first met Karch in the 1980s, as he entered the adult industry.
"He'd grown up with my cousin in New York," Spiegler reminisced. "I went on a few sets with him in the 1980s as his P.A. and then he approached me in the 1990s to produce movies for him. I produced a few movies with him and then basically went out on my own and after that I became an agent.
"I'm sorry to hear he has passed," Spiegler said.
Adult legends from the Golden Age of the Industry remember Karch as an energetic figure —sometimes chaotically so — and someone who stood out in those hectic times as a standup guy.
“He was twisted in a wonderful way," Ginger Lynn told XBIZ. "He was one of the good guys in the 1980s.”
Her long-time colleague and friend Christy Canyon told XBIZ Karch "was a great guy to work for. Very professional — I always loved working on a Roy Karch set."
"He was a good soul," Canyon added.
Performer Herschel Savage — who both worked extensively and partied with Karch during the industry's most colorful years of the "Boogie Nights" era — offered the description, “a trainwreck with a finished product, and a heart of gold — that’s Roy Karch."
"That pretty much sums up Roy," Savage told XBIZ. "He was an emotional guy. I worked for many years with him. He loved the business. He loved being a part ofthe action and he was a part of the action — but never really fit in. He was a normal Jewish kid from Queens, and suddenly he was in the middle of it, with his feet in the mud."
Adam & Eve's Bob Christian told XBIZ that "it is very sad to hear that we have lost Roy. He fought hard and I trust he is in a better place now."
"Adam & Eve Pictures partnered with Roy in dozens of movies during the past couple decades," Christian added. "For me, Roy was great to work with because he gave us what we wanted. And that changed over time. When we wanted story-driven couples movies, he did that. When we wanted thematic vignettes, he did that. Roy was open-minded to changing his style and his movies to make them what was wanted."
Christian remembers one conversation where Roy asked him why they weren’t using him as much as they had. When I told him we were moving into other types of movies, he said ‘wait what! I can do those too!’ And he did."
"One regret I have," Christian added, "is that I never got a tour of LA on one of Roy’s tour buses — a sideline he had a few years ago. That would have been a hoot. The stories Roy could tell..."
Producer-director Ernest Greene told XBIZ that “Roy was a charmer, unfailingly friendly and funny whenever we met. He was one of the few remaining links to the ‘old school’ and had many a good story from back in the day."
Greene remembered Karch as "free of auteurist pretensions, and much of his wit was self-deprecating. He saw himself as a journeyman pro who could put a production together with minimal resources and deliver the finished product reliably. After the market for low-budget features contracted he struggled, like many directors, getting what work he could, but he managed to retain his ebullient nature."
“Roy was a truly likable guy and a lot of us who go back a long way in the industry are definitely going to miss him," Greene concluded.
"Everybody liked Roy," Will Ryder added. "Roy loved the blues and enjoyed playing the harmonica and often jumped in during Porn Star Karaoke at Sardo’s. He will be buried with his harmonicas."
Karch's friends have set up a GoFundMe to help with the final costs of his care and his funeral.
