Episode 31: Hand in Hand Films’s GOOD HOT STUFF (1975) with William E. Jones

Have we got a surprise for you this week, listeners! On this episode, we discuss Hand in Hand’s ode to itself Good Hot Stuff. Part cheeky documentary, part meta-history, and part outright salvage job, Good Hot Stuff takes us through the young studio’s early artistic successes and previews its raunchy upcoming creations. Along the way, we meet an adorable narrator with an incredibly thick mid-Atlantic drawl, see some of the men who made magic behind the scenes through editing and scoring—and see an excerpt from an unfinished Scheherazade ripoff with a patently wacky backstory.

But that’s not all: we also have a conversation with author and filmmaker William E. Jones about Good Hot Stuff! The movie played a pivotal role in his previous novel I’m Open to Anything—and we discuss where his and his protagonist’s relation to the film differ. We also have a chance to discuss with Jones regionalism in porn, his enduring fascination with Fred Halsted, and his latest novel I Should Have Known Better (now available through We Heard You Like Books Press or many other retailers). 

Tune in and learn what makes this film much more than a clip package or a cheap ripoff of That’s Entertainment!—but, instead, a hot and artistic production in its own right.