Clone: The Life and Legacy of Al Parker, Gay Superstar Book

Drew Okun stumbled across his destiny one afternoon in 1967 along the railroad tracks outside Natick, Mass., when he found a tattered magazine containing an ad for the now legendary Colt Studios. That same year he would lose his virginity at knifepoint in a corn-field on the outskirts of town. It was a year of discovery for young Okun; he not only learned of the studio that would catapult him to international stardom but experienced for the first time the desperation and danger that would feed his desires--and fuel his career as Al Parker, one of the most popular adult film stars of all time and the personification of the look that would forever after be known as "the clone." Roger Edmonson, the biographer who brought the man behind the myth of Casey Donovan to life in Boy in the Sand, now does the same for Al Parker, a man so different from the norm of the day that he was introduced to the world in a Colt layout with the disclaimer "This is not normally what we give you." His story, as uncovered by Edmonson, reveals a young man out of place in his world who would find his home in front of and behind the camera as the star of 21 films and the founder of Surge Studios, celebrating the rough and raw sexuality he came to symbolize. And like so many young men of his day, he would be cut down early in life by AIDS--but not before making an even more lasting impact as a crusader who was willing to put his career on the line to make a statement about safer-sex practices, a statement that would immortalize him finally as the personification of a more responsible gay sexuality.Read More