Rating: 
Summary: Haunting, carefully-crafted, heavy.
Review: A gut-wretching biography of a beautiful man who could never get a handle on his life. It tells us a good bit about the exploitive gay-porn industry in the unhappily meteoric career of Joey: quick fame, over-exposure, and sinking star. The destructive catastropes of drugs, AIDS, self-destructiveness all come home in the life of one of the hottest bottoms in the porn trade. The final third of the bio moves with an inevitability that is good, but sometimes pretty obviously worked. You won't forget this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Ho-Hum
Review: Although it's no fault of the author, I simply could not feel sorry for Mr. Stefano. The book spends a lot of time trying to build a case that the porn industry did Stefano in; but I didn't buy it. He was basically a drug addicted prostitute and chose his own lifestyle. When we lose an artist in the music field (like Janis Joplin, Jimmi Hendrix, etc) or the entertainment field (like River Phoenix, Judy Garland, etc) from an overdose, there is a real void in our culture because these people brought something to our arts and culture. I'm sorry, the loss of Joey Stefano certainly doesn't bring any kind of loss to society. It's too bad a young man died the way he did, but his "talents" are not irreplaceable or to be mourned for.
Rating:
Summary: The Beautiful and the Doomed
Review: Charles Isherwood certainly doesn't have a dull subject on his hands, and this book is a decadent page-turner. Titillation is part of the reason, and so is camp. As one reviewer correctly points out, in its gravitas, this book reads like the biography of an accomplished artist or senator, and the serious lengthy discussion of Stefano as opening the "top"-dominated gay porn world to the possibilities of a superstar "bottom," drive the camp quotient up that much higher. Most of us are both attracted to and repelled by pornography. Sex is a shortcut to everything, and the world of flesh and juices created in X-rated films is one most males and a few females are drawn to at certain times. As I found out in life, the unlikeliest people have collections of porn so ample they almost need the Dewey Decimal System to organize it. As Camille Paglia has said, "A day without pornography is like a day without sunshine." I knew picking this book up that I'd be reading a tragic life. Joey's physical flaws were few (a flattened nose, a slight doughiness) and his physical attributes were many (a stunning Tom Cruise face and an arse that should be cast in platinum and displayed in the Prado) but psychologically this young man was a mess. Author Isherwood is a good reporter and gathers most of the important facts about his subject's life. His psychological theses are on shakier ground. The most important thing to know about Nick Iacona/Joey Stefano was that he was an addictive personality. Addictive personalities are usually not confined to one addiction, because this personality type is really a mode of response to any pleasure, one which is compulsive and unrelenting. When Nick/Joey wasn't doing porn films, he was going to orgiastic parties, and when these two allowed him any spare time, he was calling up sex lines, cruising parking lots, or soliciting other hustlers! Now this, my friends, is a sex addiction if any doubt lingers. Ecsape through drugs, frightening and blissful, was another of Nick/Joey's obsessions, and everything from heroin to morphine to cocaine to ketamine found itself in his system. Spending money compulsively and completely rounded out Nick/Joey's trio of addictions. A well-paid erotic film star, he never had a dime to his name, and couldn't even save up for a used car. With his good looks, Nick/Joey didn't lack for sugar daddies, and some of these transcended the role and became genuinely fatherly; alas, it was too late, and the porn star's problems were too weighty and too many. Lacking a human lover in his life, Nick/Joey courted death; his twin obsessions with sex and drugs dealt him a dual death sentence: HIV and an overdose. People with addictive personalities are also quite productive, since their work often becomes an addiction as well. Nick/Joey made 17 erotic films, and became one of a small group of icons in gay pornography. This may seem a dubious accomplishment, but it's well out of the reach of most of us. "The privileges of beauty are enormous" as Jean Cocteau said, and green-eyed Joey Stefano was clearly beautiful. But he was the kind of guy who could win the lottery and run through the money in a year. Tortured soul, his problems were a spooky and endless chasm, and we end up agreeing with his biographer with a chill and a sigh that at least death brings peace.
Rating:
Summary: The Beautiful and the Doomed
Review: Charles Isherwood certainly doesn't have a dull subject on his hands, and this book is a decadent page-turner. Titillation is part of the reason, and so is camp. As one reviewer correctly points out, in its gravitas, this book reads like the biography of an accomplished artist or senator, and the serious lengthy discussion of Stefano as opening the "top"-dominated gay porn world to the possibilities of a superstar "bottom," drive the camp quotient up that much higher. Most of us are both attracted to and repelled by pornography. Sex is a shortcut to everything, and the world of flesh and juices created in X-rated films is one most males and a few females are drawn to at certain times. As I found out in life, the unlikeliest people have collections of porn so ample they almost need the Dewey Decimal System to organize it. As Camille Paglia has said, "A day without pornography is like a day without sunshine." I knew picking this book up that I'd be reading a tragic life. Joey's physical flaws were few (a flattened nose, a slight doughiness) and his physical attributes were many (a stunning Tom Cruise face and an arse that should be cast in platinum and displayed in the Prado) but psychologically this young man was a mess. Author Isherwood is a good reporter and gathers most of the important facts about his subject's life. His psychological theses are on shakier ground. The most important thing to know about Nick Iacona/Joey Stefano was that he was an addictive personality. Addictive personalities are usually not confined to one addiction, because this personality type is really a mode of response to any pleasure, one which is compulsive and unrelenting. When Nick/Joey wasn't doing porn films, he was going to orgiastic parties, and when these two allowed him any spare time, he was calling up sex lines, cruising parking lots, or soliciting other hustlers! Now this, my friends, is a sex addiction if any doubt lingers. Ecsape through drugs, frightening and blissful, was another of Nick/Joey's obsessions, and everything from heroin to morphine to cocaine to ketamine found itself in his system. Spending money compulsively and completely rounded out Nick/Joey's trio of addictions. A well-paid erotic film star, he never had a dime to his name, and couldn't even save up for a used car. With his good looks, Nick/Joey didn't lack for sugar daddies, and some of these transcended the role and became genuinely fatherly; alas, it was too late, and the porn star's problems were too weighty and too many. Lacking a human lover in his life, Nick/Joey courted death; his twin obsessions with sex and drugs dealt him a dual death sentence: HIV and an overdose. People with addictive personalities are also quite productive, since their work often becomes an addiction as well. Nick/Joey made 17 erotic films, and became one of a small group of icons in gay pornography. This may seem a dubious accomplishment, but it's well out of the reach of most of us. "The privileges of beauty are enormous" as Jean Cocteau said, and green-eyed Joey Stefano was clearly beautiful. But he was the kind of guy who could win the lottery and run through the money in a year. Tortured soul, his problems were a spooky and endless chasm, and we end up agreeing with his biographer with a chill and a sigh that at least death brings peace.
Rating: 
Summary: Terribly dull...
Review: Chi Chi LeRue, Karen Dior or Mickey Skee should have written this, or even Crystal Crawford. There's no emotion or heart in this book. Go read any of the articles about Joey, not this.
Rating:
Summary: LONELY GAY PORN SUPERSTAR GETS THE RECOGNITION HE DESERVES I
Review: He had AIDS...most didn't know this. He wanted love and fame and friends...he got fame, maybe just a few friends. He did drugs...and ended up where most who do drugs get close to before falling off as he did. This is a hell of a book. What it lacks in photos it more than makes up for in the new art of voyeurism that is the porn industry and the authors of books who are brave enough to write about a segment of the American population that the mainstream fears to tread into. Four stars--FOUR BIG ONES FOR OUR JOEY! f fletcher
Rating:
Summary: An Everyman's tale of life and its cruelties
Review: He was born in south Philadephia Nicholas Iacona Jr. Jan. 1, 1968, which the author of "Wonder Bread .." points out was one of America's flashpoints in near self-implosion. Just 26 years later, in 1994, Nick died of a drug overdose. More than an all-too-common tragic story of a young, young person getting into drugs and OD'ing, somewhere along the line in Nick's life, he became gay porn icon Joey Stefano. Author Charles Isherwood mercifully respects his subject's memory by not commenting on his obvious physical endowment but, instead, gives us a portrait of a multi-faceted personality desperate for validation by anything other than what Isherwood describes as a cruel film industry in which its stars live and die by their bodies that are as easily thrown out as last week's garbage. It's not really clear what happened to Nick after he became Joey, but Isherwood may only be positing possibilities. Was he scarred by the thorns of his industry, or had it happened years earlier when Nick's father couldn't or wouldn't give his son the love and acceptance he craved? Whichever, Nick made the all-too-frequent lethal decision to seek solace and self-acceptance in drugs, and they're what got him in the end. But if they hadn't, HIV complications or AIDS would have eventually. And it presumably was the devastating combo of drugs and HIV presumably that physically devoured Joey long before his death. By then, he was virtually unrecognizable from the wholesome Wonder bread kid who would become a gay icon. His is a tragic and sad story of pain, drugs and reckless sex that, if our own houses aren't cleand up, threatens Everyman.
Rating:
Summary: this is new 2 me
Review: I asked myself, who is Joey and why do I care. Not many books tell us the background of these guys careers and how when your good looking you don't always have the most intelligence in the world. Fortunately I have both but I'm not going to brag about it. Only seen 1 of his films and a few trailors I wasn't impressed with Joey as much as the author and sevral hundred people who bought this book seems to be. I always read things that are about a topic of sorts. I don't kno
Rating:
Summary: beauty fades....but dumb is forever
Review: i bought this book expecting a steamy expose of the gay porn industry. unfortunately, what i got was a boring and poorly written account of the life of a dim-wit loser. in all fairness to joey stefano, there might be a great story to be told about his life but this author is not the one to tell it. whatever entertainment value there is in this book is destroyed by his dime store psychology and less than enthralling insights into the gay male psyche. mr. isherwood seems to blame all of joey's problems on our homophobic society or the diminished job prospects for young people today, conveniently ignoring that fact that the joey stefano that his book portrays is a pathetic, drugged-out, whiny, sex-obsessed idiot who had lots of opportunities to pull himself up by his jockstrap and make something out of his life. it seems ironic that mr. isherwood puts a lot of the blame for joey's death on his ruthless exploitation by the gay porn industry when this books seems to be just as much of an exploitation as any of his jerk-off videos were. from the naked pictures of joey on both the cover and inside illustrations to the frequent descriptions of joey's physical attributes, mr. isherwood's book seems to be guilty of the exact same thing that he is condemning...the exploitation of an emotional unstable but attractive young man in order to make a quick buck.
Rating:
Summary: Give me a break!
Review: I can only wonder why Isherwood chose to write a book about a gay porn star. Did this book ever become a bestseller? I doubt so. I have to agree with some of the people who have reviewed the book before me. No one is to blame for Nick's own lack of intelligence and prudence. It's kind of ironic that such beautiful prose (I liked Isherwood's writing style)should be dedicated to someone who was indeed drugged-out, irresponsible, clueless, and COCKY! He wanted sex? He got it! Instead of being viewed as a gay icon, Nick should be viewed as what he was in reality - a scumbag. What message did he send out to the gay public? (..)
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