“How I Started In Porn” Video. Alfred Sole remembers 1972

He didn’t know much about adult films or the industry, so he shot it in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey and using a cast and crew made up of friends and family members.

This meant that the local lawyer, banker, policeman, high school teachers, funeral home director, the mayor’s wife, even Alfred’s wife and his mother were part of the film-making group. It seemed like everyone in Paterson knew someone who was involved in the making of ‘Deep Sleep’.

And so predictably when it came out it was a smash hit in New Jersey, with long lines of people breaking box office records trying to get into the theaters to see it.

But not everyone was impressed. And what followed was one of the most remarkable and notorious prosecutions of an adult film in American history. First the filmmakers were indicted on a state basis under an ancient anti-fornication statute, and then on a federal level for interstate transportation of pornography. Suddenly Alfred Sole found himself at the center of a storm. He was under attack both from the law and from everyone who’d helped him make the film in the first place.