Former B-Movie Queen, Gail Thackray pens a memoir about her time running an online sex business. In the era of the me too movement, Thackray emerges as a strong woman who manages to play the game in a man’s world and use it to her advantage.
Thackray ran a naked photo business in the 80’s and 90’s amassing a library of thousands of nude layouts of models (including Stormy Daniels and a few celebrities) which she sold to magazines like “Penthouse.” At the launch of the Internet, Thackray owned the largest erotic library in the world and was the premier provider of sexy images to web. This was her naughty side-line business which was ultimately valued at over $50 million.
But Thackray was also at the time, a scream queen starlet (aka Gail Harris) and she reveals the inner workings of the Hollywood Casting Couch, until she finally landed at the respected CAA with Michael Ovitz. She starred in a slew of Roger Corman B movies and Quentin Tarantino’s Personal Favorite “Cell Block Sisters.”
Her memoir is not about a woman as a victim, dishing out the dirt on powerful men in Hollywood and the Sex Industry, it’s actually a light-hearted, often hilarious look at the real inner workings of two male-dominated-industries and how a young Brit was able to hold her own.
Her candid stories behind the scenes of the “mainstream” Hollywood Casting Couch compared with her experiences in the sex biz working with characters like Guccione, Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner, will have you questioning which one is really the sex business?
“Why did I write this book?
Firstly, with all the talk of sexual inequality in the press, I think people have a warped sense of this mysterious underworld as some place where men over-power women for dark sexual pleasure. I wanted to share how women often wear the pants and how vulnerable and insanely funny men can be in their chase of power, money and ultimately the love of women.
And Secondly, it’s just too much fun not to share.”
The scope of the book covers years of some of the juiciest topics; from behind-the-scenes on the most notorious players in the sex biz, to working with a group of “investors” who turned out to be the mob, to the development of technology through the Internet sex sites in the dot com boom and Yahoo passing her all the “naughty sex searches they didn’t want.” It’s loaded with massive bank scams, naked celebrities and explosive stories that all really happened according to Thackray. The journey finds her in lots of sticky situations, dodging mob hits and the FBI and occasionally falling in love.
Think “Wolf of Wall Street” in the sex biz.
“It’s raw, it’s juicy, it’s hilariously funny,” say readers.
Today, Thackray is currently in talks with producers to turn her sexy story into a TV series. The first taker on this was originally Harvey Weinstein, one week before his scandal broke out.
