4. The Playboy Interview
With another side of the same story comes iconoclast Buck Henry who reveals … that those really close to Hef always refer to hint as Ner. – ‘Playbill’, Playboy
What a scoop. I arrived at the Playboy Mansion for my interview to find that a quite extraordinary thing had happened: Ner had gone out! Now as we all know this is something that Ner hardly ever does. He hasn’t been in a cab or a shop for twenty years. Only once in that period has he walked a street — back in 1967. At that time Ner still nestled in the sealed and soundproofed Chicago Mansion: he never knew the time of day, or even the season. Playboy Inc. had purchased a new property. Struck by the desire to see the place, Ner decided on a rare sortie: he would walk the eight blocks to North Michigan Avenue. Venturing out of his controlled environment, he found that it was raining. It was also the middle of the night. Legend does not record whether he was still in his pyjamas at the time … Today, Ner had gone out to the doctor’s. But he would shortly return. You pull up at the gates – Charing Cross Road, Holmby Hills.
On my previous visit I’d been unsmilingly cleared by a young man with tweed jacket, guest-list clipboard and turbulent complexion (peanut-butter plus pimple problem). Today the closed gates were unattended. My cab idled. Suddenly a mounted camera jerked its head in my direction – surprised, affronted. ‘Let me have your name, sir,’ I was asked by an ornamental boulder on my left. After several unfriendly questions and delays, the gates grudgingly parted. warning, says a sign on the curved drive: your visit may be RECORDED OR TELEVISED.
‘An elegant English Tudor home, L-shaped, with slate roof and leaded windows’, Playboy Mansion West teems with car-boys, handimen, minders, butlers, bunnies. Everyone is brisk with corporation esprit, with problem-solving know-how. They bear themselves strictly, in accordance with some vague but exacting model of efficiency and calm. Their life’s work, you feel, is to ensure that nothing ever gets on Ner’s nerves.
The library sports a double backgammon table, a panelled, Pepsi-crammed icebox, various framed mag-covers featuring Ner, and a wall of books: bound editions of Playboy and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a modest collection of hardbacks — The Supercrooks, Sex Forever, Luck be a Lady, Winning at the Track with Money Management. Over the fireplace hangs a jokey, Renaissance-style portrait of Ner, emphasising his close resemblance to Olivier’s Richard III. (I later telephoned Don and asked him if this visual reference was an intentional one. Bemused, Don trudged off to check, and returned with an indignant denial.) As I walked to the window two limousines pulled up self-importantly in the forecourt. Slamming doors, busy car-boys, watchfully craning bodyguards. Having gone out, Ner had now come back. The interview would soon begin. Normally, I had read, recording equipment is set up to monitor a Hefner interview; also, the drapes are carefully drawn. ‘Security request we close the drapes whenever Mr Hefner is in a room.’ But things are laxer now. The sun can shine, and it’s still OK if Ner is in a room.
And in he came, wearing scarlet silk pyjamas, with pipe and Pepsi — all as advertised. He apologised for being late and, in answer to my query, gave assurances that all had gone well at the doctor’s. We settled down. The interview went through two phases, quite distinct in timbre. For the first hour or so, Ner talked like a politician: he has a hundred well-thumbed paragraphs in his head, each of them swiftly triggered by the normal run of questions. He is comfortable with criticism from the Right (abortion, censorship), rather less so with criticism from the Left (misogyny, philistinism). Actually Ner believes that these orthodoxies go in cycles: now that pornography has become — ironically — a civil-rights issue, he can imagine himself ‘returning to the sexual avant garde’ and reliving his old crusade. If such a challenge were to arise, the father of sexual liberation won’t duck it. Nor shall Ner’s sword sleep in his hand — no sir.