Porno Film Gets Harsh Reviews From Officials

Fullerton and Anaheim officials are investigating how a 10-second pornographic film clip was broadcast on closed-circuit television to 60 local officials during a recent meeting of the Orange County division of the League of California Cities.

Witnesses said the film clip explicitly portrayed oral sex between a nude man and woman. It was flashed onto the screens of several television sets after a 14-minute promotional film about the City of Fullerton, which was shown at last Thursday’s meeting in the Anaheim Stadium Club.

“I looked away in about the third second,” said Earl Prescott, the recently appointed Tustin city councilman. “People said there were two sexual acts depicted of about five seconds each. The one I saw was a woman performing oral copulation on a man.”

Prescott, a 33-year-old businessman, was appointed to the Tustin council April 15 to replace retiring Councilman Donald J. Saltarelli. The monthly meeting of the League of California Cities was his first official function.

The audience of officials, spouses and guests reacted with outrage, disgust, and “a lot of very, very nervous laughter,” Prescott said.

“My reaction was one of unbelievable shock,” said Prescott, whose wife, Nancy, had joined him at the Anaheim Stadium Club dinner to see just what her husband was getting into. “There wasn’t a person in that room who wasn’t totally shocked. You know, this was my first week in politics in my life. A few days before I didn’t even know this organization existed.”

Wednesday, nearly a week after the embarrassing incident, fingers of blame were still being pointed. Fullerton officials, whose tape had concluded moments before the flash of flesh, contend that broadcast equipment maintained by the City of Anaheim was somehow responsible. But Anaheim officials said the incident was not the product of technology run amok.

“We’ve completed our investigation and have decided that it would be impossible to have a signal broadcast in that room from outside that room,” said Anaheim spokeswoman Sheri Erlewine. “Besides, where’s that tape? It seems to me that you ought to talk to Fullerton.”

To the chagrin of Fullerton officials, however, the smoking tape is gone. The video has mysteriously disappeared.

“I think that this whole incident has shades of Watergate,” said John Francis Kelly, 25, another Tustin city councilman. “It cannot be taken lightly.”

Kelly, in a letter to the press, criticized newly appointed county Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, who had the misfortune of being the scheduled speaker after the tape.

“I said: ‘I thought I had seen it all in Sacramento over the last two years, until I saw what I saw on the screen,’ ” Vasquez recounted Wednesday. He said he added: “I hope there are no press people here tonight. I think we would have a difficult time giving some explanation for that.”

To Kelly, who campaigned as “Honest John,” Vasquez’s remarks were in as bad taste as the pornography itself.

“Supervisor Gaddi Vasquez, by not registering immediate dismay or displeasure, was (showing) an inappropriate reaction, and his gleeful response was very disappointing,” Kelly said in an interview. “It was disheartening to me. I believe that we desperately need good, wholesome people in government with respect for high morals.”

Vasquez and others in attendance said Kelly was overreacting.

“When something like that happens, it’s a blip,” Cypress Mayor John Kanel said. “It’s no big deal. No one gets up on the podium and asks for a Senate investigation. . . . It was funny in a sense and also silly. It seems to me that young Kelly is making a mountain out of a molehill.”

Said Robert C. Dunek, the league’s executive director: “I think we share the concern--but I have to say not quite the outrage--of Councilman Kelly. . . . We’re trying to get to the bottom of it. We regret it. I’m certain that we will be making some kind of formal apology to our own members, though I think most of them understand that it was not intentionally placed there.”

Kelly said he will pursue the matter and insist on a full explanation, even though he has been pressured to drop his crusade.

“For the ones that tried to put pressure on me to drop it, shame on them for not having the same attitude as I have,” Kelly said Wednesday. “I think that was the correct action to take on the part of any decent person in society.”

One participant joked that the the incident won’t hurt attendance in the future.

“I understand that the (league) meeting is already sold out for next month,” Erlewine said.