10 Things You Didn't Know About Hollywood
6. A Porn Star Produced Steven Spielberg's Hook
Interviewed by Esquire in 1985, Top Gun producer Don Simpson delighted in holding his friend Craig Baumgarten up for ridicule, telling the magazine: “He used to be an executive VP at Columbia until they found out he stared in a porno.”
Baumgarten’s first movie job was on Sometime Sweet Susan (“Girl Next Door….Or Backstreet Hooker?”), where he was engaged as a producer. The story goes that when his leading man proved incapable of performing, Baumgarten decided to fulfill his duties himself, and a Hollywood legend was born.
Neither incident appeared to harm his career, though. Baumgarten subsequently produced the films Hook, Universal Soldier, Peter Pan and, aptly enough, The Shooter, starring Dolph Lundgren.