Understand this, I was raised in a home that was Catholic enough. This means that while my parents tried to keep my mind free from dirty thoughts, certain pop culture influences proved irresistible enough. One of those things that was impossible to ignore was Zalman King’s Red Shoe Diaries.
Red Shoe Diaries is a series that aired on the American cable television network Showtime from 1992 to 1999. The brainchild of erotica guru Zalman King, each installment of the series boasts of three stories featuring relatively popular TV stars like the pre-Friends Matt Leblanc, who appeared as a randy delivery boy in an episode of Red Shoe Diaries 3: Another Woman’s Lipstick.
The Red Shoe Diaries episodes always open with a montage of a newspaper ad asking women to share their love tales. The Red Shoe Guy is none other than a pre-X Files David Duchovny who has a dog named Stella as a sidekick. Prior to being tagged as the narrator of each Red Shoe Diaries story, David Duchovny (as an architect named Jake) took his turn as a player in a heartbreaking yet still tastefully dirty tale.
Another Red Shoe Diaries alumnus, Rob Knepper now stars as Theodore “T-Bag” Bagwell in Prison Break.
That’s how he appeared in Red Shoe Diaries. He looked nothing like the homicidal pedophile he is playing on his legit show now. Ironically, for his Red Shoe Diaries outing, he starred in a vignette entitled, “You Have the Right to Remain Silent” in Red Shoe Diaries 2: Double Dare. Get this: he gets it on with a policewoman in his Red Shoe Diaries stint.
The policewoman was played by Denis Crosby, who is best known for playing Security Office Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In the very same installment Arnold Vosloo, best known as the mummy (in non-rotting form) in The Mummy, gets it on with a woman via fax machine. Please don’t ask me to explain the plot.
Needless to say, back then, my friends and I didn’t watch Red Shoe Diaries for the stories’ glorious plots. We watched them because Zalman King was 70% reliable when casting decent-looking guys and beautiful women who looked like they finished their meals.
That was probably why many legit TV stars agreed to appear on Red Shoe Diaries. Unfortunately, I could not get my hands on actual photo stills of the Red Shoe Diaries scenes featuring the actors enumerated. But, yes, those images and scenes have been seared into my brain.
So who’s the man behind these pseudo manuals to girls’ alternative sex education? Though there isn’t really a lot of information about Zalman King on the Web, I was thankful to get this picture of him:
He may not be David Duchovny-cute but, according to Net pundits, his movies’ romanticized erotica has made him famous all over the world. Well, at least to college-age girls who want to learn how to get down and dirty without turning cheap.
Thanks for everything, Zalman King. Have fun celebrating your 65th year on Earth on May 23.
