Born 10/25/1954. This pale, greasy, balding, geeky, middle-aged man has become a sort of folk hero of porn by creating hundreds of videos featuring him getting it on with all kinds of women, from porn starlets to girl-next-door types. In 1989, he released Bus Stop Tales, which showed his uncanny ability to score with women (and videotape it) despite his looks, which are average at best. By keeping the women laughing with his self-effacing humor, Ed could talk women into doing just about anything, even on camera. By 1990, he had parlayed his skill into a series of low-budget videos titled Dirty Debutantes, which often featured women who had never had sex on camera before. At some point, he became a kind of gateway to the porn business, where women looking to get into porn would perform in one of his videos as a kind of screen test. The elements of his videos: ridiculously low production values, no scripts, and a steady stream of fresh faces made him one of the kings of the gonzo porn genre, inspiring many sequels, spinoffs, and imitations. Ed's work is fairly mainstream as far as hardcore porn is concerned; his scenes feature friendly, straight sex, masturbation, or male-friendly lesbianism. By rarely delving into fringe areas like bondage or water sports, he appeals to a very large consumer base. An added attractor has got to be the effect of seeing a true underdog like Ed nail a seemingly endless line of babes less than half his age.

As of July 1999 (the only time I listened to it), Powers had a radio call-in show on a station in Los Angeles. It did not improve my perception of him. Instead of being his friendly, self-effacing self on the air, he was pretty cocky about his scores, describing to his callers how women could not help but be pleasured by him once he got started.

The highlight of the show was when a lawyer who represented prostitutes called in and offered his services to Ed's actresses if they ever got in trouble. Powers got defensive, and made a sorry attempt to differentiate between Porn Actress and Prostitute for the caller.

A major draw of Powers' films is the realism of them. No one pretends to ignore the camera. The girls are clearly on camera for the first time, and faking nothing, not even attitudes.

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