That Netflix queue pretty flaccid? In that case, we recommend consulting MR. SKIN’S SKINTASTIC VIDEO GUIDE: THE 501 GREATEST MOVIES FOR SEX AND NUDITY ON DVD. And there’s plenty more where that came from, as Mr. Skin – aka Jim McBride – dishes in this interview.

BOOKGASM: What kind of process was it with this book? Was this a case of having to narrow a list down to 501, or building up?

MR. SKIN: We have about 20,000 movies at mrskin.com. I’ve been running this website since 1999 and I always thought, you know, Roger Ebert has a video guide and Leonard Maltin has a video guide – I have to put out what I think is the best movies for sex and nudity on DVD. It took a while to narrow it down to, say, 1,000, then we had to go through all 1,000 movies, take a look at all the actresses who were naked – I don’t know if you noticed, but we added up the breasts, butts and everything – and that was a ton of work.

Once all that work was done, I had to narrow that list of 1,000 down to a manageable 501, and that’s how we came up with it. I could’ve made it 1,000, but I thought that was too many. The only real thing that I said had to be was the movies had to be available on DVD. I didn’t want people to excited about a movie I was talking about, and the only way they could get it was to pay $200 on eBay for a videotape. All these movies are movies you can get at Blockbuster, Netflix or Amazon, and play on a Region 1 DVD player.

BOOKGASM: Has anything come out on DVD since you finished that you wish would have been included?

MR. SKIN: Well, it’s more that once it goes to press, there’s nothing you can do. Like the movie MALICIOUS, where Molly Ringwald is naked, came out on DVD. They have a CALIGULA four-disc set coming out on DVD. KNOCKED UP is now on DVD. I got CALIGULA in because an original version was out on DVD. I wasn’t able to get the special edition into the book, but you know what? You gotta cut it off at some point, and in future editions, those will all be in.

BOOKGASM: I noticed whereas the SKINCYCLOPEDIA came out from St. Martin’s, this one is done under your own company, SK Books. Why the change?

MR. SKIN: Well, I realized as a businessman, you can make more money publishing the books yourself than going through a publisher, especially someone like me that has the platform to go on and promote the book on Howard Stern and the 150 to 200 other radio shows across the country, not to mention to our six-and-a-half million visitors a month to mrskin.com.

All I really needed was a distributor to get the book into Borders and all those stores, and when I found a company – IPG out of Chicago – to represent me, we paid for everything. We paid for the designers, the printing, the whole thing – and instead of getting about 7 percent of each book sold, we get about 75 percent of each book sold.

BOOKGASM: I assume you have ideas for future books, then.

MR. SKIN: Oh, yeah. We have a book coming out next year on the greatest lesbian scenes of all time. I’ll be doing the best nude scenes in horror movies after that. We’ll be the doing the best teen sex comedies. Lots of fun books planned for the future.

BOOKGASM: So this could go on forever. You’re not worried about running out of material.

MR. SKIN: No, no, no, no. And even in a few years, I’m gonna update the SKINCYCLOPEDIA and redo the format. I like this format of the video guide, because I realized for my audience, quite frankly, the SKINCYCLOPEDIA – you know, that’s a lot of reading. I learned from that and decided with this book to make sure it was more statistics, more visual, less length of reviews and bios, and I think the formula is better. It’s more the Maxim style than the Vanity Fair style.

BOOKGASM: When I was in college, the big thing was THE BARE FACTS VIDEO GUIDE. You kind of took that guy’s concept and really ran with it.

MR. SKIN: I was a huge fan of THE BARE FACTS VIDEO GUIDE. I had all the issues. I’d read that book like people read novels. I respect the book. His book hasn’t been updated since, I think, 2000; mine is an Internet experience and a whole other thing. As great as that book was for its time – you know, the Internet and radio and all the other things changed, and I’m lucky to have had the combination of the media all wrapped into one for celebrity nudity.

His was a book, but it wasn’t personality-driven. It would be difficult to compete with me because I’m already an expert on this on all these radio shows across the country. It’s like a double-edged sword: You can’t be an expert on this stuff unless you have a great website and books to be called an expert, and at the same time, and it’s hard to go on radio shows and say you’re an expert if you don’t have something to back it up. I’m not saying someone couldn’t do what we do, but it would be kind of difficult at this stage.

BOOKGASM: Have you heard of any bad blood there?

MR. SKIN: I’ve heard through the grapevine through the early, early days that he bad-rapped us a little bit, but I didn’t really care. I’ve always been a fan, so it didn’t really bother me. And he literally hasn’t done a new edition since 2000. Periodically, I check his website to see what’s going on. He inspired me and I always have that respect for THE BARE FACTS VIDEO GUIDE, for what I do for a living. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with SCARFACE’s Joshua Jabcuga
• Q&A with SKIN’s Ted Dekker
• Q&A with THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS’ Douglas Preston

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• MR. SKIN’S SKINCYCLOPEDIA: THE A-TO-Z GUIDE FOR FINDING YOUR FAVORITE ACTRESSES NAKED by Mr. Skin
• MR. SKIN’S SKINTASTIC VIDEO GUIDE: THE 501 GREATEST MOVIES FOR SEX AND NUDITY ON DVD by Mr. Skin