The publication, which was described as "raunchy, obnoxious, usually disgusting, and sometimes political",[1] was a pioneer in bringing hardcore pornography into the American mainstream during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
[6][7] In November 1968 in New York, Al Goldstein and his partner Jim Buckley, investing $175 each, founded Screw as a weekly underground newspaper.
Contributors to Gay included Dick Leitsch, Randy Wicker, Lilli Vincenz, Peter Fisher, John Paul Hudson, Arthur Bell, Vito Russo, and George Weinberg.
[11] In 1973, Screw published nude photos of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which led to scandal — and issue sales of more than a half-million copies.
[14] Other issues contained original adult comic strip work from cartooning legends Wally Wood, Guido Crepax, and Will Eisner.
[20] In 2004 the Screw periodical was restarted by former employees led by Kevin Hein, with writer Mike Edison coming onboard as the new editor.
[23] Screw features reviews of porn movies, peep shows, erotic massage parlors, brothels, escorts, and other offerings of the adult entertainment industry.
Had he not written a rave review of a low-budget film called Deep Throat ('I was never so moved by any theatrical performance since stuttering through my own bar mitzvah'), it would never have become a hit at New York's World Theater, would never have been targeted by the vice squad, would never have spawned a First Amendment cause célèbre, and might not have led to the modern porn industry.
[31] Stripper and erotic performance artist Honeysuckle Divine wrote a column, "Diary of a Dirty Broad", for Screw for several years in the mid-1970s.
[34] In 1977, Alabama governor George Wallace sued Screw for $5 million for publishing the claim that he had learned to perform sexual acts from reading the magazine.
[35] In 1978, Screw set in motion a precedent-setting case that established fair-use protections for publication of registered trademarks in sexually explicit parodies in the United States.
Pillsbury alleged several counts of copyright infringement, federal statutory, common law trademark infringement, violations of the Georgia Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act and of the Georgia "anti-dilution" statute, and several counts of tortious tarnishment of its marks, trade characters, and jingle.
[39] A number of underground and alternative cartoonists got their start doing illustrations and comics for Screw, including Bill Griffith, Milton Knight, Leslie Cabarga, Drew Friedman,[40] Tony Millionaire, Eric Drooker, Kaz, Danny Hellman, Glenn Head, Bob Fingerman, Michael Kupperman, and Molly Crabapple.
At the Second Annual New York Erotic Film Festival it won awards for Best Picture, Best Female Performance, and Best Supporting Actor.
[42] In 1974 Goldstein began Screw Magazine of the Air, soon renamed Midnight Blue, a thrice-weekly hour-long adult-oriented public-access television program that ran for nearly 30 years on Manhattan Cable's Channel J.
[43][4] SOS: Screw on the Screen appearing in 1975, was a stridently unsexy attempt at a cinematic newsmagazine that included a lot of goofy comedy, a gay scene, and several minutes of Goldstein ranting about America's sexual hypocrisy.