Originally Posted by Far-L

16. You did business with Max Hardcore. Why did you guys part ways?

After making our first LA style porn for Paul Little, we became friends and he began to hire me for other productions, not only as talent but also as a crew member, anal lube dispenser, whipping boy. I was there when Paul and his brother came up with the name "Max Hardcore" which essentially began as a riff off of "Max Headroom". Paul/Max and I would watch everything we shot with a magnifying glass and try to figure out the best ways to improve kind of like watching game footage to figure out what went right or wrong during a game.

I like to tell people I went to the Max Hardcore School of Porn. At a certain point, we convinced Max to come on board with Xplor exclusively and we produced a few series with him but a distributor who went by the name of Chuck Zane was pissed since he figured that he owned the rights to the character since he put out the first Max Hardcore material. This certainly was not the case but that didn't stop Chuck from coming after us and threatening to sue. Chuck incidentally is related to Rob Black and he was pure old school porn kingpin. People always told us to watch out because Chuck was a "connected" guy from back east but I never found my dog's head in my bed or anything like that. He was actually a really nice guy even though he would BK his businesses every two years or so it seemed like.

On a sidenote, we were in Chuck's office amicably settling the Max issues when Rob Black's first porn tape had just come in to his uncle Chuck's office. Chuck made me, my bro, and Max watch it while he ridiculed the quality of it mercilessly.

"Can you believe this guy is related to me?"

We all laughed but a year or so later Rob was winning awards and a darling of the adult press worldwide... a couple of years after that he was under indictment but that is another story.

We sold well with Max but his product was just not the right fit. Max needed someone that would be more excited about moving in the same direction as he was - which meant increasingly more depraved and hardcore. We just weren't comfortable with that at all since our stuff appeals to people that don't like seeing women barfing on erections.

Still friends with Max even though I think it is a bit bizarre that he doesn't want anyone to call him Paul anymore.

I remember we always used to talk about how we would take our evolving skills one day into the mainstream. When I was working on "Orgazmo" Max came down to shoot his cameo. We sat and talked while the lights were being set. Max praised my good fortune. Then, with a bit of melancholy he lamented how by listening to the increasingly bizarre requests of certain vocal fans he had basically gone out on a limb and there was no turning back.

I don't know for sure but I always think that was the day he decided that he would be Max from then on, leaving paul out on a curb by a warehouse on a street somewhere in LA.