Porn Valley- He ain’t dead, yet. I was talking to Buck Adams Saturday night at a little pay-per-view shindig thrown by Assassin Pictures, www.assassinpictures.com at its Chatsworth headquarters. The iceman Chuck Liddell had just wrestled/boxed/mauled Tito Ortiz, Mr. Jenna Jameson, into a hunk of meat similar to what Mike Moz was tossing on the barbecue.

Buck casually explains that he just got out of the hospital for a stroke. A mild one apparently. Funny thing, says Buck, who’s seen the insides of more hospitals than Dr. Kildaire. The attending physician recognized him. Not because he’s a porn fan but because the doc treated Buck after his fourth heart attack. I ask Buck how many does that make. Seven heart attacks, one stroke, five wives, one daughter, one grandkid he answers, not necessarily in that order.

At 51, Buck, whose hair shines like the color of a brand new US mint quarter, is an unbroken warrior. His bouts with drugs and alcohol are enough to have killed off lesser men, but he seems to have firm recall of every schoolyard of insanity he’s played in. Hard to believe because she used to be such a nut job herself, but Buck says his sister Amber Lynn is now the stabilizing force in his life.

“She’s the coolest chick in the planet,” Buck’s saying, noting that Amber was giving him one last opportunity- meaning the Assassin party- to tie one on and get it out of his system for good. Then she wants him in rehab.

“Please don’t write half of what I say?” Buck implores.

Buck checks out the landscape. Biff Fox, one of the Assassin partners, has a movie theatre-sized screen set up for the pay per view.

“How does it feel to be the two oldest guys in the room?” Buck asks me, laughing. I refer to Buck as the Tutankhamen of porn.

“Thanks,” he says sarcastically.

If he recognizes any of the newer generation of porn people, Buck doesn’t let on. Stormy Daniels conveys a Greta Garbo- I vant to be alone body language. If that’s her intention, she’s succeeded. Daniels has a variation of a Vietnam “boonie hat” lowered, incognito, over her eyes for added effect. Daniels kind of sits off in a corner. Nikki Hunter also shows up with her husband Josh. Eva Angelina, who hails from Huntingdon Beach where a lot of the UFC fighters are from, says she’s got to root for her home boys. While Tito Ortiz didn’t exactly get carried off in a body bag, someone’s already laying bets that Jenna Jameson’s finding herself a new UFC squeeze as we speak. Opening up, Daniels later points out that the TV cameras failed to cut to Jameson for any reaction shots during the fight which barely made it to three rounds.

“I wonder who Jay Grdina’s rooting for?” Buck wonders aloud during the bout.

Tommy Gunn, the other Assassin partner, seems thrilled as beans to be sandwiched between two bookends of porn lore. Buck later in the evening is telling stories, and I’m feeding him provocation to relate them. I ask Buck what the deal was with him and KC Williams. Buck swears that Randy West who was dating her at the time, begged him to take the hot blond off his hands because she was a pain in the ass.

Buck then tells about one shoot he did which was funded by a doctor. Buck always had a knack for that- squeezing money out of the medical profession- and I applaud him because the medical profession’s always squeezing money out of some senior citizen couple.

Buck’s the consummate salesman- plenty of charisma, plenty of horse manure and always with a money backer. Buck recalls a conversation he and I had at one time at the AVN award shows where he was going to prove that a monkey could shoot a gonzo movie.

And Buck was going to call it The Monkey Gangbang and have a couple of them – a mother and son monkey- wearing French berets and painters smocks. Then they were fitted with “monkey cams” to shoot some of the footage. Obviously not all of it. Buck recalls how Jim Powers was also involved in the project and showed up to the studio wearing combat boots, plaid shorts and a motorcycle jacket. Buck’s describing Powers on his knees barfing his guts up because he had been out the night before. Buck’s describing the set-up: the Astro turf and piles of bananas.

Tommy Gunn’s slapping his knee like this is the funniest thing he’s ever heard. To embellish his story, Buck makes with the snorting ape noises and squeals describing the process as the monkeys were tearing around the set with their little cams – footage which editor Jonathan Morgan would later have to assemble. Gunn’s eyes are watering, and Buck says Billy Glide who was new in the industry at the time was pissed because he only got $250 to perform while the monkeys got $750.

“He snapped,” says Buck, also noting how the monkeys went insane when they saw the platinum in Lexi Lay’s hair. Apparently monkeys react that way to the color.

Dave Hardman, who was also in the movie, reacted another way.

“Hardman’s telling me he’s pissed off,” relates Buck. “I ask him why. He says he thought the monkeys were actually going to DIRECT the movie. I ask him what are you smoking? Freon out of the refrigerator?”

Which is what I always suspected Jerry Butler was on, and Buck tells Tommy Gunn it’s his opinion that Butler was probably the greatest male performer who ever worked in the business. Which I would tend to agree, asking Buck what the deal was the night he and Butler came up on the AVN stage behaving like two zonked-out collision dummies. Buck recalls that being the show that he and Butler were signing at the Model booth and how Marty lambasted them for being disrespectful. Buck also recalls how Butler left the bathroom in their hotel room saturated in oil along with pictures on the walls of men’s torsos strangely taped onto pairs of women’s legs.

Buck was also convinced that he was buried so deep in Paul Fishbein’s shit house that he’d never win anything of significance at the awards show. Buck explains why he thought so, remembering the time he came to a show with Raven, the porn queen from the late Eighties. Apparently she was making a loud fuss at their table as Fishbein supposedly came over to dress her down. In an attempt to defend his date, Buck says he pretty much grabbed Fishbein and told him he was going to beat the shit out of him.

“Yeah, I threatened the owner of AVN,” states Buck as he then ran out of the ballroom only to run into a bank of cameramen who started interviewing him. Without skipping a beat, Buck began giving the reporters the spiel about AVN being the Oscars of porn, etc. etc., noticing from the side that Fishbein was dying to get his hands on him. Bucks admits he even sold some of those “Oscars” at the bar of the Tropicana in exchange for drinks. A few were from the movie “Roxy” which Buck shot for Vivid, and Buck remembers how the late porn star Savannah was nominated for that movie in the Best Actress category.

When Savannah typically pouted that she didn’t win, Amber Lynn, who was sitting next to her at the show apparently said to her, “You’ll never be the greatest as long as I’m alive.”