Porn Valley- The late Jim Holliday called me one night asking if I ever heard the story about him and “Mikey” Ramone. Not being a Ramone completist, I said, no, I hadn’t. Holliday said he remembers the first time he met Ramone. He had just come aboard AVN as editor and Paul Fishbein introduced him.

“He came in all rough as if, like, whatever,” Holliday says remembering his first impressions of Ramone. Holliday says he asked Ramone a question. “I’m just curious because you’re the new guy here On a q-rating where Muhammad Ali and Elvis are a 99% on a name recognition, of current working directors where does the name Jim Holliday fit? Top Five? Top Ten? Second Ten? None of the above?

“Know what his answer was?” said Holliday. “Somewhere in the beginning of the Second Ten. I’ll play along with a lot of people, but, quite honestly, I was so shocked I said are you out of your fucking mind? Who are they? Who are the ten above me? He didn’t give an answer and I turned to Paul. Paul? He said you’d be at least in the Top Ten. I said don’t you pay attention to people across the country? I have. I’m in the Top Two. It’s me and Stagliano and I don’t really know anybody else. It’s not just from the movies, it’s the books and being around 20 years. I think Fish, grudgingly, wound up putting me in the Top Five. I’m currently working and I’m still better known than Michael Ninn or am I dreaming? John Ford was a great director but everyone knows Alfred Hitchcock. I said to Mike, Jonathan Morgan? You mean that he’s in there at 8, 9 or 10? Are you that out of touch? I just walked out of there and said fuck that place [AVN].

“I know what I do at Wherehouse and I know what I do in Japan,” Holliday went on to say. “I’m really hurt that John Stagliano did not believe me one time about six or seven years ago. I used to say that if I couldn’t sell 10,000 in six months I considered it a failed movie. Once I made that statement to John. I figured he was hip with the business. He knows the real numbers. He said you can’t do that. I said I do. Impossible, he said. John, I’m not shitting you. I’ve got two places you don’t go to. I go to Wherehouse and I go to Japan. It’s not me. It’s the blonds. I’ve never deluded myself but I know what the fuck I’m doing. And I know what America wants. I know the numbers. This AVN-thing shocked me. I figure well, what the fuck. Let them dream on with their numbers. I sit here and I know the actual numbers over here.”