Porn Valley- Needless to say, I had a lengthy conversation with Max Hardcore back in the day. I didn’t realize it had been such a long interview, and here’s the first two parts of it:

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Max talks about his origins, his Buttman influence and how he was tempted either to go mainstream or start doing big adult productions ala Wicked and Vivid.

“Then there are these other people who believe I’m going to make my story- I’m going to hold out with my script, well good luck pal,” he says.

“Pay your dues first which is kind of what I’ve been doing. I’ve worked for Bobby Genova, I’ve worked for almost everybody in town. Not only to make movies but work the deal to collect the money. Which is an ordeal in of itself. Now I’m in the position to pull all the levers and call all the shots. And I’m going to re-double my efforts to make even better movies.”

“I can shoot the pretty stories like Conquest [a Wicked film] and stuff,” Max continues. “I did it- take a look at the Costa Rica movies. It’s all by the numbers stuff, shot by shot by shot. Just exactly what you’d expect from Hollywood. But, by the same token, I’m not going to wait for years for some guardian angel to come and say come with me and we got a movie deal for ya.”

“I’m a firm believer in the Max Hardcore earn-as-you-learn program,” he continues.

“If I make a movie some day it will be because of contacts I’ve made in this industry. Not because I’m denying this industry- only because I’ve got the skill, the know how and the drive to do it. Which leads me to another point. People rise to the occasion. I’ve always risen to the occasion and been able to do these things because I believed in myself and have been able to delegate enough work to other people around me. I attract some talented people so we were able to do these things.”

“I believe I would have no problem doing a $5 million movie given time. But I’m not going to hold out and say I must be the director. Hell, I’ll be the first A.D. I’ll be the producer, whatever. I’ll pay my dues. I’ll carry the fuckin’ hardware while I’m learning my craft, watching and learning from other peoples mistakes and trying not to repeat them.”

Max is asked where the whole school girls concept came from as he employs it.

“That was a natural,” he responds. “It goes back to my philosophy of what’s the greater thrill: a whore that screws or a young girl that screws. I created back in 1993 the first Cherry Poppers. I brought the concept to Chuck Zane and he loved it and put it out. We split up after Volume 10 and I went on to Xplor and came up with Hardcore Schoolgirls there. The reason for the title is that Cherry Poppers- I could have used that name- doesn’t translate well. It doesn’t mean anything in French, German, Japanese or any other language. But Schoolgirls does. And everybody knows what hardcore is, so it’s a much better title for it. It was our top seller.”

“I liked doing it. I won’t deny that,” he continues. “I keep thinking back of all the years I wasted in high school. And all these girls I could have screwed at the time- because I’m in the garage drinking beers with my friends working on the fucking cars or fucking around, completely wasting my time. But in a way, not. Because it gave me a can-do attitude. I can fix anything. The word failure is not in the Max Hardcore dictionary. Delay is, but failure isn’t. Problem is not in the dictionary. It has been replaced by situation. We don’t’ have a problem, we have a situation to deal with.”

“So I guess it’s like me going back in time, and the girls I didn’t fuck back then,” he explains. “I’m getting fucked later on in life. And to be able to go back in time like that I guess you would have to say I’m a pretty lucky guy.”

“Were you ever in love?” I ask him.

“Oh, many times,” says Max. “Sure.”

“Hormonally?”

“I guess, by definition, guys in this business have some of the higher sex drives,” he says. “So that was always on my mind but I’ve loved a couple of girls.”

Max has never been married, stating that he’s seen too many disasters around him.

“I didn’t want to get into that and end up getting divorced, and that whole mess” he comments. “But I’ve loved a couple of women and had to let them go. Either they wanted to leave, or I knew that even though I loved them it wasn’t going to work out. For instance the girl I was with in Florida for awhile. I knew it wouldn’t have been right, that she didn’t like the idea. But even though I loved her I wasn’t going to get stuck in Key West for the rest of my life shooting fashion layouts on the beach. So I had to give it up. It hurt but I got over it.”

He’s asked if there would ever come a time that he’d get married.

“I don’t know,” Max replies. “That’s a tough question. I often wonder myself. I don’t know. I can’t really answer that. I don’t feel an overwhelming urge to get married and I would never get married to a girl unless I knew her for a couple of years and lived with her. Then I would consider it. But I don’t know where this wacky road is going to take me. I don’t want to seem selfish but to do what I do I’ve really given up on having a relationship. A solid relationship. I’ve gone out with a lot of girls over periods and months. I’ve had a couple of girls live with me for months but it’s never lasted.”

Max says jealousy is usually the wild card that upsets the game.

“It’s always jealousy- no matter what the girl says or tells you, and they say, oh I love you and this is going to work out, no I don’t mind you working with these other girls, I’ve never yet seen it work out. And I don’t know anybody in this business who continues to work and has had a stable relationship. Can you think of any couple? I’ve never seen it.

“So I’ve given up on that but that’s the price you have to pay. I accept it. That’s the way it is and there’s nothing I can do. I have a singular focus on making better and greater movies and it’s my mission in life.

“It’s all I want to do. Sure, I’d like to make something big some day and I’m pretty sure some day I’ll get there. But I’ve got a lot of other things I want to develop too, for instance, we’re just beginning to tap into the potential of MaxWorld. The idea of bringing in other people and having other reporters and other adventures going on simultaneously here and there. We’re just scratching the surface on that.

“Beyond that, I’m thinking about a line of clothing and accessories called Max Hardware. I’m sure it would be a hit. We could have a heavy duty design and interesting accessories to go along with it: belt buckles, the whole shot. No problem. Possibly even a chain of restaurants in the future.”

“I’m sure I can do it if I can keep the focus and don’t get distracted by falling in love. That’s the other thing about having a steady girlfriend and the delicate balance there. I have to keep my edge and I have to keep my focus on being really strong. It’s better for me to have no girlfriend in my life so I can focus all my limited resources on every scene I do.”

“Have you ever gone into a scene and you just can’t do it?” I ask him.

“No. never,” says Max. “The hardest scenes for me- and most studs will tell you- is when you’re working outside in cold conditions and there’s a possibility of being caught. In those types of situations it just takes me a minute or two longer to reach the plateau.”

Max points out that he generally shoots with a crew of three.

“If it’s just a couple of people or a lot of people around it really doesn’t make a difference,” he acknowledges. “Because once you get into the zone you really don’t notice that shit going on around you when you’re performing. The guys that are at this level? It doesn’t bother you. You can have a whole crowd around and it won’t matter. We’re sitting around, joking. A lot of people milling around isn’t as bad as cold weather and the possibility of getting caught.”

Max is asked if he employs organic sexual enhancements.

“I’ve got a shitty diet,” he laughs. “Hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches and shit like that.”

I mention Peter North and his deployment of vitamins, et al.

“He’s into that big time,” says Max. “Holy Christ, the guy’s tremendous. But I’ve never been into the big health food, lifting weights, all that shit type of thing. Not that it’s bad, it’s just not my thing.”

“What are the most sex scenes you’ve ever done in one day?” I also ask him.

“I only prefer to do one,” he answers. “Because obviously you’ll get the best action. But I typically will do two. Sex scenes used to be much shorter. Then we came up with the idea of three vignettes on one time and the sex scenes started to get longer and we started to do more things and more positions, more blow job action etc.

“You look at a tape from the late Eighties, and it’s a blowjob for 30 seconds, ass fucking for 30 seconds,” he continues. “It’s over in a couple of minutes then fleshed out by story in between. Even the old loops, seven or eight minutes. So when you put in a scene that takes two hours and you’re fucking in a couple of different positions, that takes a lot out of a guy. If I did a seven or eight minute type of loop I could probably do four scenes a day. But of course the cum shot’s going to be way down and that counts. People really want to see that these days.”

“We only shoot two or three scenes a day- sometimes only one. For instance we just had a girl in from Texas. We started out. I did the whole set up at the VSDA in downtown LA . We never shot a sex scene because I couldn’t find the right girl. We started from down there as if the show was getting out. We went from there where I did a set up on the outside to a top level parking garage in downtown LA. We did the scene there.

“By the time it’s all said and done, it’s 4:30. And that was it for the day, and I was completely satisfied with it. I’m not thinking about the money. And the people that watch it, the fans, they don’t care about the money. They don’t care about the time it took. None of that shit counts. None of that stuff holds any water.”

“The only thing that holds water is the results and what you end up with on that tape,” Max points out.

“If it takes me all day to shoot one sex scene and I get something really good, in an unusual location, I’m completely satisfied with that. I’m not into grinding out scene after scene after scene for the sake I can make $1,000 more dollars today if I just do one more scene. I don’t care. It’s not worth it.”

“In the end, it’s going to hurt me artistically. I want to put out the best possible product and not just the most possible product.”

“A couple of years ago you had a run-in with Ed Powers- was that ever resolved?”

“It wasn’t,” says Max. “The guy’s insane. He’s an egomaniac. He has to have control over every girl. Just recently he gets a girl- Marlena- so she shoots for me and then he blows his stack because she was going to shoot for him. He shoots her and then calls Jim South because he doesn’t have enough balls to call me. I’m told that Marlena doesn’t want that scene with me released. And it gets worse. Ed Powers tells Marlena he’ll give her money to sue me if I release that scene. I go fuck you.

“I call Ed Powers myself. I said not only am I going to put it on this tape, it’s coming out this date and if you fuck with me, I’ll kill you. Because I’ve had it up to here with that guy. He fucks with me and a lot of other people in the business.”

“He’s got to have all these girls for himself. He’s insane. I don’t let him bother me any more.”

“He tried to kill me when I first came in the business,” Max reveals. “He tried to put me out of business. He told Jim South that if he deals with me, I’m through with you. Jim told him to take a hike. That lasted about a year and he finally came back to Jim. He couldn’t kill me early now it’s too late. There’s nothing he can do, so I don’t let it bother me any more.”

“I hate to get bogged down in negative things. I only focus on how can we get better, how we can run faster and make this movie better.”

“We’ve broken a lot of ground- like stove piping [gaping],” adds Max. “Who did that before we did it? Nobody. Maybe by accident but they never intentionally went out to do it. Saliva from the dick, blowing bubbles with the cum, we came up with that. We made an art form out of that.”