Porn Valley- Like certain baseball cards that grow in value, some porn events gain in significance over the passage of time. Back in the summer of 1999 when the Summer Expo was held at the LA Convetion center, AVN’s Mark Kernes hosted a panel that included Seymore Butts, attorney Alan Gelbard, John Stagliano, and Max Hardcore.

Like Yogi Berra used to say, if you wait around long enough, something might happen. And talk about eventual coincidence. Butts at the time was taking heat over his 1998 movie Tampa Tushy Fest 1 because of a fisting scene. Butts was eventually scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles, March 2002. His would have been the city’s first obscenity case to go before a jury since 1993.

But the day the case was scheduled to be heard, Butts and his attorney Roger Jon Diamond announced that they had reached a settlement with the city attorney’s office. Many in the industry figured Seymore had turned rat. And there was even a lengthy Internet battle of words that went on between Butts and Rob Black who owned Extreme Associates at the time. Black eventually backed down.

Charged with two counts of obscenity, Butts, who originally wanted a jury trial, pled guilty to a public nuisance charge instead and paid a $1000 fine to a victims restitution fund. As part of the deal, Butts also agreed to offer an edited version of “Tampa Tushy Fest, Part 1” for California buyers and was free to sell the unedited version in California without fear of future obscenity charges.

Butts, in his defense, maintained that the women in his film were consenting adults who were obviously enjoying themselves and also pointed out that “fisting” is a staple in the lesbian and gay community.

Diamond also planned to enter as evidence books and medical treatises on the subject of fisting. Diamond said his client was choosing to fight the case as a matter of principle.

“If there are no children involved, and no violence, I don’t see what interest the government has in prosecuting this stuff,” said Diamond.

Max Hardcore, on the other hand, was just found guilty of 10 counts of obscenity during a trial in Tampa and awaits sentencing in September. There’s no doubt Max will appeal his case.

Gelbard, meanwhile, represented Stagliano in Evil Angel’s long standing piracy case against the Canadian-based Kaytel Video which came to a settlement at the end of May. However details of that settlement, after a trial had awarded Stagliano damages of $11 million, were not disclosed.

Stagliano, himself, faces obscenity charges similar to Max’s in a trial scheduled to be held in Washington D.C. in early 2009. Gelbard will be on Stagliano’s defense team as well as Lou Sirkin and Paul Cambria.

During this particular panel, Gelbard held the floor on the issue of obscenity as defined by the Miller decision.

“The only thing that’s illegal, per se, in the United States is to show, in videotapes, child pornography,” Gelbard said at the time.

“What you can or should put in a video are decisions for you to make based on your own sense of whether you can sleep at night. The other types of issues that raise obscenity questions are what we, in the industry, call the seven deadly sins – bestiality, necrophilia, urination, defecation, bondage with penetration, fisting and interracial in some areas, also.

“Those areas, per se, are not illegal,” he went on to say. “There’s no law anywhere that says Thou shalt not make a fisting tape, but when they judge that type of a content on a community standard, the odds of being prosecuted are significantly higher. You have to evaluate what you’re going to put in your movie based on where it’s going to be distributed.”

Seymore Butts had a few things to say about the controversial Chloe/Alisha Klass fisting scene that found its way in Tampa Tushy Fest 1.

“The reaction was varied,” announced Butts.

“For me the most important consideration was how the fans reacted, how the people that keep me in business reacted. They loved it. There was somewhat of a quandary in my thinking before I released it whether or not I was going to make a big fanfare about this or not.

“In the end I decided not to make a huge hullabaloo about it. I didn’t put out a press release. There were no quotes on the box. The reason I did that was because I didn’t necessarily consider it much different than anything I normally put in my movies.”

Butts said he considered the fisting scene to be a sensual act between two adults who were of sound mind and who brought the idea to him.

“I don’t have scripts,” he said. “It basically just happened. It was something that made the girls cum. In that respect I don’t see it any differently than any of the other acts I portray, be it anal or oral sex or anal-to-oral.”

Butts anticipated some adverse reaction among store owners.

“There were some people who said hey, motherfucker, what are you doing?” he added.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I don’t feel comfortable with this. To those people, we said we had a softer version and offered to exchange it at that time. In hindsight would I do it again the same way? Possibly not. If I told anybody that this was coming out, it would have spread like wildfire. The tape would have sold only for the fact that people would have been interested in seeing this fisting scene.”

“The initial reaction was far worse than what turned out<‘ Butts went on to say. “We got initial calls saying they were going to return every piece and want a credit or an exchange.”

“In actuality we returned about 7 or 8%. A lot of people didn’t bother to look at the tape when they heard what was in it. Automatically this bell went off in peoples’ head. Fisting, can’t do it. To me it’s all about what context things are presented. After a lot of people actually looked at it, they changed their minds.”

On his behalf Max said he’d go as far as a performer was willing to take it.

“Whatever she can take,” said Max. “If the girl is willing to do something, and she’s not screaming bloody murder, people ought to watch what they want to watch. We want to make it wild and nasty. If there’s fist fucking or pissing, we’ll always do it because Europe, which is much more sensible, will take all that stuff.

“We just take it to the point where the girl’s not going to get hurt, at least not too bad.”

At the time Max was working for Legend Video.

“Unfortunately or fortunately I work for an uptight, pretty conservative company, Legend Video,” he commented. “Plus all the GVA’s take a microscope to my shit. Jeff Mike does all this other crazy crap like Perverted Stories with power tools and shit like that. He’ll get away with this stuff like dunking a girls head in a toilet. If I did stuff like that in my videos, I’d be looking for another distributor.”

His obscenity trial in Tampa offers a certain irony to Max’s next comments.

“We got to play by the rules,” he told the audience. “It’s frustrating, but the most important thing is not getting into trouble. There’s no rhyme or reason to that. You can get busted for a Vivid tape. There’s no logic to what’s happening out there. I just got busted for six fucking tapes that has the same stuff as the rest of the country.

“There’s no pissing or fist fucking, but they still busted it…. Mom and Pop stores can’t afford to litigate with DA’s,” he continued.

“I think we’ve reached the limit…we’re turning off people. The more extreme you go, the harder core you make it, the smaller the audience. We’ve reached the end of what we can do here in the states. We want to make pure, no nonsense, no bullshit porno. No fancy tricks. People don’t want to see 20 minutes of crap. The speculum thing, we did for awhile. It was stupid. Stores are doing a pretty good job of marketing the product.”

Stagliano at the time of the panel discussion had just come out with Buttman Confidential which featured some controversial scenes. Stagliano also sais his favorite director was now Max Hardcore. Stagliano was asked how his views of dos and don’t have changed over the years.

“For me what I feel comfortable in doing in video has changed in respect to looking at things like what Max does or what Rocco does,” he answered.

“I’ve got a little bit more of an open mind about different aspects of human nature that to me has become more arousing. I’m going on a continuum of looking at porno. I started out looking at just normal sex..the first time is really interesting, then we do get more jaded.

“We get more interested in playing around,” he went on to say. “Human beings have always played around with their sexuality, doing different odd things, putting speculums in the butts and stuff and all sorts of weird props. That is something I’ve become more personally aware of.

“I’ve been so focused over the years on just what I get off on. But because of competition I’ve become more aware of human sexuality and the incredible variety of human sexuality. In bondage there’s all sorts of interesting little devices and gadgets that people come up with for purposes of pleasure.”

“There’s a whole bunch of stuff out there that’s really psychological,” he continued.

“The one thing I really love about Max is that he’s the real thing. It’s genuine. It’s focused. I like the stuff he’s doing a lot of the time. Max doesn’t get the credit for what he’s done to this business.

“People weren’t doing gaping assholes before Max came along. They weren’t doing a lot of things Max does – the whole attitude-thing; he’s the original. I respect people who push the envelope. I respect Seymore for what he did with his movie…people who go just a little bit further are the innovators.”

“What people think of us today for doing something radical and different is not what people are going to think of us 20 years from now. You have to look into the future and ask how is this going to fit in the spectrum of human evolution. People [in the future] might say controversy was interesting and treat it like a textbook-thing. They might look at like a controversy. Human beings are changing. We don’t know how we’re changing. We’re going off in all sorts of different directions. In terms of the entertainment field you’re seeing all sorts of new and innovative movies being made in the mainstream and porno. It’s a good thing.”

Stagliano’s opinion is that every scene shot is a story whether there’s an actual script or not.

“Every time the camera turns on, there’s a beginning, a middle and an end,” he said. “People take their clothes off, they have sex, the guy cums, that’s a story. There’s something going on in that room. It may be really simple, but there’s a progression. The sex is the story.”

On the subject of condoms, which prompted some colorful exchanges, Hardcore said he’d use a condom only in the case if had to work with “some shank whore”.

“I’m not here to be a role model for the youth of America,” he said.

“I’m here to make dirty, nasty fuck films. That’s my job. My job is not to educate society or become a fucking role model for kids growing up. I personally don’t like using condoms. A lot of companies claim to be all-condom, and that bullshit, than they go and squeegie in a girl’s face, eyes and mouth. What’s with that shit? It’s stupid and not following all the rules.”