picture by Pacific Pro Digital

NL- Max- I’d love to do an interview with you if you are up for it. Cindi at Lukeisback dot com.  Max Hardcore is out of prison now, but Writer Shalom Auslander visited Max in prison and discusses his guilt about enjoying his movies with Layla, Ashley Blue..  Very interesting article. Here’s a snippet.

"…When I arrive at the prison early the next morning, Max meets me in the prison’s busy visitation room. He is of medium height, with silver hair and an easy smile; with his cowboy hat off and his pants on, he looks like a dentist, like a salesman, like he’d be more interested in putting me in a Toyota than a porn film. He shakes my hand firmly (too firmly; did he hurt those girls, I wonder, did he squeeze them that hard?) and says, "Thanks for coming." I can’t help cringing and wishing that the first sentence Max Hardcore said to me hadn’t contained the word "coming." And that he hadn’t said it quite so loudly.

We find an empty bench and sit down. Max tells me to call him Paul. Paul tells me he’s glad I enjoyed his movie. I tell Paul that I feel like I jerked off to a crime.

"They know what they’re getting into," says Paul.

"Do you ever feel guilty?" I ask.

I expect him to say no. I want him to say no. I want the guilt to myself. My guilt, at least, makes me better than him.

Paul shrugs and sighs.

"Sure," he says.

"Really?"

He nods.

"But they know what they’re getting into," he quickly adds. "It’s like boxing. You don’t feel bad for the guy who loses; you don’t wonder why they’re in the ring."

"I don’t watch boxing."

"Why not?"

"I feel bad for the loser," I say. "I wonder why they’re in the ring."

"I have this board," Paul explains, "in my office. There are twenty Polaroids on it, each one showing what we’re going to do in the scene. I tell the girl, ‘See this? This is what we’re going to do. First we’re going to deep throat, then we’ll do some puking. Are you okay with puking? Good. Then we’re going to do some anal, then I’m going to fist you. Oh, you’ve never been fisted? Don’t worry, we’ll show you how. Then

I’m going to piss on you, then we’ll do the pop shot.’ "

I ask him if he ever shows them the twenty-first Polaroid, the one where they crawl into the corner, suck their thumbs, and think about how to kill themselves.

"It’s not like that," he says. "I’m not Khan Tusion."

Khan Tusion is the notorious porno director of a series of films called Meatholes and Rough Sex. They are extraordinarily violent. There is choking. There is hitting. There is crying. In the videos, Khan masks his voice and obscures his face.

"Khan wants the girls to feel like shit," says Paul. "With Khan it’s real. Khan hates women."

Paul is soft-spoken and often laughs at himself. I know it’s all bullshit—he’s in prison, he’s on his best behavior. I try to picture him violating someone I love.

"I’m playing a character," says Paul. "I’m playing this average guy who can get these babes to do all this stuff. That’s Max. But the minute the scene is over, I’m Paul. Ask anyone. Talk to Layla. Go see Layla. Ask Layla if you should feel bad."

It was time to go. Paul walked me to the door.

"I don’t want people watching my films to feel lousy," said Paul. "I guess I just want them to be more like guilty pleasures, like eating chocolate. Is that the way you felt?"

"Kind of," I said. "Like eating chocolate made from babies."

It had been over two hours. I didn’t hate him nearly enough. And it made me hate myself even more.Ashley Blue saw the tunnel.

"I died," she says.

It was in a scene with Khan Tusion. He was choking her, and she says she saw the tunnel, the one people claim to see when they’re dying. She woke up a few seconds later.

"He’s more of a monster," she says. "Definitely."

Ashley was known as the female Max Hardcore; she and Max wanted to make a movie together, but no actresses would agree to be in it for fear of what might happen to them. Polaroid number twenty-one, presumably.

We are sitting in the den of Ashley’s tiny ranch house, which sits only a few feet off the edge of an impossibly busy Los Angeles thoroughfare. The den doubles as her studio—she gives ever more time to painting since reining in her porn career. It is small and cramped, the walls covered with her paintings. The drawing table is buried beneath her charcoal-and-pencil sketches; a magazine featuring R. Crumb’s drawings sits nearby. Her dog’s collar jangles incessantly until she locks him in the bedroom, which, from what I can gather, is the only other room in the house.

Ashley Blue, whose real name is Oriana Small, is as physically un-porn-star-like as one can imagine: small, un-made-up, un-cosmetically-altered, and, for a man like myself on forty milligrams of Prozac a day, depressingly happy. It seems to me she should be more miserable, more guilt-ridden, and so it takes me a while to tell her why I am there: to admit that I watched a Max Hardcore scene, and that it did it for me.

Ashley laughs and tells me that she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it. She tells me that she doesn’t think it makes me sick. But I’m sure she thinks I’m a pervert. I’m sure she’s thinking, Why did I let this sicko into my house? I’m sure she’s wondering where she left her Mace.

"Max, to me," she says, "is kind of a gag. It’s all dressed up, he’s got the things he likes to do. It doesn’t seem as bad as Khan Tusion, where he wants the girl to really feel like a turd, and then he wants to pee on that turd. He really has problems."

Ashley says I have nothing to be ashamed of. I appreciate her saying so, but I’ve watched a few of her porn films, too—it has been a guilt-filled few decades—and so I’m silently wondering if I should ask her for forgiveness now or just wait for the afterlife and suffer through Anal Excursions 8 Starring Shalom Auslander then. Ashley says that she would worry more about guys who get off to "vanilla" porn—that she suspects they’re dishonest or, worse, dull.

I tell her it doesn’t matter. I tell her I still feel bad. I tell her about Jerry, who likes sleeping-girl porn.

"What about you?" I suddenly ask her. Has she—the star of White Trash Whore 30, Attention Whores 1-9, Gag Factor 10, Piss Mops 2, Girlvert 2-19, and many, many (many) more—has she ever gotten off to something that made her think, Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with me? Something that worked for her that she didn’t know would, that made her wonder how the wires in her head got so bizarrely, disgustingly crossed?

She sighs. She shakes her head. And then, incredibly, Ashley Blue blushes.

"Incest," she says. She covers her face with her hands for a moment and lets her hair fall down in front. Mr. Natural watches from the cover of the magazine, amused by our self-contempt.

"Incest?" I ask.

Not real life, she adds, just the fantasy.

"Like when I see—oh God, this is so…When I see twin sisters or twin brothers," she says, "brother-sister…even a dad and son… that’s where I feel like, I am so gross. That’s such a crime. Anal, throwing up—I feel like I can justify everything in that, but I have no justification for the incest fantasies that I have." …"