Porn Valley- I had a chat with director Jerome Tanner on the set of Hustler’s The DaVinci Load. If you’re going to get technical about it, Tanner started in the business by shooting loops in the Seventies. Then he and brother-in-law Charlie Brickman started up Cinderella. Tanner then left to start his own company Western Visuals. At Western Visuals he had a partner named Rob White.

“His end of the business was to make movies,” explains Tanner. “And my end of the business was to sell the movies. But what he was making was garbage for the money he was spending. I said I knew I can do this but I didn’t know the first thing about shooting. I didn’t know anything about coverage. Now this was back in the early Eighties when you couldn’t just get good people to shoot your movies. You had to take somebody who knew how to operate a camera and train them. I didn’t know what I was doing but later on I got an audio crew and was working with a guy who was doing the early Friday the 13th series. He was a very good D.P. and I learned a lot from him.”

Before he went into porn, Tanner had a jewelry store. A couple of robberies, however, convinced him the business wasn’t for him. Tanner says he didn’t like the idea of having to keep guns on the premises, especially sawed off shotguns.

“Guns are nature’s way of telling you to find another occupation,” I suggest.

“Get the fuck out of there-that’s what my mother said,” Tanner states. “She said, Jerry, get out of there, and I agreed.”

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