Porn Valley- I imagine walking into Yankee Stadium during the Babe Ruth era would have been similar to a trip to the Red Light District offices. Here ya got the porn equivalent of a modern day Murderers Row. Just in the few minutes I’m there I exchange hellos with Michael Steffano, Manuel Ferrara and Steve Perry. We’re setting up interviews. I have a brief chat with owner David Joseph. Joseph’s on the phone telling someone he’s going to the Steelers game tomorrow. I ask if he’s a Pittsburgh fan. No, he says. The Rams. Joseph must have been a real joy to converse with last week.

Outside his office door, the enthusiasm’s flying like ricocheting bullets. Joseph, on the one hand, though, strikes me as a quiet, low key, very modest individual. Joseph says he likes things being low key. So, under those sets of circumstances, I could see Joseph more in a Roman collar perched in a confessional than manning one of the biggest porn companies in the universe. Stranger things happen.

I ask him about the rumors of another Paris Hilton tape, but from the answer I get I wouldn’t bet on it. But stranger things happen. With Joanie Laurer making comments on the Stern show the week before, I ask Joseph any truth to her story that her ex boyfriend Sean Waltman cut a porn deal behind her back. As far as he’s concerned, any deal that Joseph has cut is directly with Joanie Laurer’s agent. Joseph says he’s never struck a deal with Waltman, that the agent has the deal with Laurer and Waltman. “I pay the agent,” says Joseph, noting that if Lauer has a bitch about money she ought to be talking to the agent. Joseph says it was he agent who approached him with the tape, not Waltman.

Joseph concedes that 1 Night in China is not going to be the blockbuster that the Paris tape was, that if it sells half as many units he’d be pretty happy. Joseph, however, seems more focused on another issue. The fact that the company is moving into another building- a 33,000 sq. foot building. Joseph guesses maybe the first couple weeks in April, and he’s going to have Red Light and Platinum X together. Some remodeling’s going on in the new headquarters, so that’s the hold up.

Joseph continually emphasizes this whole idea of one big happy family. But with people piling up in existing office space and sharing nooks and crannies it obviously got hard to keep a smile on your face with someone else’s ball point pen up your ass. The new headquarters will change all that. Likening his operation to a good machine, Joseph prefers to keep out of the way of his directors and allow them to set the tone for the product. “My job is to get it out on time,” he says. Throughout the chat, Joseph keeps pumping up his people. He’s got that Skeeter Kerkove approach, like the Little League coach always with the hands clapping, always with the back slapping, the hum-babes.

Joseph claims he first heard about the Paris Hilton tape like pretty much everyone else- on the radio. Except Joseph knew people who knew people who had things in common and, thus, began a three month courtship of Rick Salomon. “He trusted us,” says Joseph and, after a defining two hour session in a hotel room, the deal was cut.

Wonder if Paris, like Babe Ruth, has had a chance to check out the house that she built. With 33,000 sq. feet, she’ll have plenty of office space.