Porn Valley- With The Sopornos coming out in a gift pac, I spoke with Rob Spallone [who played Bobby Soporno] this week about the project. www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=25308.

When The Sopornos first came out [there were 8 episodes], it was about the time Spallone was feuding with Jim South.

“That’s how I met Russ Hampshire,” recalls Spallone. “I go to lunch, I come back from lunch my mother says what did you do? I said what are you talking about? She said Russ Hampshire called. I said who the fuck is Russ Hampshire? I’m told he owns one of the biggest companies in the business and that he called looking for my father.”

“I call up Howie Wasserman my father’s partner who was retired in Vegas. I said, Howie, this Russ Hampshire called. He said, Rob, call him up but be very polite. I call up and ask for Russ. He gets on the phone. He wants me to come meet him.”

“So I’m pulling out of my parking lot and who’s driving in but Luke Ford,” Spallone continues. “He says where are you going? I said I got to go over to VCA to meet this Russ Hampshire. He goes, Russ Hampshire? Me and him are like this. We’re close. I said, alright, take a ride. We get there and go to the reception desk. Russ has in his office all of these cameras. He sees Luke and me in the lobby and fucking goes off. He throws Luke out of the building. I walk in, Russ gives me a tour of he building, we sit down and talk.

“I said, listen, I’m not a kid. You have a problem with me, you don’t call my father, you tell me. At this time I was fighting with Jim South and everybody. So he says you’re fighting with Jim and opened an agency. I said, Russ, I opened an agency. I don’t charge people. I don’t make any money. I do it for free just to bust balls. He said why don’t you stop and I’ll let you shoot for me. You’ll earn a lot of money.”

“He called up Jim South and we became friends,” Spallone continues. “Russ opened up a company called VCA Xplicit, a gonzo line. I shoot a movie, I go back he gives me another one. After about the 12th one, I go, Russ, let me shoot a feature. He says shoot another gonzo. Rob, shoot two gonzos. He was giving me two movies at a time to shoot. I shoot 18 gonzos. After the 18th one he says, alright, you can shoot a feature. So I come up with this thing called The Sopornos.

“Russ tells us his featues are six or seven scenes and you got to have a contract girl who does three scenes in the movie. Who’s the girl? He gives me Stacy Valentine. I don’t know her. He gives me her number. Me and Jim call her, she’s coming up to see us. Barry the guy who sold fake watches happened to be there that day. I bought Stacy a watch, we’re telling her we don’t have a script. We’re going to adlib, but you’re going to be the star of this movie. Everything’s cool and we’re shooting in three days. Russ goes on vacation to Hawaii.

“The day before the movie VCA calls- Stacy don’t want to be in your movie,” Spallone says. “She don’t want to be in the movie? What happened? She came, we sat with her for two hours. I even bought her a watch. She was really nice, pretty and everything was fine. She don’t want to be in the movie because the movie’s not about her. It’s about you, meaning me. I said are you fucking kidding me? We’re shooting tomorrow. What do we do? They call Russ in Hawaii and I tell Russ what happened.”

“He said what do you mean she don’t want to shoot? He says shoot whoever you want and I’ll take care of that problem. We get Tabitha Stevens. She does a great job. The movie’s in the real TV Guide. There’s this little thing written up about it and she got a ton of publicity and it was a big hit. So now I bring the movie in and we hired a lot of people in the office that worked at VCA to be in the movie like Wendy who plays my shrink.

“We end the movie on a question. I’m in the shrink’s office- do I kill this guy? And Wendy looks at me like I’m crazy. Cut. Movie ends. So we bring it in and it has to pass QC. Now Russ calls me up screaming at me. Are you fucking kidding me? You made a feature for me and you shot it on digital camera? What are you talking about? He says those are gonzos. Features are shot on Beta. I go I never shot a fuckin’ feature. Nobody told me that. I had it in the budget and the budget showed fucking digital tape stock, a hundred dollars. Beta would have been like, $700-$800.

“Russ spends two or three thousand and transfers it to Beta,” Spallone goes on to say.

“The movie has to go to QC? What’s QC? Quality control. I said what’s that? They tell me we got to check it to make sure everything’s good. So it passes first time out. They call us- your paperwork is excellent, this is one of the first movies that ever passed QC on its first go. Everybody’s happy now. The guy in charge of QC- Jerry- called. I meet him. He says that was a really smart idea how you ended it where you could make Part 2.

“I said fine, great, if it’s a success, Russ will give us another movie. A year later Russ called and told us we could shoot Sopornos 2. Russ did a quarter of a million dollars with Sopornos 1. He paid less than $25,000 for it.”

Harry Weiss, who’s now with Star World Modeling, was with VCA at the time Spallone began shooting gonzos and says the reason why Spallone got hired was that he seemed to get it.

“Russ used to buy all kinds of crap and I’d type up memos and give them to him about what was wrong with the stuff he was buying. He said what about this Spallone guy? I said I don’t know the fucker but he seems to get it.”

“I made a lot of money with Russ,” Spallone adds. “Russ was the best. You got the money, there was no questions, nothing. Russ was the best guy in the business. Then he sold VCA to Hustler. We did like Sopornos one through five for VCA and when Hustler bought it, we shot six, seven and eight.”

According to Weiss, he won a hundred bucks in a bet with Ed Kail, VCA’s salesman at the time. Kail thought they’d never get away with using the name The Sopornos.

“Russ had the lawyers call HBO and everything,” Spallone comments.

“Everything was fine. I remember in the beginning Herschel Savage kept saying The Sopranos has something to do with singing, and Herschel kept telling us to use The Baritones. I said are you fucking kidding me? That movie sold not because I made it or acted in it. It sold for one reason only. That fucking title sold that fucking movie.”