Porn Valley- I spent a portion of Thursday afternoon over at Robert Hill Releasing. And who do I run into? Robert Hill himself. Imagine that. Hill’s in town until Monday and he vaguely, very vaguely resembles the cartoon caricature of his ads. But Hill’s younger. A lot younger. And with hair. Looks like a kid, in fact. But Linton seems to think Hill might be around 40. Linton and I are shooting the shit when Hill walks in with his wife. She’s a dark haired Brazilian beauty and doesn’t speak a word of English. As good or better looking than any porn star, you would say. Linton thinks maybe she’s 18, 19. She’s very quiet.

Linton’s also introducing me to his new salesman, Tom DeNiro. DeNiro, who’s been there about a month, is telling me how he got his start with Elliot Segal over at Western Visuals. With the departure of Mike Barbella over to Jill Kelly, DeNiro’s got the job now of selling Buck Angel, among other things, to the porn public. Buck is going to be doing something like 12 movies for the company, and his first title is out next week. It’s called Buck’s Beaver. Buck used to be a woman.

“There’s been no one like Buck since Chance Ryder,” DeNiro is saying, anticipating Angel’s appeal being to the female market probably because Angel looks like this hard case biker. DeNiro’s also saying how well Hill’s Transsexual Teenage Nurses line along with The Negro & Mrs. Jones series is doing. Wally Wharton stars in that series.

Linton would also like to get Buck on Howard Stern. I’m hearing a funny story about how Mike Barbella allegedly hooked up with a tranny during AEE. I’m also told that Barbella is having liposuction done.

So I ask Linton how he got into the porn business. Linton’s telling me how he first got started working for the May Company and how it was a job that basically had the potential to corrupt. Linton explains how employees would just steal blindly from the company, people walking out with refrigerators, things like that; jewelry guys literally sticking their hands into the goods. Linton said he had to get out of there, wound up in the automobile business. From there he went on to broker airline tickets. Moved to Alaska, and one of his clients, evidently, was a guy who owned a chain of 40 video stores. He told Linton, who wanted to get back to California, anyway, that he could make good money selling porn, and the guy became Linton’s first client. So Linton is basically saying that he fell into the business but it was hard getting people to sell him product in the beginning.

For his part, Hill, who is from Indianapolis, is a very quiet, soft spoken man who started shooting movies in 1994. He had met Jeff Coldwater, and Hill, who was actually a successful interior designer looking for a change of pace, shot a scene with a performer named Natasha. Hill remembers it being a pretty lame scene but he subsequently shot two movies which he sold to Gabor over at Sterling Productions. Hill also sold another movie to Kevin Beech. Hill soon started up his own production company, largely through the backing of an Italian investor. He started shooting gonzo and subsequently began distributing movies for John Bowen.

That’s how he and Bowen met. Brown now spends most of his time shooting in Brazil as does Hill. “I introduced Bowen to my way of life,” Hill states.

Hill figures he spends about six months a year shooting in Brazil where he has an apartment, as well as the one he keeps up here. Hill confirms all the wild and wooly stories that Bowen’s been telling me about shootouts on Brazilian porn sets. Hill says it’s all true- unlike some of the bullshit stories about glib or lax HIV testing procedures in Brazil. On the contrary, Hill says he tests talent the day before they’re ready to shoot for him.

Hill’s also telling me about the time he got robbed of $11,000 in cash and equipment on one of his shoots, a thief putting a gun to his head. Hill says it’s a common place occurrence to get robbed, that gunmen are always on the look out for quick cash.

We talk a little about Fred Salaff, and Hill says he had a similar story, that he was shooting a movie and neighboring kids were watching. What made matters worse, according to Hill, was that he was filming an abduction scene. Later that night, about 20 cops raided his set and took him to jail. The police confiscated something like 25 scenes and equipment, Hill telling me that it was a true nightmare trying to get this whole thing resolved. The case, which got big play in the media, dragged out for two years. But Hill says the cops, to their credit, returned every dime of the $20,000 they also confiscated from him.

It seems like every story Hill tells you has something to do with the inside of a jail cell. On another occasion, Hill was busted at Carnival. Possession of coke. “I was so loaded, I didn’t care that I was being taken in,” says Hill, claiming that the Federales instantly began negotiating the price of release with him. They wanted $5,000. Hill claims he managed to negotiate down to $170, that this is pretty much standard operating procedure because the cops get paid shit.

Asked if this was one of those Midnight Express circumstances where he was going to get fucked up by some homo jailer, Hill said that’s not the way it works, that maybe the worst thing that happens to you is being deported. Hill remembers his cell being this empty room with an open window. In fact, no window. “It’s just tempting you to escape,” Hill remembers. But Hill didn’t try. “I was too jacked up.”

Hill figures that, without too much fear of contradiction, he’s shot more tranny movies than any director in porn. I ask him if there’s like a Jenna Jameson of the tranny set in Brazil, and Hill didn’t think there was. But Hill is also frank in telling you that his little niche isn’t something he relates to. “But I think I’m doing a good job.” Hill, who’s shot over 400 movies, seems to recall that his first tranny movie was something titled Summer Girls, Summer Not.

I ask Hill what makes a good tranny movie. He’s telling me something about trannies with big breasts who are functional. This is what the consumer seems to want, says Hill who prefers to look for gimmicks in all his movies. “Like trannies playing nuns who are forced enemas.” Hill’s also playing with the idea of doing a tranny reality tape.

And he’s telling me about his new movie, The Penetrator. “Five girls are abducted and forced to have anal sex,” he says. “Now that’s a true love story.” Hill’s also telling me about this other anal-enema movie he shot called Rim of The World.

I don’t ask if this, too, is a love story because I already suspected that.