We posted the first round of our chit-chat with Ron Hightower last week. And you can click here for those comments if you missed them. When last we left, Ron who’s now shooting for Tom Byron’s EvolutionErotica- evolutionerotica.com- was talking about how he broke into the adult business back in New York.

RH: Rick Savage was very instrumental in making my New York career happen. Kathy Tavel was also very instrumental in getting me out to California.

Gene: I remember your initial struggles to get into this business, attempting to get that break. I remember you hanging out at some of the trade shows.

RH: Yes, definitely. I first came out to Vegas at the AVN awards. I remember it. It was just so weird. Henri Pachard was the reason that I came out to California because I slept on his set with Samantha York back then. He was shooting something for Morty at Bizarre. I showed him this video that I did with Ginger Thomas and her husband. She had won an amateur of the year award back then, like ’91, ’92. We had done a double vaginal with her. She had come into New York and Rick Savage shot her. When I showed Pachard that he said come out to L.A. We don’t have any black guys- all we have is Sean Michaels and Julian St. Jox. I was like, okay, whatever. I went out there and I’ll never forget the shock of me having to re-introduce myself to him with him walking off, telling me to talk to Sean. Eventually I did get to work with Pachard but it wouldn’t have been until six months or more later. But it was a hard struggle because all of the stuff that I had done in New York didn’t matter. I had only done seven projects on video. But I had also worked with Manhattan Cable for a show called Interlude After Midnight. We’d introduce these new girls and I’d wind up having sex with them on video. With all that behind me, I had the experience in front of the camera. I was definitely a woodsman, maybe not with the biggest wood, but definitely that. Only no one was trying to hear it.

Gene: Who finally gave you your break out here?

RH: Believe it or not, Bobby Genova told it was either Chris from Anabolic or Tanna Cole to shoot me I believe Tanna Cole was the first one, then it was Chris. But what really gave me my break was that I was in this movie called Too Hung To Tongue. Milt Ingley had given me the shot to be in this project. It was an interracial thing with Sean Michaels and I think the lady on the cover was Tanya Rivers. I think for some reason, I don’t remember what it was, wound up not doing the boxcover. Maybe he wasn’t happy with the pay. But they needed a black guy on the boxcover. They put me on there and lucky for me, the same company that did this movie took out advertising in a magazine called Video Review. And Video Review was in circulation all over the magazine stands. Well, Video review took the boxcover and made it its magazine cover. Here’s the funny part. I never got mentioned anywhere in the magazine. My name, nothing. Tanya Rivers was but I was just a guy on the cover with her. That was my first cover on a magazine and I think that was what really alerted the industry that there was another black guy in the business. And then they took out ads in other magazines and there was that cover again with people saying that doesn’t look like Sean. That’s pretty much when the work opened up for me. And shortly after that, maybe a month or two later, Sean was supposed to go to Italy with Jon Dough, Peter North, Ron Jeremy and something happened. Sean couldn’t do it and they asked me if I wanted to go. I went out there and I was like a kid in the candy store.

Gene: So twice it happened that circumstances directly related to Sean Michaels, opened doors for you.

RH: Totally, and I tell everybody that. If it wasn’t for Sean I don’t think I would have made it. The industry already had their guy for interracial. And a lot of times Sean, if he needed another guy would say use Julian because he had that influence. But if wasn’t for those two incidents, I don’t think I could have survived it because there wasn’t enough work. It wasn’t happening. And then there was incident number three. They came to Sean and asked him if he’d be interested in doing a black line. At the time Sean had other commitments and couldn’t commit to that. And they came to me afterwards and I’m like, hell yeah. That’s when Dark Alleys came into play and that was my first video line. That would have been the first of maybe 14 signature lines. The only problem, and not necessarily a problem, is that I still aspired to be as big as your T.T. Boys, your Peter Norths, your John Leslies. Definitely memorable. But I got pigeon holed into all-black erotica. Which wasn’t a bad thing. Don’t get me wrong. But it wasn’t what I envisioned. At the time it was very hard and politically insane. And I was really swept away into a corner of the industry. The funny part about it is one of the things that kind of burnt me out about the industry was the feeling that I was paddling upstream.

Gene: Were you ever the target of racially insensitive comments?

RH: All the time. The break I was trying to make was on two levels. If I was going to be in the adult industry, especially as a director, I wanted to be able to shoot everything. I wanted to be able to shoot a fetish-line, all-white; interracial. I wanted to shoot it all. If Henri Pachard wanted to shoot a video project, he could do whatever he wanted and rightly so. The man’s been doing films since way back when. When I got to meet him it was like meeting Martin Scorcese. I was a huge fan. So maybe he’s not a good example. But it just seemed like anybody with a camera who was not black could shoot anything. But I had somehow gotten into a situation where because I was black shooting black product, I couldn’t get an account to do anything else.

Gene: You’ll hear this on Howard Stern all the time. One of the first things he’ll ask a white female performer is if she’ll do a black guy. If the girl says no she gets jumped on. It’s a totally different thing now. Back then I’d imagine that if a white girl said that, the opinion jury would be on her side. Did you run into a lot of girls who would say I don’t think so.

RH: I’d like to comment on that. A lot of these girls would have done anything. They would have worked with black guys and there wasn’t a problem. It’s the way they’re questioned about it. I’ve sat right there and watched Jim South double-question a girl with eyebrows raised, ‘Let me ask you again, do you work with black guys?’ Reb and Jim were friends of mine but they would tell me if the girl’s going to make any money for them, they have to keep them away from blacks because they’re killing themselves in the south and there’s no money from that generating into the agent’s pocket. My thing is this. A business is a business. If I’m a white girl and I know for a fact that I can make more money by not doing a specific thing, it’s a business. You can’t be mad at somebody for the way they want to make their money. I don’t see it as a prejudice. To me a prejudice is if she’s looking at black skin and going, hell no. But if you’re making a business decision- and I think people forget that this is a business- if you’re in the market to sell yourself in the best way, you only have a certain amount of time in it anyway. If that means you’re not working with someone on account of their skin, if it’s business and not a personal one, I don’t see why it should be so significant.

Gene: Bu sometimes you don’t know what is the real underlying factor. They could cop out by just saying nothing personal, strictly business. It could be personal but you don’t know.

RH: There’s so many other girls willing to come in and do so, that’s how I look at it.

Gene: In other words, this is something you’re not going to lose sleep over.

RH: And it’s nothing I ever have. because a lot of women who don’t do blacks on screen are doing it off screen. So I know it’s not personal.

Gene: Ever have a girl tell you no for a video project and you wound up sleeping with her anyway off camera.

RH: A true confession is that I was so shocked that I made that quick leap just on the chain of events that I was constantly being told this girl wanted to work with me. And at the time I was a horn dog and not that picky, either. I was happy to be working; she didn’t look like a lot of ugly women I knew and three, it was just very flattering, the whole thing. I remember times when I’d walk into Reb or Jim’s office, they’d be in the bathroom and I was introducing myself to the girl and she’d be inching away from me like I was the worst thing from the sewers. Or maybe she’s insecure. But the same girl will sit in front of Jim or Reb and go, no offense, I prefer not to work with black guys but I will work with Sean Michaels or Ron Hightower not knowing that’s who I was sitting in the office.

Gene: In other words you’re saying there’s star fuckers.

RH: Yeah, I’ve run into that. So maybe those girls indeed were prejudiced but would say I’ll work with these two. Okay, cool. Business decisions. That’s all I look at it, as. I try not to personalize because I take things personally a lot. One of the things that bothers me the most was my trying to come up in the industry and the personal attacks on me by the people who I’ve worked with.

Gene: Personal attacks in what sense.

RH: Example given without going into details or giving names, there’s a few black guys who were working with me who got paid a lot more on my sets than what they did on any other sets. But they would tell everybody how cheap I was, that I had all these video lines and was only giving them this. Number one, I never owned these lines; and two, I paid what the budget was for the line and I gave even extra despite them going behind my back and making projects for the same company and getting everybody to lower their rates. There’s a lot of cutthroating and a lot of backstabbing.