Porn Valley- The story on the street is that Eddie Van Halen was the money backing The New Neighbors. And Tony Batman had both Linda Roberts and Frank Castle, the show’s director and star, respectively, on his KSEX show. Besides being her partner in the movie, Roberts said Castle was her partner in real life. Besides directing, Castle also wrote the movie.

“It’s the first feature that he’s done for adult,” said Roberts. “He and I perform together- we’ve done a lot of things together.” Castle and Roberts have been in LA since 1989 and both are from New York. Batman mentioned that there was a big party for the movie Halloween night at Sardo’s.

“There’s such strange stuff in this,” Batman said. “It’s sort of a scary movie and it’s a porn.”

Castle, who also writes for the mainstream, said the people from Sllab Wurks came to him and asked if he had something different for them as an adult movie. Castle had been toying with taking The New Neighbors to the mainstream and instead made it an adult film.

“It was pretty sexual,” said Castle. “Because a lot of it revolves around a neighborhood that descends into perversion and debauchery because of the two neighbors that have moved in.” [Then, of course, there was the similarly-themed project, Neighbors, with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.]

“I think it’s about what people really want to do, what they fantasize about- and if all those fantasies were released, what would really happen,” Castle went on to say. “Then you put that into a movie.”

Asked where his ideas come from, Castle said personal experiences and that he and his wife are swingers.

“There’s some of that in the film, and I think everybody has fantasies about the girl next door, or the guy with his secretary” Castle said. “We all have that every day and wouldn’t it be incredible if we could indulge some of them?” Roberts said they’ve done clubs but have their own little parties.

“We sort of settled on doing it our way for a change,” she said. “People have a tendency to go in and out of the lifestyle. Sometimes it fits into what you’re doing in your life and it works really well; other times you say I’m going to take a little bit of a break and do something else for awhile. And so the group is constantly evolving.”

From his own experiences, Batman noted that new people in the swingers group tended to jostle things.

“That’s good,” said Roberts. “Because you get a little complacent. And now it’s a new person.” Also from his experience Batman said porn tended not to have much of an influence especially if someone gets the bright idea to try and film something.

“The cameras come out, they run,” Castle agreed. Roberts said the movie’s been out about two weeks and that the reviews have been really good.

“It plays like a mainstream feature- that’s the effect I kind of wanted with it,” said Castle. “It’s something different which porn needs right now with so much of the same stuff over and over again.” Roberts said that AVN gave them an Editors’ Choice.

“That’s pretty cool.” Asked if they made it in time for the nominations, Roberts said they’ll know on Tuesday.

Roberts mentioned that there are eight sex scenes in the movie of which five are group sex scenes. Batman thought there’s sometimes too much acting during a sex scene and Roberts commented, “You shouldn’t be acting during sex- if the sex is good, that should just be happening.”

Besides Roberts, Mike Horner, Randy Spears and Nikki Hunter also have lead roles.

“Randy Spears didn’t take anything up his butt, did he?” Batman wanted to know. Batman has been on Spears’ case about that ever since Spears did a pegging scene for Stormy Daniels. Batman then did a pretty good impersonation of Spears talking about getting a cup of coffee.

“The energy is so great when you work with people like that,” said Roberts. “And Mike is the same way.” According to Castle, when he wrote the movie, he did it with the key four roles in mind going to Horner, Spears, Hunter and Roberts.

“I couldn’t have done this film without them. And that’s how I do mainstream movies, too. I write them for specific talent.” Castle said because these were “specific parts,” he didn’t want people cast who were “too porned out”.

“And you don’t want anyone who smells like ass, right?” Batman chuckled.