Max Hardcore


Max Hardcore is an American pornographic actor, producer, and director. He rose to prominence in 1992 with the film series The Anal Adventures of Max Hardcore, which in 1994 was awarded the X-Rated Critics Organization's award for Best Amateur or Pro-Am series. His work has been classified as gonzo pornography and described as "testing the limits of acceptability". He is a member of the X-Rated Critics Organization's Hall of Fame. Max and actress Layla Rivera appeared on the Howard Stern show on September 24, 2007. He spent two and a half years in prison, convicted in a trial for obscenity. His company, Max World Entertainment, was headquartered in Altadena, California.
According to the Adult Film Database, he has also performed under the names Max Steiner, Max Hardcore Steiner, Paul Little, Rex Reamer, and Sam Smythe.

Nature of content

Max Hardcore's films generally consist of sexual acts executed by himself, with women, often porn industry newcomers, who act like girls or their upset mothers, with an emphasis on anal sex.
The sexual situations depicted in Max Hardcore's films frequently include acts such as urinating on his female co-stars, fisting them, or inserting specula into their anuses or vaginas and widening them to extreme degree. There are also scenes wherein the actresses, at his direction, vomit or blow mucus into their mouths or on themselves, or drink urine from their anuses using a tube. Films by Max Hardcore often depict their director and star inflicting apparent pain and humiliation on his co-stars.
Hardcore calls his own material "vile and crazy" and considers that he has been influential on the porn industry, spawning many imitators.
Writer Susannah Breslin, reviewing Hardcore's work, has commented: "In Max Hardcore movies – Pure Max, Hardcore Schoolgirls, Don't Fuck Up My Mommy! – the women are verbally and physically degraded in an unprecedented myriad of ways." The treatment by Hardcore of his female co-stars has been described by several critics as occasionally abusive. The tone of Hardcore's work has been considered misogynistic. His films and alleged work methods have reportedly made him relatively unpopular in the porn industry.

Prosecutions

Based on Max Extreme 4, the city of Los Angeles in 1998 charged him with child pornography and distribution of obscenity. That the actress was over the age of 18 was not disputed; charges were brought because the actress was portraying a character who was underage. Just before the case was brought to trial in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the statute prohibiting adults from portraying children in films and books was unconstitutional. Based on this ruling, the child pornography charges against Little were dismissed. The misdemeanor charge of distribution of obscenity was retained, but the jury failed to reach a verdict. An additional obscenity charge was subsequently levied against him by L.A., again resulting in a hung jury. Little commented after the trial that it "was a frivolous waste of public resources."
On October 5, 2005, while Little was in Barcelona to attend an international FICEB Erotic Expo, the offices of Max World Entertainment were raided by the FBI. Five video titles and the office's computer servers were seized, ostensibly for research toward a federal obscenity indictment or a charge related to the record-keeping law.
In the execution of the search warrant, one officer accidentally discharged a weapon into the floor of an upstairs office, as the housekeeper was being detained below. No one was injured.
After the FBI raid, Little released the following statement:
In 2007, Little and his company, Max World Entertainment, Inc., were indicted by the United States Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section with five counts of transporting obscene matter by use of an interactive computer service and five counts of mailing obscene matter, relating to five movies showing fisting, urination and vomiting. Little was subsequently found guilty on all charges, and sentenced to 46 months in prison. On appeal, the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta, Georgia upheld the conviction, but remanded his sentence. Little began serving his sentence on January 29, 2009.
The jury ordered the internet domain www.MaxHardcore.com to be forfeited but declined to forfeit Little's house in Altadena, California.
Little was originally assigned to the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles, and then transferred to Federal Correctional Institution, La Tuna in Anthony, Texas, a low-security correctional facility for men. He served the final five months of his sentence under house arrest. He was Federal Bureau of Prisons number 44902-112 and was released on July 19, 2011.
Since he has been out of prison, Little stated in a February 2012 interview that he "wants to do good in the world", and has now gone back into the porn industry. However, Hardcore has not been credited as a porn performer or director since 2013.

Awards

Paul "Max Hardcore" Little is the subject of the 1998 David Foster Wallace essay Big Red Son, which analyzes the American pornographic industry of the 1990s.