Paul Little, also known as Max Hardcore, has gone from a hardcore pornography star and director to a symbol of the fight against censorship. Willing to perform all kinds of sexual acts, and portray even more, Little has never used a non-consenting adult for his films, or sent any films to anyone unsolicited. That did not stop the US government, however, from sentencing him to 46 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and fining him $7,500 for “mailing obscene matter” and posting “obscene” trailers on his website. Little’s company, MaxWorld Entertainment Inc., was fined $75,000 and ordered to serve five years probation. The jury spared Little his house, which the government could have ‘lawfully’ seized.

Obscenity laws have been reeling in convictions, one of the most surprising being Christopher Handley's, who is still awaiting his sentencing. Many have, understandably, looked to plea bargains to reduce time. Not Paul Little. He fought his charges, and still is, currently working on an appeal while he serves his time in the Metropolitan Detention Center of Los Angeles. Living up to his stage name both on and off camera, Paul Little will not compromise his belief that obscenity laws be abolished. And he will do everything he can to help, so that no one else should be imprisoned for expressing him or herself.

SexHerald: How are they treating you in there? Have you met any fans?

Paul Little: While I can’t complain too much about my treatment by employees of the US Bureau of Prisons, I must say that the Metropolitan Detention Center is far less humane than I would have thought before arriving here. It’s more like a jail than a prison, and houses short-time pre-trial and pre-sentence inmates for the most part. Unfortunately for me, even in the shittiest of shitholes, they need inmates who can do the grunt work at the facility, at slave-labor rates starting at 12 cents per hour. That’s where my section comes in. Me and the rest of the 150 or so inmates crammed into the section called 5 North do the cooking, cleaning, plumbing, electrical, welding and carpentry to keep the MDC functional. With a sentence of 46 months, there’s no way that I should be here as a ‘minimum’ security risk. I should be at a camp but evidently there’s no room at them right now. Fortunately, I put in for a transfer and it’s finally been approved, so I expect to be in a much better facility in the not-too-distant future.

Quite a few of the guys in here recognized me, which isn’t so strange considering I’ve been making movies for more than 15 years. At first it was quite fascinating for them, and they asked a lot of questions about how to get into the business and what the girls are like. But after a while, I discouraged that and now I’m just one of the inmates around the joint. I do my job and I do it well, so I stay out of trouble and out of the dreaded ‘hole.’

SH: What do you do to keep busy?

Little: I read, work out, and especially I write a lot on this ancient Olympia typewriter. I write quite a few letters to people I know and those who are just fans. I also do articles and short pieces for other publications like Hustler, Adult Video News (AVN), and XBiz. One thing I don’t do is watch much TV, but I am working on a couple TV shows that may come together after I get out of here, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

SH: I presume that you personally believe there should be no regulation on obscenity. Is that right?

Little: You are correct. I don’t agree that we even need to have obscenity laws, and that they don’t even apply to artistic works. About the only thing that’s obscene in my book is war. That said, I don’t think that we ought to be showing my movies up on the big screens at Times Square. That people consume porn nowadays, in the privacy of our homes with our computers, precludes the very concept of obscenity. If we don’t like something, we just move on to the next thing.

SH: Given that, do you believe that you violated the obscenity laws?

Little: I believe that the bible-thumping zealot of a prosecutor was able to convince the jury what I did was obscene, but I sure as hell don’t. The way the laws are written, you could convince some morons that Mary Poppins was obscene. There’s just no definite boundaries for it. It’s the only law in the country that I call a ‘matter of opinion’ law. You don’t know if you violated it until a judge or jury finds that you did. Needless to say, it’s completely judgmental, and therefore highly unfair.

SH: Do you think that there are differences between what a community considers obscene and what government officials deem obscene? How do you feel about the use of the Miller Test?

Little: Firstly, let me just say that not one person or community group complained about my movies or websites beforehand. And unfortunately, most citizens don’t have any idea what First Amendment stands for, nor do they understand the concept of privacy of one’s home, because they’ve had it pretty good their whole lives. People in Europe understand those concepts though, and that’s why they have, for the most part, very few laws regulating pornography, and don’t have anything like the Miller Test for obscenity. That test, by the way, is the biggest bunch of bullshit since people first discovered sex. It has language and words that no one understands, so it can be applied to almost anything. Bottom line: the government has to kiss some ass for votes, and rounding up a few pornographers is always a good way to do it.

SH: Why do you make the movies you do?

Little: I guess the easiest explanation is that it’s a reflection of who I am and what I’ve learned over the years. But moreover, it’s a collaborative thing that I put together with the girls I work with. As you can imagine, I have spent many hours talking to girls about life and about making movies, as well as their hopes and fantasies. I discovered that quite a few of the girls whom I work with have very dirty minds, and love to play the victim, or be an aggressor. I take whatever they can give me, and push it to the limit. If they want to play young and innocent, I’ll play the big bad wolf. It all depends on where they are coming from.

SH: Why do you think it is so important to your opponents that they see you imprisoned?

Little: Because they’re selfish and uncaring. It should be pointed out that America has more people in prison, percentage-wise, than any other country in the world by far. Three strikes and zero tolerance are completely American concepts, and for the most part, are not even imagined in modern Western-style democracies that we find in Europe. Until you’ve been to prison, you couldn’t imagine how unfair it is. Most of the guys in my section are in here for low-level offenses like a pound or two of weed, or other negligible offenses that would result in either no penalty in Europe or a fine at most. If anything, I should have been fined for supposedly violating an arbitrary law. But in our country, all people understand is prison.

SH: How’s the appeal coming?

Little: I think we have a good chance to overturn my convictions. For starters, I didn’t send the movies to Tampa for which I was convicted of sending. They were sent by an independent Internet distributor without my knowledge or consent. And they were my ‘Euro’ Versions as well, which I only sell in Europe. The second group of charges was on the movie trailers on my website, which of course is on the World Wide Web. Somehow, the prosecutor was able to fool the judge and jury that the local community standards (part of the Miller Test) of the Tampa area can be applied to a website. We are confident these are wrong decisions, even if we accept the concept of local standards being the defining test of obscenity. Plus, the trailers were for the most part, shocking and not obscene, more like crazy short and funny clips to get a viewer interested in seeing more. The jury convicted me of those out of exhaustion more than anything else. I would never have been even charged for the trailers by themselves.

SH: What are your plans once you get out?

Little: First, I plan on putting my life back together and my business, and taking a little vacation with just me and my girl Layla Rivera. Then I’m going to sit down and discuss all my options with my team, and decide where I’m going to go from there. The main thing is that I never want to end up in prison again, for expressing myself or my ideas in movies. This is the end of that shit. If I am going to do something else, or if I am going to be moving to Europe, I’ll decide then.

SH: Tell us about your life before porn.

Little: Oh, Christ. That’s a long story. How about you look up that on my site, under Who is Max Hardcore, and/or Google a couple sources to get the background. Suffice it to say that I’m a self-made and motivated man. I have a can-do attitude about life and what I can accomplish. I am a leader of men and women, and I take care of my team and never leave anyone behind. I believe in truth, courage, dignity, and loyalty. I’m the guy you want at your side when the shit hits the fan.

August 3, 2009

Dear SexHerald,

Thank you for contacting me, and having an interest in my work and case… Besides breathing air, sex is one thing that all human beings have in common. I still find it strange that most are so ashamed of it that they can’t even have a rational conversation about sex.

I am pleased to report that I’m doing well, despite the drab surroundings and mind-numbing boredom of my present location, which is the Metropolitan Detention Center of Los Angeles, where I have been held against my will for the last six months. I am keeping my spirits up because I know that I am not a criminal; I am the victim of an ongoing crime. I did what they said was wrong, but so did our founding fathers when they wrote the Constitution which guarantees the freedom of speech and the privacy of the home.

Despite my conviction in Tampa, which is the real obscenity, not a single person from that area had complained about my movies or websites beforehand. My trial was a sham to showcase the Bush administration’s perverted pursuit to stamp out sexual expression, at the behest of Evangelical Christians, when they’re not attempting to elude detection for their own misdeeds.

With the assistance of my able attorney, the First Amendment champion H. Louis Sirkin, we will present my case for reconsideration and reversal in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in late October. We have multiple and mighty arguments for dismissal, and are cautiously optimistic for a full vindication of this unjustifiable persecution. We are even taking aim at the federal obscenity statute itself on constitutional grounds, and hope to relegate it to the trash heap of legal history once and for all, where it belongs.

In the meantime, I am making the most of my time away from family, friends and career to improve myself in body and mind, so that when I finally emerge from this illegal confinement, I’ll be a better man and be able to entertain people around the world once again.

This persecution has taken its toll not only on myself, but also for the fine folks who work for me, and who now struggle to get my business back from near destruction, when the federal authorities unlawfully seized my primary website, and forced me to start from scratch with a new one at MaxHardcoreTV.com. Fortunately, while they took my website name, they left me with all my hundreds of hours of video, for which I am grateful. My crew is also putting together new movies from scenes that I had shot before I was incarcerated, and the newest releases are Universal Max 13 and Fuck Puppets 01.

If people would like to reach me directly, they can of course write me at:
Paul F. Little, Federal Register 44901-112, Metropolitan Detention Center, Los Angeles, Post Office Box 1500, Los Angeles, CA 90053-1500.

Again, I thank you for contacting me and your continued interest in my work.

Sincerely
Paul F. Little
AKA
“Max Hardcore”