donnylong

Remembering Buck Adams

this was written this morning about buck! PART 1

--Gene Ross

The last time I?d speak to Buck Adams, which was a couple of months ago, he laughed about the fact that he?d been in the adult business 25 years.

In porn, Adams has blown up buildings, set off Atomic bombs, dyed his hair blond, played the Hunchback of Notre Dame in full makeup and shot down helicopters. Another time he was going to play Popeye but never got around to it. But it?s only this one scene in the Internet age that Buck will apparently be forever known for.

Adams, a former boxer with a classic glass jaw - T.T. Boy once took him out in seconds of a first round - shot for Jim Powers in a feature titled The Young and Anal 18.

In it Buck plays a grizzled cowpoke, walks into a saloon and fucks a slenderish, scant-breasted dance hall girl in the ass. She protests vigorously, and virginally to suit the need, telling Buck, ?But I poop there.?

?Not now you don?t,? Buck replies in a gnarled voice of the dusty trail.

This scene and dialogue exchange has been adopted and cuddled to the breasts of Internet cultists everywhere and is playing all over the web in various forms and recreated soundbites. Buck has to laugh. ?People walk up to me saying that line.?

?I?ve been in the business 25 years and this is what I?m remembered for,? he says shaking his head.

?It was Anne Howe,? he recalls, noting his partner?s name in the scene.

Which is the name Melissa Ashley used early on in her career. Ashley?s adolescent looks caused legal stirs for more than a couple of producers. Whereas Buck, hardly an adolescent, would have been 53 years November 15th.

I don?t know if Buck ever romanced Ashley but he certainly made it a practice of being involved with his leading ladies in more ways than one.

There was Jeanette Littledove, the original Tabitha Stevens, K.C. Williams, Aspen Brock and Rebecca Wild, for whom Buck created a vehicle titled Little Girl Lost, a film about the late Savannah.

Now Buck, like Savannah, can tell us what it?s like on the other side. He died Tuesday afternoon at Northridge Hospital of complications from heart failure.

Which was expected. Because in the scheme of things, for Buck, it wasn?t a matter of how it was going to happen, but when. It?s almost fair to say that in a two-car garage, Buck?s other means of transportation was a hospital gurney. On another Jim Powers? shoot Buck was having an attack. As the pulmonary unit pumped him with needles and wheeled him out of the studio, Buck sat up like an experiment in a monster movie come to life, wondering what had just happened.

Buck and his heart condition got on real familiar, conversational terms, and he pretty much shaped the necessary gallows? humor to his needs and specifications. Over the years, and on many occasions, I?d had the great pleasure of interviewing Buck- a man with a vast sense of humor, remarkably intelligent, very conversant and very open.

And the subject of our talks would invariably be the fact that Buck had just fucked up again in one sense of the word or another. But then he?d be contrite and repentant, and I would call these our Born Again Buck sessions.

One time I talked to him was after another of his strokes- a situation that was becoming as common and predictable as Red Foxx?s Fred Sanford TV character clutching his heart, proclaiming that the big one was coming for real.

On this occasion in late December when I talked to Buck, The Iceman Chuck Liddell had just finished off Tito Ortiz, Mr. Jenna Jameson, in quick fashion on pay-per-view.

Buck casually explained how he just got out of the hospital for a mild stroke. Funny thing about that one, said Adams, who'd seen the insides of more hospitals than Dr. Kildaire, the attending physician recognized him. Not because the doctor's a porn fan but because he treated Buck after his fourth heart attack.

I asked Buck how many did that make, now. Bearing in mind that this was in 2006, Buck answered without having to think or cipher on his fingers: seven heart attacks, one stroke, five wives, one daughter, and one grandkid, not necessarily in that order.

Buck, whose hair gleamed like the color of a brand new US mint quarter, was an unbroken warrior. His bouts with drugs and alcohol were enough to have killed off lesser men, but he seemed to have firm recall of every schoolyard insanity he was involved in. Which is sad in a way because his book would have been a marvelous read. Buck, however, would also credit his sister Amber Lynn as being the stabilizing force later in his life.

"She's the coolest chick in the planet," Buck told me, noting that Amber was giving him one last opportunity- meaning this party which was being hosted by Bill Fox. In other words, Amber was giving him one last chance to tie one on and get it out of his system for good. Then she wanted him in rehab.

"Please don't write half of what I say?" Buck implored.

"How does it feel to be the two oldest guys in the room?" Buck asks me, laughing. In retaliation, I refer to Buck as the Tutankhamen of porn.

"Thanks," he says sarcastically of the King Tut remark. Commenting on the fight we had just seen, Buck adds with an impish grin, "I wonder who Jay Grdina rooted for?"

Buck later in the evening is telling stories, and I'm feeding him provocation to relate them. I asked Buck what the deal was with him and K.C. Williams. Buck swears that Randy West who was dating her at the time, begged him to take the hot blond off his hands because she was a pain in the ass.

Buck then tells about one shoot he did which was funded by a doctor. Buck had a knack for that - squeezing money out of the medical profession - and I applauded him because the medical profession's always squeezing money out of some senior citizen couple. Also, I don?t think there was a dentist in Porn Valley Buck didn?t know. Or that was the joke.

You see, Buck was the consummate salesman- plenty of charisma, plenty of horse manure and always with a money backer which was invariably one of those dentists. Buck, who had an expensive appetite for guns, helicopters and F/X in his earlier movies, recalled a conversation he and I had at an AVN award shows where he was going to prove that a monkey could shoot a gonzo movie.

Buck was going to call it The Monkey Gangbang and have a couple of them - a mother and son monkey- wearing French berets and painters? smocks.

They were fitted with "monkey cams" to shoot some of the footage. Obviously not all of it because Buck recalled how Jim Powers was also involved in the project and showed up to the studio wearing combat boots, plaid shorts and a motorcycle jacket.

Buck's describing how Powers, on his knees, was barfing his guts up because he had been out the night before. Buck's next describing the monkey gangbang set-up: complete with Astroturf and piles of bananas.