What relationship is complete without a sex tape? If you follow the Paris Hilton school of thought, practically everyone’s made a sex tape or two, famous or not. So by that logic, Verne “Mini-Me” Troyer and ex-girlfriend Ranae Shrider are perfectly normal.

Troyer sued TMZ to get his sex tape taken off their website; however a judge ruled they could put it back up because Shrider gave TMZ permission to post the tape – and the camera used to make the video was hers.

Shrider just gave an interview to AVN about their relationship, how she and Troyer met, and how they came to make a sex tape. Here are a few excerpts:

Shrider - who grew up in Kentucky and attended the University of South Florida before moving to Hollywood in July 2007 to pursue an acting career - said she and Troyer met on New Year’s Eve 2007 at a party at the Playboy Mansion. “I was totally not in my element there,” she said. “A friend I was with said, ‘Let’s go over there and meet Mini-Me.’ I was hoping to meet someone like Ian Ziering, but hey.” Shrider said Troyer asked her for her phone number several times, but she said he asked several other girls for theirs, too. She said she eventually gave in and gave him her number, never expecting to hear from him.

“The next day, he called and told me it was his birthday,” she said. “I was like, ‘Um, well, happy birthday.’” Shrider said the relationship progressed through phone calls during Troyer’s three-week stay in England while filming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. When Troyer returned to the U.S. on Jan. 23, Shrider said, the two met up and began a full-fledged relationship.

As for the sex tape, Shrider said, the couple had been dating for several months when they decided to document their intimate moments during a romantic getaway. “Neither of us had ever done anything like that before,” she said. “We thought, ‘Why not?’ We were in a beautiful setting, and we thought it would be something good for our personal use.”

However, Shrider insisted, filming sexual romps was not a normal activity for the couple. A lot of their life was “all about normalcy,” she said. On more than one occasion, they discussed marriage, she added, but the relationship soured in June. They still live together, but they lead separate lives with separate bedrooms and try to be “civil to each other.”

[From AVN]

Ranae of course claims she’s not trying to cash in on her 15 minutes of fame, and says if she were, we would have heard about her “months ago.” Okay… but since she revealed that she gave permission for TMZ to show the sex tape, wouldn’t that indicate that she is trying to become famous? Otherwise, shouldn’t that tape have ended up in a fire?

I find it crazy that she and Verne are still living together. That’s got to be awkward. According to In Touch, they’re staying in separate rooms while waiting out their lease. Something tells me that’ll be a tense few months.

Here’s a video clip of Ranae’s interview with AVN. The video content itself is sorta-SFW, but the ads preceding the video are a little racy. And there are some nude images hanging behind Shrider during the interview. The other content on the page is NSFW.

Here are pictures of Ranae Shrider with Verne Troyer. They appear to be her own private pictures, which I’m assuming she sold to AVN, since they have the rights to them. They are SFW, but the ads on the page are NSFW. Thanks to AVN for the images, where they have many more.