LOS ANGELES—Last night brought about the Los Angeles premiere of Seed Money, Michael Stabile's documentary about gay entrepreneur Chuck Holmes and the founding of his production company Falcon Studios.
"It started as a project that was going to be an oral history," Stabile told AVN. "I had a friend, Jack Shamama, who's also producer on the film, who was working at Falcon at the time, and so Jack and I started talking about maybe doing an oral history; 'Let's get these stories down because they're so wonderful.'
"The whole point of porn being illegal and going back to the late '60s, early '70s, where gay porn was just on the level of where maybe marijuana is today, where people are getting busted; they're selling it out of their trunks; it's legal in some locations and not in others—it seemed like Boardwalk Empire meets Boogie Nights," he added. "It had this really amazing history, and once the people die, it's gone, so we started talking about how do we do this, and I pulled in Ben Leon, who at the time was directing for Raging Stallion, and said, 'You know how to operate a great camera; would you like to shoot it?' And it just sort of came together. We sat down with Steven Scarborough from Hot House, who had been Chuck's lover and his second in command at Falcon, and said, 'Tell us what you know.'"
But Scarborough was only the beginning, and as the project began to take shape, more and more current and former Falcon employees came on board, as well as several figures who were an integral part of the growing gay porn community. Some of those included John Summers, one of Falcon's founders; John Rutherford, considered Holmes' protégé; John Travis, an early 8mm loop producer and operator of some of San Francisco's gay brothels; agent David Forest; director Chi Chi LaRue; performer Jeff Stryker; and dozens more.
Stabile describes Holmes as "an Indiana farmboy, but he had a head for business," and in 1971, Holmes left Indiana for San Francisco, first as a seller of real estate, but within the year, he had founded Falcon Studios, in part because of his dissatisfaction with the quality of the gay porn tapes that were already being marketed.
"Chuck looked around, saw that it was a bunch of hippies running around shooting films vaguely illegally; said, 'I think I can do it better'; borrowed some money, bought a mailing list and he was off and running," Stabile summarized, though Seed Money itself goes into much greater detail of those early days, showing how well Holmes worked his mailing list selling loops and raking in millions, some of which he reinvested in the company to produce better films, some of which he used to bankroll a luxurious lifestyle—and some of which he donated to liberal causes.
"I think Chuck's first big hit was The Other Side of Aspen, their first big feature, and that brought in a ton of money and I think it really set him aside from the pack in terms of business, and from there, he was the king of the business until he died in 2000," Stabile stated. "There was nobody who was rivaling Falcon in terms of production, revenue—and Chuck was a huge donor, particularly in the '90s, to Democratic causes and then to gay rights causes, so he was very active in the Human Rights Campaign, which is the big gay lobbying organization in Washington. He gave a lot of money to the Clinton campaign, Emily's List, ACLU—all the good guys. As Steven Scarborough has said, he was first and foremost concerned about saving his own ass: "We can't have a Republican in because I'm gonna go to jail.'"
Indeed; Seed Money, displaying some of the few photographs of Holmes that still exist—much material was discarded when Falcon was sold after Holmes' death—shows Holmes in the company of Bill and Hillary Clinton (photos that will undoubtedly figure in right-wing campaigns against Mrs. Clinton in her presidential run), Holmes with Al Gore, and with several other dignitaries, only some of whom knew what sort of business was funding Holmes' large donations.
"I think that was always a fear of his," Stabile said, "that his money wasn't good enough, or—here was somebody who was living the high society lifestyle, fearful that a leader of one or more of his favorite causes was going to be embarrassed about what he did."
Seed Money's premiere, which took place at the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood, was part of the 10-day Outfest LGBT Film Festival, which also sponsored a pre-screening reception for the filmmakers, and before the evening was over, more than 300 guests, including several current and former Falcon employees, attended.
"I worked for Chuck for seven years, 1976 to 1983," recalled retired filmmaker and AVN Hall of Famer Paul Norman. "There are so many Chuck Holmes stories! He was the most charming man I ever met. He was the loudest man I ever met. Chuck would come in Monday morning to the office after a weekend of crazy sexual stuff. There wasn't a drug that Chuck didn't do; there wasn't a boy that Chuck wouldn't do, so he would come in Monday morning with these stories, crazy wild stories—and I'd go home and try 'em on my girlfriend.
"Chuck was like a father figure to me," Norman added. "He really taught me more about pornography than anyone else.You know, back then, for most porn movies, it was shoot a close-up of the action, shoot a close-up of the face; cut back and forth, back and forth. Chuck wanted to see the action with the face in the background or vice versa. He really taught me how to shoot something, make it sexual; how to shoot something, make it interesting. He knew what people wanted to see. There was one rule that Chuck had: As soon as the guy unzipped his pants, he better have it hard as a fucking rock. He wanted to see that excitement right off the bat."
Holmes demanded such specificity not only from his directors, but with everyone involved in the production, right down to the stills and glamour photographers.
"You had to learn to shoot in the Falcon style, so it had to have the Falcon look," explained Mocha, who began shooting stills for Holmes in the early '90s. "The style was, the poses were very specific poses. You had to show the body in good form, good abs, back light on the models, good lighting."
"My main memory of Chuck was interacting in the office," said Mick Hicks, another photographer. "I shot a lot of the glamour shots that were on the VHS boxes and the one-sheets, and they'd also send out photos to the various magazines—Blue Boy, Honcho, Mandate—but when I'd do the photos, I would have to come into the office and edit them; I'd edit like 300 photos down to 80; that was the max I could use.
“Once I edited them down,” Hicks continued, “someone would load them into a carousel—we were still using film in those days; I preferred Kocachrome—and then we'd go into a room and they'd project them up on a screen, and that process was called the House of Pain, because Chuck would take a red laser pointer, and as they projected these slides, he would shine it and he had this big booming Southern voice, and he would say, 'Girl, what is with this? What were you thinking when you did this?' And he would criticize the hell out of your photos. He had no preconceived idea of who was going to be on that box cover, unless it was one of his favorites, of course, but he would go through the pictures and say, 'Okay, that's it. That's your box cover right there, girl; use that one,' and that would be the box cover.”
Hicks summed up, "It always amazed me that he just knew; he knew which was the best photo and the best model that would sell that video. I learned more sitting in the House of Pain and watching Chuck pick pictures that he liked and pointing out the flaws, and I learned a lot from him—like how to turn a model so that you see his dick from the side and not pointing at you and a lot of very interesting techniques."
Hicks also recalled a humorous incident when he was shooting at one of Holmes' homes in Sacramento: "One time, Chuck's mom came to the set, and in this little Southern accent, she told the cast, 'Do a good job for the company,' so it was fun to actually meet his mom."
We won't try to summarize the documentary itself, though Seed Money, which runs 71 minutes, captures Holmes' entire, somewhat enigmatic career in gay porn, despite the fact that Stabile admitted, in introducing the film, "We spent a lot of time in archives, digging through old films, trying to find footage of Chuck, which was not easy. I want to say that for all of us, but particularly for the gay community, these weren't histories that were recorded; the versions of our lives were not there, they weren't recorded in the mainstream media; when people died, things got thrown out. ... So I think with someone like Chuck, who was larger than life, as you'll see, I think we managed to eke out maybe four minutes of footage and maybe two dozen photographs. ... So if that's what we were left with of him, think about the things that are in your archives, the things that are in your basement or attic—things don't last. ... For all of you who have footage, who have stuff—you have picnics, you have parties, you have photos—find a way to preserve them, meaning take them to a place and have them converted; it's cheap. But do it now rather than later, because you never know."
The Seed Money audience was also treated to a "short subject" before the main feature began: Been Too Long At The FAIR, codirected by Charles Lum and Tod Verow.
"The movie is about the Fair Theater in Jackson Heights, Queens," Lum told AVN. "It is the last porno theater operating in New York City, and it has been operating as a gay porno theater for over 35 years, which makes it the longest continuously running gay establishment in New York City with the exception of Julius Bar. It's a beautiful old theater that was build in the '30s, and it's deco, it still has its original seats, but it's been added onto over the years to make more room for more porn."
The short, which runs about 15 minutes, chronicles the Fair Theater's place in its mainly residential neighborhood, and narrators reflect on the good times they had there—including re-creations of some of the hardcore sex that took place in corners of the theater, often mimicking what was being shown on the screen.
Also present for the event were former adult directors Gino Colbert and Terry LeGrand, as well as JC Adams, assistant stage manager for The Deep Throat Sex Scandals.
All in all, the evening was quite an experience—and we have little doubt that when the Outfest crew tallies the scores on the audience cards that were handed out as attendees entered the screening room, Seed Money will likely have received sufficient kudos to earn a prize as one of the best documentaries of the entire festival.
