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Downloaded from YTS.MX

(glass shattering)

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- Is there anything else I can get you?

- How 'bout another ginger ale?

- You sure you wouldn't like something a little stiffer?

- I got something stiffer.

- Oh, you're here already.

- Well I can see what kind of workout this is gonna be.

- I was just getting warmed up.

- Hi Kurt, I'm home.

(upbeat synth music)

- [Voiceover] Pornography's a very important part

of the gay culture, and Chuck was a very important part

of pornography.

He changed people's lives.

- [Voiceover] What he did liberated many, many people,

at least on a very basic, primal level,

to show that it was okay.

- [Voiceover] He came from Indiana.

He knew exactly what the story was.

He understood what people wanted to see.

He understood what they wanted to experience.

He understood what Middle America was missing.

- [Voiceover] Dealing in the gay porno world,

you deal with people they have no concept

of being suave and debonair.

That's where Chuck Holmes was different.

He seemed to have a class about him

that nobody else did.

- [Voiceover] He was very concerned about social change

for gay people and understood that he could play

a unique role.

- [Voiceover] He felt that he had to give back

or he would lose everything he had.

- [Voiceover] No one mind getting Chuck's money

but some of them minded where it came from.

He's a pornographer, we don't want that porno dirty money.

- [Voiceover] I think of Chuck Holmes very much

in the same way I look at Hugh Hefner.

Someone who admired beauty and wanted to share that beauty

with others.

- In the beginning, Chuck Holmes

was a great collector of porn.

That's how it all started, eight millimeter loops.

- It was extremely closeted

and they would have these little parties,

like a Tupperware party, in a Holiday Inn hotel room,

the customers would come.

They would buy them directly while they were there.

- [Voiceover] I was probably one of the first

in the business.

I was traveling the country, checking into hotels,

meeting interested customers,

and in one of my encounters back in Cincinnati, Ohio

I met Chuck.

He's, "Oh, I want to get into that business,

"oh I'd love to get into that business."

I said, "No, I don't think you really want to deal with

"the feds and postal inspectors

"and all the other shit involved."

"Oh, I want to get into that business

"and I want to make movies."

Six or seven months later he moved out to San Francisco.

(disco music)

(funk music)

♪ Taking a walk down to the bookstore

♪ On a lonely boring day for me

♪ Can't wait to see my latest boyfriend

♪ Under the covers waiting to be free ♪

- Chuck came out of the closet really fast.

I don't think everybody understood like,

come to San Francisco to come out,

but it was quite obvious and that many, many people

were uprooting and coming west and landing here.

Sexually it was on fire.

I was coming from the Deep South and I was just

blown away by how comfortable people were,

and how uninhibited they were about their sexuality.

♪ Spending all of my cash on jars of Vaseline ♪

- I think San Francisco when I came here

is gayer than it is today.

South of Market there was a bar called The Hungry Hole

that was glory holes where you put your ass through.

That's fairly radical.

- We'd all come from very oppressed backgrounds.

We went to San Francisco because we had had it

with the rest of America.

We wanted to be free, we wanted to have sex,

we wanted to be gay, we wanted to be queer,

we wanted to take a lot of drugs and party.

And porn was part of that.

Porn is freedom.

- The Supreme Court ruled today that if anyone wants

to read dirty books or look at dirty movies in his own home,

he may do so and it's none of the law's business.

The law still may regulate

the spread of obscenity in public,

but the court said a person has every right

to satisfy his intellectual and emotional needs

in the privacy of his own home,

that the law has no business telling anyone alone at home

what books he may read or what films he may look at.

- [Voiceover] Depending upon one's own moral posture,

this film festival

means either more tarnish on the city's growing

reputation as the smut capital of America,

or a major break away from inartistic pornography.

It would be difficult for anyone to deny, however,

that erotica by whatever definition

has become a commercial as well as cultural phenomenon.

Mike Lee, Eyewitness News San Francisco.

- I came to San Francisco in '72.

I went to the BAR which was relatively new

and I kind of admired the fact that a gay paper

was being published.

I walked in the door and said, "I'm a writer,"

and the editor, Paul Lorch, said, "What do you write?"

And I said, "Theater reviews with an emphasis

"on musical theater."

And he said, "I've got somebody writing those,

"would you like to review porn?"

(sultry music)

It was his idea that it was time to be legitimizing

gay men's sexuality in its on-screen depictions.

- The big innovation of the sexual revolution period

was theatrical, in other words, in mainstream theaters,

in movie theaters, or small storefront theaters.

The other way, and this was more traditional

and it goes back to the beefcake photographers,

there was a mail-order business and this was really

the main way.

- Mail order was selling directly through ads in magazines.

They would send in cash many times,

because they were afraid to even have a record

as far as a personal check paying for adult material.

- [Voiceover] Loops were the kind of short little scenes

shown in peep shows.

That was in fact the form that was used

in mail-order businesses.

- [Voiceover] It was a small little reel of film,

not well focused and not well lit, body hair

was not manicured, dirty feet, they were just thrilled

to get anything that was available out there.

There just wasn't that much product.

- [Voiceover] They were definitely headache-inducing

at all times because the camerawork was bad,

the lighting was worse, the editing was atrocious.

And the soundtracks just were painful.

You really had to want to see men having sex.

- [Voiceover] This is by some the gay technique called

LIA for Legs In Air.

Frequently meaning simply that an individual homosexual

enjoys such activity.

But where the name came from is clear.

- Chuck didn't like dirty feet.

That's why he got in business,

that's what he always told me.

Says, "I used to watch porn movies and see those

"goddamn models and they'd have dirty feet.

"I said, I gotta do it better.

"There's not gonna be a model with a dirty foot

"within 10 miles of a Falcon movie."

- A lot of them get into their industry

because of their sexual impulse and they don't have

much of a craft of an impulse towards the craft

of the medium they've chosen.

Chuck seems to have had a natural proclivity,

something in him, when he found himself a gay filmmaker,

he wasn't a bad one at all.

- Chuck started Falcon in 1970 out of his home.

It probably just seemed like the business to get into

in the early days.

It was becoming legal.

When you're the first or one of the first to do something,

you can make money on it.

- He had some friends who were in it, and he always said

that, "I'm smarter than those guys are,

"and they seem to be making a good living,

"so I know I can do it."

- [Voiceover] Chuck and I were very close.

At that time I was not only shooting for myself,

I was also shooting for Matt Sterling.

We met and he picked my brain, he talked me into

shooting all the earlier films.

We both put each other on payroll, started Falcon.

Right after Chuck and I had met and started things,

Vaughn came into the picture.

He was the person who went out and recruited

the mailing lists.

- [Voiceover] Just walking talking and one day

he said, "What should we call the company?"

I said, "I want a bird of prey."

He said, "Eagle?"

I said, "No."

Then he said, "Falcon," I said, "That's it,"

and that's the way we named it.

It was like just spitting in the street,

it wasn't no big deal, it was just three or four words

and it was named.

I said well I'm gonna set you up, give you all the contacts,

I want $5,000.

And a little percentage of whatever.

And we just started doing it.

- [Voiceover] This is when it starts.

When Chuck gets that mailing list is when you can first

start calling the adult erotic gay industry an industry.

- Chuck was the business brain behind everything.

He was the financial whiz.

John Travis was the camera man, he was the creative aspect

of everything.

He was the original pioneer.

But Chuck knew how to capitalize off this.

(upbeat funky music)

- [Voiceover] Sex sells.

It just blossomed overnight.

We just shot whenever we wanted to.

Was nothing planned or anything.

We weren't making films so people say oh,

they're having good sex or they're showing how

sex should be done, we were making them

because we enjoyed it, we loved it,

and that's what we liked doing.

- They're renegades, you know?

They're out there just shooting sex,

it's just it's real guys having real sex.

Right on the side of the road, (laughs)

in a boat, they're just going for it.

- Back then there were like seven models.

And every once in a while you'd find that eighth model

walking on Santa Monica Boulevard.

And they kinda all would swoop.

- [Voiceover] They'd have another business

and they would kinda attract models,

like Vaughn had a company called Rugby.

And it was a really slick little clothing store in Castro.

They printed a really nice catalog.

They'd take photographs of these guys.

Dick Fisk comes to mind.

But it was always like well, we have this other business too

that you could make some more money.

(upbeat funky music)

- [Voiceover] I just went on the streets

and picked them up in bars and cable cars

and walking and baseball fields, I just went out

and picked them up.

Once you pick up a guy, you know, you never know

what's gonna happen.

Is it gonna be sex or is it gonna be no?

Most time it was yes.

And of course (mumbles) to Falcon.

- Falcon consistently looked for better and better models,

and they always used beautiful locations

and outdoor scenes.

It was the consistency that the customers

knew if they were buying that brand

they were gonna receive a wonderful product.

It was a new era and Chuck really helped create that.

- [Voiceover] Chuck Holmes may have had the largest sense

of scope in the way in which he wanted his product

to get out nationally.

- [Voiceover] He was very smart at marketing.

He knew what he liked, he knew what sold,

he knew to continually build up his mail-order list

and the name Falcon.

- [Voiceover] Chuck was so competitive, he could move

at lightning speed, he could have an idea,

he could have it laid out in two days,

and he'd print it overnight and he'd be in the mail

while his other friends were still thinking about it.

- [Voiceover] Chuck was mass-production machinery.

He wanted to make 'em and get 'em done,

boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Get 'em out there on the marketplace.

- [Voiceover] Chuck in his early career

was able to attain success because he was able to deliver

in the brown paper wrapper the films that magazines,

that gay America wanted to see in a form that they could

actually accept it.

It was sensual, it was sexy, it was not smutty,

it was not low-life, and he was at the right place

at the right time.

(funky music)

- [Voiceover] Chuck Holmes and Falcon Studio translated

the sexual life of gay men in those large cities

into kind of a historical record.

- They were very post-Stonewall.

They were reflecting new gay freedoms.

The explosion of our lives and our visibility

on the streets, in the world, in bars that no longer

had their windows painted black.

You know, and the movies quickly reflected this.

The clone look, the lumberjack look, jeans, flannel shirts,

mustaches, facial hair.

It was the hippie look filtered through

a notched-up masculinity.

(doorbell ringing)

- We had a rich lexicon of our culture,

of the way we lived and what we wore

and what we thought about and how we dressed and talked

and filmmakers could put that out

and kind of recreate or document our culture.

- The porn stars were really heroes.

At a time where it was necessarily not easy to be gay,

and not easy to be out, not only were they like gay and out,

but they were like really, like,

putting it all on the table.

You know, they were kind of going the extra mile

for all of us.

- [Voiceover] Pornography was still technically considered

a kind of prostitution, it was sex for money.

Anybody who made pornography at this point in time

had not only to worry about being arrested under

prostitution laws, but still had to worry about obscenity,

vice squads, it was a dangerous occupation.

- Yesterday the Supreme Court authorized wider restrictions

on the exhibition and sale of obscenity.

Today a nationwide crackdown was underway.

- [Voiceover] The explicit portrayal of sex activity

has become a big, very profitable business.

The vice squad goes after it all.

- [Voiceover] What you have to understand

is that it was extremely risky.

I mean, people got busted for selling porn interstate

and went to jail.

They all hid, you know, they all had noms de porn.

At the first hint of a bust or any legal issue

they'd all pick up their teepees and run.

- [Voiceover] The entire industry was anonymous.

Neither the performers nor filmmakers

were credited or wanting to be known.

- [Voiceover] You had to be very careful.

No one knew where they were gonna shoot that day

until they were going there, it was a secret.

It was like the McCarthy hearing for making sex films.

- They were after Chuck Holmes for a long time

because he was noted for fisting movies.

- He was indicted along with Matt Sterling.

The trial was actually in Texas.

Chuck says is that they showed, I believe it was

an interracial scene.

(funky music)

The prosecutor said, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,

"this could be your son!"

And one of the women in the jury box threw up.

Chuck hired Michael Kennedy and Tom Steele.

These are people who defended the Chicago Seven.

They went to the judge in chambers and said,

"Judge, we feel like we're not getting a fair trial."

And the judge said, "Fair trial?

"Fair trial, Michael?

"Hell, not too many years ago we would've taken

"those old boys out behind the courthouse and hung 'em!"

That's what the legal climate was like.

Chuck delayed it, and he had it moved finally

to San Francisco.

Matt Sterling who wouldn't spend the money went to prison.

Chuck was lucky, but he was also smart.

- [Voiceover] I decided to discontinue shooting

for myself because I just didn't want to deal with

the entanglement of the feds and postal inspectors.

I let Chuck take the brunt.

- People said look, I'm tired, he would be a buyer

and buy these rights out, you know, it's like a card game,

people folded, yeah, I'll buy you out.

- [Voiceover] One reason why Chuck Holmes thrived

the way he did was that he was able to avoid going to jail

in a way that some of the other directors

were not able to do.

He basically built on that and acquired their materials.

(upbeat music)

- [Voiceover] Chuck loved to go skiing

and it would cost a lot of money, so one year he said

let's just shoot a couple scenes so we can write it off.

- [Voiceover] On the Other Side of Aspen

he was extremely involved, he wanted to get everybody

outfitted, a whole lot of my ski clothing

is in that original movie.

In those days they probably had sex at night,

I would imagine.

Either as a group or in groups.

- [Voiceover] They wanted to pull together

three of the leading performers of each generation.

Generations were very short at this point in time.

Of the gay porn performers.

They had Casey Donovan who was the very first famous

gay porn star, they had Al Parker from the second

generation, and then Dick Fisk from the third generation.

- [Voiceover] He shot a few scenes and he brought it back,

and he showed it to Matt Sterling and showed it to me,

and we said hmm, we can make this into something.

I said well, do we need an opening scene?

And Matt Sterling wrote the whole thing

and it just blew 'em away.

- Well there you are.

- Hi, how are you?

Been running.

- Wow, you're really sweating.

- Yeah, a lot.

- You have a good time?

- Yeah, I had a great time.

Been thinking about this little trip I took to Aspen.

- At that point they realized

that they had something a little different

than they had intended and it was really almost

a feature movie.

Once Chuck Holmes realized this, he decided he was going to

market it that way, and sent out a brochure,

asked for the people on his mailing list

to mail in reservations.

It was such a huge success that everyone

decided to imitate that.

It even was more important than anyone realized

at the time because once the video revolution occurred,

what you sent home was not a clip,

you sent out a movie with four scenes.

It produced the biggest success of his career.

(upbeat funky music)

- [Voiceover] Falcon Video pack number three.

- [Voiceover] When young businessman Craig Ryan

realizes that the cabbie who picked him up at the airport

is the incredible Al Parker, he gives into

the bearded stud's blatant come on.

Along a deserted country roadside, the two men

get naked and nasty together.

Even Parker's impressed when Ryan fucks himself

with his own thick cock.

- It almost happened overnight that all of a sudden

video was the big thing.

Everybody was buying machines, everybody was getting tapes,

people were sharing tapes, and film just faded out.

- Everything that was on eight millimeter

got transferred over so we kept getting additional sales

without having to manufacture anything new.

- I was getting like FedEx packages every Monday morning

like stuffed with pounds of cash!

I couldn't believe how much money there was.

I mean, it was wild.

We got advance checks here and advance checks there,

Chuck certainly took advantage of that, man.

He was on the edge of that.

- Before you even finish making your movie,

you would have 10,000 units sold at $35 a pop.

Falcon was noted for having more than that,

and his mail order was so incredible and vast.

He'd make a fortune any movie he made.

- [Voiceover] He didn't hit the door in a hotel

or on a cruise ship that he wasn't handing out $100 bills

to the help.

Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, everybody.

They knew he was coming.

Hello Mr. Holmes.

- One of the first things you did when you got with Chuck

is you got a Rolex, okay.

And he, Chuck gave me two Rolexes, a Tiffany watch,

a lot of jewelry over the years.

He started to refashion you in his image.

I had a Rolls Royce that towed us to and from

the clubs at night, and another one to bring

other boys home or to follow us shopping.

He told me, I'm gonna spoil you so rotten

that no one else'll ever have you.

And I was like, bring it.

- [Voiceover] I had a lot of famous friends.

And just with Chuck he really got a lot of kick out of it.

Steve Robel of 54 and David Geffen.

Hosten, I'd take him to Hosten's house.

He got so much joy out of that type of stuff.

Chuck wanted a new way of life, he wanted to be a big-shot.

(calm funky music)

- You take a look at the Falcon models

of 1980, '81, '82, they're all picture perfect.

Falcon had the most beautiful models there were.

They wanted the most perfectly beautiful faces

with the most beautiful bodies and the biggest dicks

possible, and they wanted them to do everything.

And then some.

- Long ride, you guys, did you check that pothole?

I just about busted my nuts coming over that.

- Well I think we should go inside

and get on with this initiation, okay?

- Alright.

- Yeah, let's go.

- If you really go back to the first eight millimeter loops

they're all hairy and with mustaches.

In the '70s that was the image that reflected masculinity.

I believe the story was Calvin Klein came out with his

famous billboard underwear billboard I believe in 1979

or 1980, and they were friends,

and that whole image changed.

It went from machismo to clean-cut.

(sultry music)

- [Voiceover] Calvin Klein had sent me a box of underwear,

100 pair Calvin Klein underwear,

and I liked the way the guys look in them,

and I started using them.

It was not planned, it was just something

I liked the way it looked visually.

- [Voiceover] Chuck was not a creative person at all,

he was a business person.

What Vaughn brought was the sheets and the art

and the pictures and the orchids.

Vaughn could sell it.

I mean, when you talked to Vaughn he's like,

"Oh girl, just imagine white crisp linens

"on tan skin, ooh, girl."

He'd sell to Chuck and Chuck could almost,

he almost hypnotized Chuck by that, you know.

"Ooh, girl, yeah, okay, do it."

He'd convince him to spend the money for it.

- [Voiceover] I picked the guys and I picked the clothes,

cut their hair, plucked their eyebrows and shaved them.

Scrubbed their feet and bleached 'em

so they'd have nice white feet.

Tanned them up and oiled them down

and then Matt Sterling saw it, he said,

"This is gonna change the way we shoot film."

- The thing I remember about Chuck and his productions

was he was really methodical about manufacturing

the fantasy.

And the guys had to be a certain kind of guy.

They were always very white and very muscular

and very tanned.

- Right at this time the formula is gelling.

Beautiful people in beautiful surrounding.

The models are getting more attractive

and there's some money rolling in where we can

spend a little more money on the productions.

They were all just beautiful people, the boy next door.

There was no dog meat.

(chuckles)

- He is the first producer that wanted to depict

good, clean, all-American fun.

Collegiate-looking guys, brand new socks,

pure white underwear.

It was a new look that kinda brought the industry

above-ground, and made it clean and fun

and wholesome almost.

- I think they were the first one ever

that you knew that that was a class act,

if you can say anything's a class act in pornography.

- The standards of everybody's movie were based on

Falcon movies.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Well you know it takes a lot to win

♪ Long nights spent at the gym

♪ We're on the way with a winning streak

♪ Working hard gonna reach our peak

♪ Can't stop now

♪ Can't slow down

♪ Well it's spring training look out

♪ We've got the will to win

♪ Well it's spring training yeah now ♪

- Hey, thank Phil for introducing me to Kathy last night.

Man, she was a real hot piece of ass.

- Over the half the guys in Phil's office

have been trying to get it on with her.

- I know she's hot for my dick.

- I could understand why.

I was just on my way into the sauna before you came over.

Why don't you join me?

You'd feel a hell of a lot better afterwards.

- What the fuck, why not?

Alright.

- [Voiceover] Falcon was just a reflection of Chuck.

His fetishes, his likes and dislikes with guys,

how he wanted gay to be portrayed in his movies.

Falcon was really just right out of Chuck's brain.

It was Chuck.

- He was very uber about masculinity and about boys

and about men and about keeping things male.

- He struggled with his being gay.

Not so much being gay or saying I'm gay,

but having a presence that was flamboyant

beyond being appropriate.

He never wore tore-off jeans, he never wore anything

that would give away the sexuality.

- You know, you really do have a hot body.

- Thanks, I try to keep it that way.

- Have you ever had a blowjob before?

- Two chicks have done it before, really turns me on.

- Have you ever had a guy blow you?

- No.

Have you?

- Well, maybe.

A few times.

Could I give you a blowjob?

- Sure, why not?

- The image of that masculine basic, plain, athletic man

was purposely created to combat the image

that society had of gay men in the '60s and the early '70s.

He was taking that fringe element and dressing it up

and cutting its hair and teaching it to speak well

so that the general population would overlook the gayness

and pay attention to the person.

To assimilate easier.

- They would get 'em out of the Midwest.

They would go to great expense, do model searches

through people all over the United States.

The smaller the town, wherever.

Fly 'em in, build 'em up.

(funky music)

- Falcon would put 'em through the car wash.

The idea being that you take somebody

and you beautify them and they work out and add

a little toning the body, the makeup,

and before you're done, you've got the perfect

car-washed Falcon star.

Seemed like in a lot of cases they all looked alike.

- Kevin Williams, Kurt Marshall.

That was the iconic look of Falcon.

That was the Falcon look.

Everybody was looking for the next beautiful blond.

(phone ringing)

- Hello?

- Hey Brian.

Yeah, how's it going?

What's going on?

Hey how 'bout coming over to party?

- Hey, my buddy Kurt's here with me.

You've never met him before, but he's real hot.

You'll like him for sure.

Anyhow, we'll be right over.

Bye.

- They would strip all the color out of my hair

and then just add a beige toner to it

so it would basically be stripped to white

and then we would just add a shade of ash to my hair.

And it was different versions of that,

flipped off to the side so it looked like

I had this big mop.

- I had to remain shaved and even though I made

two or three movies a year I had to be shaven down,

every day, and in San Franciso you try to get a date

(laughs) with no hair on your body.

(laughing)

- They had this very lockstep, lockdown concept

of what masculinity is, how it should be portrayed

and how it should be packaged, you know,

for poor Joe in Iowa that's gonna pay $69 for a VHS.

- [Voiceover] You know if I would bring in

a fabulous black model, a black model couldn't be

just in the cast.

There had to be a reason for the black model

to be in the cast.

The black guys were never to get fucked.

And the white boys were to never lick

the black guy's ass.

That's what he wanted.

- Hey.

- Hello.

- What brings you over here?

- (mumbles)

- Wait, what do you mean?

- Fuck my wife, fuck this tour, I wanna fuck you.

- [Voiceover] How does that depiction of sexuality

reflect gay men, what does it say about us,

what does it say about the filmmaker?

- I'm gonna fuck that lilywhite ass.

- Hey come on man, don't hurt me!

- This is a really personal medium.

They were filming their sexual fantasies,

filtered through what they thought

the little old man in Peoria wanted to be seeing.

- [Voiceover] What set Falcon apart was that very clean,

squeaky clean college student image.

That squeaky clean kid becomes Piggy when the doors close.

And it's that juxtaposition that made Falcon work.

- Chuck didn't care about anything but sex.

He didn't want to see kissing,

god damnit, they're kissing too much.

Make 'em fuck that hole and I'm gonna see it open up.

God damnit, they're talking too much.

Who cares about the goddamn seagulls

on the fucking beach in the water?

God damnit, this is bullshit.

- Little woop-do-woo and gets you right to the action,

'cause Falcon was very anal oriented.

Finger that butt and slap that butt.

A lot of butt, a lot of fucking.

Chuck would love it if on film

we could get some dildos going.

Like someone started talking about these artistic cocks

and he said no, they've got to look like aliens

plunging, plunging.

He was just ooh ooh ooh, honey.

(laughs)

Ooh.

He loved it.

- Chuck always said to me, he goes, "Honey, it'll stretch

"a mile before it tears an inch, believe me."

- [Voiceover] Chuck's surgeons would come to me

and they'd say, "What's wrong with him?"

He must have some psychological problem,

he must have something going on with him

that's really wrong.

I looked at myself and I looked at Chuck, and I said,

"There's nothing wrong with him, this guy's normal.

"He's got wishes and dreams and aspirations

"and all kinds of ideas that don't fall into the box."

- Having sex was a political statement,

because we were allowing ourselves the privilege

of having sex unfettered by straight people's

expectations of our sexuality.

(doorbell ringing)

(curious music)

- Chuck breathed a lot, a lot of energy

into his relationships.

When Chuck fell in love with someone, it was 110%.

As generous as he was, he would not,

he wasn't willing to allow the men in his lives

a lot of room to express themselves.

I had a complicated relationship with Chuck.

He was like my lover brother father buddy.

It was always extremely complicated.

Everybody knows Chuck as an extremely sober individual,

and who would campaign against alcohol.

He didn't like drinking at all, much less drug use,

but the truth of the matter is Chuck had quite a sexing

and drug episode in his life that I had engaged in with him

and it amplified itself.

And so there were a few years there that I didn't see him

all the time.

- I'm having a wild party at my condo at the Aspen Club.

Why don't you come on over?

- Sounds pretty good.

- Hey you guys, you won't believe this hot guy

I ran into on the slopes this afternoon.

I literally ran into him.

He's back in the back room, he wants to come up.

He's wearing a mask and you guys won't mind.

My friend.

- Hey Kurt.

Hey everybody.

Hey guys.

- [All] Hey, how are you, how's it going?

- [Voiceover] Every weekend they would have a sex party,

I mean every weekend.

And it would last until Monday.

So I'd have to come drag him out of the bed

on Monday morning to go to work.

- [Voiceover] Chuck was lucky if he could bounce a check.

He would spend all the he had coming in Falcon

chasing boys and going to New York, and drugs,

he spent up all the money, didn't have anything left.

Had to make payroll.

Had to pay the rent.

Did he have to make a new film, there was no money.

- [Voiceover] Falcon was in disarray.

They had orders that were six months old.

And at this time they were only making two or three

movies a year.

- [Voiceover] I just couldn't take it anymore,

it was just too much.

I was not going anywhere, and everything was just

going deeper so I left him.

- When I saw Chuck in the mid '80s, '84, '85,

I could tell that by his general appearance

that he was not too well.

- We left this meeting, we went out to the car,

we got in his Porsche and he said to me, he started crying.

They had diagnosed him with KS, he had KS on his ankle.

That's when I first became aware about his HIV status.

I'm sure he was positive long before that.

It was the first time that I had ever seen him frightened,

because he wasn't that kind of person,

but also that I really became aware that he was, you know,

fallible, you know, and that he wasn't just a superhero.

- I come from a generation that had a lot of sex

in very casual and free ways all over the town,

all the time.

(disco music)

Having to switch rapidly to a sex life

that was prescribed in any way was difficult.

We were used to being very freewheeling,

that was part of who we were, that was part of our

statement of identity.

So it was hard to put the brakes on.

- You could have heard a pin drop down the Castro.

Everyone pretended that they were never found

bottom-up on Dory Alley or any other seedy location.

People fled for the closets, they all ran back

into the closet, they ran back into straight relationships,

everybody abandoned being out in public.

This is how I saw it.

- I think that when AIDS happened it was devastating

to this business.

I think it scared the shit out of everybody.

When we found out how it was being produced

and of course when we then found out all of our actors

were dying, I mean I think it changed the industry a lot.

Some people went out of business I think because of that.

It pretty well got me where I didn't want to be

in the business anymore.

I didn't want to take somebody else's life.

- Oh man, it was just a very scary time,

and here I am still groveling down below at the camera

and stuff dribbling on me, it was like (chuckles).

- Chuck would never speak to it,

like what was going on in our community

in a general sort of way.

He would do it very quietly.

But if you got him on an incident like that poor guy

whatever, Chuck would break down and cry.

But he had kind of a rigid front around it otherwise.

(typewriter clacking)

He used nonoxynol-9, that spermicidal thing,

and he would have all these notices, you know,

precautions have been taken that maybe you don't see

and occasionally in some of the movies you'd see it.

You'd see somebody squirt something in,

and in fact many people would always say, "What was that?"

They'd think it was a bump or something, you know,

a booty bump.

- They were doing everything but using condoms.

They were dancing around that issue

by squirting nonoxynol-9 up the boys' butts.

- [Voiceover] He could recite a lot of studies.

It's 99% effective and blah blah blah.

Come to find out years later it wasn't.

Okay, 'cause what it did was it irritated or inflamed

the lining and it could actually contribute to conversion.

- I would talk to Chuck and I would say,

"You need to use condoms, Chuck, you have to use condoms."

- And remember that was one of the big

bones of contention with Falcon was they were sort of

the last ones the come on board with using a condom.

- The feeling was that the consumer wouldn't buy

a product that depicted condoms.

It was performers actually who kind of insisted on it,

but there was great resistance.

As there was among the populace.

- [Voiceover] I would hope that he would look around

and say I can't promote this, I can't contribute

the people looking at my movies and thinking

it's okay to not use condoms.

I did not let up.

- [Voiceover] This was very serious, it was a health crisis

so we talked about it all the time and I think

the only time we really wouldn't talk about

but when people started showing up very thin

and I just said, you know what, I don't feel comfortable

with this, I just can't do this anymore

and I don't feel comfortable doing it anymore.

- I had to argue with him about it.

He said, "We can't go to condoms, we go to condoms,

"we're gonna go out of business,

"people aren't gonna buy it."

I just couldn't convince him, so I knew what would do it.

Because Chuck, for all his being the grand wizard

was also a coward and I told him, I said,

"You know what, honey?"

I said, "Act Up's gonna come down here

"and you're gonna come to work one day

"and Act Up's gonna be standing outside that door,

"and you're gonna get called out on this."

And that, at that point, he decided

we could start using condoms.

(synth music)

- [Voiceover] Coming through this AIDS epidemic

I think a lot of people were afraid to have sex,

even safer sex, and porn was one of their

only sexual outlets.

- You'd be amazed at the amount of people

that have come to me, like, wow, you saved my life.

I think porn was a safety mechanism.

(upbeat synth music)

- Business was growing.

I told Chuck, I said, "We need to get people in here

"full time, we need to get serious about this,

"and stop being weekend porno hobbyists."

I had brought professional filmmaking people,

young kids who really had something to prove,

we really had ideas.

- I was Steven's assistant, Steven and I were very close,

he was like my big brother, and we would literally

pow-wow every day, ideas, scripts,

I was constantly involved with his everyday,

and I think Steven wanted me very close

so that we could produce together.

- [Voiceover] We added lines, the Mustang line,

the Jocks line, the Falcon International line,

a novelty line.

- The duplication lab ran 'round the clock,

24 hours a day, hundreds of titles were we duplicating

in just one day.

- It was at a time where people were watching more porn,

we were making movies like a production line.

We had just entered distribution nationally

and internationally, it was exploding.

We'd have $40,000 days.

(applause)

- [Voiceover] Chuck loved the gay porn world.

He loved being the hefe of the porn world.

- [Voiceover] I think he made a complete turnaround

of his life.

He had gotten sober and very serious about it,

watching his weight, health conscious.

- [Voiceover] He was the kind of image you would look up to.

You could tell he was a very successful man,

he carried himself well, he was real confident.

He had whatever he wanted.

(chuckles)

I mean, he owned Falcon.

- Incredibly lucky.

I started in this business sorta accidentally in 1972,

my friend Jack Nouveau, better known as Matt Sterling,

and John Travis down there.

We had just told (mumbles) to me.

(laughs)

Some of us go way back to the days of Peter and John

when there were no snakes and reptiles on the earth.

But be that as it may, we're all lucky to be here.

Some of the best have gone on before us.

I think we've got a few more licks in us

and I want to thank you, thank you.

(cheers and applause)

- He taught me so much about what to be

and what not to be.

You know, he was a very lonely person, very lonely.

And not satisfied.

Early on I thought money brought satisfaction.

Chuck taught me that that's not the case.

He lived on the hill and he had all the money,

and he was not a happy person.

We would travel on planes or go places

and people would say, "What do you do?"

"Videotape replication."

And for most people that would be like, okay, great,

anyway, it's nice out isn't it.

You know, it would keep 'em off track.

And I would always question like,

what is videotape replication, what is that?

Making tapes.

Yeah, but what kind of tapes?

You know, someone's gonna ask you.

Well they haven't yet Mary, so quiet.

He was never really comfortable with what he chose

as his career.

- He had to test the water before

you told somebody what you were doing.

You know, it wasn't completely open.

He used to tell his society friends,

"I'm in the mail order business," and they'd say, "What?"

and he'd say, "Well I sell, you know, tchotchkes

and things like that," so people around town

used to call him Crystal Holmes because

she'd sell crystals and things like that.

For a laugh, they all knew what he did.

- I don't know if Chuck was proud to be a pornographer.

I don't think he was embarrassed by it,

it certainly afforded him a lucrative lifestyle.

I don't think that he ever felt accepted by society

because of society's negative feelings towards

the porn industry.

- [Voiceover] He would come through the main entrance

and all the officers were lined up.

It was like an ice storm came through

because each person would be like

doing something personal and then as soon as they saw him,

oh, hello Mr. Holmes.

- [Voiceover] He really, really cared about

everybody that worked for him, even though he was a tyrant

at the office and people were afraid of him.

He would storm around that office.

If he was in a bad mood and he came into that office,

a paperclip on the floor could send him into a flying rage

of monumental proportions that shook the ground

that that office was on.

- Guards, him.

- Oh no, no, no!

- He had that type A personality and he never felt

like he achieved enough.

- [Voiceover] We had gone to see Eva Peron's tomb.

Chuck came home and she's gonna build a mausoleum.

Chuck Holmes is gonna build a mausoleum for himself,

and I said, "Why?

"Who's gonna come see it?"

And we had this discussion he says oh I'm gonna build

ooh, green marble and ooh, ooh, ah, I'd say,

"No one's gonna come to see it,

"you're gonna be dead and gone, except for a handful of us.

"We don't have kids."

He turned the corner later on and realized that he could

donate money and that would give him a living legacy.

It was very important to him that people remember him.

(upbeat music)

(whistles blowing)

(cheering)

He got involved in politics first and foremost

because he needed to protect his business.

He was really politically motivated around

we couldn't have these goddamn republicans in office

because I'm gonna go to jail.

(cheering)

I think I saw everything change,

and I think it changed for many of us

was the promise of Bill Clinton becoming president.

We needed a president who would speak about AIDS,

who would say the word AIDS, who would maybe come

to our defense and perhaps our rescue.

That's when I saw him really begin to contribute heavily.

He really was very, very shy about getting into it,

and when he met Vincent Fria and (mumbles)

and a couple other people, they encouraged him,

saying your money's as good as anybody else's here,

and we need you.

You're a good leader, you're a good organizer,

you can talk people into things that nobody else

can talk 'em into, you can get people on board,

we need you.

And when he finally got that message, my God, it was on.

Because he had self-doubt around it.

I think that he was always frightened by,

or he was frightened by that someone was gonna

return his check.

- I'm Chuck Holmes, I'm from San Francisco,

and I'm glad to be here in Washington.

This is the first time I've ever marched for a cause

in my life, I waited a long time, 48 years almost

and I'm here and I'm glad to be here.

The spirit's very high, everyone's very motivated

and yet very civilized.

I know those people, it's not rowdy, it's very safe.

We're just glad to be here.

I hope America wakes up and gets our message.

- He was part of an emerging, very elite,

successful group of gays that had taken it

upon themselves to really immerse themselves in politics

and use their power and wherewithal

to advance gay candidacies and gay issues.

- He was one of those guys that just melted into the crowd,

took everyone in, made 'em feel welcome.

He could sit next to anyone and have a conversation

about anything and really what he did was

never really the subject of the conversation.

- Chuck and I met in a very particular and singular

capacity, I as a volunteer fundraiser,

he as a very generous donor.

(applause)

Chuck's name was at the top of the list of donors

and so it was my job to, of course, get to know

who this individual was and make him my friend

so I could continue to encourage his significant

contribution to the Human Rights Campaign.

- [Voiceover] Chuck, how do you feel about this weekend?

- Very excited about the weekend,

it's a big part in our movement for our equal rights

for gays and lesbians, and I expect a million people

and hopefully we'll turn the tide for the country,

or begin to turn the tide in a big way.

- [Voiceover] You're a big supporter of

the Human Rights Campaign Fund?

- I do the best I can.

(laughing)

- [Voiceover] And who are your friends here?

- This is Steve (mumbles) co-chair of the board of directors

of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, Melinda Cuthbert,

board of governors of the Human Rights Campaign Fund,

and Tim McFeely our executive director.

- The depth of his generosity made him

a significant player.

Chuck was a strategic thinker, certainly had an opinion,

always had an opinion,

and was very welcome as a board member

of the board of directors.

- Chuck had the reaches to get to

the David Geffens of the world,

the Jim Hormels of the world.

He would pick up the phone and say hey Jim, it's Mary,

and that was Chuck's favorite thing

and he'd get $100,000 out of him like that.

(snaps)

- Chuck was a full-service activist.

He loved to go out and be the Great Gatsby

and have a good time and hit the town

and go to countless parties.

He at the very same time was working and being focused

and he understood the power he had

and he wanted to apply it in a concentrated way

for as long as he could.

That his talents and wherewithal would allow.

(applause)

- I'd watch him at these events,

I'd hear people like Angelo Alioto,

people who were running that year.

You gotta meet him, he's got money, he's got money.

Shake his hand, meet him, meet him.

God, crazy, you know.

And Chuck lived off that.

You know, he had made it.

It fortified whatever negative impression

people would ever think about his business.

Lot of the people that were his close friends

who were big in the political arena

were his good friends, he loved them a lot

and they loved him back, but there were a lot of

other people who were just hangers-on.

- A lot of the people at the Human Rights Campaign

and other organizations he belonged to

thought of him as just a person in porn

who made a lot of money.

(applause)

And I think Chuck always knew that part of the reason

these people enjoined him was partially the money.

- There wasn't so much an issue with HRC

and taking money from Chuck.

Where a lot of the issues came in were in the candidates

that we gave money to.

So some candidates chose not to accept funds

knowing that they were coming from Chuck Holmes

because of his relationship to the gay pornography industry.

One of the first openly lesbian candidates to run

for Congress was Tammy Baldwin, and I remember

a bunch of us in San Francisco putting together

and hosting an event for her, and his check wasn't accepted.

I mean, it was later given back.

(cheering)

- Let me say a few words about this tremendous victory

that's happening all across this country tonight.

Our community was there, this is the first time in history

that any presidential candidate

asked for our support openly.

They've always wanted our money,

they'd prefer it if it could pass sort of secretly

but Bill Clinton was proud to have our support.

Some of the most prominent people in our community

were there with Bill Clinton,

President-Elect Bill Clinton, excuse me.

(cheering)

- He gave major doning level to see Clinton

before he was elected and they wouldn't allow him in

because of what he does for a living.

And that crushed him, I mean, that really,

I remember he came home from that trip

and all he got was a little glass thing,

you know, and he goes, "Well, all I needed

"was a fucking glass trinket.

"I couldn't even see the goddamn president."

- I knew that some prune-faced people

might have thought twice about wanting to

connect up with Chuck, but it was so full of hypocrisy

because everyone I know has been very happy

to enjoy his hospitality and of course Chuck ran

a legal, legitimate business.

You know, the community slowly has gotten over

its own homophobia, perhaps.

- This is the 1998 gag reel.

This is one of the few shots where you get to see me.

The old man's been let out of the barn one more time.

No, I didn't want to tell them

that you've made my office into a mushroom growing ground.

Where they just keep me in a dark shed,

but that's the truth.

(dramatic piano music)

- Chuck worked, he was a workaholic,

he worked all the time, he would say, "I'm ram tough,

"I'm the original ram tough model and they broke the mold

"after I came along."

And it was true in many ways.

He was not, he was not sickly.

Now this is somebody who had early on

a lot of health issues, he was diabetic,

he had high blood pressure, HIV, he had a liver that,

in the end is what failed him.

- A lot of the early HIV therapies were very, very toxic

and had the possibility and probability of liver disease.

I think he was run from pillar to post

with all the magical therapies.

His anxiety and his basic personality forced him

to go to that leading edge if you will.

People with liver disease tend to ride along for a while

and then just plummet.

- He had chronic hiccups, all day, all night.

And the only way to stop them was to inhale amyl nitrate.

You're talking about a six foot three, six foot four man,

very lithe and lanky, now having a very tight belly,

just from distention, not from fat.

Walking around hiccuping.

(hiccuping)

All day.

- They wanted to remove the spleen

which would stop the hiccups, and I remember

the day he went in for the operation,

the doctors came in and they said,

"We are not gonna do this operation, you will not survive.

"You will not come off the table, you're in no condition.

"Stop everything, go home."

- We used to call him Mare, because it was French for Mary,

you know and he use to say, "I'm the old gray mare."

It was a term of endearment so if we really wanted to say,

say oh Mare, that's how we talked to him,

and it just made him kinda misty-eyed

when we called him Mare.

When he was passing away, those last few weeks

he was in the hospital, I got to tell him several times

I said, you know Mary, we fought hard over all these years

for a lot of things, and I have to tell you

now that I've been in business for myself

is that you were usually right, and he was.

- [Voiceover] It's strange how people die.

I got a call from his houseboy.

He was very ill, said Chuck was expecting a visitor.

Stan, his distributor.

He got up that morning, got dressed,

he started feeling a little tired so he said

he would lay down.

- I remember this long, dark hallway to Chuck's room.

The door was closed, and that's rare,

and I thought this is weird, so I opened the door,

and as I opened the door, I see all these people

in a V facing him in his bed.

And he was in black sheets, pale white,

and as I walked through the door, he goes (inhales).

One breath, I'm not kidding you, it was one breath.

And I see all the blood drain out of his face.

He's dead.

I hold his hand and I sat there and I just said to him,

I said, "Chuck I just want to thank you for everything

"that you've done for me, and I just love you so much."

And it holds me up thinking that when you see on TV

that people float up when they die and look down,

that he might be looking down on me.

(crying)

And that was when this little bitch came out the bathroom,

was hiding out in the bathroom, wanted to hear

my conversation, and I was like, one of the money hangers,

like one of these people who was there just hanging on

for his wealth, like he probably got all the cats

and the dowry and then gave the cats back

because he got the money and ran.

All these people were just sucking him.

And so that was it and then I walked out of the bedroom

and I walked in the living room and everyone's talking

about the paintings and where they're going

and what they're doing and who's gonna get this

and who's gonna get that and I'm like, whoa, you know?

You fucking assholes.

He's not even fucking cold, and you guys are all fucking

dividing everything up.

Falcon was a glass castle.

It was not a reality.

After he died, the glass castle shattered

and all the air from the world came in.

- He was incredibly secure and he was as secure

as he was vulnerable.

He was filled with enormous self-love

and with enormous self-loathing.

He forgave immediately, and he carried a grudge forever.

He wanted to control everything

and he knew he had no control.

And he always doubted, let's say that he knew

he was a success, but he kept waiting for someone

to come and tap him on the shoulder, and say,

no, no, it wasn't meant to be you, you weren't supposed

to be the success, out, you're the impostor.

- [Voiceover] I read the headline in the January 31st issue,

"Center to be named after Falcon Studios founder,"

And I was filled with disgust.

It is no wonder that right-wing advocates

and the Christian movement consistently criticize

and damn the GLBT community when by this action

it justifies their claim that we are all about sex.

So he contributed a million dollars toward the center.

Big deal.

I for one will not contribute another dime.

- There were some people who thought

Chuck Holmes was buying respectability,

but you'll always have those prudes

who can't face up to the fact that people have sex,

and didn't think that a person who made his fortune

in the sex industry should have his name put on

a public building.

I think it's good that the Chuck Holmes name

is attached to a business and that people have to confront

whenever it comes up that that money

and the honor being given to him is going to a person

who was involved in gay men's sexuality.

That's good.

- [Voiceover] Just think of the numberless people

that walk in the building or have already

and will in the future and I think it's important

to create more than a Wikipedia paragraph, perhaps.

- What we brought, and what this business

continues to bring is a gay connection

to people who lead private gay lives or closeted lives

out in the Midwest, people who have families

or for whatever their circumstances are.

I got a letter from an elderly woman.

She said please take my husband's name off your

mailing list, I thought now I'm gonna get it.

And she said I'd like to thank you for all the years

of enjoyment that you brought my husband.

He was on your mailing list for 10 years

and bought all your movies.

He two years ago moved to the nursing home,

took all his movies with him.

This is a woman who had nothing in common with us,

no investment to be kind, but she so loved her husband

despite something she couldn't understand

that she was gracious in the end.

That was a wonderful moment for me, and I thought,

we reach more people like this than you know.

- The one thing none of us should ever, ever forget

is this, the image of that young man

making his way to San Francisco in search of strength

and dignity and self-esteem,

and because of his own life, Chuck never, ever forgot

the need for each and every one of us

to do all things to make a better life in this country

and in this city for young gay and lesbian people.

And I think what we all know in this room today

is that a young gay person could do very well

to grow up to be Chuck Holmes.

(cheers and applause)

(funky dance music)