The narrative of America is littered
with entrepreneurial opportunists spotting a gap in a market and filling it
with the right product at the right time and changing history. Yet Chuck
Holmes will probably not feature in any school syllabuses any time
soon. As his right time was 1971 San
Francisco, and his right product was hardcore gay pornography.
First sold as 8mm ‘smutty’ loops featured
out of the back of a catalogue and then as feature length films sold on
VHS. Chuck founded Falcon Studios with a
passion for sex, and men and an eye for business.
Falcon Videos became a sort of historical
record of Male American (homo)sexuality post-Stonewall. In the 1970s, the look du jour was the ‘lumberjack’ – plaid shirt, dirty feet, body hair
and mustache – whereas after the famous Calvin Klein billboards of the early 1980s led to a much more
collegiate, shaved clean-cut skinny-man look.
The films aesthetics (and the fantasies that they depicted) were moving
with the times.
Then came the dreaded 1980s and the AIDS
crisis. The fear of the disease devastated
the business and led to people ‘running back to the closets and straight
relationships’. Just as young gay men,
such as Jake Shears from the Scissor Sisters, were having a group of
alternative and proudly ‘out’ gay male role models on screen, they soon become
a montage of obituaries, victims of the virus.
Yet during this health crisis, pornography became an alternative to
unsafe sex – a sexual release practiced alone.
In the ‘90s, possibly in response to his
own HIV diagnosis, Chuck became increasingly political and began to fundraise
for candidates and causes, including such high profile figures as Al Gore and
the Clintons. He tried to integrate with
the power elites across California, but because of the nature of his business
few would accept his money.
A huge array of talking head interviews
suggests that Chuck was beloved by those around him, and deeply respected as a
filmmaker and a political activist. And
his legacy is as one of Gay America’s most fascinating unintended historians.
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