June 8, 2015 | The Biz

A tribute to Falcon's Chuck Holmes

Seed Money -- currently making the gay film festival circuit --  is a must see for anyone interested in gay porn history or even just gay history: as documentarian Mike Stabile explains, the two are linked.

Chuck Holmes was a closeted Indiana boy who escaped to San Francisco in the 1970s and  eventually founded the first major gay porn studio, Falcon. He made iconic films, first distributed as  mail-order 8 mm loops and later by VHS tape. And he made a lot of money, some of which he used to move the gay rights movement forward,  though his financial gifts were not always wanted. 

Almost all gay men were in the closet to some extent in the early 1970s. For a gay rights movement to exist, homosexual men had to start believing that they were normal and deserving of equal rights, far from the characterization imposed on them by society as psychologically bent or criminal.  When they started seeing movies like the ones Holmes made, either in porno theatres or in their own homes, it opened their awareness of a larger gay culture. Seeing Falcon men in plot-driven films as masculine and confident individuals could be much more than just sexually gratifying; it could be positively transforming. 

According to Seed Money directory Mike Stabile, “I think that Chuck saw his contributions to gay politics as his lasting legacy, but to me it’s those early films that may have had the biggest impact on gay culture. They were the original “It Gets Better” videos, giving gay men across the country a vision of gay life that was unashamed and unapologetic in its sexuality”

The film includes interviews with gay porn stars as well as famous directors, who started off with Falcon, but eventually started their own studios: Steven Scarborough (Hot House), Chi Chi LaRue (Channel 1 Releasing) and John Rutherford (COLT). There are also bits from celebrity gays like John Waters and Jake Shears, who testify to the effect Falcon had on them.  

Holmes died of AIDS in 2000; in a fitting tribute, the San Francisco LGBT Centre is named after him. 

Seed Money plays at the Castro Theater in San Francisco on June 21.