Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story

Late in the documentary "Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story," a speaker at the porn producer's memorial service lists some of his many contradictions. It's a well-chosen clip; if anything, the film illustrates and underlines how Holmes' internal struggles powered and propelled him, enabling him to carry out a fight to fulfill a need for gay Americans at a time when gays were still essentially criminalized -- and so was sex of just about any sort other than missionary-style mixed gender coupling.

Holmes resisted the notion that to be gay meant being flamboyant or effeminate or any of the other stereotypes. He co-founded Falcon Studios back in the days of 8 mm short films (basically peep shows for the home audience), but Holmes took the medium in another direction: Toward the well-groomed, smart-looking, athletic, and mostly-white "college boy" type. His movies were several cuts above the typical adult fare, which tended to be poorly lit and not very well shot. (One especially funny tidbit is a claim as to how Holmes was goaded into making classy porn because he was disgusted at the sight of guys with filthy feet having sex.)

Suddenly, with Holmes creating the sorts of fantasy that "middle America" -- such as his own point of origin, Indiana -- longed to see, porn had acquired a semblance of production values. "It was a new look that brought the industry above ground," notes one of the movie's many commentators, which includes a host of Falcon staffers, gay icons (John Waters appears, and so does Jake Shears), porn stars, and others.

With the advent of home video, Falcon led the way in creating and marketing feature-length adult films. This helped make Falcon a huge success, and made Holmes rich. It also gave Holmes the access and influence he needed to pursue political activism -- something he did, we're told, as a means not only of doing some good in the world, but also out of sheer necessity. (What if Clinton had lost in 1992? Would Republican lawmakers have destroyed Holmes' business? What would they have done to GLBT rights and other forms of social progress?)

"Having sex was a political statement," Bay Area Reporter porn reviewer John Karr tells director Michael Stabile's camera. That's a mantra as old as gay studies, and so is the history that follows: The terrifying onset of the AIDS crisis, which sent gays back into the closet, and entrenched the market for porn even more deeply (people were afraid to have sex, so they lived vicariously). The reverberations of AIDS are still felt today, in controversies around laws requiring porn actors to use condoms; at the time, Holmes was resistant to the idea of equipping his models with rubbers, believing (as many porn producers still do) that consumers wouldn't want to see them. Even Holmes saw the light, though it took the idea of ACT UP descending on his studio to spur him to that new point of view.

Eventually, Holmes became a major contributor to political and social causes. The film includes photos of him with the Gores and the Clintons, dutifully notes his contributions of the Human Rights Campaign, and takes a bemused look at the outcry that surrounded the naming of a building associated with the San Francisco LGBT Community Center after him.

What a guy: Holmes not only re-shaped the "gay look," but walked the walk of true gay power, presenting sex as something worthy of celebration and demonstrating that participation in politics isn't selling out -- it's making your voice known in what is, at least nominally, a democratic process. It didn't hurt that he had the cash in hand to back up his ideals.