Review by Amos Lassen
By: Amos Lassen
"SEED MONEY: THE CHUCK HOLMES STORY"
The Changing Gay Male
Amos Lassen
Chuck Holmes is a gay San Francisco pornographer who became a philanthropist. He was responsible for helping to change, shape and create a gay identity during the p...
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"SEED MONEY: THE CHUCK HOLMES STORY"
The Changing Gay Male
Amos Lassen
Chuck Holmes is a gay San Francisco pornographer who became a philanthropist. He was responsible for helping to change, shape and create a gay identity during the period that followed Stonewall. He was a founder of gay advocacy groups such as the Human Rights Campaign and the LGBT Victory Fund but then discovered that his money was wanted and welcome but he was not.
Holmes's porn studio changed the way gay men looked. If you can remember back to the 1980s and 1990s, the in-man was preppy, smooth, blonde and self-assured. This what we saw in gay porn. Many say that Holmes was the gay Hugh Hefner. He was charming and suave, a businessman par excellence, his taste was impeccable and he loved the best. The word no was not one that he used and neither was it used on him. He wanted to give back to the gay community-after all, they had made him rich and as I stated before, his money was welcomed but his business was a liability. I wonder if HRC would still be begging as much as do they do had they taken his money.
In 2002 when his name was installed over the San Francisco LGBT Center, people were outraged. The directors of the center called it insane even though they had accepted a million dollar bequest to the center that had fallen on bad times. They were afraid that the donation and the name on the center would cause right-wing allegations against the gay community and its obsession with sex. They did not understand the importance of what pornographers had given to the community.
They played a very important role in building the gay rights movement. Michael Stabile, the film's director tells us that he discovered, while working on the film, that or community owes a great deal to porn barons who risked their lives in order that we are able to live ours. In the 1950s the government of this country saw no difference in homosexual rights, manifestos, dirty pictures and gay erotica. All were against the law and using the postal service for distribution could and did bring prison sentences.
Pornographers provided an advantage to the liberation movement-they knew the legality of the restrictions and they had money to fight obscenity battles. Chuck Holmes was especially helpful to those who lived outside of the major urban centers. Because Falcon was such a well-established studio, he had a very wide reach and he was quite vocal about creating imagery that would make gay men feel proud of their sexuality. For many closeted customers in small towns across the country, those Falcon films brought gay life to them and for many they were as important as the "It Gets Better" videos of today. Pornographers also contributed in many other ways-they gave directly to the liberation movement, they lend resources, they educated audiences about Safer Sex during the AIDS epidemic and gave their mailing lists to new and struggling organizations such as HRC to whom Holmes gave a great deal and later sat on its board of directors.
As the liberation movement became more mainstream, pornographers became less and less welcomed. Checks were actually returned. Holmes kept his business in the closet even though he was a tireless worker for our rights. Even when he died, his name and money were considered to be stigmas. Michael Stabile, the director of this film says that the reason he chose to make this film was to give Holmes and the others the recognition that they deserve. He says that this has not been an easy film to make. Some people still see this a shameful mark against us and that it will hurt us politically. However, if sexuality is a source of embarrassment and we hide our history to keep good relations with our critics, then we have not yet hardly achieved the freedoms that we think are ours.
Appearing in the film are some very familiar names-John Waters, Jeff Stryker, Holly Woodlawn, Jake Spears, Chi Chi La Rue, Zak Spears, Jim Bentley, John Rutherford to name just a few.