![\"Seed](\"http:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Seed-Money-Title-Card.jpg\")
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Documentary on Falcon Founder Hits the Film Festival Circuit<\/strong><\/p>\n Several years ago, filmmaker Michael Stabile embarked on an ambitious project \u2014 a documentary on Chuck Holmes, the founder of Falcon Studios and a significant force in the gay rights movement in the 90s. While this wasn\u2019t a Falcon project, we were thrilled to participate. Many at Falcon still remember Chuck, now fifteen years after his death. We talked to Stabile about the project, which premiere in San Francisco on June 21<\/a>, and in Los Angeles on July 13.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Director Mike Stabile<\/strong><\/p>\n Not many people, even Falcon fans, know about Chuck Holmes. Can you give us a quick idea of who he was?<\/b><\/p>\n Chuck was essentially the godfather of the gay porn industry, a sort of gay Hugh Hefner. He founded Falcon Studios in 1972, shortly after it became legal, and quickly focused on creating an incredibly high-quality product, and distributing it across the country. He was very smart, and very serious about giving gay men a vision of themselves that they could be proud of. Later, he became very involved in the gay rights movement, was on the board of the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, and very involved in fundraising for the Democratic Party. Even today, his name is on the gay and lesbian Center on Market St. in San Francisco. But of course, none of that was without controversy.<\/p>\n Chuck Holmes<\/strong><\/p>\n What inspired you to make Seed Money?<\/span><\/p>\n The contributions that gay porn made to gay culture, particularly in the 70s and 80s, were incredible \u2014\u00a0and yet they\u2019ve been largely forgotten. Shortly after director Matt Sterling died, in 2006, that my producing partner Jack Shamama and I started talking about the fact that these histories were disappearing. Jack was working at Falcon, and would ask questions about Chuck \u2014 the mysterious founder \u2014\u00a0and people would tell the most amazing stories. There were photos of Chuck on his yachts, in his mansion, with Bill Clinton and Al Gore. We pretty quickly realized that there was more to this than just dirty movies. So I called up Ben Leon, who was directing for Raging Stallion at the time, and asked him if he wanted to film some interviews. And that was how it started.<\/p>\n Who were you able to talk to for the Seed Money documentary?<\/b><\/p>\n We interviewed about fifty people all together: old Falcon stars like Jim Bentley and Zak Spears and Tom Chase, directors like Steven Scarborough, John Rutherford, and Chi Chi LaRue, and people who were friends with Chuck, like Jeff Stryker and John Travis. And of course, people who loved Falcon, like director John Waters and the Scissor Sisters Jake Shears.<\/p>\n We all love Falcon films, but you\u2019re positing that they\u2019re more than entertainment.<\/span><\/p>\n You have to remember that in the 70s and 80s \u2014\u00a0really, until the late 90s \u2014\u00a0it was VERY hard to find positive representations of gay life in the mainstream media. We were all murderers and victims, destined to sad and lonely lives. Falcon was really instrumental in creating an alternate narrative for gay men. It was the original gay independent film, except that it went out across the country. For gay men who were lonely, or living closeted lives, those videos gave a picture of gay life that was out and unashamed, it was VERY powerful. And purposeful. I think of them as the first \u201cIt Gets Better\u201d videos. And then, of course, pornographers were very involved in the gay rights movement.<\/p>\n What do you think made Falcon stand out?<\/b><\/p>\n Well, to begin with, Chuck was an incredible porn fan. He really knew what he liked, and had a sometimes dictatorial approach to quality. Falcon was always the standard-bearer for porn. In those early days, there was so little porn to go around that anything would sell. But Chuck wouldn\u2019t stand for it. And I think even more importantly, he was a businessman. Most of his competitors liked making movies, but didn\u2019t have the vision or drive Chuck had.<\/p>\n Was there anything that you left out?<\/span><\/p>\n We didn\u2019t get too deep into Chuck\u2019s personal life, in part because it was hard to do without Chuck being alive to tell it. So we don\u2019t really get too deep into his relationship with (Falcon Star) Kurt Marshall because neither is around to tell it. There was very little footage of Chuck \u2014\u00a0these were people who really ran from the cops in the early days, and have a life long fear of photographs. So we focused instead on his work, on his effect, on Falcon.<\/p>\n I know there his financial contributions were controversial. Were political people willing to talk with you?<\/b><\/p>\n Some were \u2014 particularly San Francisco politicians. But we never got much of a response those who worked in national politics, even though he was close to many of them. We do have some great footage of him with Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy, and some photos of him with Bill and Hillary Clinton, but I think Washington is still fearful that taking porn money is too scandalous to admit.<\/p>\n How has the response been?<\/b><\/p>\n It\u2019s been incredible. We\u2019ve screened the film at about a half dozen smaller festivals. Boston, Toronto, San Diego, Turin. And the response is always the same. People come up after and say \u201cThis man had an incredible effect on my life, and I knew nothing about him.\u201d It was such a struggle to make the film, so knowing that we\u2019ve done something for gay history means a lot.<\/p>\n Want to know more about the film or find out when it\u2019s screening near you? Head to www.chuckholmesdoc.com<\/a> to find out more, or click here<\/a>\u00a0for a list of upcoming screenings with links to purchase tickets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Documentary on Falcon Founder Hits the Film Festival Circuit Several years ago, filmmaker Michael Stabile embarked on an ambitious project \u2014 a documentary on Chuck Holmes, the founder of Falcon Studios and a significant force in the gay rights movement in the 90s. While this wasn\u2019t a Falcon project, we were thrilled to participate. Many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":11624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2,453],"tags":[817,1396,1397,18,635,1212,1398,1306,1314,245],"class_list":["post-11510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogroll","category-special-features","tag-chi-chi-larue","tag-chuck-homes","tag-documentary","tag-falcon-studios","tag-jack-shamama","tag-john-rutherford","tag-mike-stabile","tag-seed-money","tag-seed-money-the-chuck-holmes-story","tag-steven-scarborough"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Seed-Money-Title-Card.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pauedl-2ZE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Seed](\"http:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Seed-Money-Stabile-Headshot.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n![\"Seed](\"http:\/\/blog.falconstudios.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Seed-Money-Clinton-and-Chuck.jpg\")
\nChuck Holmes with Hillary and Bill Clinton<\/strong><\/p>\n