I wasn’t around the first time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love a bi-curious hippie with a lit joint.

Jim Tushinski, the director of the excellent Peter Berlin documentary, That Man is still in production on Dirty Poole, about porn pioneer Wakefield Poole but it looks great and was worth showing to a bunch of degenerates accustomed to fast-forwarding and scrubber bars.
Gay porn has always been divided into two industries– one dedicated to long-form ‘features’ which exhibited theatrically, the other into one-scene ‘loops,’ which were sold through mail-order. ‘Loops’ are what we’re most familiar with these days — they began as short 8mm reels and evolved into the scene-based internet clips (cf. Randy Blue, Corbin Fisher or OnTheHunt.com) while features have almost disappeared (the modern day decedent is multi-disc DVD — like Raging Stallion’s Focus/Refocus or Michael Lucas’s La Dolce Vita).

Loops have been around longer, but it was features, like Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand which brought critical attention to the gay porn industry and which fought critical free speech battles for the gay community. Like Fred Halstead’s “LA Plays Itself” (now part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection), Poole’s early films (Clips from “The Bijou” below) — were reviewed in Variety and the New York Times, and were one of the first ways that gay men could see themselves in a non-tragic light. Features, in many ways, were themselves documentaries of gay men’s lives in the years that followed Stonewall.

Does it hold up? Can you still get off to it? In order to raise enough money to finish the documentary, Tushinski has remastered the original Poole porn movies and offering a remastered DVD of The Bijou to those who donate to the project. (C’mon, it’s a recession. Help a brother out.)

– Mike

Related:
Chris Ward Responds to Focus/Refocus Controversy
Gay Vintage Porn: Joey Stefano in ‘Plunge’

Is there such a thing as a butch theater queen? Sure, Jeff Stryker does a stage show every once and awhile, but director Sean Abley is upping the ante with “L.A. Tool and Die Live: A Pre-condom Comedy” a production of Joe Gage’s masterpiece of masculinity. The original, which features gruff daddy Richard Locke along with guys like Will Seager, Paul Baressi, Casey Donovan, is not only a porn classic, it’s also rightly a classic of gay cinema. The third installment of Gage’s “working man trilogy” (starting with Kansas City Trucking Co. and El Paso Wrecking Corp.) is phenomenal. And thirty years later, the late Richard Locke (above) is still the hottest bear I know (although old COLT Men like Steve Kelso and Bruno still give him a run for the money).

But to get to the stage, the director is looking to raise a little money. And to entice you, he’s throwing a little flesh — in the form of L.A. Tool and Die Live! star John Gale. (He’s hot, but I’m still stuck on Locke — more Locke pics after the jump).

L.A. Tool and Die Live! (via kickstarter.com)
El Paso Wrecking Corp (via NakedSword.com)
Kansas City Trucking Co. (via NakedSword.com)

– Mike

There are a few porn stars that have staying power decades later — Dick Fisk, Jon King, Chad Douglas, Joey Stefano, and Al Parker to name a few. For the past year or so, Jack and I (along with Raging Stallion director Ben Leon) have been in production on a documentary about the early history of the porn industry (we’ll post a trailer for the project shortly) and lately I’ve become obsessed with another one: Kurt Marshall.

Falcon exclusive Marshall, who dated Falcon Studios founder Chuck Holmes in the mid 80s, was, in many ways, the epitome of the Falcon style — blond, athletic, devilish. William Higgins once told me that the difference between Falcon stars and those cast by men like him, Matt Sterling and Jon Summers was that Falcon stars were “professional gays” and unrepentantly sexual.

Like so many other gay men in the 80s, Kurt passed away from complications related to AIDS, but it seemed appropriate to put him up on Pride in part because he was a stellar performer and in part because he was proud of who he was. I came across this quote in an interview from the mid-80s, and think that it’s even more true today.

“I think to be gay is to be blessed. We have so much freedom, so many choices. This isn’t our moment to party or to think we’re going to stay young forever…maybe it’s our time to find someone to be safe with…to be happy with…”

Happy Prides!

(More Kurt Marshall pics after the jump …)

More Kurt Marshall …
Kurt Marshall in Other Side of Aspen II (via NakedSword.com)
Kurt Marshall in Splash Shots (via NakedSword.com)
Falcon 35th Annual Box Set (via FalconStudios)

– Mike

So this is fun: Falcon just posted the 4th version of their little flash quiz game. Winners get a free two-week membership to FalconXXX.com.

So, how’d you do? I got all these questions right, but what’d you expect? Take the other three quizzes after the jump …

I’ve mentioned before that for the past year or so, we’ve been shooting a documentary about Falcon Studios founder Chuck Holmes. We’ve been slowly making our way through the living Falcon superstars to talk about what it was like to work with Chuck. Thanks to help from people like Steven Scarborough of Hot House and John Rutherford of COLT, we’ve had a fair amount of success. But given that few of the porn stars were using their actual names, and given that many of them had no connection to the industry other than a few films, it’s taken a fair amount of detective work. This is where I’m hoping you guys will come in.

Most importantly, I’m trying to track down Jim Bentley (above left) and Kevin Williams (above right), two of Chuck’s favorite models. I’d heard that Kevin Williams was living in South Florida somewhere, and that Jim Bentley was in San Francisco, but that’s about as far as I’ve gotten.

More memories … and clues after the jump.

Jim Bentley, Kurt Marshall and Brian Maxon (in Splash Shots)

Kevin Williams and Chad Douglas (in In Your Wildest Dreams)

Second, I’d love to know which Falcon models — and films — you guys are most curious about. I’ll chase them down (or try to, at least — anyone seen Dean Chasson hanging around Palm Springs?)

Third, if any of you worked with Falcon — or knew Chuck — we want to hear from you. Give us a yell or drop us a comment if you’ve got any leads. Drop us a line here.

– Mike

Related:
Vintage Gay Porn Stars: Kurt Marshall
Vintage Gay Porn Stars: Joey Stefano

Of all the people I’ve met working on this Chuck Holmes documentary, director John Summers was one of my favorites. He died yesterday morning in his North Hollywood home from an apparent heart attack.

Summers was one of the people most responsible for the Falcon look — he brought a style and class to post-Aspen movies that really set the studio apart. He claimed that one of my favorite of Summer’s movies, Style (1981) was the first porn where the boys were shaved. He also had Bruce Weber’s assistant Kyle Martin style the movie — clothes were brought in from Wilkes Bashford, hair was done, the feet were bleached and the 80s were ON.

Summers had come to San Francisco in the late 60s and ran a series of boy brothels with John Travis. Later, he, Travis, Matt Sterling and Chuck Holmes would become the founders of the industry as we know it. It was illegal, it was dangerous and to hear Summers tell it, it was a lot of fun. He was always behind the scenes (he never liked to be photographed) and always cooking up trouble (Vanity Fair once referred to only as the mysterious Black Buddha of Porn), but in my experience, always a pleasure to deal with. We shot an interview with him in March, and he’d call every couple of weeks to talk about bad Hollywood movies, money-making schemes, and the importance of high-quality mixed nuts. He loved art and orchids and preppies with big, big dicks. I’ll miss him a lot.

– Mike

Select Filmography
Style (Falcon)
Big and Thick (HIS)
Two Handfuls (Bijou)

While Al Parker was never able to get his foreskin back, I’m glad to report that some things from the 70s can be fully restored to their original gay glory. Radley Metzger’s sexploitation classic Score is being re-released in HD, with formerly deleted man-man sex scenes that were chopped from the original. (The movie, which is based on a Jerry Douglas play that originally starred Sylvester Stallone, isn’t the only porno chic revival these days — Douglas is directing The Deep Throat Sex Scandal at the Bleeker Street Theater in New York.)

Score, a story about a couple swingers on vacation in the European city of Leisure was part of the all-too-brief period of porno chic when everyone felt that hardcore sex and polite cinema were bound to merge. The trailer (after the jump) is closer to Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice than a 8mm peep show loop. Incidentally, Score was a big influence on director Travis Mathews, who’s I Want Your Love project has been getting so much press. Maybe the dream of integration hasn’t died …
(Excuse the women in it — it was 1972, and the men didn’t know any better.)

Score will be released later this month; Metzger will be on hand in LA on November 7th, for a screening of Score and a Q&A at the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax.

– Mike

What’s the best thing about vintage gay porn? Is it the lack of artifice? The lack of condoms? The sheer exuberance of the sex? The bushy bushes? The quaintness of film? Or the fact that they don’t have lines to read? Whatever it is, there are times when well-lit, digitally enhanced, MySpaced bodies don’t do it like their rough-and-tumble forefathers. Rick Donovan? Al Parker? Dick Fisk? Leo and Lance? Above, the always ready Roger, getting his gorgeous dick sucked while definitely not thinking about his Twitter.

Best of all, when you buy your unresponsive boyfriend a subscription to a site with vintage porno, he won’t get jealous. And he might even turn up the heat …

Vintage Porn (via NakedSword.com)

– Mike

Headbands! Tube Socks! Ironic Mustaches!

With the recent sale of Falcon, I’ve been looking back through their excellent back catalog and have started to feel like I’m looking at Cobrasnake photos of a pool party in a Brooklyn Dumpster. (Maybe it’s no surprise that American Apparel sells towels with gay porn stars on them.) With that, I present ten legendary style icons from the Falcon vault from the Mystery Skier in the Other Side of Aspen II (above) to pretty much anything with Dick Fisk.

Now put on Grizzly Bear and try finding your own.

Other Side of Aspen II
Other Side of Aspen
Steam Heat
Spokes II
Overload

– Mike

Bob Mizer, age 20 (image courtesy Wikipedia)

Vintage porn enthusiast Dennis Bell purchased Athletic Model Guild’s massive library of film reels and early gay erotic almost 10 years ago and has been working diligently since to properly archive a criminally neglected, enthralling piece of gay/porn history. Starting as far back as in 1945, AMG founder Bob Mizer photographed the male form under the guise of “physique modeling”, and although completely tame by today’s standards, AMG undoubtedly helped paved the way for the two-armed fisting scenes we know and love today.

Recently, Bell has turned to Kickstarter to help fund what he’s calling a dual-focused project: preserving and archiving AMG founder Bob Mizer’s photographic legacy through the Bob Mizer Foundation (a non-profit organization started by Bell), and then to produce a documentary about Mizer and the backstory of the restoration of his estate and work.

No doubt helped by a generous $5,000 donation from BelAmi founder George Duroy, he’s reached his modest goal of $8k but could still use your help (at the very least to offset Kickstarter’s somewhat vicious fees). It’s a worthy cause in an of itself (hello … split beaver, anyone!?), but the rewards being offered make things even sweeter: a pledge of just $25 or more gets you a digital inkjet print of one of Mizer’s images that appeared in 2010′s excellent Bob’s World: A win/win if you ask me.

Related:
The 1,000,000 Photos of Bob Mizer’s Athletic Model Guild (Kickstarter)
Athletic Model Guild Membership Site
Archive of stories related to Ahletic Model Guild (GayPornBlog)
Watch a selection of AMG’s movies (Nakedsword)

Joey Stefano. Once, the hottest star in gay porn. And one of my most enduring crushes.

We’ve been researching the history of Falcon Studios (now Falcon Entertainment) for a documentary on founder Chuck Holmes, and I have become fairly obsessed with the Falcon movies that I grew up with, before the internet. In college in the 90s, Jack and I would have to have to get movies from small porn stores with small gay selections — movies like Plunge with Joey Stefano. There was nothing gay-for-pay about the late Stefano who could suck a dick (and take a cock) like few gay men before or since.

The real fun in watching Stefano for me, aside from the amazing ass, is the Nomi Malone whoreyness after nearly a decade of Reagan-fueled shame. The aggressive sluttiness isn’t just hot, it’s also radically unapologetic about gay sexual desire. Or something.

(from Falcon’s My Cousin Danny)

More … Plunge (clips and pics via NakedSword)
My Cousin Danny (via Falcon Studios)

Mike

Related:

Joey Stefano: The Complete Gay Porn Blog Archive
Vintage Gay Porn: Cumlicious Jon King

Vintage Gay Porn: Nuts for Nuts

Vintage: The Complete Gay Porn Blog Archive

It’s a shame that in a blink of an eye I can pull up about three thousand photos of yesterday’s twink, but if I want a dirty photo of a gorgeous Jon King, I’m limited to a small handful. The creationists would have you believe the world has only been around for 5,000 years; the internet would have you believe the world began in 1996.

TheRandy Blue 70s-themed gay porn shoot last week got me thinking about King, who starred in about three dozen movies for Catalina and Falcon in the 80s. The kid looks he’s got a fake mustache, but I STILL FUCKING MELT every time I look at his Bambi eyes. Sure, his hair is equal parts Joyce DeWitt and Jane Velez-Mitchell, but I expect we’ll be seeing it in Williamsburg and the Mission soon enough.

I’m off to hunt down dirty magazines on Polk Street. In the meantime, enjoy a little bit of Jon after the jump …

The Best of Jon King (via NakedSword)

If anyone’s got some better photos, or hardcore gay shots that aren’t teensy thumbnails, let me know so I can post them.

– Mike

Related:
The Gay 70s: Randy Blue Gets Saved By the Bellbottoms

It’s a shame that in a blink of an eye I can pull up about three thousand photos of yesterday’s twink, but if I want a dirty photo of a gorgeous Jon King, I’m limited to a small handful. The creationists would have you believe the world has only been around for 5,000 years; the internet would have you believe the world began in 1996.

TheRandy Blue 70s-themed gay porn shoot last week got me thinking about King, who starred in about three dozen movies for Catalina and Falcon in the 80s. The kid looks he’s got a fake mustache, but I STILL FUCKING MELT every time I look at his Bambi eyes. Sure, his hair is equal parts Joyce DeWitt and Jane Velez-Mitchell, but I expect we’ll be seeing it in Williamsburg and the Mission soon enough.

I’m off to hunt down dirty magazines on Polk Street. In the meantime, enjoy a little bit of Jon after the jump …

The Best of Jon King (via NakedSword)

If anyone’s got some better photos, or hardcore gay shots that aren’t teensy thumbnails, let me know so I can post them.

— Mike

Related:
The Gay 70s: Randy Blue Gets Saved By the Bellbottoms

Joey Stefano. Once, the hottest star in gay porn. And one of my most enduring crushes.

We’ve been researching the history of Falcon Studios (now Falcon Entertainment) for a documentary on founder Chuck Holmes, and I have become fairly obsessed with the Falcon movies that I grew up with, before the internet. In college in the 90s, Jack and I would have to have to get movies from small porn stores with small gay selections — movies like Plunge with Joey Stefano. There was nothing gay-for-pay about the late Stefano who could suck a dick (and take a cock) like few gay men before or since.

The real fun in watching Stefano for me, aside from the amazing ass, is the Nomi Malone whoreyness after nearly a decade of Reagan-fueled shame. The aggressive sluttiness isn’t just hot, it’s also radically unapologetic about gay sexual desire. Or something.

(from Falcon’s My Cousin Danny)

More … Plunge (clips and pics via NakedSword)
My Cousin Danny (via Falcon Studios)

Mike

Related:

Joey Stefano: The Complete Gay Porn Blog Archive
Vintage Gay Porn: Cumlicious Jon King

Vintage Gay Porn: Nuts for Nuts

Vintage: The Complete Gay Porn Blog Archive

Is there such a thing as a butch theater queen? Sure, Jeff Stryker does a stage show every once and awhile, but director Sean Abley is upping the ante with “L.A. Tool and Die Live: A Pre-condom Comedy” a production of Joe Gage’s masterpiece of masculinity. The original, which features gruff daddy Richard Locke along with guys like Will Seager, Paul Baressi, Casey Donovan, is not only a porn classic, it’s also rightly a classic of gay cinema. The third installment of Gage’s “working man trilogy” (starting with Kansas City Trucking Co. and El Paso Wrecking Corp.) is phenomenal. And thirty years later, the late Richard Locke (above) is still the hottest bear I know (although old COLT Men like Steve Kelso and Bruno still give him a run for the money).

But to get to the stage, the director is looking to raise a little money. And to entice you, he’s throwing a little flesh — in the form of L.A. Tool and Die Live! star John Gale. (He’s hot, but I’m still stuck on Locke — more Locke pics after the jump).

L.A. Tool and Die Live! (via kickstarter.com)
El Paso Wrecking Corp (via NakedSword.com)
Kansas City Trucking Co. (via NakedSword.com)

— Mike

There are a few porn stars that have staying power decades later — Dick Fisk, Jon King, Chad Douglas, Joey Stefano, and Al Parker to name a few. For the past year or so, Jack and I (along with Raging Stallion director Ben Leon) have been in production on a documentary about the early history of the porn industry (we’ll post a trailer for the project shortly) and lately I’ve become obsessed with another one: Kurt Marshall.

Falcon exclusive Marshall, who dated Falcon Studios founder Chuck Holmes in the mid 80s, was, in many ways, the epitome of the Falcon style — blond, athletic, devilish. William Higgins once told me that the difference between Falcon stars and those cast by men like him, Matt Sterling and Jon Summers was that Falcon stars were “professional gays” and unrepentantly sexual.

Like so many other gay men in the 80s, Kurt passed away from complications related to AIDS, but it seemed appropriate to put him up on Pride in part because he was a stellar performer and in part because he was proud of who he was. I came across this quote in an interview from the mid-80s, and think that it’s even more true today.

“I think to be gay is to be blessed. We have so much freedom, so many choices. This isn’t our moment to party or to think we’re going to stay young forever…maybe it’s our time to find someone to be safe with…to be happy with…”

Happy Prides!

(More Kurt Marshall pics after the jump …)

More Kurt Marshall …
Kurt Marshall in Other Side of Aspen II (via NakedSword.com)
Kurt Marshall in Splash Shots (via NakedSword.com)
Falcon 35th Annual Box Set (via FalconStudios)

— Mike

So this is fun: Falcon just posted the 4th version of their little flash quiz game. Winners get a free two-week membership to FalconXXX.com.

So, how’d you do? I got all these questions right, but what’d you expect? Take the other three quizzes after the jump …

Of all the people I’ve met working on this Chuck Holmes documentary, director John Summers was one of my favorites. He died yesterday morning in his North Hollywood home from an apparent heart attack.

Summers was one of the people most responsible for the Falcon look — he brought a style and class to post-Aspen movies that really set the studio apart. He claimed that one of my favorite of Summer’s movies, Style (1981) was the first porn where the boys were shaved. He also had Bruce Weber’s assistant Kyle Martin style the movie — clothes were brought in from Wilkes Bashford, hair was done, the feet were bleached and the 80s were ON.

Summers had come to San Francisco in the late 60s and ran a series of boy brothels with John Travis. Later, he, Travis, Matt Sterling and Chuck Holmes would become the founders of the industry as we know it. It was illegal, it was dangerous and to hear Summers tell it, it was a lot of fun. He was always behind the scenes (he never liked to be photographed) and always cooking up trouble (Vanity Fair once referred to only as the mysterious Black Buddha of Porn), but in my experience, always a pleasure to deal with. We shot an interview with him in March, and he’d call every couple of weeks to talk about bad Hollywood movies, money-making schemes, and the importance of high-quality mixed nuts. He loved art and orchids and preppies with big, big dicks. I’ll miss him a lot.

— Mike

Select Filmography
Style (Falcon)
Big and Thick (HIS)
Two Handfuls (Bijou)

While Al Parker was never able to get his foreskin back, I’m glad to report that some things from the 70s can be fully restored to their original gay glory. Radley Metzger’s sexploitation classic Score is being re-released in HD, with formerly deleted man-man sex scenes that were chopped from the original. (The movie, which is based on a Jerry Douglas play that originally starred Sylvester Stallone, isn’t the only porno chic revival these days — Douglas is directing The Deep Throat Sex Scandal at the Bleeker Street Theater in New York.)

Score, a story about a couple swingers on vacation in the European city of Leisure was part of the all-too-brief period of porno chic when everyone felt that hardcore sex and polite cinema were bound to merge. The trailer (after the jump) is closer to Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice than a 8mm peep show loop. Incidentally, Score was a big influence on director Travis Mathews, who’s I Want Your Love project has been getting so much press. Maybe the dream of integration hasn’t died …
(Excuse the women in it — it was 1972, and the men didn’t know any better.)

Score will be released later this month; Metzger will be on hand in LA on November 7th, for a screening of Score and a Q&A at the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax.

— Mike

What’s the best thing about vintage gay porn? Is it the lack of artifice? The lack of condoms? The sheer exuberance of the sex? The bushy bushes? The quaintness of film? Or the fact that they don’t have lines to read? Whatever it is, there are times when well-lit, digitally enhanced, MySpaced bodies don’t do it like their rough-and-tumble forefathers. Rick Donovan? Al Parker? Dick Fisk? Leo and Lance? Above, the always ready Roger, getting his gorgeous dick sucked while definitely not thinking about his Twitter.

Best of all, when you buy your unresponsive boyfriend a subscription to a site with vintage porno, he won’t get jealous. And he might even turn up the heat …

Vintage Porn (via NakedSword.com)

— Mike