His actors could be seen out and about in the bars and clubs, and the Falcon look fanned out organically from the soundstage throughout the Castro. Today, gay men often see porn as one-off clips on the Internet, but in his day, Holmes fostered a full-fledged studio that had a cohesive aesthetic. Seed Money evokes the era of sexual liberation, which was at its most heady in San Francisco, where Falcon Studios was located. In part, it was created through the visionary efforts of Chuck Holmes.” We shared a common bond over our sexuality, and I wanted to show how that bond was created. “I want to capture what Falcon meant to a whole generation of gay men,” says Stabile. I spoke with Stabile over dinner the night before he was to do another round of interviews for the documentary. But the film also takes a look at his financial role in some of his era’s defining political causes - in particular, he provided the seed money for the HRC (Human Rights Campaign). As the acknowledged king of a pivotal era in gay porn, Holmes is an important subject for historical assessment. Michael Stabile, a documentary film-maker, is in the process of making a documentary about Chuck Homes, titled Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story. As Holly Woodlawn, the Warhol-era superstar, says, “Any gay man who says he doesn’t like porn is a liar. He revolutionized the business, moving from mail order and theatrical distribution, then mail order to videocassette from one-off shoots with prostitutes to building up the first gay porn stars and from lean, mustached hippie-types to clean-shaven, preppier guys. Holmes had had a buttoned-down career before he entered the porn industry, and he used his business sense to his advantage - he was the hustler who hustled the hustlers.
In the 1970s and 80s, no porn studio flew higher than Falcon Studios, founded by the hard-driving entrepreneur Chuck Holmes. Adult theaters became centers of male-male sexual activity, screening gay porn for eager and often closeted audiences. Though erotic images of men have sold as long as pictures were for sale, court cases allowing images to be sent through the mail paved the way for films that showed men having sex with each other to gain a wider underground audience. The gains of the gay liberation movement in the late 1960s rode the back of a gay culture that, in part, came together watching porn.