Julia St. Vincent & the Legend of John Holmes

By Christian Shapiro

Before the advent of home video and cable TV, few porn personalities had made an impression upon the public at large. Linda Lovelace, as the star of Deep Throat, had risen to the stature of Tonight Show punch line, and Marilyn Chambers, due to well-publicized fallout from her pre-XXX association as a model for Ivory Soap, achieved a noteworthy notoriety. The fame of both these women was thoroughly eclipsed by the unlikely renown of John C. "Johnny Wadd" Holmes (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4).

At the start of the 1970s, Holmes had been a hick kid from Ohio with a dick longer than a schoolhouse ruler. By the early 1980s, when he became enmeshed in a brutal, cocaine-fueled multiple murder in the Hollywood Hills, "Johnny Wadd" was the most celebrated adult performer in America.

Relatively few of the housewives across the land had actually seen footage of the Wadd's mighty inches in action, but most of them knew what it meant to be "hung like John Holmes."

Within the ranks of the peep-show and Pussycat Theater cognoscenti, Holmes had taken on legendary trappings. His riches, his education, his martial arts prowess and his devoted fan base of beautiful, rich, powerful and extremely generous women were the bare bones of a mythological mystique that came to overshadow even the towering reality of his magnificent unit. Unlike the unfathomably huge penis, the Holmes persona was built largely upon illusion.

Groundbreaking blue-screen director and producer Julia St. Vincent (Picture: 1) had as much as anybody to do with establishing the Holmes legend. Julia was on-set for most of Holmes's defining series of "Johnny Wadd" private-eye films, which established him as the first leading man of cum-shot cinema.

The young St. Vincent is assumed to have fallen under Holmes's seductive sway. At the age of 25, Julia created a hybrid of reality and fiction with Exhausted (1981), a film she produced and directed. Exhausted purports to dig into the career of the world's foremost porn icon, John Holmes, with action interrupted for documentary interviews of Holmes, his cast mates and crew members.

In the film, Holmes coolly chain smokes and spins biographical tall tales and self-aggrandizing fables into the camera as, off screen, Julia prompts him with questions to his origins, philosophy and accomplishments.St. Vincent intended to intertwine reality with fantasy in her movie, but she had no way of knowing just how fantastical Holmes was being.

Most of John's more outlandish and self-serving contentions have long since been dispelled, but still Exhausted stands as a definitive document of a complex, conflicted man thrust by a purely physical fluke into a limelight that he was ill-prepared to survive.

Mainstream director Paul Thomas Anderson extensively mined Exhausted for authenticity and inspiration when preparing to shoot his breakthrough paean to the classic era of porn, Boogie Nights (1997). Boogie Nights also directly references Julia St. Vincent's work, duplicating several scenes from Exhuasted shot for shot.

Exhausted holds up today as well as Boogie Nights does, and has recently been released on DVD with a commentary track from St. Vincent and several other luminaries from porn's golden age. This infatuated portrait of a flawed icon can be purchased at http://www.excite-dvd.com/exhausted.html.



How did you meet John Holmes?
Well, it's tough for me to go back that far, but I think I met John during the filming of the movie Tell Them Johnny Wadd Is Here or Liquid Lips, which were back to back productions. That may have been in 1974. I was working in the office as a file clerk for my uncle who owned Freeway Films and Phoenix International Films, along with the theatrical distribution company who put out posters and trailers for nearly every adult-film company in the business at that time. John was running around in the background looking like a defender of evil, shooting them up and all that. I was a kid working for my uncle on summer vacation.

Was your relationship sexual? If so, you must have been aware of John's size before having sex with him. Was the extraordinary heft an allure or an obstacle?
John was a very alluring type of guy, and he liked to work on things for months and years at a time if necessary in order to get what he wanted.

What is the secret of successful pleasurable sex with a man whose penis is as big as Holmes's?
Try not to get into the personality behind the man; it's usually filled with a lot of pride and egotistical insanity.

What private aspects of Holmes might surprise those who are familiar only with his public persona?
John was silly and extremely possessive. In addition to that, he was a tortuous psychopathic liar and torturer. I would imagine that people can understand him and suspect these things, but there was so much promotion to counter that, I even perpetuated it myself. In reality it wasn't pretty. Contrary to popular belief, John was not someone who got mixed up in something by mistake. He gravitated toward it, he was curious about it, and he ended up where he did out of that curiosity.

I think there was a point when John was overwhelmed by the amount of rejection and lack of respect that he got from the industry, but you have to remember that he was demanding and spoiled rotten by that point. His contribution was not that terrific for anyone in the business to become endeared to him. He was constantly a thorn in the side of those who hired him, and then swore to never do it again.

The entire nature of the business anyway was one of trying to get rich off the least amount of investment. He was on the wrong side of the camera to place himself in any other position, and he made no concerted effort to change his plight. I hate to say such things about such a nice guy, but he really ended up being nice only when he was sleeping, and since he was pumped full of cocaine and free base most of the time, he didn't sleep much.

Was there a period in your relationship with Holmes when you were oblivious to his faults? If so, how did that happen?
Yes, I believed that John was rich, and he never was. It's a misconception that the entire industry perpetrated about adult film stars at that time. John made $1,000 a day when he was shooting on major films, the rest of the films paid him measly amounts, like $200 a session. If you add that up, it only comes to about $50,000 a year. An average to good salary at that time. Further to that, John preyed on those of us who were younger and not wiser. Without having benefit of any experience in the real world when I met him, It took me nearly two years to realize the extent to which he was personally flawed and insane. I know that others, especially his widow, will counter this, but the truth is that John was an unstable insane personality, high maintenance. And maybe he matured along the way by the time he got to his widow, but when I knew John he had many faults that crept out through the cracks of reality and could not be denied.

Aside from your chronicle of John Holmes, what are your proudest achievements in the XXX world?
Absolutely nothing really. I was a board member of the Adult Film Association of America at the age of 25, and I ran with the biggest industry people of the day. I was present on all filming of the Johnny Wadd series and worked behind the scenes on a whole lot of sleazy nudie films of the day, things that Lee Frost and Dave Friedman were doing, stuff that is now considered some kinds of masterpieces. It's funny. What they really are is a bunch of horny, perverted squirrels making films behind one-way mirrors and on the couches in their offices. Then they sold them like they were big deals, like imported from Denmark. In my day, we only made two or three films a year; so I can't say that I had "achievements." I just had a lot of fun doing things around my little town.

In what ways has being a woman hampered your progress in being taken seriously behind the XXX camera?
Well, when I did it, I had the extra handicap of being a child. I was 24 years old at that time. But no, I had the money and the talent to pull it off, on whatever scale I did back then; so I was actually respected. I think if you look at that one brilliant concept [Exhausted] 25 years later, you have to say I did a good job. It was memorable, and it is still alive. Even if it was an amateur production, it was a marketing masterpiece.

How has being a woman made your XXX career easier?
I was able to get credit when I made my film from camera, crew and labs, and favors and protection because I was well liked, the "baby" of the family so to speak. I started that film with $2,000 and raised $16,000 to get it made. At that time, the average film cost was about $40,000 in that caliber of film, you know, excluding the loops and Swedish Erotica stuff. I doubt that I would have gotten that credit if I was a man.

What drew you to the hard-core sex-flick business?
My uncle's cash and my sick obsession with fitting in. Another case of arrested development.

Will you chart your progress through the ranks?
I started as a file clerk in 1971, a gofer. I became a bookkeeper in 1974. In 1979 I was a secretary and film booker. In 1981 my uncle died and left the company to our family. ... There was no one else to run the company; so I was basically it. I became President of Freeway Films in 1980 and made my first film in 1981. I made my millions and left the business shortly thereafter.

What are your favorite types of porn, and what do these do for you?
Good old-fashioned sex, smooth silky stuff.

Who are your favorite porn directors, and what do you enjoy about them?
Anthony Spinelli did some of the best movies of the day when I was watching porn. I'm not watching it anymore, and I'm pondering this question as if porn is an art or as if someone made A Beautiful Mind or Lord of the Rings or something. No one has yet to make a porn film of this type of artistic caliber that I am aware of, so I'd have to say that I don't enjoy much about them at all, and I don't really have any favorites when it comes to directors. If I was watching, I'd be doing that either not caring what the directors had created, or because I knew the director. At this point, I know nothing when it comes to this subject.

What about the guys of hard-core? How do they stack up against John? Do any of them make the cut?
I don't watch porn, but I will say that Ron Jeremy stacks up in that he has stayed on top for as long as he has to represent. He puts himself out there in the action and gets things happening. He is a good guy actually, warm and personable. Even though he has done some nasty shit in his day, I try not to hold that against him. As far as anyone else is concerned, there are no other names synonymous with porn; so they don't matter much really in the larger picture. On the other hand, I get the sense that you want something juicy here, like can anyone cut it as the big huge guy that John was in the physical realm, and I haven't seen anyone; so I guess they just don't stack up at all.

What are the most telling changes in the porn marketplace as it has evolved in the past twenty years?
The single most telling change would have to be the fact that we did not have reality TV shows with porn stars on them, or porn stars on TV at all. The opportunities today seem quite abundant compared to 20 years ago, but the one thing missing now is the theater. Believe it or not, that was fun. Finding out if your movie will make it, if it's a blockbuster, if anyone watches it.

In the same breath, it's hard to define a single movie now that stands out as a memorable film because the films today are all one-day, next-door-neighbor, wonder films. They just don't have the budgets in the film anymore. Now it's on the actor/actress. No one anticipates the arrival of this year's blockbuster in porn.

All it is now is more and more and more small, quick shoots to flood the market. There is no "public" event, no major opening like there was years ago. But the vehicle for sales today is so much greater than it was back then. We didn't have an internet, or actually didn't have DVD and hardly had video. When I left the business, I cut the single largest deal with Caballero for $75,000 on video rights. Now I imagine the rights to a film like mine would be substantially more marketable. To cable, to DVD and to other markets that were unheard of.

The one thing that I wish would have happened then was this reality TV stuff and talk shows. We didn't have that.

Is it easier or harder for women to work as creative decision makers behind the cameras in XXX now?
I have no idea about now. I guess the world has evolved. If you have a brain and pull it off with the money, who cares what gender you are? All the things that people have to say about men or women being better is bullshit. The fact is that you can do whatever you want to do and make it wherever you want to make it. It's all in your mind if you think it has anything at all to do with gender.

Is there anything about innovations in today's XXX that makes you long for the old days?
Yep, most everything. You can't go back in time, and back then things were tough. Most of the people who now run the greater porn companies were mere low-life back in the day [laughs]. Many of them I wouldn't dream of associating myself with. They were the slime of the slime. Some of them were just gofers and production assistants, and others were people not to be trusted.

Now these same guys are like the most known and knowledgeable historians and business people of porn. It's funny, because back then, we hung in different circles. It was a good thing for me because I was protected by that. There are very few of the good guys still alive and in the business. In fact, I can really only think of one or two.

And I'm not saying that there are not some good people today, but things now have become so broad and so mixed in with weirdness that the whole scene is all about being the weirdest and no longer about being the sexiest or the best at production values or the art.

We were striving to make our films appeal to women and couples. I'm not sure what they are doing nowadays, but when I hear of series called things like "Butt Freaks," that just isn't something that we were doing back then. We had a kind of motto to disguise our lusty sex films. When you unwrap them and boil it all down, I guess they are all the same thing, but we made an effort to elevate the business into an art. Now it's a free for all with no art necessary.

How accurate, in your estimation, was the movie Boogie Nights (1997)? What did director P. T. Anderson get right? What are some things he might have missed?
I loved Boogie Nights. Most of those with whom I've spoken will say that it was not really like that, and that is utter bullshit. I was there, on the production, distribution end, and it was exactly like that.

Maybe there aren't that many still living to be able to affirm that, but in reality we did the things that were done in Boogie Nights, and PTA was right on with his depictions.

He was superb in his casting, and in his story emotions. Nothing to this day can touch that as a historical reference to what actually took place behind the scenes of the porn business. I can't really say enough about it.

What he totally got right was the scene with Julianne Moore where she is on the bed freaking out on cocaine. That was entirely so realistic, I felt like I was having a flashback.

His casting of Burt Reynolds and the attitude he carried was completely correct, and the way that he portrayed the love in the family was just as it was then. He even got the child molester right.

The violence in the last scene spoiled the riches for me, because I felt is was unnecessary, gratuitous. This was out of context for the rest of the movie. But I don't want that comment to detract from my feelings on his work.

I appreciate very much how insightful he was in his depictions and understanding of the family nature of the business. It's too bad, but it really doesn't exist today the way that it did back then.