Good Vibrations Magazine

Originally released in 1999, WADD: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes had its theatrical re-release in January of this year, and is making its way slowly through the art house circuit as you read this review. The film is a scrupulously researched documentary directed by Cass Paley, released by adult industry giant VCA Pictures. In a surprising — and shocking — number of ways, it leaves nothing to the imagination.

Paley edits together scenes from John Holmes’ life: porn, childhood home movies, dozens upon dozens of stills, and crime scene footage from the 1982 murder of four of Holmes’ friends, for which the porn star was tried and acquitted. Paley gives us the juicy bits of interviews with adult actors and producers, LAPD detectives, both of Holmes’ wives and his underage mistress, all in an attempt to put together a coherent picture of Holmes’ life. The trouble is, Homes never painted a coherent picture for anyone, and his life spiraled out of control as fast as the cocaine went up his nose. The interviews pieced together with subtle skill show that the people in his life clearly believed Holmes’ lies as much as Holmes did, and the story becomes a disturbing, wholly American cliche that paints an unnerving portrait of the adult industry.

An understanding of the time of Holmes’ rise to stardom is crucial in sorting out the tangled web that Holmes — and many others in the emerging porn industry — wove in the drug-fueled ’70s. Paley shows that time through interviews with producer Bill Amerson and publishers Al Goldstein and Larry Flynt. These interviews paint the picture of an industry on the cusp of an explosion, a time when adult films were made by people who thought their work championed the First Amendment. Actor Richard Pacheco soberingly adds that his generation at this time had a “take a pill mentality” about everything from syphilis to unwanted pregnancy. This was the beginning of the ’70s, and involvement in a porn film got you sent up for pimping and pandering, a three-year felony offense.

Everyone who participated in adult films at this time stuck together. They’d meet at restaurants and move to undisclosed locations for shooting. A film would be shot in a day, processed overnight and in theaters by the end of the week. Holmes was discovered by a guy who spied his dick in a poker lounge men’s bathroom. Holmes went for stills and his freakishly big schlong led his way into adult entertainment history.

That schlong seems to have been the main thing people remember about John Holmes. In fact, the documentary opens with a collection of soundbites where interviewees expound on the star’s large penis. Men and women — but mostly men — wax rhapsodic, saying things like “He was the king” and “He had this huge dick.” The scenes go on long enough to make the viewer wonder what the obsession is in the first place. C’mon, people, a hose is a hose.

In the middle of the big dick talk, Ron Jeremy self-consciously states, “Men want to see big penises.” Beautiful Annette Haven gives us a reality check when she informs us that Holmes’ 13-and-a-half inches could never get all the way hard. “It was like having sex with a big loofah,” she says.

John Holmes was cast into the role made for him, that of detective Johnny Wadd, in director Bob Chinn’s clever marketing ploy of the serialized porn film. Unlike today’s porn, the films were full of sex and violence mingling together, often featuring Holmes slapping women around and taking them by force, or subduing their boyfriends and having sex with the women right then and there. Directors and producers describe how they lied to the press about John’s past to hype the mythical exploits of their big-dicked stud, and Holmes took to making these stories up himself. He took these confabulations so seriously that he often believed them himself.

At about this time, Holmes was arrested for pimping and pandering. Rather than go to jail, Holmes turned informant. In the film, LAPD Detective Tom Blake describes how Holmes turned in actors, producers, directors, and even the films financial backers. “I loved working with him,” says Blake. “He made us the busiest investigators in LA.”

John Holmes loved being an informant. After playing detective Johnny Wadd, it’s clear that he believed his own bullshit. In the same way Ronald Reagan thought he was a star football player and served in the war, Holmes believed he was Johnny Wadd.

After much extolling of Holmes’ virtues, the revelation that he was an informant seems like the first chink in his armor. The myth begins to fall apart, and the documentary from that point onward is like a car crash in slow motion.

The stories of Holmes’ descent conflict, just like Holmes’ own bullshit. In a sense, the film begins to parallel the web of lies and myths woven around Holmes. The legendary super-stud’s failings are quickly exposed — and they were many, from seducing a fifteen year-old girl in a van on the beach to snorting coke and freebasing. But it gets worse.

His drug problem escalated to dizzying heights, and the lies grew more frequent than the truths. Then again, the industry professionals describe how excessive drug use was the norm. Still, Holmes’ exceeded the norm by anyone’s standards. He moved his 15-year-old mistress Dawn in to the house he shared with his wife. The coke, and later the freebasing, ruined his erections and made him impossible to work with. He turned to robbery, stealing from other porn actors and movie sets, selling the family china and racking up $48,000 on credit cards. He also sold drugs.

Before long, he was pimping his mistress to get coke, and, disgusted with the fact that she was “dirty,” would beat her when she returned. Stories of these nightmarish incidents are doubly chilling, mingled as they are with porn figures’ saying what a great guy he still was. Only Julia “Aunt Peg” Anderson paints Holmes as rude, unpleasant and insensitive.

Holmes wasn’t finished with his decline — we follow the story of the murder of his four drug associates and Holmes’ subsequent trial, followed by his being jailed for contempt of court when he refused to testify in the trial of another drug associate. But the documentary doesn’t let up here.

What’s puzzling is how everyone continued to buy Holmes’ lies. After he knew he was HIV positive, he claimed he had colon cancer and continued to work, flying to Europe to make more porn. He made it clear to his second wife, porn actress Misty Dawn, that he expected everyone in the industry to die of AIDS. And his first wife credits Holmes as being capable of exposing people to AIDS to get revenge. But then we get to hear Misty Dawn bleating, “But he needed the money… we needed the money.”

It’s a bold stroke for VCA to show the actor most associated with porn, the guy they call the King, in such an unflinching light. It’s a dark portrait of the adult world, eerily similar to Boogie Nights but from a less flattering angle. The viewer is left to draw his or her own conclusions at every step of the way, but what remains is a twisted icon of male sexuality — the man’s man who is actually your garden-variety American sociopath.

It surprises me to see the adult industry open themselves up for inspection like this in the new Bush era, where they will certainly be scrutinized and persecuted by a conservative administration.

But what the story of how John Holmes used people reminds me of, mostly, is an old saying.

There’s one born every minute.