All language subtitles for Wadd.The.Life.and.Times.of.John.C.Holmes . 1998.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB

Man: If one respects...

what you do, what you represent
and how you speak,

how you carry yourself,

you don't have to be overly macho,
you don't have to be...

over-complimentary.

Gain her respect...
and that's treating her as an equal.

Don't bullshit her.
Treat her as a human being.

Treat her as you would
treat yourself.

As soon as you have
that respect from her,

she'll treat you
with the same respect that you show.

Then you fuck
the shit out of her.

John was
to the adult film industry

what Elvis Presley was
to rock and roll.

He simply was the king.

(woman moans)

He was the one and only king.
No one else measures up.

He was the king.

John Holmes was the biggest
male star that there was.

He wasn't that good looking, he wasn't
that smart, he wasn't that brave.

He just had a huge dick
and he could fuck.

I'm talking about a dick
from my elbow down.

John had multiple personalities.

He was very sweet and gentle.

John was a jerk.

I never knew John
when he wasn't doing drugs.

What actually was in his mind
as he saw four people slaughtered?

John had an extremely
low self-esteem.

He was an interesting man...
very sociopathic.

He back-handed me in the mouth
so hard that...

my tooth went through my lip.

Real deep.

He was proof that all men
are not created equal.

Thank God for John Holmes
or I wouldn't have a job this year.

We would say something like, "What do
you think you are, John Holmes?"

And everyone knew
what that meant.

Man: When they look at this industry
in a hundred years again,

his name and pornography...

it's the same.

Man: You can mention a lot
of porn stars from today's world

that the housewives
in the middle of America

wouldn't know
what you were talking about,

but you say "John Holmes"
and everyone knows.

He was a little boy with a big dick

that discovered a pot of gold
at the end of his zipper.

I asked him, "How long
do you want to do this?"

'Cause a lot of people
in the hardcore field wanted to get out.

And he looked at me and said,
"Until I'm dead."

As long as there's been film...
almost...

people have been wanting
to put sex on film.

In the early '60s,
the X-rated films of the time

were really "nudie cuties."

The other source, of course,

was the not-so-legal,
under-the-counter,

8mm black and white that people showed
at home and that kind of thing.

That was the starter of it.

Man: It was 8mm
stag movies we called it then.

At that time
they were very hot...

and very,
very much in demand.

Perry: Oftentimes you'd be jumping
on trampolines or in a swimming pool,

and most of it was bare breasts
and you couldn't show pubic hair.

That was the days when you wore
the black socks, the fake moustache...

- you know, those days.
- Nowadays it would be on TV...

probably on the Disney Channel.

The changeover came in 1969,

when it went to hardcore.
Everything changed at that point.

Man: I made the very first
hardcore films in the United States.

I immediately went to jail.

And there was a lot of big money.
People couldn't believe

that we actually showed insertion.

We actually showed the penetration
and oral copulation.

We actually showed that.

People couldn't give up their money
fast enough to see these.

I was shocked out of my life
to see real sex on the screen.

Man: People actually saw themselves
the first time having sex...

and they...
"Oh, this isn't weird what we're doing."

So it was a really interesting
sub-culture, 'cause it was like...

like being in a place everyone else
wanted to be but you were there.

But you were young
and you didn't know you were there,

so it didn't matter to you,
'cause it was fun.

It was a nice way to have a lifestyle
that wasn't working at a bank.

What had been the life-threatening
plagues of syphilis and gonorrhea

that had scourged humanity
for two, three... 5,000 years,

were done.
You take a pill.

Unwanted birth?
Have an abortion.

Easy and accessible.

There was no reason for my generation
to not fuck around.

As a result of what's come to be called
"The Sexual Revolution,"

adults felt more willing to experiment
with viewing films like this.

This became something
that any adult,

if he or she were were of a mind to,
could go see.

I thought... and we all did, I think,
when we were doing those things...

aside from making money,

that we were doing
something to further...

freedom of speech
and expression.

Man: I think the '70s were a good time
to be in the porn business.

The '70s obviously followed the '60s...
the hippies, the war in Vietnam.

There was real belief that making
a fuck film was a political statement.

At that time, back
in the 1970s and early '80s

the production of porno films
was a felony

which you could serve up to
three years in jail for this crime.

The vice squad in Hollywood...

they were pretty organized,

and it was a legal battle
the entire time.

But, you know,
it was an amazing thing how

the producers, directors
and the actors stuck together.

They helped each other.

The cops
were the bad guys.

What they do
in the production of films...

they will tell the actors
and actresses

to go to a restaurant
at a certain time and wait.

Vosse: And we would meet
at various places, get in the car,

go somewhere where we'd
have another car stashed,

get in that car,
go to a different place,

no one knew where the location
was going to be.

They would try to follow us,
they would try to catch us.

I was arrested for conspiracy
to commit oral copulation

because I was directing the film,

and that made it a felony rather
than a misdemeanor,

which everyone else... the actors
and actresses would be charged with.

Yeah, we were subject
to go to jail a lot...

for different things.

The thing that saved us

was a young attorney who took up
the First Amendment...

the right, you know,
to free speech,

and started working
with pornography cases.

Man: What the Founding Fathers
tried to do

was ensure that there would be
free speech, whatever its form,

and I think that's the beauty
of the First Amendment.

It is so...

simple.

It simply says
we need to be free,

we need to be able
to express ourselves in all ways,

and government shouldn't step in
and take that away from us.

So it covers everything.
And it'll cover computers

and all the rest of it
as time goes on.

I think it's the most important
amendment to the Constitution...

and it gets its vitality
and meaning

from the unrestricted right
of free choice...

not necessarily my right
to produce adult material,

but the right
of some individual out there

that may want to have access
to this material.

Two individuals came on the scene...
one was Betty Paige,

and the other was John Holmes.

And what happened was

Betty Paige became a personality,
if you will,

associated with the adult world.

John Holmes became a male personality
associated with the adult world.

Man: I think John Holmes is
the single most recognizable name

in the history of the business,

and he of course took the industry
from the back alleys of Hollywood.

Flynt: John Holmes,
his name is synonymous

with the adult
entertainment industry.

I think his participation

was legendary
and always will be

for decades to come.

Man:
He was the first.

And you can't replace the first,
even though somebody can come along

that could be even better.

But once you lay the first foundation,
you're the guy it's all built on.

And again, John was...
he had the package.

That's why he could never...
he will never be topped in that sense.

What was so fascinating
about John Holmes

is the fact that he had
this gigantic penis.

He was a skinny guy
with this huge schlong.

No matter how you slice it
when it comes down to porn,

that's what people really seem
to get a kick out of.

You can have all the good looking guys
with the body-builder physiques...

guys in the audience want to see
this gigantic penis

going into some cute
little blonde or brunette.

The reason he became an icon,
first and foremost,

is the obvious anatomical factor.

It was the size that made him
a household word

more than anything initially.

That's what I saw when I looked
at John Holmes...

when you see some
of the early films that he made,

and you see his face and he's really
like, kind of cute, you know?

He's like a little kid almost,
you know?

He's oh so gangly.
He's like a geek, you know?

Like just a geek,
but he's got this big dick.

When I first saw his cock,
my reaction was...

I didn't know what to do.

I was like, "There's no way that thing's
getting up in me."

Wow!

Woman:
As... as the joke goes,

if John ever got fully erect,
he'd lose consciousness

from lack of blood to the brain,
because his dick was that big.

And it's true that his cock
was never hard.

It was like doing it
with a big soft of kind of loofah.

You know, it was actually
131/2 inches long,

'cause John measured it many times
for many people that didn't believe him.

Man: I was always fascinated with Johnny
because he had everything I didn't have.

He was hung like a horse,
I'm hung like a squirrel.

He had what
all the guys dream about...

we're all size queens,
size kings.

Would I trade my little,
meager Jewish cock for his cock?

Yeah, fucking A, I would,
and I'd throw in my kid too...

and a house and three ex-wives.

The man said you had a big gun
under there... I had no idea.

When you saw a woman who was working
with John for the first time...

her excitement, her fear,
her anxiety

was palpable and unbelievable.

- How long is that thing anyway?
- Ohhh...

a little bit longer than yours.

Probably about...

14 inches, give or take
a couple of inches maybe.

This was the moment
in a woman's life

when she found out if bigger
was better or not.

There was no other test
to be taken.

This guy's a bull.

I mean, he's hung
like 14 inches long.

Pacheco: Every woman who made
a name for herself in this business

sooner or later was ritually enlarged
by Mr. Holmes.

It was a magical moment
that first time.

Some women just found God
and were gone.

- (moaning)
- They had reached the promised land

and their scenes
are magnificent.

Then there was the other crowd...

their faces more looked like
somebody who's a...

it's a constant
medical kind of exam,

where they're wondering
when the pain's gonna start.

And those are kind of odd.

And then there's
the last grouping that went,

"Get this out of me! Now!"

But they were magical to watch,
no matter what happened.

And Holmes leaves us this legacy.

I'm not sure why people were so
fascinated with the size of his penis,

I just know that they were,

and I know that it was a great
marketing "tool," if you will.

My name is John C. Holmes.
I am something entirely unique.

Why unique? Because I've got
the biggest cock in the business.

It's almost like John Holmes
had this big, huge, perfect penis

that everybody remembered...
and plus, he wasn't threatening.

He didn't swag... he tried to be
swagger, but he was a joke.

He was the kind of guy
that men liked

because he was kind of goofy
and loving

and soft inside...

and everything but some
dick-waving stud

that he really was
the ultimate example of.

I mean, he was the colossal king
of all penises...

that most people had ever seen
in their life.

And the fact that somebody discovered
him and made him a star

in an industry that was on the cusp
of worldwide recognition,

was just, you know,
the right place at the right time.

Amerson:
I first met John in 1969,

while casting for some still work...
magazine stuff...

at the "Crossroads of the World"
on Sunset Boulevard.

We had an open casting call.

It was towards the end of the day,

and in walked this skinny,
really skinny, kid,

with somewhat of an Afro haircut,

and he didn't look like the type
that we could use.

My partner said, "Go and take
a Polaroid of him anyway.

Have him go in the back room
and take his clothes off,

take a Polaroid, say, 'Thank you
very much,' and that's the end of that."

We went in the back room,
he undressed and turned around.

I had a Polaroid, and I looked,
and I said, "You're going to be a star."

And that's how I met John.

John was...
thanks to the creator, Bob Chinn,

John became instantly identifiable
through one of his characters...

the infamous detective
Johnny Wadd.

- Mr. Wadd, I presume?
- You presume correctly.

I first met John...

when this scruffy looking guy
walked into the office...

scruffy looking, had this
big Afro hairdo and everything...

asked for a job
as a crewmember.

Said he was a gaffer.
I said, "Well, we have a gaffer."

He says, "I'm also a grip."
And I said, "We have grip.

We don't need any crew people."

And then he told me
he was an actor.

And I said, "Well, what have you done?
Show me your credentials."

And he showed me
his credentials.

My partner and I
sat down and said,

"You know, we can make a film
with this guy."

And he said, "God,
what a wad that guy has."

And I said, "Let's call him Johnny Wadd,
make it a private detective thing. "

And, as you know, it went over big
and John became a star behind the name.

So we wrote the first script
on the back of an envelope,

and I think we were shooting
a couple of days later.

We shot it... two days later.

My appreciation of an X-rated film
was predicated on

if you took the sex scenes out,
would you still have something

that was marginally watchable,

that it had a plot that went A, B, C,
all the way down?

I'm going to be nice and I'm going
to ask you one more time...

- where's Ringo?
- Go to hell, motherfucker.

And the Johnny Wadd films
really lived up to that.

And I really think that they
sort of set a standard

that a lot of other
filmmakers emulated

and hoped to achieve.

...you bastard! That should put you out
for a couple of hours.

What about me?

You interrupted us making love,
and I'm still horny.

All right, baby,
to celebrate wrapping up the case,

I'm going to fuck you
like you've never been fucked before.

Chinn: After I hired John
at the unheard-of price of $75 a day,

since we were paying everybody
$50 a day at the time,

we shot a film called
"Johnny Wadd,"

which was
a one-day shoot, $750.

I sent it out just like I sent out
all the other films.

And New York
is our biggest market...

and so they called within two weeks
after they received the film and said,

"We want more films
with Johnny Wadd."

And I said, "Okay, okay."
So next week,

I called John, hired him,
did "Flesh of the Lotus."

In those days,
it took one day to shoot the film

and I could have it developed
the same night.

We cut the original,
and it was out on the market

within a few days.

Within a week after it was shot,
it was playing in the theaters.

I don't know what made
the Wadd films a success.

I tried to do something different
than people had been doing at that time.

It was the first series, actually,
that anyone had tried to make,

and I wanted some kind of continuity.
And I thought by doing

a series of films with some kind
of continuity in the character,

people might enjoy it
a little more.

Margold: The Johnny Wadd character,
is the first continuing character

the first serialization of a character.
You know, the stories were detective...

semi-detective
noir-type stories.

Hard-bitten,
smoked a cigarette...

shot a few people... not very well...
and fucked them a lot better.

I'll come straight to the point,
Mr. Wadd.

- Johnny. Call me Johnny.
- Johnny.

You have something
that I want.

I cannot possibly imagine
what I could have

that you'd be interested in.

- (loud moaning)
- Sager: The Johnny Wadd character

was indeed a character.
It was a bad character,

but it was something more.

I still don't know who would ever watch
a film from beginning to end.

When I watch... when you watch some
of the clips from the John Holmes...

from even like,
pick like "Jade Pussycat."

Yeah, okay,
it sucks some of the times,

and there's some cheesy dialogue
and everything else,

and there's some
goofy stuff going on.

All right, Mr. Wadd,
get those hands up.

Pang, get out of here.

Frankie, you always seem to show up
at the most opportune times, don't you?

So it seems, John.
So it seems.

You know, Frankie... there's a girl
standing right behind you,

and she's got a gun pointed
right at your back.

And I won't give you odds
that if you don't hand me that gun

she won't blow a hole
right through you.

Anderson: And there's some
real bad supporting players... just bad.

But something
you notice with John Holmes

is that even as he's sort of
suffering through

and stumbling over some of this bad
dialogue that he's required to say,

just plot stuff
that he's got to get through,

he really can deliver it in this kind
of natural, easy-going way.

He was not a bad actor.
He was really pretty good.

There's moments where he'd sort of
genuinely seem so relaxed,

and seem sort of improvisational
and very natural.

Hey, man, you got a dollar for a burger
and a cup of coffee?

Yeah, I just happen
to have one dollar, man.

Hey! You got another quarter
for dessert?

You better get away from me.

I'm gonna give you a set of knuckles
for dessert. Now beat it.

In a different set of circumstances
or something else,

he really could've been
quite a good actor.

Well, you know something?

It looks like the game is over, bitch.
And I think you lost.

He wasn't a great actor
by any means,

but he had a natural ability
to fall into a character

and make it his own.

Amerson: We'd run into people
at maybe a hockey game

and they would refer to him
as Johnny Wadd

and didn't really think
about John Holmes.

He became Johnny Wadd
in his own mind.

Right about this time, John was busted
for pimping and pandering.

And when offered the choice
between going to jail

and becoming an informant,
he chose to become a snitch.

Blake: We did a lot of cases.
He was very cooperative

and he enjoyed being
Dick Tracy or a cop.

He loved... he liked that role
of investigating,

and getting information
and passing it on.

He really got into the role
of informant,

fancying himself
a Johnny Wadd in real life,

forming a close bond with Tom Blake,
the vice cop who was his handler.

He would tell us who would
be shooting the porno films...

who were the producers,
who were the directors,

sometimes who were
the money people backing these films...

when the films were being shot,

where were the people
being picked up at...

the actors and actresses.

Sager: It's kind of ironic in a way
when you think about it.

He was a guy who was credited
with single-handedly

bringing the industry
to the public's attention,

and simultaneously, he was having
all those other stars busted.

It was almost as if he was creating
a ground for himself

to be the only living star.

John was absolute dynamite.

I was probably one of the busiest
investigators in LAPD.

My crew... I had
about five or six people.

We were kept hopping
and doing investigations

because of the information
John fed us.

Kept us real busy.
Did a lot of search warrants,

and it was enjoyable
working for him.

Goldstein: He almost has mythic...
stature to me.

He's almost a god.

Because he walked among us
with that massive tool...

banging on the floor.
He was like some huge dinosaur...

you'd hear
the "thump, thump, thump."

But it was his balls
hitting the ground.

It was that dick
hitting the ground.

The myth that created
John Holmes was...

was my doing,
it was a form of advertising.

It was a form of selling
his character.

Most of the things that were
discussed about John were not true.

John was, in reality,
an average person

with an extra large appendage.

I knew how to package him
and what to do with him,

what direction to guide him in.
I was John's manager and his agent

his entire career.

So we got together and we came up
with a number of different things

about him being a gigolo,
about him flying to Europe

and turning tricks with wealthy women
around the country.

It all added to his box office,
if you want.

After all, making money was
what we were all about.

I did the orgy trip for two
or three years, almost every weekend.

And between tricks and freebies

and the girls in films and...

keeping track of the films
and averaging out how many girls

you go to bed with in each film
helped a lot.

It's slightly over 14,000.

Goldstein: The people who think that
John Holmes slept with 14,000 women

are into... are into numbers.
That's like thinking

that the Indianapolis 500...
everyone of the 500

really gives a shit.
It's just a number's game.

And John wasn't
a basketball player,

so I don't think he had sex
with more than, maybe, 7 or 8,000.

But it's a nice story.
We love our stories like that.

Man: Johnny's claim of 14,000 women
sounds like a nice round number.

I'm surprised
he didn't say 20,000 women.

Amerson: If you do the math,
you'll find that's probably impossible.

We came up with... originally,
it was going to be over 1,000 women.

- John had a proclivity for...
- Oh yeah!

... bullshit, if you will.

And the numbers kept getting bigger.
As years went by

the numbers kept getting bigger
and bigger and bigger,

and John soon lost sight
of what story he told to who

about how many women
he'd been with.

But it's impossible to have sex
with over 14,000 women.

Sager: I think the public wants to know
that he slept with 14,000 women.

They don't really want to know
it was probably this many,

or he didn't enjoy it.
People want to have their fantasies.

Woman: How did you
get started in these films?

I was going to UCLA,

and I was starving to death.

What were you taking?

A graduate in physical therapist
and pediatrics is what I wound up being.

- You have a degree then?
- I was... oh, yeah.

I graduated.

One of the rumors was that John
graduated from UCLA.

The closest John
ever got to UCLA

was stealing something
out of a car in a parking lot.

John didn't go to UCLA.

John quit school
in the ninth grade.

Everything in life is an act...
everything.

- Do you like the acting?
- It's the performance that counts.

He did tell a lot of mythological-type
stories about himself, you know?

And you never know on these things
whether they're true or not.

He talked a lot about...

being hired for stud services
by varying people,

and yeah, they were great stories,
they were fascinating.

It's really... it was impossible then
and it's impossible now

for me to know
how much of that was true.

But he clearly liked talking
about himself.

You know, he was an actor,
he liked playing this part,

and I don't know,
he may even have believed it.

No, he believed his own bullshit
a lot of times.

I remember there was
one story that...

that I came up with,

that once a year
he would fly to England,

and a rich woman in England
would pay him $10,000

and pay for his flight
and everything else.

And each year he would go,
she would put another diamond

in this diamond dragon ring
that he wore.

That, in fact, was bullshit,
but the public loved it,

the public bought it.

John and I were fishing one day,
we were out in a boat

and we were talking about
the old days and some other things,

and he said, "Remember when
I used to go to England once a year?"

I looked at him and I said, "John,
you never went to England once a year. "

And he said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "We made that up."

He said, "Oh, yeah."

He did believe
a lot of his own press.

Vosse:
Almost no one knew John socially.

John had no social life...

and very, very few friends.
He didn't want you to be his friend.

I tried to be John's friend.
I can't say I was ever John's friend.

I shot more,
much more than half of the films

John ever made in his life.
I shot them.

And John never trusted me,
but he never trusted anyone.

He didn't want friends,
and he didn't trust anybody.

And I'm not saying he's wrong.
I never had John's home phone number.

In all of the years,
over 20 years of working with him,

I would have to go through
an answering service,

leave a message,
and he would call me back.

And this is true with everybody.

He'd..."Swedish Erotica"
did not have his phone number

in all the years
and money we paid him,

we never had
a phone number for him.

You really cannot trust anyone
about anything 100%.

It's lonely, but it's just one
of the sacrifices you have to do

to be successful in the field.

I always thought he was
a really terrific person myself.

He treated us all so wonderful,
he was really nice.

He was very tender, very sweet,
very sensual.

John was really a nice guy.

There's no one that knows John
better than myself.

He never considered anyone
in the business his friends.

He used them,

just as he felt he had been used.

You know,
everybody was assigned

either to the name of dirt,
slime or bastard.

We're not talking about bastard
in a nice way.

John grew up in Ohio,
kind of as a country boy.

Sharon: He grew up in rural
farm country in Ohio,

the youngest of four children.

I think it was shortly after...

probably about the time
John was three and a half or four...

that his mother separated
from her husband.

His father was an alcoholic,

and John could only tell me

that he remembered
arguments and yelling

and his father
falling across beds

and vomiting all over the kids.

John wouldn't touch alcohol until
he was well into the porn business

because of thoughts
of his father.

Mary had not worked.
She was a housewife up until that time.

And they became a welfare family,

moved into a project
in Columbus, Ohio.

It's shortly after, I believe,
John was eight or nine

that his mom remarried.

And they moved from Columbus
to a rural area

called Pataskala in Ohio.

John discovered the woods
and the streams and fishing

and, you know, frogging
and what have you.

I think it was probably about
two years after that

that David, his half-brother,
was born.

Harold, you know, was really good
to the kids until David came along.

David was his, and these other
four children weren't his,

and "I don't have
to be nice anymore."

And because John
was the youngest,

he took the brunt
of Harold's anger.

He was the one who was always
getting beat up

because he wasn't smart enough to get
out of the house when he saw him coming.

Not a happy childhood.

Things escalated when John
reached his teenage years

to where Harold was
backhanding him, you know,

off a chair, across the room,
this type of thing.

John went into the army
at the age of 16,

after Harold threw him
down the stairs.

He got up off that floor
and decked Harold.

And I think he spent probably about
two days away from home,

went to his mother
when he knew she was home alone,

then he said,
"I'm going into the army.

I need you to sign me in.

I am not going to stay in this house,
or I will kill him."

Two weeks later
he was in boot camp.

He did boot camp, and from there
was sent right to Germany.

He was in the Signal Corps,

and most of the time he was
in Nuremberg...

almost that full three years.

When he came back from the service,
he spent, I believe,

about 10 days in Ohio.

That was all John needed.

You know, to see Mom.

And he said,
"I'm going to California."

And he did.

He really never bore
any ill will

to any of his family

other than his stepfather.

His father...
his own father...

you never talked about him.

I think John looked upon him
as being the cause

of all the things
that happened to the family.

I don't have any
brothers or sisters.

- Woman: You have none?
- No.

- I thought you had some.
- Nope. No brothers, no sisters.

- Are you lying?
- No.

Amerson: John had so many stories
about who he had been,

who he was,
what he was doing.

All the stories were designed
to cover up his pain.

John had
a very painful childhood.

There's so many different stories about
where he came from and what he did.

John himself at times
didn't know who he was,

so he created a persona

to be a certain person
for a certain time period.

So that's why he was able
to lie, to dance.

He always needed to be
somebody else.

That way he got
out of the pain...

that he was experiencing.

He'd been in California
probably about a year when we met.

John was married
to a very straight woman

who was a nurse.

And he was an ambulance driver
when he met her.

And he courted her in a very
sort of sweet way,

with picking flowers
out of the house next door

before coming to her house,

and bottles of Mateus Ros�.

I first met John
just after Christmas...

the Christmas of '64.

One thing led to another
and he had no place to live,

so he moved
into my apartment.

He was very young,
very immature at that time,

but very sweet.

We were married
five months later.

John was still underage,
so his mother had to sign the papers

allowing him to get married.

John entered his marriage
with Sharon with a feeling of hope.

He was looking for the love
that he had never had as a child.

He was young, goofy,
attentive and romantic.

We were happy together,
there's no doubt about that.

He was very, very sweet.
Always had an arm around you,

holding hands.

I think he would've done
anything for me.

John worked
driving a forklift truck

at a meatpacking place
in Cudahy.

He had a collapsed lung because he drove
the forklift in and out of the freezer,

and he got some
lung complications from that.

Sharon:
He had three pneumothoraxes,

which are complete
lung collapses,

within a space
of seven to nine months.

The doctor tied it in
with the extreme cold

and felt that John should
look for something else.

And while he was recovering,

he would go to a poker palace
in Gardena.

He loved poker,

which he had learned how to play
very, very well in Germany.

And occasionally he'd
go for an evening.

And he met someone
in a bathroom there who said,

"Oh!" and talked him into
doing some stills.

- How about the girl next door?
- It was the third year in college.

The girl next door asked me
if I wanted to make $100.

And I said,
"Who do I have to kill?"

$100 was a lot
of money back then.

- How long ago was that?
- She said it was for a stag film,

and the producer was looking
for somebody who was...

overtly large.

- So I said, "Sure."
- And personality?

I wasn't planning on going
into political sciences,

so I figured, "What's it matter?"
So I made a stag film.

How did she know you were
"overtly large"?

We used to borrow things
from each other...

cups of sugar, breadsticks,
an occasional fuck.

Sharon: He was in the bathroom
with a tape measure.

And he said,
"I think I found what I want to do.

I want to do porno. "

And I said, "Magazines, movies?"
And he says, "Both.

Wherever it'll take me."

I was appalled.
I'm sorry, I was appalled.

Didn't sound like something one would
want to make one's life work,

but what do you say?

I told him I wasn't
particularly happy about it.

This is one step up or one step below
prostitution in my mind.

You know, this is what
ran through my head.

And I said, you know,

"Are you asking for permission?"

And he says,
"No, I'm going to do this."

I mean, it kind of leaves you
speechless, you know?

It takes a while to react because
you don't believe you're hearing this.

You know?
At least I didn't.

I thought, "Maybe passing fancy."

Sharon's relationship with him
was very normal.

He was her first,

and she sort of was
marked with that her whole life.

She never married again.

She always had
a fondness for him.

Sharon: So it slowly but surely
kind of eroded

my feeling for him.

I still loved him,

I still cared enormously for him,

but I did indeed feel

that this was still
a passing fancy.

I always thought
it might change.

I think I hoped, you know,
that it would change.

My first impressions of John
were that he really wasn't too bright,

he really wouldn't
stay in the business very long.

He was very nervous.
He just didn't seem to fit.

He was like an awkward kid.
He was like a fish out of water.

He just didn't know what to do.

(laughing)

You got an awful pretty pussy.

Oh, thank you.

I tried to tell him way back
when he decided

he wanted
to make this life work,

do you really want
to use your name, you know?

We can come up
with something.

And he said, "No, this is what
I'm going to be about. "

I'm going to use my name. "

This probably is my only shot
at being famous for something.

I think this was one way
of his establishing

in everybody else's mind that he truly
was proud of what he was doing.

He seemed very excited
at doing what he did.

He seemed very proud of it,
he seemed very excited

at the effect it had on people.

He talked about how this was
kind of acting

like any other kind of acting,

and that the emotion you aroused
with these films

was as valid an emotion
as arousing tears or arousing laughter.

He was a real zealot
for this kind of work.

Couples have been married
any number of years, with children.

Sex to them was him getting on,
him getting off.

Oftentimes the woman had
never achieved a come... a climax.

After going to these films,
and after seeing

that there is
nothing wrong with sex

or watching these films
and using them as a stepping-stone

toward their own sexuality,

we've helped
quite a number of people.

Goldstein: In effect,
every manifestation of this man's life

was a lie,
was a distortion,

was a duplicity.

We enter a quagmire
of deceit.

And the one truth was
he had a big dick.

He could come on cue.

And that was his claim to fame.

He was a refugee
from a freakshow.

Sharon: He was very possessive
of me from day one.

He wanted limited contact
with people...

the people he worked with,
I never met them.

But I knew them all
by name.

No one in the business
knew about me.

This was both his desire
and mine.

I wouldn't know anything
about how great he was.

I have to take
everyone else's word for it

that he was great in the industry.

I've never seen
a porno film in my life,

so I've never seen his films.

He knew it wasn't something
I was happy about

and that I was interested in.
It's hard to stomach

that this is what
your husband does for a living.

Perry:
I met John a long time ago.

When I was talking
about in the beginning,

I met John
sort of in the beginning.

John was just a neat guy.

I liked him very much,
he was very polite,

a real sweetheart,
easy to work with.

Occasionally an actress
would come to me

and say they didn't want
to work with him,

they were afraid of his...
incredible size.

Please, Mr. Wadd, not that.
It's too big.

And then on the other side
of the coin,

there were a few actresses
that came to me and said,

"Please! I want to work with John.
I love him! I wanna work with him."

When Serena brought me into the cabin,
I couldn't believe my eyes.

He loved the adulation,
you know, because...

it didn't matter what kind of people
felt he was famous,

or what he was famous for.

This built up his ego...

what little there was of it.

He really felt he had
nothing else to give.

Because of his unique attributes,

he felt, you know, this was something
he could excel in.

It's just it was kind of...

kind of sad.

- I don't come at home.
- Woman: Why not?

It's 'cause I'm not getting paid.

That's awful.
What about your old lady?

- I don't have one.
- You don't?

I have bunches of them.

It probably would sound very strange
to people that John and I

we were more friends,
we were no longer lovers.

I had reached the point
where I couldn't handle it

and a physical relationship.

I was literally eating
my own guts alive

because of the emotional upheaval
of my trying to deal with the situation.

I couldn't handle it anymore.

This was somebody
I hardly knew anymore.

And I told John, I said, "John,
we have to talk, about something.

What you're doing
is ruining my health."

I said, "I have no problem
with your living with me, "

but I said, "I don't want
anything to do with you physically.

I'll do your laundry, I'll be
your mother, I'll be your confessor,

I'll be your sister,
I'll be your friend,

but I don't want to be physically
associated with this."

And I said,
"I'm married to a hooker."

You know?
And I said,

"I'm not comfortable with that."

We slept in the same bed,
you know,

we hugged, you know, we kissed.
We still felt...

intimate with each other,
but not sexually intimate.

I couldn't deal with it
any other way.

And he respected that.

Man: He was tired of being wanted
just for his big dick

and all that stuff,
and needed for that.

That gets on you,
and that wears on you,

and eventually
it can destroy you.

Sharon:
I was John's safe house

and the only person
he could really be himself with,

could show his vulnerability.

I mean, this low self-esteem
was there, you know?

And I don't think anyone else
was aware of it

because John had developed
a different persona.

"This is John Holmes
who I have created."

And this is the side
that those people saw,

they didn't know about the other side,
you know?

And I don't think they knew
his capabilities,

as far as what
he could do artistically,

other than than what
was artistically pornographic.

What do you like to do
in your spare time?

- Basically?
- Yeah.

- Fuck.
- That's all?

Well, occasionally I eat pussy.

Mr. Holmes, I mean,
isn't there anything

that you're interested in
that's not sexually oriented?

No.

Sharon:
I think if he could've done anything,

he would have liked
to have gone into furniture...

making his own furniture.

He could work anything in wood

and literally
was pretty much self-taught.

Could've built, you know,
a house,

from the foundation up.

And then there was...
in the middle of this marriage,

and his beginning
to be a porn star,

there comes along
this young, underage girl

that he starts falling in love with
and having an affair with.

Dawn came into our lives,
I think, in about 1976.

She had come from Florida
with her father,

a sister and a brother.

Dawn: I can remember the first time
he saw me. He looked me up and down,

and he asked me how old I was.
And I said, "15."

And he went, "Mm, mm, mm.

Too bad."
And he started laughing

and turned on his heel
and walked out.

She was 15.

Skinny, skinny 15.

John started
his seduction scene...

probably about
six months after that.

Dawn: I mean, he courted me.
This was a courting,

and it lasted about, I think,
a good six months.

Always with my sister.
She was like a chaperone.

And it got to the point
where he had to pay her in Snicker bars.

Armloads of frozen
Snicker bars

he'd just dump there
so she wouldn't bitch.

(laughs)

I couldn't quite understand
how she'd gotten

caught up
in everything that she did,

trying to imagine
being a 15-year-old

introduced to sex
in a van by John Holmes.

Dawn: He set it up at the beach...
where it just so happened

that my sister wasn't there...

and he asked me
to go camping by myself.

It was like we both knew...

that is was the night,
you know?

We went to Malibu,
to Zuma Beach,

And we went to Leo Carillo,
we got a campsite there.

It was perfect.

It was just really...
it was very magical.

And without saying anything,
I think he got down from that rock

and just took my hand
and we walked to the van.

That was the night.
He was extremely gentle,

and extremely...
just... awesome.

I felt as if I was his newborn
child or something.

That's how precious
he treated me.

Sussman: He was a magic guy.
He'd take over a situation.

If he was in a mood
that was good, he'd just like,

"Man, I think I'll take everyone
out to dinner."

He just was really generous.

He wanted to involve
people in his life that he liked.

He trusted very few people,

and if he trusted you,
he'd trust you with everything.

I always wanted to meet him.

It was John Holmes
and the "Super Sex Queens."

I was hoping I'd, you know,

get to feel his cock.

And he always liked to pick one woman
he was going to go down on,

and it was me/ Yay/
(laughing)

He was fun.

Vosse: John worked with a few girls
a number of times.

But for the most part,

he really didn't like to work
with a girl but one time.

I always thought my...
my job at "Swedish Erotica"...

my main job was to find new girls
to feed the monster.

Day after day
I would interview

and find these girls.

He particularly liked
short, dark-haired girls.

And I'm gonna give him credit,

he was the best
and the easiest to work with

in the sense...
from the girls' point of view.

Extremely gentle.

I never had one girl complain

or didn't... wasn't willing
to work with John again.

Woman:
Working with John was...

definitely unpleasant.

He was rude, insensitive.

I could say a lot of things.

He just didn't want to be there.
He didn't like what he was doing.

He had a real
Jekyll/Hyde personality.

On the one hand,
he could be very sweet,

very nice
and a very nice friend.

And I never was victim
to any of his moodiness,

other than the fact
that he knew

he could throw
his weight around on the set.

So if he didn't want to do something,
if he wanted to stop,

that shoot was shut down.
So he did throw his weight around.

He had a big ego

and it could get unpleasant.

He had a tendency to lie.

He loved lying. It's...

He would keep lying
even if you knew he was lying

and he knew you knew
he was lying.

Block...

an idea or a movement.

Bob will put the final touches
on what the camera needs for editing,

what the final say-so
in the scene is.

He allows me to block
my own sex scenes though.

- Woman: Do most people do that?
- No.

I think there's only two or three
directors I can do that with.

- Why do you do that, Bob?
- Allow him to block his own sex scenes?

Well... I don't allow you to block
your own sex scenes.

See, I don't tell him how to edit,

and he doesn't tell me
how to fuck.

John could put out
so much bullshit.

(chuckles)

John used to get people
to stop smoking.

John smoked five packs a day.

John would say to a girl
on the set for instance,

"That's really gonna kill you.
You don't need to smoke anymore. "

He would say, "Gimme those,
I'm gonna throw them away. "

He would take two or three packs away
she had in her purse, and her lighter,

and put them in his briefcase
and tell her he was going

to destroy them or throw them away.
John always had cigarettes.

(laughing)

People believed him.
A lot of people adored him.

They looked up to him
like he was all-knowing,

that he was wise.

I moved
into their spare bedroom.

We all lived in a larger
two-bedroom unit.

John and Sharon had the master bedroom
and I had the spare room.

My private understanding
of our relationship

was that I was his mistress
and we all lived together,

and that was that.

I accepted that was good,
because I loved Sharon at that point.

I wouldn't want to be
without her either.

Dawn was like a daughter to me.
We had a separate relationship.

And I wasn't aware
of the complete involvement.

And you know,
we became really good friends.

I was trying to show her
that John wasn't God Almighty.

And I guess to a 15-year-old...
and this sort of thing...

when he was showering her
with gifts and presents

and telling her
how wonderful she was...

she would've done
anything he wanted

and eventually did do
anything he wanted.

Dawn: I believed everything he said.
I was in love/

I had no idea what was going
to hold the next day,

I just knew I couldn't be
without him.

It was like I had
to be with that person,

and the feeling was returned,
as much as he could,

aside from his work
and aside from his wife.

Chinn:
When I first met him,

and when I made
the first few films with him,

he wouldn't touch
any kind of drug.

Like marijuana? No.
Alcohol? No.

He wouldn't drink,
he wouldn't smoke grass.

- Woman: Do you take drugs?
- No.

- Never?
- They take me.

No, I don't take drugs.
I don't even like aspirins.

I am a kind of a...

healthy person.

John had a drug problem.

John smoked marijuana
starting maybe in 1972.

And it got to be more
and more.

John wouldn't do any other drug
except marijuana.

John always carried a quart

of J&B Scotch in his briefcase.

Always.
He was never without...

without Scotch. Never.

Sharon: His brother David
introduced him to marijuana.

And it escalated.
Things just went from bad to worse.

Amerson: All the time John was smoking
marijuana, there was cocaine around.

It was like a commodity
in the adult film business.

People were paid in cocaine.

John, however, would not do...

didn't want anything to do
with anything except marijuana.

It was standard.
Everyone had cocaine,

everyone had some heroin,
everyone had whatever they did.

PCP, Speed...
whatever it was,

people carried this around.

Now, I'm not necessarily saying we
needed it to perform in the movies,

I'm just saying that we
kind of preferred it, you know?

That's what it was.

We carried it one step
further than the '60s.

It was free sex,

and... and a lot of drugs.

It was a sign of the times

that everyone was packing
whatever their preference was.

And we would all share.

We were good that way.

About 1975, '76,

John got turned on to cocaine.

Dawn: I think things went downhill
when cocaine got involved.

That was the drug
he could never kick,

that was the one that
he liked the best.

That's the one I like the best.
It's a very addictive drug.

And I became addicted with him
and he kept me fed.

I mean, he made sure I had that bit
to keep me along with him,

because he didn't want to be alone.

I think he became
bigger than himself...

and he got real spoiled.

He was a guy getting $1,000 cash
a day in a lot of situations.

You know, just, in those days,
that was...

huge amounts of money.

Then for a few years...

John started cocaine
almost on a daily basis.

And then John got
introduced to freebase.

Why do you stay in the bathroom
for five hours at a time?

- On set?
- I don't know, it's a shitty habit.

I've got...
(laughs)

I don't have a habit of doing that.
Sometimes I hide in other places

so that they can't find me.

But usually the bathroom is
the only place with a lock on the door.

We were on a set once

and John was...
it was his turn to work

and we looked all through the house
and couldn't find him.

Everyone on the set had thought
that John had went out...

for lunch
and was coming back.

I was looking all over for him.
He had to be on the set.

It was one of those things
where you had to wait around forever.

And we were waiting
and waiting and waiting,

and it was getting darker
and darker and darker.

No one knew where he was.
The crew was having a fit.

They shot everything else
they could've possibly shot.

I looked outside, I looked everywhere.
His vehicle was still out in front.

And then we heard a little
"Ahhh!" scream from one of the bedrooms

and some woman
had opened up a closet

to get changed or to get something,
retrieve something,

and there was John in there
with a base pipe, getting high.

He had been on the set all day.

Small closet. John was rolled up
in a little ball in the closet.

I remember John was hovered
and cuddled in like a fetal position.

And he was afraid.

And he wouldn't tell me what he was
afraid of, he was just afraid.

John:
As I lay there, I was wondering

how long I could go on
at this kind of pace.

Would I wear out?
Would I be old before my time?

Would there come a day sooner or later
that I couldn't get it up again?

He had problems
maintaining an erection

when he had done
so much cocaine, so...

that would take a lot of time,
a lot of patience,

and I just didn't have the time
or the patience

or the budget
to deal with that.

Amerson: John had a choice
every morning when he woke up,

and it was which dealer to call.

His life got to be
that hectic with drugs.

He still tried to work.
He got a reputation that...

actually people didn't want
to hire him anymore.

One day we caught him
with cocaine on the set.

I flushed it down the toilet
and said, "John,

you can't do this."

And he became petulant,
and wouldn't work,

and it cost us a lot of time.

I said, "John, I haven't paid you yet.
Finish the film,

get your money
and do whatever you want. "

But from that point on,
I just couldn't work with him

because it was just too difficult.

Sharon:
He couldn't get work

or enough money out of work
to support his habit.

It's when he began robberies,

and he began pilfering
out of our house.

You know, this sort of thing...
out went the china,

out went the jewelry.
You know, this sort of thing.

In one month's period of time,
he took our credit cards

and charged $48,000.

Jewelry, furniture,
televisions,

et cetera, et cetera.

And what he was doing
was selling them.

It just really didn't bother me
at that point,

because he was out of control.

And the less I saw of him,
the happier I was.

I would tell the people,
"Put away your money,

put away any jewelry...
antique jewelry particularly...

or even any drugs.
Don't leave them out."

The problem was, those were
John's three favorite things.

He was such a charmer.
He'd steal from one girl,

and give it to that girl the next day,
or someone else.

Amerson: He did
this freebasing until he died.

And as far as I'm concerned,

it's one of the reasons
John got involved

in the criminal activity he did...
to pay for his habit.

He went to running drugs
for the mob, if you will.

He did that. He did mule drugs
to pay for his habit.

He started taking me with him...

when he went on runs.
I never went into anybody's home.

Sager: The stories she told...
spending two days in the car

waiting for John,
being inside having a drug binge,

and she's got a six-pack of Diet Coke
and a can to pee in,

and her little Chihuahua Thor
to keep her company,

she was a sort of a very
touching victim, who again...

as oftentimes victims
have a sort of Patty Hearst syndrome,

where they identify
with their captor.

Dawn:
I would be in the car...

sometimes 48-hours worth
of activity in a home...

and he'd be in and out and going off
in another car and then coming back

and I knew what the people
looked like who lived there,

but I was never introduced to them
or their names...

except for Eddie Nash.

Blake: I heard that
he got involved in narcotics,

and was running around
with some people

like Eddie Nash
and that group of people,

that were not only involved with dope,
involved with arson,

robberies and everything
that goes with narcotics.

Once he got involved with that,

John was a lost cause.

As the money and drug situation
became more desperate,

John turned to pimping Dawn.

Oftentimes he chose Eddie Nash,

who was the easiest turnaround
between the drugs and the money.

He basically sold me for dope.

He needed
to get high and...

he just... he gifted
Eddie with me,

the teenager, in trade.

It almost became a classic
pimp/hooker scene

where the pimp would be pissed
that he sold his woman

for the money that he wanted

and she would end up
getting back-handed for it.

He backhanded me in the mouth
so hard that...

that my tooth
went through my lip here.

Because I guess there wasn't as much
cocaine as they originally bargained on.

Sharon:
She became his punching bag.

As things really got bad,

both with the drugs and approaching
the time of the murders,

basically everything that
was wrong in John's life

was her fault, not his.

He may have wanted to punch me out,
but was terrified of me.

Dawn:
Then he had outbursts...

that had become rough...
shovings and pushings

on top of just blatant cruelty...

you know, emotional cruelty...

that was just coming out of him
that was not there before.

Probably there all along,
but the drug brought it out.

The whole idea of somebody's running
around doing crack every 15 minutes,

cooking it themselves...

the whole idea
of what drugs and sex

and how they work together,
and what drugs unleash...

in a sense, porn is just the unleashing
of the darker tendency

of men and women

that is the same tendency
that's unleashed

when you do a drug
like cocaine

that lowers your inhibitions
and stimulates the possibilities

of what things
you could possibly do.

The problem with people that do this
business is they never think it'll end.

You think it's going to be
$1000 a week forever.

It doesn't work that way,
and life isn't like that.

And people don't do that
'cause it's a fantasyland business.

Sager: The pimping, the drug runs,
the staying in the car...

I think this was really
the beginning of the end for Dawn.

He asked me to draw his bath
and I drew his bath.

He asked me to go get
a cup of coffee,

and he gave me the moment
to take a break...

to make my break...
and I ran.

I ran... I ran down
to the nearest business,

and it was a Denny's.

I tried to call my mother.
I did call my mother collect,

and she said she would send a ticket
to the bus station in Glendale.

There was a little old man
in the Denny's,

and he saw that I was...
I must have been crying,

I really don't remember.
I told him what was happening,

and that I didn't know what to do.
He says "You can sleep on my floor

if you let me touch your butt."
(chuckles)

And I said, "Is that all?"
(chuckles)

So I made it... I got away.
I got away.

But he wheedled his way back in.

He had talked me
into coming back,

and I flew down.
He met me at Burbank Airport.

Immediately, the first thing
he did was...

he picked up somebody else's
baggage off the lift

and walked out with it.

He left me in a motel.
And what I realize now was the time

when the robbery of Eddie Nash's place
was taking place.

Sharon: It was in
the early morning hours,

nothing was moving in the streets,
and he came knocking at the door.

And this was the first time I had
literally seen him since March.

And he was covered in blood.

He asked if he could come in,
and I said, "Yes. What happened?"

He looked me straight in the eye
and he said,

"I was at a murder and four people
were killed in front of me."

Then he proceeded to tell me

about the robbery that had
occurred the day before, that he set up,

and was carried out
in a demeaning manner to Eddie Nash.

And that these people that had
cut him in for drugs and money

that were stolen
from Eddie Nash were killed.

Blake: They made the plan
that he would go to Nash's house,

spend some time up there.
And about 2:00, 3:00 in the morning,

would leave with the back-door
slider open.

And these guys from Wonderland Lane
would come up there.

And all they were supposed to do
is take the dope and the money,

and some jewelry and whatever,
and split.

I knew he was running around
with Nash and that group of people

before the murders went down.

Man: Eddie Nash
was a target suspect

in the organized crime division.

It was known...

and felt that he was involved
in these murders.

I knew he owned a lot
of adult nightclubs,

was involved in
the adult nightclub business...

nude bars and things like that.

According to John,
he was one of the big people

in the Israeli mafia,
had a lot of power.

And he had a lot of clout
in politics,

in the fire department
and supposedly the LAPD,

the ATF...
he had all these connections.

He came in and he pulled
out of his briefcase

the largest pile of cocaine
I've ever seen in my life.

I didn't question the pile.
I know this to be...

the loot, you know,
his cut of the robbery.

We just got high.
We just got way high.

When he went to go
pick up his messages

at his answering service
in Santa Monica,

he got in the car and there was a gun
put to the back of his head.

Blake: Nash says,
"Hey, I know what happened.

And you're going to do
what you did

for those guys on Wonderland Lane
what you did to me."

Nash says,
"And if you don't do it,

I'm going to kill your wife,

your friends. "

Dawn:
And he was forced

to let the murderers into
the Wonderland Avenue house,

because he had
the security entrance pass.

So John said he went up,
back to Wonderland Lane,

and went up there and was buzzed
in by the people

because he knew them real well.

Coen: He...

let the killers in with the intent...

that everyone inside the house
would die.

Blake: John let them in.

John knew who went up there,

and the next day
that people were dead.

Sharon:
He was... according to him...

was thrown up against the wall
and held there

while two of the three people
he took there

carried out the murders.

I just..."You stood there
and you watched this?"

And he says, "Yes."
And I said, "People...

these people were your friends. "
And he said "They were dirt.

They were filth, "
you know?

"And it was them or me."

He said, "I want to go ahead
and get clean

and I need a couple of hours sleep.
Is that okay?"

And I said, "That's fine."

Thinking, "Jesus, how can I get him
out of my house?"

He slept for a couple of hours,
left probably a little bit after 6:00.

And he said, "I'll call you
in a couple of days."

And I said,
"Take care of yourself."

Dawn: Just before he came back,
the news was on.

And they were pulling the bodies
out of Wonderland Avenue.

Reporter: One by one,
the four bodies were removed

from 8763 Wonderland Avenue.

Dawn: I've sat in front of that house
many times in the car.

I knew the house,

and my heart just went
into my gut,

because I just knew
there was something wrong.

He got back
and I didn't say anything.

He just looked exhausted.

He took a couple of Valiums
and laid down and went to sleep.

He tossed and turned
and he screamed.

He screamed, "Blood, blood,
there's so much blood. "

And that was the final, like,
you know, gut stabber for me.

He slept for a day or two,
and that's when...

the door was kicked in
and we were arrested by the police.

They took us both in,
they separated us,

and they grilled us about
the Wonderland Avenue home.

John was trying to work out
a deal with the police.

And he called and said,

"Will you come?
Because I'll need you. "

Dawn:
They drove us down

to the Bonaventure Hotel
in downtown Los Angeles.

He says, "Hey, if I testify
against these people

or say anything,
Sharon's gonna be dead,

the rest of my family and my friends
are gonna be dead.

What do I accomplish?"

So he says, "I'm gonna
take my chances.

Hey, you can put me in a jail,
you can do whatever.

I'm gonna take my chances."

He says, "Tom, I'll deny I ever talked
to you about what I told you."

Under the guise of turning
State's evidence,

John bought for himself some time
in a safe house,

first at the Bonaventure

and then at the Biltmore Hotels
in downtown LA.

He stayed there
a few days with Dawn,

I think hatching up
what he was gonna do next.

He never had any intention of helping
the police with this case.

After about, I think,
three days of this,

between the Bonaventure
and the Biltmore,

John came in and he says,
"Well, that's it."

I said, "What do you mean?"

He says, "They're letting us go.
We gotta run.

We have to run. "

He said, "I need to...

I need to get stuff together
because I need to run,

because the police
are going to be after me.

And he said, "Worse than that,
Eddie Nash is going to be after me. "

Dawn: Within 24 hours
of our release from the Biltmore,

John and I took off.
We left Los Angeles.

He turned back into his old...

I mean, there was no drugs
and he was his old self.

You could talk to him again.

The personality was
coming back.

The situation was still fucked up,

but his personality was back.
He was that loving guy again

that could crack jokes
and make you laugh,

that you knew that could just
make the room glow.

We drove through Vegas.

I waited
in the parking lot there,

because he wanted
to go in and play roulette.

He just wanted to put one bet
on aught... double aught.

It was his favorite spot.

We got to his sister's house
in Montana

and she let us stay
for a couple days.

A couple of days later
we got a phone call

from his mother in Ohio,

telling us the FBI
was just there

and they were looking for him.

And they were probably
on their way

to his sister's in Montana,
where we were, next.

That was our clue to pack
up our bags

and get the hell out of there.
"Where are we gonna go?"

I said, "I was raised in Florida.
Let's go to Florida."

That seemed far enough away... the whole
opposite end of the United States.

Somewhere in there,
"The Great Escape"

became "National Lampoon's
Family Vacation."

They stopped at all
the tourist attractions along the way...

the Grand Canyon,
various other things,

seeing the sights,
taking their time going to Florida.

Getting in towards Mississippi
and Louisiana

we were running out of money,

so he started thieving cars
that were parked at the motel

for anything he could again.

It was a process
back into the old self.

Sharon: Tom Lang and his partner
came to my house

wanting to know if I knew
where John was, and I didn't.

I assumed he might go back to Ohio
for a short period of time.

But I had no idea how
he would go or whatever.

I didn't want to know.

You know,
and I told them straight out,

"I have no idea.
Yes, he did leave.

Yes, I did give him money."

You know, because
I wanted him gone.

Dawn:
We made it down to Florida.

And we went to North Miami.

And we stopped
at one of the cheapest hotels there,

the Fountainhead Hotel
on Collins Avenue.

It was a rundown,
kind of transition hotel.

There was some prostitution activity
on the streets there at night,

and on the beach,

and there was an X-rated motel
across the street.

It came to the point
where he was...

he was being
dominating again

and insisted that
I just walk out on the beach

and turn a trick

for some extra cash.

He started to get
violent again at that point

because he didn't like me going out
and being with other people.

It was his possessive nature.

It started back
into the old arguments

of I was...
I was dirty and I was corrupt,

and I wasn't any good.

He wouldn't touch me until...
until I'd like,

stripped down
and like been in the tub

with hot water,
just to like to purge myself

of all sin or something.

I mean, it just got...
it got very twisted.

He started to hit me again,
and my world crashed,

again, around me.

It was...

"Oh no. Now there is no hope
because I can't blame the drugs."

Dawn turned John in
in Florida

where he was arrested.

He had beat her up

and someone
offered her a way out.

Dawn: He was running after me,
and he caught up to me

just in front of the snack shop
by my hair,

and yanked me down to the ground
and jumped on top

and just pummeled
the hell out of me...

in front of everyone.

The next day,
a few minutes after he left,

there was a knock on the door,
and it was Big Rosie the manager

and a few others
that had lived there...

Joe from the snack shop
and another lady, Louise,

who's a stripper.

And they just took over.

They walked in,
they said, "Grab your things,

get your dog,
you're outta here."

And got into a car
and, boom, was gone.

I mean,
it just happened so fast.

After a couple of days,
there was a call.

And this was the last time
I ever spoke to him.

And I cried when I heard his voice,
and he was crying.

And he said, "I know what I did
was wrong, and I'm sorry. "

I'd heard this before.
This is the old story.

He said, "I'm sorry."

He said, "Can I please just see
your face just one more time?

That's all I'll need. That's all
I'll ever ask of you again."

And I said, "No.
I'll never let you see me again,

where you can touch me,
where you can hurt me. "

Her brother contacted her
via the police.

They evidently knew where she was
but they didn't know where he was.

Her brother met her at a park

and told her that the police were there
in the car that he had come in,

and they wanted to talk to her,
explain to her

about how many people
were out there looking for him,

and said,
"Do you want him to die?"

You know, "He's safer with us."

So she basically told them
where he was.

It wasn't something
that I liked doing,

but it was the only thing
left to do.

Or that I could do, you know?

I had no other choices,
I was just resigned to it.

I said, "He's at the Fountainhead."

I said, "After you've arrested him,

call me and let me know
that everything's okay.

That's he's safe. "
It was the next day, I believe,

or that evening when Tom Lang
called me at the number that I was at

and he told me, he says,
"Well, we got him,

and we're about to get on a plane
and go to California.

And he was kind of expecting us.

He kinda looked relieved
a little bit,

and he's okay."

And so I said, "Thank you."

That was the last.

That was the end.

Sharon: Then he called me
and he said, "Well, I'm here."

I said, "Yes, I know you are."

He said, "I need you
to come and see me."

And I said, "For what reason?"
And he said,

"You're the only person I know
who doesn't want something from me."

This didn't involve
anything more to me than time,

so I granted him that.

I think he kind of drew on my strength,
if you will, to get through the trial.

Woman:
He talked easily to me.

I wouldn't say
he was extremely bright,

but he was very street smart.

He knew about people

and how to handle people.

Very manipulative
and very charming.

Both Earl Hanson and I were
the attorneys for Holmes.

I thought he was very astute,
and I thought that he...

could form an opinion
about people

with just a short period
of observation.

He did contribute to his defense,
not only for...

in the preparation,
while he was in jail,

but even through the voir dire
of the jury.

So he was an interesting man.

Very sociopathic,

which simply means that...

he could use anybody,
in any way,

to his advantage without feeling
any kind of guilt.

There was a fingerprint,
or fingerprints.

There was blood and it was on
the headboard near one of the victims,

but there was no bloody fingerprints.
I remember quite clearly

that was the impression, perhaps,

that some had in the courtroom
before it was clarified by the defense.

The indications were that...

Holmes was holding
the bed frame

with the victim just on the bed,

and that he was beating the victim
with his right hand.

It's a left palm-print.

John was up there all the time.

There would be nothing unusual

having John's handprints
all over the house.

Because he visited these people
on a daily basis.

One of the interesting
aspects of the trial...

again, it predates
the OJ trial by 15 years...

it's the first time video evidence
was brought in.

Eggers: There was nothing
in the videotape that connected John

to the...
to the murders.

I think that probably was...

the first instance
of videotape being used

in a major case
in the United States.

But California is the place

where I'm surprised
not only did we see the tape,

I'm surprised it wasn't
turned into a musical.

He made it quite clear to us
that he wasn't going to take the stand.

It's always nice,
especially in a case like this

that is completely circumstantial,
to have a defendant...

in this case Holmes...
take the stand.

I would have loved
to cross-examine him.

Loved to.

He was an actor.

He would act
by sitting in the chair...

crying at the appropriate times.

The poor-pitiful-me attitude
would emanate.

I wanted him on the stand so badly
I could have tasted it then.

Eggers:
My partner Earl Hansen

very cleverly and very ably

in closing argument

argued that there was no intent
to commit murder.

With a gun to your head,

the only intent you have

is probably
to save your own life.

And the jury either bought it,

or just felt
that I didn't prove my case.

I can't see him doing it.

As the law states, you don't really
have to do anything in a crime

to be guilty of the crime,
especially a murder.

We the jury,
in the above entitled action,

find the defendant, John Curtis Holmes,
not guilty of murder.

Eggers: The jury felt
that there was no proof

that he was involved,

that he had an intention
to have them killed.

And that's why
he was found not guilty.

I didn't think he probably
bludgeoned them,

but I would not have been surprised
had he been there.

I think the jury came back
with the right verdict.

Oh, he was thrilled.
He was thrilled, of course.

I went to the jail
when he got released that night.

I took him out of the jail.

And John called me that night.
He called me twice that night.

And wanted to see me
and I said no.

Asked me...

if he could come back
or if I would go with him,

that he would try to make
another life somewhere else

and get out
of the business.

And the first time in my life
I ever used the word "fuck,"

I said, "Get the fuck
out of my life."

I said, "I've lived
with enough upheaval,

and there'll never be...

a life for us together,
because you can't change. "

My life was about life,
not about death and drugs

and porno
and that sort of thing.

I didn't want to do this.

I couldn't provide any kind
of a support for him anymore.

That basically was the last time
we ever spoke.

Reporter: Are you afraid at all?
Afraid for your life?

Sure. Of course.
I'll keep a very low-key figure,

but, I mean,
I gotta go back to work.

The first day he was out,
he came to my house

and got back involved
in the business.

Sharon: I know that he had been
looking for Dawn.

If he could have found her,
if there was any way to find her,

he would have found her.

He wouldn't have married a porno queen.
(laughs)

He would've wanted somebody
that would have been separate.

The first movie that John made
after he got out of jail

was for Hal Freeman
in San Francisco.

That's where John met
Laurie Rose.

Laurie was known as the...
the "butt queen"

of the porno industry.

That was
what her specialty was.

Well, according to that bulge
in your pants,

it looks like maybe I should relieve
some of the pressure.

Laurie: I met John on the set
of "Marathon" in San Francisco,

early 1983, and I didn't know
what to think about him at first.

I thought,
"Oh my God, should I take a gun?

John Holmes
is going to be there."

Amerson: She said,
"I really want to meet John.

And I really want all that."
John thought it was amusing,

thinking that
it wasn't going to happen.

So off camera,
they did that and it did happen.

- (moaning)
- She fell in love with John.

John came back and told me
about Laurie Rose,

had no respect for her whatsoever,
really had an attitude.

I remember walking up,

and I go, "Hi, I'm Misty Dawn."

And he was very, you know,
being the prima donna.

"Hi, nice to meet you,"
you know?

There was an instant attraction.

Oh yeah!

She was a repeat performance
of Dawn.

Part of the attraction was the fact
that her name was Misty Dawn.

He was trying to find
the only other person

that could give him
the support that he needed.

And I guess she was
young, impressionable,

and she fell for the myth
and the whole ball of wax.

But things progressed
really fast with us.

I think I met him in January,

and I had moved in by March

up at Bill Amerson's house.

There were times
during the summer

where I would hear a voice
from the bedroom saying, "Bill, Bill,"

and John was out
swimming in the pool.

I would go back in the bedroom
and she would be laying there naked,

tied up, where John had had an orgasm
all over her face and walked off.

That's how much
John loved her.

John tried to run over her
with a car twice in the driveway.

She had insurance. He wanted
to collect the insurance money.

John had a heart of gold.
He was a great person.

I mean, he was great to me.

That's the one thing
I admired about John.

I knew without a shadow
of a doubt

he would have taken a bullet
for me any time...

as a woman,
that made me feel good.

Amerson: John liked her
because she was nasty,

and that's his word.
She would do anything.

Anything.

Leslie:
He sort of went into a shell.

He just was different after
he came out of jail, I think.

Any time you leave
and come back,

it's like you got to start
all over again in a way.

And you can never catch up
to the same groove that it was before.

All you can think about
are tongues...

thousands of hot,
horny tongues.

And the tongues are making you so crazy,
all you can think about is sex...

wet, warm, moist sex.

(John mimicking Japanese)

Holy Ben Wa balls, Dickman.
What does that mean?

I'm not certain, Throbbin.

It's something I read
on the back of a ginseng box.

Ah, so.

I don't know, things changed.
Video came in,

and people...
the budgets were lower.

John Holmes
was making $1,000... a scene,

in the late '70s, early '80s.

And when he came back,
I think he was lucky if he made 300.

Well, we had planned
on getting married for years.

We did it in Las Vegas...

took a flight out there
one morning.

I got a phone call from Las Vegas
one afternoon, from John,

who obviously was stoned.

He appeared to be
just really out of him mind.

And he said, "I think I got married."

We did go gamble
for our honeymoon.

What were we gonna do
for a honeymoon at that point anyway?

He says, "I don't know,
I think I married that...

I think I married Misty."

And it almost seemed
like it was a shock to him.

It was like
we didn't believe him.

Woman: He said, "I just found
this picture on my coffee table.

And I'm in it and Laurie's in it,

and she said
it was our wedding picture.

I need you to help me out with that.
I don't remember."

Amerson: John was up
to taking 50 Valiums a day.

50 Valiums.
5010mg Valiums a day...

which would...
should kill people, but it didn't.

His cocaine would
elevate him so much

that he needed that much Valium
to come down.

So they in fact did get married.

Denise: There is a wedding picture
though, however.

John's looked better,
I think, in pictures.

Sean:
She was like a gnat,

sort of buzzing around
all the time

and trying to get
in the middle of things.

John was really harsh to her.

She was definitely in his life,

but I don't think as a partner,
as a life partner.

Amerson: But as far as it being
a love story that Laurie portrays,

that's nonsense.
That's bullshit.

Hi, I'm John Holmes.

I've been in the adult motion picture
business a good number of years,

and I've seen some very
crazy things happen.

Fernando: I remember
John walking on the set,

and having that incredible fit.

I've never seen him angry,

but he was upset because he wasn't
the star of the movie.

Bill Margold was.

It was a little bit tough
to see this,

because he wasn't the stud
that I used to know.

He was completely different,

staring off in space a lot.
He was talking to himself.

It's like there's
a giant hourglass somewhere,

rapidly pouring out the sands
that people have to...

to achieve what they want
out of life...

the fame, the fortune,
the success. Even the sex.

He was on a spiral
that couldn't stop.

It just was unfortunate.

He didn't want to get off
the trolley.

He was like a rock star, though, see?
He did the same thing rock stars did.

Just, you know,
go up high and burn out.

You can't get back
in the atmosphere...

don't know how to do that.

John and I initiated HIV testing

for the adult performers.

We were the very first ones
to insist that they do that.

Prior to this, no one really
cared much about it.

So to show the performers
that we were really serious,

John and I both took
the AIDS test together.

And we both
came back negative.

Um... so the next time,
I think four or five months later,

we took another test because we were
going to do it every six months

to show the industry we weren't afraid
of the tests, we're okay.

My test came back negative,
John's came back positive.

I was with John
at the doctor's office

when the doctor informed him
that he was HIV positive

and explained to him
what conversion was

and explained to John
that he could live another 15,

maybe 20 years,
if he changed his lifestyle.

The doctor told John that he should
stop smoking cigarettes,

stop drinking
and stop doing drugs,

start taking vitamins
and watching his diet.

Laurie: The minute he found out,
his whole theory was

"I can't have sex anymore."

That was his life...

whether it was on film
or off of film.

He didn't want to live.
He didn't have the desire.

He knew he was gonna die.

Didn't hear what the doctor said.

He just didn't hear what he said.

So that's...
that's a sore...

(sighs)
That's a sore spot with me.

John could've lived
had he not been that reactive.

John, being as reactive
as he was,

immediately doubled
what he drank,

doubled his drug usage,

went to smoking five packs
of cigarettes a day.

Drank a quart
of Scotch a day

and just didn't give a shit
about anything.

Duke: I think the first thing
that I can remember hearing about

was Dad telling me that John
had colon cancer...

or they thought he had cancer.

They weren't exactly sure
what he had.

He didn't want to bring
anything down on the industry.

So he came up with that
he had cancer... colon.

And I'd sit there and I'd listen
to him spin his tales.

"Oh, they took out six feet
of my intestines. "

(chuckles)
You know?

I didn't know what was going on.
I just know every time I saw him

he was sicker and sicker.

He was just joking around saying
he's got a bad virus, got the flu.

Duke: He was getting
more and more out to lunch.

You sort of could see
that he was...

Iosing grasp of a lot of things.
His stories became a lot wilder.

He really didn't know what was
going on at that point.

He was losing it
more and more.

But, you know,
he was in pain.

Denise: He was getting very, very skinny
and very, very distorted,

but all the time
just making jokes

and trying to protect
me and my feelings

and that everything was fine,

but obviously I knew
things weren't fine.

Mitchell: I could tell there was
something wrong with him,

that he was very sick,
by the pallor of his skin,

by the loss of his hair,
by the gauntness of his face,

and by his weight and structure.
I knew that he was sick.

Fernando: There was
a lot of rumors about...

how he contracted AIDS.

Amerson: There are rumors
that John had sex with men.

We made one gay film

called "The Private Pleasures
of John C. Holmes. "

He, in fact, had sex
with Joey Yale... one performer...

where he performed anal sex
with Joey Yale.

But he really didn't like that
and it took us a half a day

to shoot that particular scene.

He just couldn't... another bad pun...
he couldn't get into it.

(laughs)
So John, in fact, was not gay.

Laurie: He asked John
to do a few gay films.

He wasn't gay
by any means.

It really wasn't something
that turned him on.

He didn't have anything
against it,

but it just wasn't his pleasure.

Right away I had a feeling
that he was probably shooting.

I didn't think it would be...

from sex.

Sharon: John would never have shot up,
I can tell you that.

Absolutely never.

This man could not stand
a needle in any way.

Terrified of them.

Terrified of them.

So I never...
I knew it was not that way.

It had to be sexually transmitted.
There was no other way for it to be.

I've had people tell me
that they used IV drugs with John.

And my answer to that is,
"Bullshit."

John absolutely
did not use IV drugs.

You know, if all the rumors that
were spread about me were true,

it would wear to a nubbin.

Sharon: I've no doubt
about the fact that indeed

he felt that everything
that happened to him

from the time our marriage ended

to the time he died,

that everything
was the business's fault.

What he really valued in life

was gone.

And it was their fault, not his.

After John
was diagnosed with AIDS,

he wasn't working on films.

I heard he went to Italy,
knowing he had the virus.

He'd been offered this
film in Europe.

And he talked to me about it.

"It's a lot of money. We could
really use the money right now."

(woman speaking Italian)

Translator:
I have no idea what his life was like,

but when we shot the movie together,
he was a real gentleman.

I can't say
anything bad about him.

He couldn't really get a job in America.
He did the gay movie.

He supposedly got the virus in jail.
His lover died of it supposedly.

He went to Europe to work
with Cicciolina, possibly Tracy Adams,

and possibly Amber Lynn.

He just figured
"If they don't get it from me,

or if they don't already have it,
they're gonna end up with it anyway."

I know he fucked Cicciolina
'cause she told me about it

when I was in Italy,
years and years later.

(Cicciolina speaking Italian)

Translator: I didn't think he was sick,
but I could tell he had some problems.

I had no idea why. I thought
maybe he had a touch of the flu.

Yes, he did work with Cicciolina.

And yeah, he took his risk, but...

he just figured everybody
in the business

was gonna die of AIDS
at that point,

because everybody had sex
in circles, you know?

In this industry.

(speaking Italian)

Translator: If John Holmes
had known in America

of his sickness
or of his symptoms,

John would have thought
to use some precautions,

to use a prophylactic.

Jeremy:
That's kind of mean,

that he knew he had it
and went to work anyway.

From which case, if that's true,

if there's such a thing
as heaven or hell...

Sharon:
He was certainly capable

of exposing
hundreds of people to AIDS

and feeling,
"I'm gonna get mine back."

That's why he could steal
from people in the business

and not have any qualms about it.
It's payback, it's revenge.

What was in value of his life...

he was gonna get back at people
one way or another.

Whether it was stealing
something from them,

or potentially
exposing them to death,

you know, and whatever.

Conscience...
not something he had.

I don't know of anyone
that has died that he...

was with sexually...

after he found out he had AIDS,
including me.

I asked Bill Amerson,
and Bill said that they did know.

I asked "Why didn't you stop him from
going?" He said, "I couldn't stop him."

I said, "Why don't you call and warn
them what's coming across the ocean?

That would've stopped him.
Hey, AIDS coming across!"

Laurie:
He needed... we needed the money.

He needed the money.
We needed the money.

That was all there was to it.

Thinking about John Holmes
and his last days

makes me a little bit pissed off.

People just basically
discarded him.

I think that I saw
a lot of people pull back,

in a lot of respects,
because of our own ignorance.

Nobody knew really
what was going on about it,

but we knew that he had it,
and we knew that we didn't want to die.

Laurie:
He was very hurt at the end.

He felt like people
had turned their backs on him.

His whole attitude was, "God,
I've made these people all this money,

and they won't even
return my phone call."

And that was basically his attitude.

He was very hurt by it.

I said, "Are you in a lot of pain?"
And he goes,

"Yeah, I'm in a lot of pain,
but the worst pain is

that nobody
cares about me anymore."

Duke:
John was in the hospital,

and Misty had a restraining order
about us going to the hospital.

I don't know if she went to that extent,
but I know we were not allowed there.

She apparently...

decided that it was...
that John wasn't allowed visitors,

or that our family wasn't to be
involved in his life whatsoever.

And since she had his last name,
she had the right to do that, I guess.

The reason I didn't let the Amersons in
was because I didn't trust him... them.

I didn't trust anybody
at that time.

And I especially didn't
trust them at that time.

At one point, I know that
John had called and asked

for us to come to the hospital
to see him before he went.

And that Misty had called

and my sister got the message,
I think, on the machine,

and said that we were absolutely
not to see him before he passed away.

Who knows what was
going on in his head?

But he just kept waiting for us
to come and see him,

and I guess he didn't know
we couldn't.

I called the attorneys who
represented him in the murder trial.

And I said,
"This is Sharon Holmes."

And I said, "All I need is verification
that he is dying of AIDS.

I don't want to know
where he is.

I don't want to know anything else

other than, 'Is this true?"'

And he was kind enough
to tell me, yes, it was true.

I don't even know if it was maybe 10
to 14 days later that, you know...

it was announced
that he had died.

Denise: In the morning, there was
a phone call on my machine from Laurie.

She says, "Your godfather
died last night

and you didn't even care enough
about him to see him in the hospital."

And she hung up the phone.

And, uh...

Or "You didn't give a shit enough
about him to go see him." One of those.

And that's how I found out
that he had died.

I will never forgive what she did.

I will never excuse what she did
and I'll never understand it.

Laurie: It was John's request.
He was adamant about it.

He did not want a funeral.
He was cremated.

I had viewed his body
before they put him in the oven.

Laid a picture of Jesus
on his heart

and watched them wheel him in.

His mother
and his half-brother David and I

went out on a fishing barge
out of Oxnard.

And we didn't say anything,
we just...

tossed it over, you know?

And our thoughts
were inside of us, but...

you know,
there was no funeral.

Denise: John had wanted to be buried,
and he wasn't, he was cremated.

I guess she took it upon herself
to make that choice.

And that's what she did before we had
a chance to go and say goodbye.

Laurie: I wasn't aware that there
was even a memorial service.

Nobody invited his widow.
(laughs)

But I wouldn't have gone anyway.

Denise:
We needed some kind of closure.

We wanted to have something for him,
so my father planned a memorial.

It was only going to be for, you know,
family and close friends.

And it was beautiful
and it was very heartwarming.

My dad wrote a eulogy
that was beautiful.

And we got to say goodbye
as best we could.

I just wanted to say goodbye
to my godfather, you know?

And...

His passing away

was like my dad dying,

because...

at the time previous to that,
when he was in my life,

he was the person
that took care of me.

He was the person that made sure
I had something to eat.

He was the person that

would let me know when I had
done something wrong.

He was the person
that I respected the opinion of.

It was just the end of an era.
Like John Wayne dying, you know?

Chinn: When I found out
that John had died, I was...

very surprised.
He told me he had cancer,

but I was surprised to find out
that he died of AIDS.

When I had heard that he died,

my reaction was very sad
and terrified.

I thought, "Oh no, this is
the antichrist of the industry.

This is it, this is the other shoe
that we all knew was going to drop."

And by some miracle,
that did not happen.

I believe that the death
of John Holmes

was the start
of HIV testing in the industry.

Goldstein:
So it's, to me, surprising

that he came,
and he came and he came

and he went
and the world goes on.

And for me,
he's part of my history,

because to me, he is the most important
person in the business

other than Linda Lovelace,
who at least blew me.

Amerson:
He was like a little brother to me.

The death of John Holmes

really hurt me,

and it still does.

I guess in spite of all...

the bad things I've said...

'cause he's had good and bad,
a lot of it...

I really loved the guy.

Sharon:
I felt bad that he allowed himself

to die in this way.

I had always hoped
that he actually would find

there was something else
he could do with his life.

Amerson:
John Holmes was a country boy

who just wanted people
to love him.

He wanted to be liked
by everybody.

It's basically the young kid
with a dream,

who gets that dream
and then it spirals out of control.

I don't think there's anything
within John Holmes' story

that actually strays from the clich�.
That's not to say that it's negative.

It's a fact. It's true.
That's what happened to him,

was this very clich�d sort of thing
that happens over and over again.

It doesn't just happen in porno,

it happens anytime anybody
gets any kind of success.

It's a very slippery thing to deal with.
Do you know what I mean?

It's especially slippery
if you throw drugs into the mix

and if you've got a 13-inch dick
and that's all anybody cares about.

It's a real American story,
this story...

what happened to John.

Goldstein:
Bottom line was,

he was, I think, the man
who towered over the business...

not just with the girth
of his cock,

but he was the most interesting
story in the world, and fascinating.

And the tragedy of his end...
he should almost be...

he should almost be a Kennedy.

I think the value
of John Holmes to all of us

was as an ultimate porn star

with the ultimate weapon,

who was yet,
kind of touchable

and a little bit of a sad sack,
and kind of a loser.

John was the ultimate cocksman,

but somehow, he wasn't so much
of a personality or a threat

that all men couldn't love him
and identify with him,

and maybe sort of project
themselves into his body

for the purpose of the fantasy.

He was at the right place
at the right time,

and he was kind of
the right guy for the job.

He was an everyman's gigolo,
a polyester smoothie.

His life had no meaning to him.
He'd do what he had to to survive.

If you call that living,

then I guess this was
the only way he could live.

So he chose his path and I chose mine,
and I lived and he didn't.

John had a heart as big as the world.
He would do anything for anybody,

except himself.

I loved you.

I'm two different people.
I am myself,

whom I portray
on a natural level,

just acting idiotic
and being natural.

And then the other person
is a fantasy, is...

it's a figment of somebody else's
imagination.

I am what you want me to be.

If you are envious of what I am,
or do, or can be, or I have,

then that's part of the mystique
of why you pay attention to me,

and that makes sales,

and makes people go to films
and buy films.

If you enjoy watching what I do,
that is an interest level.

Everybody has, or sees into,
that character which I portray,

which is not me.
I'm... I'm just like anyone else.

That's just somebody on film.
I'm sorry about that.

It's tough making
the split sometimes.

Mitchell: He was funny,
he was a wonderful person.

And his persona
was big as life.

I know where to find him...
I can always press play.