Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes
Before Dirk Diggler, there was John C. Holmes, the legendary adult actor who turned “Johnny Wadd” into a franchise and himself into a myth. WADD: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes plunges into the heady 1970's and 1980's LA porn scene, exploring the intersection of sex, celebrity, and crime - the nonstop sex, the coke-fueled nights, and the fatal orbit of club kingpin Eddie Nash that culminated in the Wonderland murders.
Narrated by Mike Sager, whose Rolling Stone investigation inspired the movies BOOGIE NIGHTS and WONDERLAND, the documentary pairs rare film clips, never-before-aired crime-scene footage, with candid testimony from the people who knew him best. Featuring rare interviews with his wives, Sharon Holmes, and porn actress, Misty Dawn, his underage mistress Dawn Schiller, adult industry titans Larry Flynt and Ron Jeremy, and filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, amongst many others, WADD is essential viewing for audiences captivated by rise and fall of one of porn's most legendary figures to this day.
- "The ultimate searching - and shocking - exposé of the porn world."
- "Like Holmes, Wadd is seedy, twisted, a bit on the long side--and creepily fascinating."
- "Wadd leaves us to ponder the difference between Holmes' special 'gift' and, say, another star's beautiful singing voice. When you come right down to it, they're pretty much the same thing, but distributed to different parts of the body."
- "Holmes' story isn't pretty, but it's fascinating, in no small part because the people Paley interviews offer a glimpse into a brief time when making porn was an act of rebellion that attracted a diverse and eccentric group of filmmakers and performers."
- " The film... is an exceptionally thorough adventure in docu-journalism loaded with an obscene number of interviews with experts, co-stars, directors, producers and technicians -- among them actress Misty Dawn, film critic Kenneth Turan and "Boogie Nights" director Paul Thomas Anderson, who turned to Holmes' career and his Johnny Wadd alter ego when he was conjuring Dirk Diggler."
- "Picaresque, funny, cautionary and hugely enjoyable, "Wadd" focuses on the cultural impact of gawky country boy turned genre folk hero John C. Holmes and his natural endowment."
- "Wadd is a complex and striking portrait of a complicated individual and the ways in which talent and timing create popular culture as much as our own desires."
- "Guaranteed to provoke Lacanian scholars and porn connoisseurs (not always distinct categories), the documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes is indisputable evidence of the power a really big dick exercises on the fantasies of those who behold it."
Gallery
Awards & Recognition
Best Documentary Feature
SXSW Film Festival