John Holmes and Boogie Nights

[LUZDEDOS]

Boogie Nights was loosely based on the John Holmes porn star.
My name is Luke Ford and I have written a forthcoming book on the history of
X-rated cinema...
Here is a short version of the life of John Holmes: If the formatting drives
you crazy, go to http://dejanews.com and call it up... Dejanews automatically
adjusts formatting.

Porn's biggest male star, John Holmes, died of AIDS March 13th, 1988. By
his own account, he screwed 14,000 women on and off-screen. John also had
sex with men though he didn't boast about that.
"John considered it as satisfying to stick his dick into a guy as into a
pussy," says Jim Holliday.
No one claims to have caught AIDS from John Holmes, even though he had
unprotected sex with dozens of persons while he was HIV positive.
John screwed two generations of porn stars - from Seka and Marilyn Chambers to
Ginger Lynn and the Italian member of Parliament Ciccolina. He appeared
in about 2500 flicks including gay ones. Porn's leading woodsman created
legends amongst the actresses able to absorb his 13-inch penis including
Little Oral Annie.
"John Holmes was the king," says Bill Margold, whose own dick measures over 10
inches. "He was living proof that not all men are created equal.
"I worked in a scene where John Holmes was being blown by four women and I was
sitting underneath, being blown by Lesllie Bovee. All of a sudden his
dick popped out over my head like the opening shot of Star Wars. I was
terrified. I had this horrible vision of it falling on my head and
cracking my skull open.
"Other dealings with John included the famous "40 inches of Meat" scene in
a Carlos Tobalina creation called Marathon (1982) wherein my wife of the
time, Drea, was taken by not only "The King" but also Ron Jeremy, Jamie Gillis
and yours unruly."

John's private life revolved around his penis. Rich men and women paid
handsomely to play with it. Though porn has seen longer dicks (Dick
Rambone measured 15 inches), none are as famous as John's organ.
Bob Chinn produced and directed John's most successful series Johnny Wadd,
where he played a hard-boiled detective. Holmes "was a thin bony trench-coated
shamus, outrageously horny, beding down with client and quarry alike," says
Al Goldstein of Screw.
It was a goofy series. "Holmes was everyman's gigolo, a polyester smoothy
with a sparse moustache, a flying collar and lots of buttons undone. He took
a lounge singer's approach to sex, deliberately gentle, ostentatiously artful,
a homely guy with a pinkie ring and a big dick who was convinced he was every
woman's dream." (Rolling Stone 6/15/89)
"I'm tired of hearing about John and his acting ability," says Jim Holliday.
"No one ever gave David Niven grief for having a small penis."
Holliday says that the 1977 movie Eruption demonstrates that John Holmes
could act. He plays Peter Winston, an insurance man drawn into a murder
conspiracy by Sandy Bevin (Lesllie Bovee). John does his own stunts, including
all the underwater scenes.
Holmes loved his work. "A happy gardener is with one dirty fingernails, and
a happy cook is a fat cook. I never get tired of what I do because I'm a sex
fiend." (Sinema)
Born on August 8, 1944, in Pickaway County, Ohio, to Mary and Edward Holmes,
John was the youngest of three boys and a girl. Mary, a Bible-thumping
Baptist, spent much of her marriage yelling at her husband, a carpenter and
alcoholic who'd throw up on the kids.
John Curtis Holmes lost his virginity at age twelve to a 36-year old friend
of his mother. After serving in the army, John, at age 19, began driving
an ambulance. He met a nurse, Sharon Gebenini who worked at USC County General
on a team pioneering open-heart surgery. In August, 1965, he married Sharon,
still a virgin, at Fort Ord, California.
One afternoon three years later, Sharon came home early from work to find
John measuring his penis. She went into her bedroom and laid down. Twenty
minutes later John appeared. He had a full erection.
"It's incredible," said John.
"What?
""It goes from five inches all the way to ten. Ten inches long! Four inches
around!"
"That's great," said Sharon, turning a page of her magazine. "You want me
to call the press?"
John stared at her for a long time before he spoke. "I've got to tell you
that I've been doing something else, and I think I want to make it my life's
work." (Rolling Stone)
That encounter marked the beginning of the end of their relationship, though
it stumbled on for twelve more years. Sharon bought the food and provided
for John, while he spent his porn earnings on himself. They slept in the
same room for the next decade but soon quit having sex.
"I loved the schmuck," said Sharon. "I just didn't like what he was doing."
While on disability, John had answered an ad for porn performers placed by
William Amerson who became the porn star's close friend and manager over
the next 20 years.
With his big dick, John quickly earned wads of money. He became a star.
In a 1973 interview, Holmes appeared hyper.

"I just can't sit still," he says, and he really can't. He fidgets, licks
his lips, rolls his eyes, chews his gum, runs his long fingernails down the
side of the chair he seems constantly on the verge of leaping out of. He
is so exuberant that "everybody says, 'Are you on uppers, are you on speed?'
And I say, 'No, man, I've just got this natural kick-in-the-ass energy level."
Constantly searching for new outlets for his energy, Holmes does all the
stunt work for his films - "scuba diving, flying, sky diving, jumping from
building to building, crashing motorcycles."
And he does all this without benefit of artifical stimulants. As a rule,
he never takes "any type of narcotic, dope, no pills, not even aspirin, not
even Rolaids. I don't drink alcohol, wine, nothing. The hardest thing I ever
drink is coffee."
By his own lights, John Holmes is a very moral person. He will rarely give
his word on something because "it's a life and death thing with me, when
I give it, it sticks. You've got a moral obligation to do what you've said
you're gonna do." And he has a personal code that others might envy: "Don't
hurt anybody physically or mentally in your whole lifetime... And don't fuck
with children." (Sinema p.117)

In 1973, John started informing to Sergeant Tom Blake, an LA Vice detective.
It's doubtful that John ever passed along useful information, but in exchange
for what he did give, the police went easy on him as he increasingly lived
the life of a criminal. To supplement his earnings, Holmes in 1975 became
a carrier for the mob.
Bill Amerson served as John's longtime manager, one of the few persons to
whom John told as much truth as much as lies. Amerson produced porn with
capo Michael Zaffarano of the Bonnano crime family and Stu Segall.
In 1976, John began courting 15-year old Dawn Schiller. He bought her stuffed
animals, roses and a ring. One night, John drove Dawn to the beach in his
van and stole her heart and virginity.
At the height of his career in 1978, Holmes earned three thousand dollars
a day from porn and almost as much selling himself as a gigolo. But he had
a drug problem spinning out of control. Every ten to fifteen minutes he needed
a hit of coke and then 40-50 Valium a day to cut the edge.
John got Dawn on drugs and eventually turning tricks to support his drug
habit. Away much of the time, Holmes filmed in Europe, San Francisco and
Hawaii, but as his drug use increased, John became harder to work with.
Persons on the set joked that you had to leave a trail of freebase from
the bathroom to the bedroom to get Holmes to work.
Drugs eventually killed John's abilities to get hard on camera. The man who
claimed to earn half-a-million dollars a year from his sexual talents became
a drug delivery boy for the gang of outlaws and junkies that lived on
Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.
John and Dawn lived for months out of Sharon's Chevy Malibu. Eventually,
John got her into an apartment in the San Fernando Valley with a porn actress
and high-priced hooker named Michelle.
Dawn turned tricks to support John's drug habit. Committing felony crimes
most days, Holmes stole luggage off conveyors at L.A. International, bought
appliances with his wife's credit cards and traded them for cash. Police
finally caught him January 14th, 1981 stealing a computer out of a car.
Nightclub owner and drug kingpin Adel "Eddie Nash" Nasrallah bailed John
and Dawn out of jail. Dawn fled. John chased her to the bus station but Dawn
had convinced the clerk to give John the wrong information, saying her life
was at stake.
John followed the wrong bus all the way to San Francisco. He then returned
to Sharon and beat her up. Dawn got home to Oregon and refused for months
to answer John's phone calls. Eventually she relented.
Five months after fleeing him, Dawn reunited with Holmes in West Los Angeles
two days before the most frightening week of John's life.
In late June, 1981, John was in bad shape. He'd screwed up a couple of drug
deliveries for the Wonderland Gang, a group of drug dealers who lived in
a stucco house at 8763 Wonderland Avenue on a steep, winding road in the
hills above Hollywood. John owed them and Eddie Nash money.
Holmes had met Nash several years earlier. The Palestinian loved porn and
loved John, treating him beautifully. John thought Nash the most evil man
he'd ever met but he couldn't figure him out. So John just hung around, even
presenting Dawn to Nash on Eddie's 1980 birthday. Nash was so pleased he
gave John a quarter pound of hard cocaine. But now the Wonderland gang was
out of drugs, out of money, and out of patience with John. They demanded
that John take them to Nash.
John did and the gang made Eddie plead for his life, stole over $100,000
cash, jewelry and more than eight pounds of cocaine. After going back to
their place on Wonderland Avenue, the gang divided up the spoils. John Holmes
got several thousand dollars, some cocaine and jewelry.
While wearing a ring that belonged to Nash and was stolen in the robbery,
John got caught in the San Fernando Valley by Nash's 300 pound karate-expert
bodyguard Gregory DeWitt Niles, a convicted felon. Niles dragged John to
the furious Nash. The druglord threatened Holmes that he'd murder his friends
and family if he didn't lead them to the Wonderland gang.
Holmes took them into the house on Wonderland Avenue where the gang stayed.
They found four dead men, beaten to a pulp and one woman, barely alive.
Early that Thursday morning, July 2nd, John, covered with blood, knocked
at Sharon's door. He told her he'd been in a car accident. Sharon, a nurse,
bathed him. She didn't notice any abrasions.
Sharon questioned John because she could tell by the look in his eyes that
he was lying. John then confessed to Sharon the truth of what happened.
"Why didn't you do something?" Sharon asked.
"I couldn't," said John. "It was either me and my family, including you,
or them. They made Nash beg for his life. They deserved to die." (Ibid)
John went to Dawn and fell asleep. She heard him cry out in his sleep, "Blood,
blood, blood, so much blood." On the late TV news she saw the report on the
murders of the four Wonderland gangsters.
She put everything together and waited until morning. After John awoke, he
told Dawn a made-up story.
A week later, police took John, Dawn and Sharon into custody, billeting them
at a luxury hotel. John enjoyed the attention and told the police everything
but who killed the Wonderland gang. Holmes refused to testify because he
feared that Eddie Nash would murder his family.
After a few days, the police released the three. Dawn and Sharon dyed John's
hair black. Dawn and John spray painted Sharon's Chevy Malibu and then the
two of them took off across the country. Holmes broke into cars along the
way to support them.
When they arrived in Miami, John got Dawn turning tricks at the beach. When
she tired of it, he publicly beat her and she ran away. A couple of weeks
later, on December four, 1981, she led the police to him. It was the last
time that John and Dawn saw each other.
Holmes went on trial for murdering the Wonderland gang. Because of his fear
of Eddie Nash, John refused to testify.
He used a simple defense. John Holmes was the "sixth victim" of the Wonderland
murders, and Eddie Nash was "evil incarnate."
"Ladies and gentleman," said John's lawyer at the beginning of the trial,
"unlike some mysteries, this is not going to be a question of 'Who done it?'
This is going to be a question of 'Why aren't the perpetrators here?'"
The jury acquitted John.
Months earlier, police arrested Nash, his bodyguard Diles and others on
charges of drug possession and drug selling. On November 22nd, 1982,
Nash got the maximum sentence of eight years in jail. Upon hearing the news,
John Holmes testified that same day before a Grand Jury (what he said is
not public knowledge) and was released.
John phoned Sharon who, during his incarceration, divorced him. Sharon told
him to "get the fuck out of my life."
Holmes returned to porn as the grand old man, a sort of Marlon Brando type.
In California Valley Girls, for instance, he has one scene. He enters the
room and sits on a couch. A girl comes in and begins sucking him. Then another
girl, and another. Eventually, six girls work on his penis.
In early 1985, while working on Fleshpond, Holmes met Laurie Rose, 19. Her
porn name was Misty Dawn, an anal queen. A junkie who came from a small town
outside Vegas, she looked like Dawn.
Sporting a vivid Caesarian scar, Misty appeared in such flicks as Aerobisex
Girls #1, Desire and Nasty Nurses.
"That first time, we didn't get to work together," says Laurie, "but we were
attracted. It sounds silly, but you know how you can meet someone for the
first time and it's like you know them already?" (Ibid.)
John and Laurie began dating - smoking freebase cocaine and having sex. Then,
Laurie told Rolling Stone, "the third time I went up there, he came up to
me with the mirror and said, 'You want a hit' and I turned to him and said
no. He looked shocked. He said 'Why not?' and I said, 'Because it makes me
feel funny and I can't talk.' So he went in the bathroom, and he locked
himself in. He stayed in there like three hours, and I'm just sitting
there, twiddling my thumbs. Finally he came out and said, 'You know
what? This stuff makes me feel funny too. I'm going to quit.'" (Ibid)
According to RS, John kept his promise. He and Laurie stayed home a lot and
watched videos. They went to swap meets and yard sales on weekends. They
supposedly fell in love.
The truth is much messier. Both John and Laurie kept doing drugs. John beat
her regularly.
After serving a couple of years in jail, crime kingpin Eddie Nash was released
early for good behavior. John worried but Eddie did nothing to him.
His fortune destroyed by his use of drugs and by his legal expenses, Eddie
Nash started anew. At night, he took business classes at a local college.
In the summer of 1985, John Curtis Holmes tested HIV positive. "When he came
back," says Laurie, "he was laughing about it. We closed up the office and
went to the beach. We played our favorite songs, walked, talked. John said
he felt like he was chosen to get AIDS because of who he was, how he lived.
He felt like he was an example." (Ibid)
John smoked five packs of cigarettes a day, in addition to ingesting enormous
amounts of alcohol and drugs with Laurie. He kept doing porn, including The
Rise and Fall of the Roman Empress starring Ilona "Ciccolina" Staller, a
future member of the Italian parliament.
He stole $200,000 from his friend Bill Amerson.
Pain dominated John Holmes's last two years.
While under the influence of drugs or alcohol, John married Laurie Rose at
the Little Chapel of the Flower in Las Vegas on January 24th, 1988. While
Holmes respected his first wife Sharon, he despised Laurie.
Police visited him the next month. John was down to 90 pounds and incoherent.
Prosecutors had reopened the inquiry into the Wonderland murders and wanted
evidence from John. But he was too sick to help.
On March 13, 1988, John Holmes died in peace with Laurie beside him
Six months later, on September 8, 1988, Niles and Nash were charged with
the murders on Wonderland Avenue but were acquitted.
Cheers, Luke Ford

For 100 years of sex in cinema, go to:
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[The ScriptPro 2000 System]

Kolaga wrote:

On 12 Nov 1997 10:00:37 GMT, luzd...@aol.com (LUZDEDOS)
wrote:

On March 13, 1988, John Holmes died in peace with Laurie

beside him. Six months later, on September 8, 1988,

Niles and Nash were charged with the murders on
Wonderland Avenue but were acquitted.

That would make a good movie! I mean, if they had all the stuff
about AIDS and beating up women and all the rest of the sleazoid
behavior.

For years now, Christopher Walken and Abel Ferrara have been trying to
put together the money to make this movie. Walken evidently wrote the
script himself. I know I'd be there opening day to see this movie, but
it would probably only be playing one theater in town, unrated. These
guys would definitely get the sleaze right, and that would probably make
people run for the doors.

Drew
POISONVILLE, LTD.
http://www.pacificnet.net/~noname/
"Karma Police/Arrest this man/He talks in maths/He buzzes like a
fridge/He's like a detuned radio..." - RADIOHEAD