GOLDEN GODDESSES: 25 LEGENDARY WOMEN OF CLASSIC EROTIC CINEMA, 1968-1985

by Nelson, Jill C.

  I really do think the reason that Boogie Nights came out is because I did make John appear somewhat nice. Therefore, he was a fascinating guy. If I’d portrayed him as a guy who was just having sex with a bunch of people I don’t know that it would have lasted this long. There is nothing profound in the fact that someone had sex with people. The domino effect is that because I made Exhausted, Boogie Nights was made, and because that film was made, Wonderland was made.

  Beyond Boogie Nights

  Spurred on by the popularity of Boogie Nights, Hollywood took another crack at cashing in on the public’s fortuitous interest in porn legend John Holmes. In the fall of 2003 Wonderland, directed by two relative newcomers to filmmaking, James Cox and Captain Mauzner, was released by Lions Gate Films. The film chronicled real life events leading to the robbery set up by Holmes (Val Kilmer) at the home of L.A. nightclub owner Ed Nash (Eric Bogosian) followed by a multiple homicide in Laurel Canyon. Wonderland strikes a chord during certain segments, but due to its unsympathetic characters, harsh content, and misrepresentation of certain incidents, the production was unable to capture the success or the same demographic that made Boogie Nights a triumphant undertaking.

  I always wondered if Paul [Thomas Anderson] didn’t know somebody in the business because he got really close to me with the Julianne Moore character in some respects. There were many little things in there that I thought were parallels, but they could have just been completely coincidental although I did wonder if he might have known someone. Anyway, the homage was very nice of him even though we ended up with legal issues.

  Initially, when plans were made for the DVD release of Boogie Nights, Exhausted was slated to accompany it to make the product a dual set until a legal infringement compromised the marketing strategy.

  I should qualify that by saying it wasn’t something that I was doing vindictively. I was just a little pissed that there was no credit. Everyone ripped me off. The video company that got involved totally ripped me off. They pretended to own Exhausted which they denied. They swindled Newline and Criterion into believing that they had the rights to give them. It was a business proposition. There wasn’t insult on the work that Paul Thomas Anderson did, but I wasn’t getting paid a single nickel for DVDs that my film was put on. Then when lawyers get involved, it kind of snowballed. If someone came and had legitimately asked me if they could pair Boogie Nights with Exhausted, and given me a percentage, or something, I would have been fine with that prospect. That was never offered to me as a counter offer. If they’d made that offer it would have been different, but nobody made that offer. I may have miss-stepped somewhere, but I didn’t know any other way to do it, and I reached out to those guys to try to talk about that, but who am I? According to them, I’m a miniscule part of life. In other words, you don’t go and take The Little Engine that Could and recreate it without talking to the guy who wrote that book and said, “Hey, we’re going to redo this, are you interested and we’ll cut you in”.

  I have a feeling that whole thing got confused because of certain people who had no right to get involved. I think they shot some scenes [for Boogie Nights] down there at their company and so they were the big shots of the day, I really don’t know. Having said that, I thought Boogie Nights was really a good film and made well. Except for the fact that I was depicted as a porn star, it was real to life, yeah.

  Bigger Picture

  St. Vincent is genuinely humbled when asked about the impact her film has made historically on contemporary cinema. What is most important to her is that people and fans of the adult genre understand the motivation and cautionary measure communicated in her project.

  My legacy is minute in the scope of all of humanity, but if it was only pertaining to one little section, I’m not sure. I think P. T. Anderson passed along the message that I was trying to show and that is quit messing with people because they are making poor choices and help them instead. I think that’s what he was trying to say as well — that people were confused. People were just doing what they had to do just as I was trying to do with John. An opportunity was there and I took advantage of it. You could say the same thing with all of the women who do pornography. That’s what they do, they take what they do have and use it. If you’re one of these judgmental people, you should get off of your moral code because people did whatever they thought was right and what they could do at the time; they might have not thought of the bigger picture, but so what?

  I honesty do believe that they’re coming from a dysfunctional screwed up situation though — most of them. I don’t think in the whole time that I worked in that business that I really met anybody — women who acted in films that were coming from a real holistic viewpoint. That’s what I meant earlier about them being preyed upon on by people. It’s really a hard business. Young girls get involved in it thinking that they’ll become something, but they’re not. You’re going to get paid some money and then it’s all over. The damage has been done to you.

  I think there’s a difference in the overall attitude in today’s porn. The women are in a different environment because the attitude is more open about the adult industry now. People are not as judgmental today as they were years ago. There were many judgers back then so it’s not as bad for people now. You can actually survive without being beat up about it at this point. As far as the women go, I’m not sure about caliber, but I still believe that people who enter pornography are in some manner dysfunctional and haven’t resolved their issues. Otherwise, you would make a different choice. If you’re twenty years old and if you have it presented to you to have a choice of being in pornography or being in a commercial or a bit part in a movie, I would take the bit part as far as I could take it. The other point is that people around you are telling you that you should be doing it, and you don’t realize on the other end what it’s going to do to your life. It’s not a healthy thing.

  St. Vincent, who has been gone from the pornographic movie industry for more than twenty-five years, remains cautious about sharing her past with people who might not understand. Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the 1981 release of Exhausted, in the summer of 2011, Julia made a rare public appearance at a downtown L.A. venue where she introduced her documentary to members of the media and a group of vintage film fans. While gauging the age range of the audience, a mixture of youth, middle-aged, and older, not surprisingly, eyes were riveted to the images on the screen as many absorbed the film for the first time since its release. Gram Ponante, an adult journalist in attendance that evening, commended St. Vincent for her unique presentation of an adult film icon. He wrote, “Aside from the interviews, which are priceless, the collected sex scenes in Exhausted are beautiful. Holmes took his time with his partners and it’s refreshing to see so many natural, fleshy beauties again including Seka, and the perfect Annette Haven. There can be no argument that Holmes was famous for a reason, and this loving documentary is worth watching.”

  For me personally, it’s not even as severe as other people, but you can always use that as a way to beat yourself up — that you’re not as good as everybody else is because you did pornography. You cannot run for public office without that coming out somewhere along the line. It’s been a long time for me, but you can always use it against yourself in some manner. Other people can bring it up and mess with you. Again, if you say to someone, “I was pretty successful at one point, I made a movie,” and they ask you what it was and you tell them they say, “Oh, a porn movie? That was really something.” There’s always a way to get beat up, but I guess in the bigger picture they could beat you up over any damn thing.

  I got married to get out of the adult business. I tried to change my life and the thing that I thought was, “I don’t want to raise children and have Mommy going off to work with a bunch of people that are stripping and screwing each other.” I couldn’t see how that and a newborn baby could fit in the same picture.

  St. Vincent’s children are now grown. When she’s not working in her home office, J
ulia, a larger than life personality in every respect is funny and often spontaneous. She loves to walk her dog along the ocean boardwalk or take off for an adventurous road trip on the spur. I had an opportunity to accompany Julia and her dog alongside the ocean in Carlsbad late one afternoon in July 2011. While we observed kite boarders near the shoreline on a picture perfect day, St. Vincent reflected upon her past in the pornographic film industry. Years ago, she recorded her experiences and is saving them for a rainy day.

  It’s not that I have anything personal against pornography, but I don’t like the way it can affect someone’s life. People get hurt by it. Sure, it is fun when you’re a kid and everything, but when you grow up and you look around and you see what choices you have, some of them are limited because of that. Everybody can come out and try to question my opinion, but I’ve been there and I already know what they have to tell me. Even the women who came out sort of unscathed don’t make a lot of money today at age fifty because of pornography. They’re broke. You can only use your body for so long. It’s not even the same thing as being an actor because an actor like Betty White can get old and still accept parts. What kind of part in porn do you want to see an old grandmother doing?

  COURTESY OF JULIA ST. VINCENT

  John Holmes in Exhausted raw footage. COURTESY OF JULIA ST. VINCENT

  Julia St. Vincent Directing Exhausted. COURTESY OF JULIA ST. VINCENT

  Julia St. Vincent interviews John Holmes in Exhausted. COURTESY OF JULIA ST. VINCENT

  Original cover art for Exhausted.

  Holmes and Bob Chinn are interviewed (by Julia St. Vincent) in Exhausted. COURTESY OF JULIA ST. VINCENT

  Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) and Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) are interviewed in Boogie Nights. NEW LINE HOME VIDEO

  COURTESY OF JULIA ST. VINCENT

  20.

  Laurie Holmes

  New Dawn for Misty

  PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHARLES BIGGS. COURTESY OF LAURIE HOLMES

  “I am a fighter. I fight for what I believe to be true no matter what the cost. It has often cost me dearly.”

  — Laurie Holmes

  At forty-nine years old, Laurie Holmes (born Laurie Rose) is an apt example of what it is to be a survivor although she’d be the first one to proclaim she’s nobody’s victim. As the youngest of three children from a nuclear family in New Mexico, Laurie was not unlike any other little girl growing up in the southwestern United States during the late 1960s and 1970s. The daughter of a military man and kindergarten teacher, Laurie grew rebellious in nature during her teen years. She was sent to live in foster homes before becoming pregnant by her boyfriend at age sixteen. When she was unable to reclaim the carefree years she’d lost before becoming a young mother, Laurie entered adult movies in 1982 to support her young son and chose the stage name “Misty Dawn.”

  In her first feature film, The Best Little Cathouse in Las Vegas (aka For Love or Money, 1982) Laurie co-starred opposite her favorite veteran actress at the time, Rhonda Jo Petty. Although her tenure as a performer was sporadic, her petite stature in conjunction with a high-spirited girlish essence and well-formed figure, made Laurie popular with male audiences.

  Shortly after her introduction into the triple X industry, the young performer fell in love with legendary porn star John Holmes (fresh out of L.A. County jail for contempt) after becoming smitten by him on the San Francisco set of Marathon (1983). A few months later, John invited Laurie and her son to move in with him and became a mentor to his ready-made family.

  After joining the ranks of the new breed of female adult performers in the early 1980s, Laurie starred in her own feature vehicle for VCX as psychiatrist Dr. Misty Banks in Dreams of Misty (1984). In 1985, Laurie put her acting career on hold and became an office clerk for Penguin Productions, an adult video company Holmes formed along with his partner Bill Amerson. Granted the responsibility to balance the books and preside over accounts that had fallen into arrears, Laurie eventually became Vice-President of Penguin and watched it turn a healthy profit during its short term in operation.

  Before he passed away from AIDS-related causes in 1988, Holmes bought Laurie a car for her twenty-fourth birthday and encouraged her to make a fresh start away from the industry. With her son in tow, Laurie relocated outside of Los Angeles where she found work at various jobs that included dancing and bartending. After giving birth to another child, the young mother drifted back to pornographic movies in 1999 where she met her second husband Colombian born Tony Montana. Later, Holmes found employment under Dr. Sharon Mitchell at AIM.

  In 2003 at age forty, Laurie finally hung up the G-string for good and hasn’t looked back. Nor does she encourage young aspiring starlets to follow in her footsteps. Employed full time in the medical community, Laurie resides in the Colorado Mountains and has a new lease on life. She concentrates on the elements she believes are essential to her well-being: love, family, friends, nature, and a dog named Miss Beto. Laurie manages to retain a few vestiges belonging to her untamed youth however demonstrated by her continued passion for politics, rock and roll music, driving in the high country, and a propensity to speak her mind.

  I interviewed Laurie Holmes in the winter of 2011.

  Budding Rose

  I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had a very good and happy childhood. It was probably better than most kids’ childhoods. My father was a military man. He came from nothing and worked very hard to become somebody. We had more material things than many other families did in our community because of my father’s success. While I was growing up, my mother was a kindergarten teacher. She was also a hard worker and was admired by many, yet both my mother and my father always had time for us kids and for all of our many activities. I have one brother and one sister; I was the baby.

  I had many dolls and I was into gymnastics and took various lessons during my childhood years. I was a cheerleader in YAFL [Young American Football League] in New Mexico. I was a Blue Bird and a Camp Fire Girl — the whole works. My family went on many summer vacations together. It was the seventies and it was all grand.

  During my early years, I had problems in school though and I wasn’t very popular in grade school. Then one summer I blossomed into something that I wasn’t ready to be. Upon returning to school that fall, all the boys wanted me. The attention I received was a little overwhelming, but I enjoyed every single bit of it. In the eighth grade, I was expelled from one school and in the middle of the year, I started attending another. The girls were terribly jealous towards me and I remember running to the bus away from them so that I wouldn’t get beaten up. That incident clearly isn’t as pleasurable as the memory I have of walking down the hall and noticing that the boys were literally bending over and grabbing themselves while gazing at me. That image is still etched in my mind. For better or for worse, all of the positive attention was coming from the opposite sex — for sure.

  By the time I reached high school I was totally out of control; I hated any kind of authority. I was going to do whatever the hell I wanted to and nobody was going to tell me any different. I was sixteen going on thirty-something, or at least I believed that at the time.

  My first love was at the age of fifteen. My parents did not approve as he was about eight years older than I was at the time. That didn’t stop me. By the time I was sixteen, I was living in foster homes because my parents didn’t know what to do with me. I saw one psychologist after another against my will, of course. Finally, one of the psychologists said to my mom, “She thinks she’s grown up and you’re not going to stop her. She’s going to have to go out in the world and find out what reality is like for her own self”. Shortly afterwards, I moved to a different state with my boyfriend and it wasn’t long after we’d started living together that I became pregnant at the age of sixteen. I was far too young for motherhood; I know that now. By the time I was eighteen, I was back at home living with my parents with a baby. I was working at a stupid little clerk job, riding around town with a baby on the back of my b
icycle while living under the rules of my parents. I didn’t like it one bit. It was during this time when a girl friend of mine and I reconnected. She told me that she had been shooting porn movies and making good money. After hanging up the phone with her, I called her back a few minutes later and begged her to turn me on to these people. For a young mother living at home with her parents, it sounded like an exciting lifestyle as well as an opportunity for me to make enough money to get away from the homestead.