Jim Tushinksi

I'll take Manhattan
Wakefield Poole is subject of new Jim Tushinski film project

Author, archivist and historian Jim Tushinski is not one to rest on his laurels. Fresh from awards and accolades for his restoration of the classic 1970s Peter Berlin films, That Boy and Nights in Black Leather, not to mention his Peter Berlin documentary, That Man: Peter Berlin, Tushinski has a new project underway.

Wakefield Poole is the subject of Tushinski's next film documentary. Although Poole's accomplishments embrace far more than gay porn, Just Us Boys readers may know him best as the director of the films classics Bijou and Boys in the Sand, and the discoverer and promoter of the world's first bona fide gay porn star, Casey Donovan. Boys in the Sand (1971) is, in its way, the Gutenberg Bible of gay porn, being the first adult film ever to be reviewed by Variety and advertised in the New York Times.

I ran into Jim Tushinski at the 2007 GayVN Awards ceremony in San Francisco, which he attended with Peter Berlin. We chatted after the show and he told me about his Wakefield Poole project.

To learn more about the project, view photos, hear audio clips or to make a tax-deductible donation, visit www.dirtypoole.com. See video excerpts and a montage of Poole's films at www.youtube.com/jtatgfp.

Tell me about the Wakefield Poole project.
I got very interested in Wakefield's story after I read his autobiography, Dirty Poole (Alyson Books, 2000, pap. out of print), while preparing for my interview with him for That Man: Peter Berlin. His story was this amazing saga of reinvention: from ballet dancer to Broadway hoofer to director/choreographer to influential gay filmmaker to art collector/gallery owner to pornographer to drug addict to recovered addict to successful corporate chef. He worked with and rubbed shoulders with everyone of any influence in theater, dance, and art and then committed professional suicide by releasing Boys in the Sand with his own name attached and in an open, respectable way.

Who is involved in the production?
We started shooting in New York at the end of April, doing a bunch of interviews with Wakefield and a bevy of colleagues and friends such as Joe Gage, Marvin Shulman (Wakefield's long-time manager who financed Boys in the Sand, Bijou, and others and then used the profits to help fund the initial run of A Chorus Line), Richard Rodger's daughter Mary Rodgers Guettel (composer of Once Upon a Mattress and author of the book Freaky Friday), Broadway actress Jill O'Hara (the original productions of Hair and Promises, Promises), Frederic Franklin (the primary dancer of Ballet Russe, in which Wakefield was a member of the corps), and more.

We hope to continue with more interviews in San Francisco and Los Angeles later in the year. The list of people who worked with Wakefield is incredible: Carol Burnett, Diahann Carroll, Stephen Sondheim, Noel Coward, Florence Henderson, Joel Grey, Bernadatte Peters, Kelly Bishop (from Gilmore Girls), Chita Rivera, Gwen Verdon ... it's like a musical comedy queen's wet dream.

It's amazing that he was so involved in arts and theater at a time when it was becoming "safer" to be gay and out in the arts.
Really, this project is as much about the New York theater and art scene in the late 1960s as it is about the birth of modern gay porn. And a large part of Wakefield's story takes place in San Francisco during the mid 1970s — another seminal time — where he co-owned and operated the influential gallery/store/hair salon Hot Flash of America and was friends with Harvey Milk. So the doc really shows the influence of burgeoning gay self-awareness and openness on the pop culture of the USA in those important years 1960-1980.

I know that Poole made quite a few films, both porn and non-porn.
One of the most interesting parts of this project has been being able to see some of Wakefield's non-porn films, including crazy experiments on Super 8 that anticipate the enormous multimedia events Wakefield and his partner Peter Fisk created for the New York art scene and Wakefield's first big flop, The Bible (1973), a soft-core, straight look at three Old Testament Bible stories which starred Georgina Spelvin (who has agreed to be interviewed for the documentary) and Bo White (he was one of the leads in the 1973 gay film A Very Natural Thing and played Adam in The Bible). Bible is an amazing film, sort of a combination of Fantasia for adults and a Fellini movie. Of course, it was a huge financial disaster.

(Ed. note: Georgina Spelvin played Miss Jones in the original The Devil in Miss Jones.)

One of Wakefield's last "personal" films (before he started making standard porn) has been unseen for almost 30 years due to a dispute between him and his producer. It's a porn/documentary hybrid called Take One (1977), which is a love letter to the Nob Hill adult theater in San Francisco and features Richard Locke. It's unlike anything else done at the time and hopefully we'll be able to work something out with the producer to be able to include a number of clips from it. It shows Wakefield at work in a film within a film.

When can we expect to see the final film?
We shot a presentation for the Donnell Center of the New York Public Library that was shown on April 28, called "The Two Faces of Wakefield Poole," which looks at his theater and dance career and at his filmmaking career. I have no idea when I'll have a cut of the documentary ready for screenings. With no financial support (lots of distributors want to see it when it's done, but no one wants to give me money to make it), this is a one day at a time project. So unless an angel appears with a fat checkbook, this is going to take a while to complete. I'm not sure if the lack of funding has more to do with the porn angle or with the fact that this is perceived as a gay subject and therefore of very limited commercial appeal. Despite all the word of mouth given to the gay dollar and how gay men supposedly have lots of money to spend, films that are perceived as gay have a financial stigma attached: no potential theatrically and limited appeal on DVD. Since documentaries are even less commercially viable than fiction films, it's pretty much impossible to raise money for a project like this. Maybe if I can get Carol Burnett and Florence Henderson to be interviewed, it will help. But I'm not holding my breath.

Interview conducted June 2007; updated March 2008.