Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes
First screened and reviewed in January 2026
Director: "Cass Paley," aka Wesley Emerson. Documentary about the iconic and disgraced 1970s porn star. Interview subjects include Sharon Holmes, Laurie Holmes (aka "Misty Dawn"), Bill Amerson, Bob Chinn, Al Goldstein, Ann Perry, Bob Vosse, Sharon Mitchell, Kitten Natividad, Candida Royalle, Richard Pacheco, Ilona Staller (aka "Cicciolina") Tom Blake, the Hon. Ron Coen, Kenneth Turan, Larry Flynt, Ron Jeremy, Paul Thomas Anderson. Screenplay: Rodger Jacobs. In Brief:
POV could be deeper, tone more precise, but there's more to this doc than meets the dick.
VOR:③
Negligible as filmmaking, but as archivally rich as a text as in the text. A round, era-specific study of someone who could've been flattened.
This documentary about the 1970s porn star John C. Holmes is notable mostly for 1) its sheer, revealing access to so many personal and professional intimates who are surprisingly candid about their varied experiences with Holmes, and 2) establishing beyond dispute that Holmes, the well-known basis for the Dirk Diggler character in Boogie Nights, was a more bottom-feeding reprobate than Paul Thomas Anderson came anywhere near suggesting. Which can coexist with the fact that many of his colleagues liked him, whatever that means about them, or him, or people.
I can't tell if it's interesting or disconcerting (both, I guess) that the movie maintains an almost journalistically neutral tone on even the worst parts of Holmes's life, which include violent partner abuse; working as an LAPD narc against his porn colleagues; beating and pimping out the girlfriend he started "dating" when she was 15; continuing to have unprotected sex with hundreds of fellow adult film actors while withholding his HIV-positive status; and serving as a likely murderer or, at minimum, active accomplice in the Wonderland killings in 1981, though a jury acquitted him of all charges. I often wanted the makers of Wadd to linger longer or turn up the condemnatory heat in some of these passages, a few of which fly by faster than you'd guess or with more elisions in fact or implication. More damning facts surface regularly, often to be followed by yet another dispatch on Holmes's oft-measured 13-inch penis or another debate about which drugs he did or didn't use, and when or when not. Then again, the censure is often palpable even when mealy-mouthed or unvoiced, not least when pseudonym-sporting director Wesley Emerson (aka "Cass Paley") controversially includes unblurred police footage of the just-discovered, blood-coated Wonderland corpses in situ. And I'm not usually begging for filmmakers to tell me what to think or feel, especially when I'm having no trouble deciding for myself. Grade:B–
(I posted this review on Letterboxd, where you can comment.)
