““I picked the guys and I picked the clothes. Cut their hair, pluck their eyebrows, shaved ’em. Scrubbed their feet and bleached them so they had nice, white feet. Tan them up and oil them down…”” – John Summers
So, I don’t mean to reduce an excellent, well-researched, and fascinating article into one silly quote – but maybe I just did! I had NO IDEA about John Summers, partly cuz other than the handful of porn directors I go to all the time, FALCON (while having a ton of good material) never seemed director-focused – BUT, mostly, seriously, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that a major player at Falcon all those years was Black.
So you must check out Kelvin Blunt‘s recent piece – John Summers: The Black Co-Founder of Falcon Studios – from the intro: “Summers was attached to movies that were polished, popular, and, in some cases, quietly influential including The Bigger The Better, Two Handfuls, Rock Hard, and Don’t Kiss Me I’m Straight.” Particularly interesting is Summers’ role in Style – so check out the article, then come back and check the clip out.
Below we got a clip, Watercolors found in Falcon’s 1982 film, Style that is mentioned in the article. Also, he mentions this documentary Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes story of – which I think I contributed a couple dollars to several years back, got a complimentary copy, and then stowed it away and never watched – insane, right??!
8 replies on “Scrubbed their feet”
That was a fascinating read, great find. I think I realized that about John Summers belatedly too, probably a clip from one of those documentaries like Seed Money or others I’ve found. It gets confusing when multiple names are all associated with the same guy, and directors in porn have that happen to them as much as performers do. But it had a lot of info about the early days which is definitely of interest.
The only quibble I noticed in the linked article was when he claimed Falcon had made the switch to safe sex by 1988 when that is WRONG, they were among the last holdouts in switching to condoms for fucking. The page linked below (listing the first 100 FVPs) seems accurate, though it’s gone and I had to find an archive crawl of it, anyway whoever wrote it said: “Their last pre-condom production was FVP 070, released in 1990. I am still astonished that they could keep up producing bareback porn until that year.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20220820002903/https://hotyoungfuckers.com/2021/02/falconstudios-classic-fvp-001-fvp-100/
Hi BJ: Thanks a million for sharing my essay and for your kind words. I’m glad the article sparked interest in John Summers and his role in shaping Falcon’s early visual style and productions.
And thanks as well to the commenter who flagged the condom timeline. After revisiting the archival record, I confirmed that Falcon adopted condoms in 1990, beginning with the film Revenge (FVP-67). I’ve updated the essay accordingly to reflect the corrected year. The timing is notable given how dramatically HIV/AIDS had already reshaped safety practices across much of the gay adult industry by that point.
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read the essay.
And BJ, thank you for creating BJ Land and for the devotion, passion, and care you put into sharing it with us. This history is so important to savor, celebrate, and nurture. Thank you for leading the way. xx
Kelvin Blunt
One again it seems I let my inner jerk out to play, sorry if I was too abrupt in the way I said that. I didn’t know the author himself was going to be swinging by the comments but that’s not really an excuse. I very much enjoyed your article and the research that must have gone into composing and publishing it, and I envy your turn of phrase and precision editing since I’m more of a ‘dump it all out at once and let people try to find their escape’ kind of writer myself, in reddit porn reviews mostly.
But being a young gayling in the late 80s when such mixed messages about safe sex were seen in porn I remember it clearly from my intro period to the films. I even know of a handful of films where condoms were worn at first, then discarded for whatever reason as the sex continued which was very confusing to the audience. I know why guys didn’t want to see condoms and have them ruin the fantasy aspect but the performers were real men, and them putting their lives at stake was too big a cross for the industry to bear.
I forget whether it was Seed Money or another similar film about Falcon, they interviewed Steve Scarborough and he was talking about the lengths that studio went to to avoid having the actors wear condoms. He said something along the lines of ‘pump the bottoms full of nonoxynol-9 and hope for the best’ as being their mindset as most of the rest of the studios starting mandating safe sex depictions. N-9 was billed as a combination spermicide and HIV prevention, while it may have worked for the former it wasn’t effective for the latter, as tests eventually proved.
One of their most famous bottoms of the transition period, Kevin Williams is apparently still around, and he was fucked onscreen by plenty of big dicked tops then, usually raw. But others of course weren’t so lucky whether primarily tops, bottoms or more versatile.
You or other readers here might find this of interest, there was a rather short-lived gay magazine focused primarily on NYC that was called Outlook, between 89 and 91. Michelangelo Signorile wrote for it, along with Michael Musto and others. In the 28 August 1989 issue linked below starting on page 34 is an article titled ‘Fright, Cameras, Action!’ written by a John Umlaut, describing the situation in gay porn from what was then the present time and he quoted various people in the industry then, worth checking out if you haven’t seen it:
https://archive.org/details/outweek/OutWeek%2010/
The link is right but the magazine was called Outweek not Outlook, and I can’t change that in the above comment.
Thank you for the thoughtful follow-up. No worries at all about tone. Conversations like this are part of what makes these archives and comment threads so valuable.
I appreciate your kind words about the essay. Untangling the early history of Falcon and the people around it took quite a bit of digging, so it means a lot when readers engage with the material so closely. I also appreciate you sharing your memories of encountering these films when they were new.
Your recollection of the late-80s transition period is especially helpful. That era was full of contradictions and misinformation for the industry, and the mixed messaging around safe sex that you mention comes up repeatedly in interviews and retrospectives from the time.
And thank you for pointing me toward the Outweek article. I wasn’t familiar with that piece, but it sounds exactly like the sort of contemporary source that helps illuminate how people inside the community were thinking about porn, sex, and HIV/AIDS in real time. I’ll definitely take a look.
Thanks again for reading and for contributing to the discussion.
Both the blog post and the resulting comments were very eye-opening. I had always assumed that John Summers was white. I’m shocked that I was so ignorant.
Falcon did not always have the diversity that it should have, but the studios were mostly all like that back then. I feel like things have really improved across the industry and I hope that they actually have. In other areas, I hope that things have improved as well. I worry about the high rate of performer deaths by drugs or suicide. And I don’t know exactly how individuals maintain their physical and mental health- and hope that there are enough resources and support to help them. There probably aren’t- as that is kind of the way it is for many people in the country. I wrote a paper once in favor of legitimizing the sex worker communities and industries and how that might improve things. Maybe de-stigmatize these jobs, ya? But I’m not exactly holding my breath in the current state of things.
I guess there have always been aspects of the gay porn industry that we’d like to avoid looking too closely at because it’s upsetting. It’s important to remember the past and to stay aware of what’s going on right now.
I was lucky as a teenager in the 1980s because my mom was aggressive when it came to educating me about safe sex. She was constantly hiding condoms and safe sex brochures all over my room and among all my belongings. Unzip your backpack, condoms fall out. Not a normal parental situation, but it worked. Thanks mom! (I also lucked out quite a bit)
Thanks guys. Very thought-provoking which I love, and very sexy thanks to the hot video clip!
Hi JohnnyLlama: Thank you for this thoughtful reflection. And please don’t feel embarrassed about the assumption regarding John Summers. Many people, including me, made the same one for decades, which is part of what compelled me to research and write the essay.
Your broader reflections about the industry and performer wellbeing are important. I think about it everyday, especially about performers. The history of gay porn includes both creativity and difficult realities. Looking honestly at both is part of understanding how our community (and the industry) evolved.
I especially appreciated your story about your mom making sure you were surrounded by safe-sex reminders. That kind of care was lifesaving for many people during that era. My mother worked with people with AIDS in the late ’80s/early ’90s, which made my coming out and discussions around safe sex much easier.
Thank you again for reading the essay and for sharing such a thoughtful perspective. Btw, I loved the clip BJ posted, too. BJ spoils us lol.
Yes he does! Thnx Kelvin for the reply.