PinkLabel.TV PornClub’s Spotlight series returns for Pride! We interview filmmaker Ryan A. White, one half of the driving duo behind Wohler Films, about Big Sur Gay Porn and Raw! Uncut! Video!, presenting erotic gay films of the past through intimate documentation and a deep reverence to the history of queer adult cinema that is a gift to the past and present creators and audiences, honoring those who were there and creating powerful connections for new audiences.

Trailer for BIG SUR GAY PORN (2023)

Filmmaker Spotlight: Wohler Films

PinkLabel.TV: How did Wohler Films come to be? What is its origin story and the inspiration behind your work? 

Ryan: Alex and I met about 12 years ago when we were both living near the Russian River in Sonoma County, California. We both needed to commute to San Francisco multiple times per week, and we started carpooling whenever we could. While stuck in early morning traffic, we’d chat about art, film, music, LGBTQ+ history, and local gossip. We found that we had a mutual interest in researching and recovering the vibrant queer histories of rural California. During that time, I started developing Cruising Elsewhere – a historical project about a nearly forgotten gay beach and cruising area on the Russian River. Research and production for the film required exploring an incredibly beautiful, but largely overgrown, area of the River that was occasionally still visited by nudists. Alex joined me on some of those adventures and shot material for the film. While working on that project, we met Jack Fritscher and Mark Hemry (of Palm Drive Video), which began our five year journey of making Raw! Uncut! Video!

PLTV: What is it that sparks your interest about early gay porn filmmakers? Who were your early inspirations in this field? 

Ryan: Early gay porn offers such a rich archive of LGBTQ+ life during a time when queerness wasn’t really documented in the same ways that it is today. Erotic films were some of the first opportunities that independent gay filmmakers had to openly tell their stories and document their own communities. So, when you watch those films, you see and learn so much about gay culture and history. As a documentary filmmaker, I find endless inspiration in erotic queer films from the 1970s and 1980s. I have my favorite filmmakers from the period – like Arthur J. Bresson Jr, Peter de Rome, Wakefield Poole, Lancer Brooks, and Steve Scott – but honestly, it’s all so precious! If we didn’t have those films, we’d be missing a huge chunk of historical queer expression and cultural documentation.

Ryan A. White and Alex of Wohler Films pose with PinkLabel.TV creator Shine Louise Houston at the 2023 San Francisco PornFilmFestival

PLTV: We were thrilled to present both Big Sur Gay Porn and Raw! Uncut! Video! at the San Francisco PornFilmFestival. Where else have your films toured? Do you have any good travel stories to share? Have you connected with other filmmakers documenting queer culture, time and spaces in similar ways? 

Ryan: Yeah!!! We were so excited for Big Sur Gay Porn and Raw! Uncut! Video! to be part of SFPFF! We’ve been really lucky to travel a bit with the films. It’s always so interesting to see how people react to our work, especially because we typically start from this place of telling a local story and helping to recover very region-specific queer histories. But, within that specificity we’ve been able to connect to larger themes that speak to all sorts of audiences.

A huge travel highlight for us was having the International Premiere of Raw! Uncut! Video! at the 50th Molodist (Kyiv International Film Festival) in 2021, which was also the first-ever public showing of the documentary. When making that film, we never could have imagined that we’d be walking the red carpet in Ukraine for our first screening! We were also really thrilled that the programmers at Wicked Queer: Docs in Boston screened Big Sur Gay Porn and Raw! Uncut! Video! together for their 2023 festival. The two films really complement each other and we had a fantastic conversation with the audience afterwards. It was so cool to have the common threads in our work recognized and celebrated!

PLTV: Do you have any advice or resources to share with other queer filmmakers? 

Ryan: Follow your instincts and don’t be afraid to get super specific in your storytelling. Often the stories that are closest to us are the ones we can tell in the most impactful and resonant ways. Big Sur Gay Porn is incredibly close to my heart, because I grew up going to that beach and had my first sexual encounters there. When making the film, I often felt this sense of “So what?” – like, this means something to me, but why would anyone else care? But, I believe that diving deep into the nitty gritty details of individual experiences is how we find inroads to universal connections that lots of people can relate to. In the world of documentary there’s this urge to tell BIG stories that tackle SERIOUS topics, but it’s often in the nuance and specificity of diverse experiences that we actually learn interesting things about each other and ourselves.

PLTV: What excites you about having the film on PinkLabel.TV?

Ryan: Having our films on PinkLabel.TV is such a huge honor! We’ve never wanted to censor the content of our documentaries. Our films deal with the historical significance of pornography and sex-positivity, and if we were to eliminate the explicit imagery from those stories it would feel antithetical to our entire approach. But, because our films do contain graphic scenes of sexuality it is often a struggle to find widespread distribution for our work. There’s still so much stigma and restriction around images of sensuality, and mainstream distributors seem to get scared off from our films. For instance, we had months of negotiations with an LGBTQ+-themed broadcaster for Raw! Uncut! Video!. Those talks finally resulted in a two-year streaming contract, which was really exciting. But, months after the agreement had been signed by all parties, the broadcaster decided the film was just too risque and they broke the contract with us. All we want is to have our films accessible and available to the public! So, it’s absolutely incredible to have a platform like PinkLabel.TV that celebrates and elevates adult-themed content. We’re so thankful to y’all for carving out this space and creating this platform where viewers can support independent erotic cinema. We know that our documentaries are in wonderful hands and we are excited that people around the world can screen our films whenever they want!

Interviewing Richard Bernstein (aka Mickey Squires) for Raw! Uncut! Video!, 2018

PLTV: What are you working on next? How can people find out more about your work?

Ryan: We’re currently in post-production on a new documentary called Mickey & Richard. The film explores the contrasts between Richard Bernstein and his alter ego, Mickey Squires – who was a Colt model and had a 25-year career in the gay porn industry. Richard is a very shy and reserved person, yet through this character of Mickey Squires his image became absolutely iconic to gay male masculinity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But, while Mickey offered Richard validation and an escape from his insecurities, it was all a performance. It’s not always easy for Richard to live up to this hugely popular porn alter ego that he created. And, years after retiring from the spotlight, the shadow that Mickey casts can still be challenging for him to grapple with. Our previous projects have examined queer history through the lens of erotic films and filmmakers, and this is our exploration of how one highly visible porn performer has negotiated the blurry line between his personal and public lives.

You can find out more about our work by following us on social media. We are @wohlerfilms on Instagram and X, @rawuncutvideo on Facebook.

Thank you, Ryan! Watch Big Sur Gay Porn and Raw! Uncut! Video! (and also Cruising Elsewhere!) streaming on PinkLabel.TV.

Featured image for this post shows Alex filming the Big Sur Gay Porn title sequence, 2023. Courtesy Wohler Films.