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Jenni Olson in conversation with Robert Adams, on the Adult Films of Arthur J. Bressan Jr.

On Sunday, July 26th, queer film historian Jenni Olson connected via Zoom with Robert Adams, star of Passing Strangers and Forbidden Letters, two gay adult films from the late filmmaker Arthur J. Bressan, Jr. Bressan died of AIDS in 1987. Bressan’s work has been largely unrecognized, however thanks to the restoration efforts of The Bressan Project, it is now finding a digital revival.

Jenni Olson, Co-Director of The Bressan Project, has gone to great lengths to make Bressan’s films available, coordinating with Vinegar Syndrome and Frameline and the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation and PinkLabel.TV to digitally restore and stream the titles. Robert Adams stars in both films, and graciously share his time and experiences in this interview.

Text excerpts from their recorded talk appear below. A full transcript is available here.

Jenni Olson in conversation with Robert Adams, on the Adult Films of Arthur J. Bressan Jr.

Jenni: I’m so excited to get to talk to you. This whole project started a couple of years ago and we’ve been gradually restoring and rereleasing Arthur’s films. And it’s been especially amazing to reconnect with or connect with Arthur’s old friends and people who were involved in the making of his films. And so thank you so much for being here and talking with us. So many questions. I wonder if we could start with you. Could you talk about how you met Arthur and kind of, you know, the early days?Passing Strangerswas made in 1974, which was like five years after Stonewall. Very different time. And could you talk about what it was like to be gay in San Francisco back then? And meeting Artie?

 

Robert: It was definitely an interesting time and there’s never been another like it, that’s for sure. I came to San Francisco, I think about a year before that from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I had some friends in Milwaukee that I met that were gay that moved to San Francisco. At the time, San Francisco was known as this gay Mecca that gay people from all over the country flocked to, just to be accepted and to feel like, you know, to learn more about themselves. And so I kind of followed them there. When I met Artie, I was just literally standing in front of the St. Francis Hotel on Geary at Powell and Artie walked up to me and approached me and said that he was interested in, or he was making this movie and he thought that I looked like the kind of character that he envisioned for it. And he wondered if I would be interested in doing it. And as a, really a lifelong movie fan. Even at that point, my first job was at an art house movie theater. I ran a film society in Milwaukee. So he says “movies” and it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’ll do it!” And at that point, I didn’t even know what kind of film it was or anything. Just the word “movie” was magic. So then, I think we probably went and had lunch or something somewhere, and he explained the concept of the film. And also that it was, you know, adult nature, explicit sex, which I didn’t really have a problem with. So that was how it started.

 

Jenni: I’d love to talk about any kind of stories about the shoot or particular memorable aspects of the scenes with your co-star Robert Carnegie, or there’s stuff that you shot out at Angel Island that seems particularly amazing. The outdoor sequences. And also one of the most remarkable things about both films is that they are so romantic and affectionate. And I would love for you to talk about that and about, you know, kind of Artie’s vision as a director in that regard and how he worked with you on those.

 

Passing Strangers

 

Robert: Well, I’m a romantic.I really am and to this day I still am. And so it wasn’t hard for me to play that kind of role. Robert Carnegie, I remember that I kind of had a crush on him. But I kind of formed crushes on a lot of people back then. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t reciprocated. We didn’t have any kind of relationship outside of the shoot. But I think both of us really got into the characters, you know, when you’re doing something like that, you just kind of… You kind of find, not even the role, but just that that part of yourself, that romantic part. You know, when and how you are with a relationship where you’re in love with someone. And yeah, I think it worked. I think at the time we felt it. And it shows, it shows on camera, even though we didn’t actually have that relationship.

 

Jenni: And did you talk about that aspect with Artie? I mean, obviously it is a porn film and there’s plenty of actual sex in it. As a director, did he talk about how important that aspect was? In terms of his direction?

 

Robert: I think sex is a very ‘matter of fact’ thing with Artie. He was focused on it because that was the market that he was in. I also think he enjoyed sex and that he liked filming it. In terms of his direction, the way I remember is he set up a scene, and then he just expressed generally what he wanted from the scene. He let us just take it from there. There wasn’t any specific direction. At least that’s how I recall it. I mean, that was 40 years ago.

 

Jenni: One of the things about both films is this kind of ethos of gay liberation and a kind of political aspect of that. And also this sense of community and kind of nurturing. I mean, in the plot of the film, your character is 18 and other characters older, 28. And you have this kind of sense of mentoring and nurturing. I’m curious if you can just talk about that perspective, that aspect of it.I was reading — we got all these great new reviews — and I love, love Johnny Ray Houston’s 48Hills review, where he describes you as a waif-like, well-hung muse.

(Both laugh.)

I don’t know. Is there anything that you want to say about that aspect of the — not your ‘well-hung muse’ — but the kind of nurturing, you know of the two characters.

Robert: Well, I uh… Yeah.That was I think that was really the reason that I did the film, is because of the story. And that tenderness and that love story aspect of it. I mean, the sex was of fun and it was exciting to do, obviously, but it isn’t what was important to me or why I was drawn to Artie in doing those… (Laughs)

I was telling a friend about the waif-like comment. “Well-hung muse.” And he said, “well, wasn’t that filmed in a small aspect ratio?” And I said, “Yeah, but Artie could pan across my dick.”

(Laughs.)

 

Jenni: One of the other amazing things that Arthur does in all of his films is utilize, you know, essentially a kind of documentary. He has these kinds of multiple levels of cinematic meaning or things happening. In Passing Strangers, he has the two characters literally go to the actual 1974 Gay Freedom Day Parade. So it is this documentary like you’re actually at the Gay Freedom Day Parade. Can you talk about that, did he just say, go and pretend that you’re these guys and you’re in this parade and we’ll follow you around?

 

Passing Strangers

 

Robert: Yeah, there is an interesting thing about that. The scene that we’re actually in is very short and I believe he used footage from other parades.

 

Jenni: He had shot the 1972 Gay Freedom Day Parade, and I think he also did an additional 1974 kind of B-Roll.

 

Robert: : But he had more of us in the parade, and as I recall, he thought we broke character, that we got too much in to the gay parade thing and we weren’t really as much into our characters. So I think the footage he actually used was pretty brief because of that.

 

Jenni: Wow. That is fascinating to hear. And then, of course, makes me think that there are outtakes. There’s outtake footage that we have not found.

 

Robert: I think he probably destroyed it.

 

Jenni: I don’t know. I mean, we it’s been an amazing kind of journey on an archival front where, first of all, Arthur’s sister, Roe Bressan, when when Artie died, she donated boxes and boxes of his film elements and papers to Frameline, which is the organization that runs the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival. All of that stuff was at Frameline. And then there was this kind of crazy situation where she actually moved and Frameline lost touch with her. This was in, I mean Artie died in 1987. And in the early 90s, we were trying to get in touch with her. I was at Frameline at that time as festival co-director, and we couldn’t reach her. And so we had all that stuff, boxes and boxes sitting there for twenty years and couldn’t reach her, so we couldn’t do anything with it in terms of the rights holder. And then it was maybe three or four years ago that it occurred to Google an old phone number that I had for her because she’d changed her name. She had a married name and her name was different. Anyway, there was this ridiculous thing where we couldn’t find her. And so three or four years ago, I- I found her and we reconnected and I said, you know, we have all this stuff. We would like to do something. And anyway, so all of which is to say, all of that material we’ve then kind of gone through and figured out like, oh, here’s the original negative of, you know, the prints that this amazing company called Vinegar Syndrome did the scans for – new beautiful 2K scans. But the outtakes, I don’t know. I don’t know where they are, and there are some things that we haven’t been able to find some other things like including his first short, a short called Boys. That was a Super 8 that he wrote about, you know, so we have like documentation that it existed, but we haven’t found the actual film.

 

Robert: I have a vague recollection of something like that, maybe just that he mentioned it. But I feel like he might have shown it to me as an example before we did Passing Strangers.

 

Jenni: I could imagine that, what he writes about it is that he made it in 1969 and that he showed it here in San Francisco in 1970, and that it was an adult short and that it was really popular and people were very excited about it. So it’s this thing that we’re still looking for. And now we’ll start looking for the extra footage for Passing Strangers.

Can you talk about the response to Passing Strangers and your memories of when it came out? I know that it won the Best Director award at the 1974 San Francisco Erotic Film Festival, and it got great reviews inThe Advocate and nationally. Do you remember the response?

 

Robert: The thing I remember most is that he had the premiere at, I believe, the Powell Cinema. It was a little tiny theater right on the cable car turnaround, at Powell and Market, which is like the tourist hub. And he got a klieg light! So we had a ‘searchlight’ premiere forPassing Strangers at the theater right in the middle of the tourist district in San Francisco. And I thought, wow, this is the coolest thing. This is like a real movie premiere. And all the stars came out. I think he might have even had a red carpet. I don’t remember, but it felt like we did all of that. And I had people, for a while after that, stop me on the street to say, “Oh, I saw you in that film.” And so I had my fifteen minutes of fame. It was pretty cool. I liked that.

 

Forbidden Letters

 

Jenni: Well, I have to ask. It must be an interesting experience to see it now for yourself. What’s that like?

 

Robert: It is really interesting going back and looking at yourself when you were in your early 20’s. It’s a good experience to be able to see yourself from the outside, because I know how I felt inside. At that time in my life there was a lot of turmoil. So you’re aware that it’s yourself, but you also see it as “wow, that, you know, maybe things weren’t so bad as I thought they were back then because I looked pretty cool. And by cool, I mean I had a kind of calm demeanor that came across in the film that I didn’t necessarily feel in my life at that time.

 

Jenni: Well, it’s an amazing performance. And it’s just such a beautiful film. Is there anything else you want to say specifically aboutPassing Strangers? Then I have some questions aboutForbidden Letters.

 

Robert: You know, I was always grateful for having that opportunity to do the meeting Artie. It was just a really great experience in my life. Just one of those life experiences that you would write in an autobiography. And at the same time, it wasn’t one I could share with everyone, not my family, because my dad was a minister. So that made it a little awkward. I mean, my parents were…. they were liberals, you know. It wasn’t a conservative church, but they would not have been okay with my participation in a porn film. I don’t know if they could have come around to understanding it. My family that’s alive to today — my brothers and everything — they know about it.But they don’t want to see it. And I don’t blame them for that.

 

Jenni: It’s interesting to think of it in relation to the time. To me — not to get too romantic about it, but, politically — it was a really important thing for gay liberation, for gay people to see, for gay men to see themselves onscreen in a romantic context and a sexual context. And it has a really different quality to it than contemporary porn, which one could argue also has a liberation ethos to it, but politically, it was just such a different time.

 

Robert: What comes to mind for me is that in particular, it was different from mainstream film that took on LGBT characters or gay men specifically. When mainstream films addressed the issue of gay and lesbian. Inevitably, the characters… Mostly they died. Otherwise, something miserable happened to them or they got beaten up. I mean, there was very little that was positive for young LGBT people to look at and see “Yes, this validates my relationship.”And I think we did that. At that time it was really rare.

 

Jenni: Yeah. And I think both of these films, you know, they’re not just adult films, but that they are part of the kind of early gay independent filmmaking, like Christopher Larkin’sA Very Natural Thing and David Buckley’sSaturday Night at the Baths, there’s very few films to point to in terms of early 70s gay films. I mean, obviously, there wasThe Boys in the Band andThe Gay Deceivers… But, you know, few and far between and it’s been really amazing to see the response to both films, because they’ve been essentially unavailable all of this time because they’ve just been sitting in the box and people haven’t gotten to see them. I mean, similarly, just a digression on Arthur’s 1985 filmBuddies, the first film that we restored and re-released, which was the first feature film about AIDS, but was really eclipsed in terms of people’s awareness of it because it was not available all this time. And films likeAn Early Frost, which came out a couple months later andParting Glances, which came out two years later, have had much more awareness in the mainstream and people’s consciousness because they were available. AndBuddies was just not available all this time. And so for all of his films, it’s been really exciting for them to have this kind of revival.

So let’s jump toForbidden Letters, which came out in 1979. And in betweenPassing Strangers andForbidden Letters Arthur made the 1977 documentaryGay USA which was the first feature-length gay documentary made by gay people. It actually came out a couple of months before Word is Out and documented Gay Freedom Day Parades across the country, mainly here in San Francisco. And then Artie went back to making another narrative feature,Forbidden Letters — and likePassing Strangers it has a pretty simple narrative premise. Your the younger character waiting for your older gay lover to come back out of prison, played by the legendary Richard Locke, who at that time was a pretty big star. Like he had just been in the Joe Cage trilogy:El Paso Wrecking Company,Kansas City Trucking Company,L.A. Tool & Die. Not to be too starstruck about Richard Locke, but can you talk about what it was like working with him?

 

Robert: Well, you know, I think if I had really had it in my mind that he was a big star, I probably would have been nervous.But I didn’t see a lot of porn films. So, I didn’t really know who he was when Artie introduced me. I mean, I was told about that later.

 

Jenni: He does seem very unassuming in the film. And again, it’s so romantic. And so affectionate. It’s just beautiful. The connection between the two of you. Is there anything else you want to say about that and the direction?

 

Robert: Yeah. The interesting thing about me and Richard is that we were not two people that would have met in real life, most likely. I don’t think either of us was with each other’s type, you know, and in terms of the kind of person that we sought. But he was an extraordinarily gentle, sweet person. That’s what I remember about him. And I think, I think the chemistry was real. For that period of time, and again, it was a relationship that existed only in front of Artie’s camera. I mean, not to say that we never talked outside of the… We kept in touch somewhat, but we didn’t have a relationship in that way. But during the course of the film, I think we really felt it. Yeah. He was a special person.Does that make any sense?

 

Jenni: It does, and I think it really comes across. In both your performances the chemistry is really remarkable.There’s so many amazing things about the film. Again, likePassing Strangers, tons of location shooting. You go out to Aquatic Park and Lands End and the Castro. I love the sequence of you walking through the Castro together.

 

Robert: Yeah, that was great.

Jenni: And Alcatraz! I want to ask if you have any specific anecdotes, but I’m especially curious about Alcatraz, because this was a time when Alcatraz was not yet a national park. It wasn’t a big tourist place, right? Can you say anything about that?

Robert: I think it was a National park. Because I think the way we were able to film there was that Doug Dickinson, who helped film it, and Artie’s friend, either was or was at the time a Park Ranger. And he had the connections to that section of Alcatraz closed off. And the thing that I remember besides that was that on the other side, Clint Eastwood was filming.

 

Jenni: Escape from Alcatraz.

 

Robert: His film crew and we were there at the same time. And we were doing this sexual stuff inside the bars of the prison. Doug, and I believe maybe someone else, were looking out to make sure that nobody came over to our side. But it’s kind of understood with film crews that you don’t mess with someone else’s set. So I don’t think there was really a great risk there. But that’s how we got privacy, without somebody walking in and seeing us. And the same actually with Angel Island. He had some sort of arrangement.

 

 

Jenni: Angel Island for thePassing Strangers shoot.

Robert: Yeah.

Jenni: Wow. I just, it’s just amazing. I mean, he was so ambitious in that.

Robert: He was, yeah. He was thrilled to do the helicopter shot. He was so excited about being in a helicopter and doing these overhead shots. I guess that was forPassing Strangers too. I don’t think that wasForbidden Letters.

Jenni: It’s funny. He has in all of his films, these kinds of like attempts to do ambitious things likeGay USAalso has these helicopter shots of the marches and andBuddies, as well, closes with this great aerial shot. Which, you know, they’re very modest aerial shots, but they’re aerial shots. And it’s like, wow, this is a real movie.

Robert: He did amazing things with almost no budget.I can only imagine if he was around today with drone technology and all of the tools at his disposal. He would be making amazing films. You know, I think he was on the road to becoming a mainstream filmmaker.

 

Jenni: InForbidden Letters, there is a sequence that’s, again, a character shot at a “real” event, which I would guess maybe you are not physically at, but it’s the Halloween celebration in North Beach at the Cabaret. And Richard Locke’s character is there for real, like it’s really Halloween. Do you know anything about that shoot?

Robert: I do not. He did do that with Richard, I was not present. I wasn’t aware of it. I had forgotten about it so when I watched it recently, I was surprised to see that it was in the film. I had an old degraded VHS copy of Forbidden Letters, and it was a different cut that Artie made for some distributor and it cut a lot of stuff out.

I haven’t seen the full film since it was released, so it was really a wonderful experience to go back and see it as Artie had intended it to be.

 

Jenni: It was an interesting experience when Joe Ruben at Vinegar Syndrome did the 2K transfer from the original negative, he realized that the color timing of the sequences had actually been done incorrectly on the VHS. You know, the release copies where it goes back and forth between black and white and color sequences and there’s this idea that when we’re in contemporary time it’s black and white, and that the flashbacks are color. Right. And he realized that those had been done incorrectly. And then we spent hours on the phone talking through the logic of which things needed to be printed as color. There’s a bunch of color sequences in here that have not been seen in color prior. But I guess I don’t know that much about what might have been cut out about from the tape, the VHS version.

Robert: Well, what was cut out was basically all the plot because this distributor just wanted a porn film.There wasn’t much left.

 

Jenni: Which is a good seed to the next question, or next thing to talk about, which is that it does have so much plot. And not just plot, but an amazing esthetic choices cinematically. There’s so much going on. The opening sequences. There’s so much that that’s very experimental and kind of drawing from… it feels very much like Un Chant D’Amour or Kenneth Anger or classic gay experimental esthetic, including a whole montage of stills that’s really beautiful. Did you talk much about cinematically his ambitions?

Robert: Well, he talked a lot about Frank Capra and Preston Sturges as being influences of his.He loved old movies. He especially liked movies from the 40’s. I can imagine. Some of the shots he innovated reminded me a lot of Orson Wells. Kenneth Anger too. A little bit of Ingmar Bergman maybe, without a depression. I mean, the story of Richard being in prison for being a mugger, I guess, was sort of a contrast too because it was a little darker than Artie came across otherwise.

Jenni: I love that you mention Capra.He did write his dissertation, his master’s thesis on Capra and he interviewed Capra for Interview Magazine.

Robert: That’s right! Yeah.

Jenni: Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine in the early 70’s. It’s either 72 or 74. He had a correspondence with Capra as well, which, is this amazing back-and-forth where he had clearly told Capra that he was making a gay porn film. You know, it’s like, oh, what? And Capra responds — Capra, who is this, you know, Catholic, Republican, conservative figure — responds, and he’s like, first of all, pornography is not OK. And then he shifts gears and he has this kind of jokey tone where he goes, well, if you’re describing a 82-minute romantic sexy story, something like that, it’s like you’re describingIt Happened One Nightexcept for the running time. Basically joking thatPassing Strangers is likeIt Happened One Night and kind of demonstrating his sense of humor.

Robert: Yeah. I would love to see that interview.

Jenni: There is this real connection, like a very strong connection to Capra.

Robert: Yeah he mentioned Capra a lot.

Jenni: And you have the sense of it too, in his protagonists, especially inBuddies where the David Schachter character is this kind of singular hero and his concluding thing where he goes to the White House and to protest. It’s just so beautiful as this pre Act Up moment of activism, which is the other thing that comes to mind, particularly withForbidden Letters, that it was made in 1979 and has such poignancy, on the edge of the 80s and, of course, Arthur went on to die of AIDS in 1987.

Robert: I had lost touch with him and I read about his death inNewsweek. That’s how I found out. It was really a shock. I mean, that’s not how I wanted to find out. He seemed like he’d survive anything because of what he’d been through.He had a life-threatening version of Hepatitis. That’s where he got the Prednisone Productions name, because that was a drug that he was taking for his Hepatitis. He kind of made light of everything. You know, in that way. So I didn’t even know that he had AIDS. I do have some regrets, because… he was in New York and I was in San Francisco and I wish we’d kept touch better. I mean, there was no Internet then, so it was writing letters and phone calls. People didn’t do it as much as they do now.

 

Jenni: It makes me think, you know, the other obvious thing is that, you know, you made these two films and then that was it. You didn’t make any other films. Is there anything to say?

Robert: I actually did.Because of these two, a filmmaker Toby Ross came to me and asked if I would be in a film he did. So I wound up in something called Do Me Evil. Another adult film. I have a copy of it.

Jenni: Wow. Is it, is it available, that you know of?

Robert: I guess it is. I got the copy fairly recently.

Jenni: Yeah, well, I guess we’ll have to go in search of it. I’ll have to go dig that up.

Robert: I don’t think it’s a classic…You know, at the time of my life, if someone came up and said “you wanna do this?” I’d go, “Yeah sure. If it’s an experience, I’ll do it.”

Jenni: Wow.Well, we’re discovering so many new things here. I’ll have to work on that. I got to a couple of years ago actually work with PinkLabel.TV to kind of help them with their classics acquisitions. And we got, you know, a bunch of Wakefield Poole and Arch Brown and other kinds of classic stuff. And what year was this, the Toby Ross film?

Robert: Well, it was after the two Bressan films. I’m not sure exactly. I could find out. I guess to answer your question, though, I wasn’t really looking to be a porn star. That sort of incidental that I did that. You know, I liked sex. Someone offers to do a film, and yeah.

Jenni: But it wasn’t your career path.

Robert: No, it wasn’t the same motivation.Artie’s films had a lot more meaning because it actually felt like it was an opportunity to act and play a character and then be in a real movie. Because he was an artist. So it meant more. That’s why. You know, I don’t really mention “Do Me Evil.” It’s kind of a joke when I look back on it. Maybe it wasn’t a joke to Tobi Ross. I mean, he may have had his own sense of artistry in what he did too.

Jenni: Hopefully at some point, we will also get to work on Arthur’s subsequent adult films like Daddy Dearest and Juice.

Robert: Yeah, I liked that one.

Jenni: I know that we have the negatives somewhere. It’s just such a labor and financially intensive process.

Robert: Well, I’m appreciative that you chose these two to restore.

Jenni: Well, thank you.

Robert: I really appreciate that you’re doing that.

Jenni: Let me just see if I have any other questions here for you? Are there any final things you want to say?

Robert: Yeah. I want to say something about the voiceovers. People may notice that there is a different actor being my voice in Passing Strangers and that I did my own in Forbidden Letters. That’s because Artie, I think, didn’t feel like my voice matched the character. I was kind of a sarcastic twenty-three year old, you know, about things. What changed his mind in the other film, I don’t know. There were a couple of short parts where I spoke on camera and maybe he wanted to match those up. I don’t know. But he handed me a script and just asked me to read it and I believe we did it in one take. I just remember that he was really pleased with the way that turned out. So that’s how I wound up narrating most of the Forbidden Letters. You know, obviously, I think I could have done the voice in Passing Strangers, too. That’s the way it worked out.

Jenni: I love hearing the behind the scenes stuff. So thank you for that.

Robert: Yeah. I just really, I remember reading that and just I was so deep into that character when I read it, I just felt it. And, you know, everything in it was Artie. Artie’s writing, Artie’s dialog. We didn’t really improvise. And he would come up with things, it just seems so heartfelt and we’re easy to just flow with. So that I just remember doing that.

Jenni: “Heartfelt” is a good word and I think is another kind of thing that I think that feels very connected to Capra, that he was very earnest and sincere in this way that just is so refreshing, including the musical aspects, the soundtrack, this kind of earnest folk songs. He had such a dedication to having original music and all of his films.

Robert: Yeah, that was the other thing that was so unusual for a low budget film like that. He actually had people writing original music. It added a lot to the mood. And the tunes were good. I mean, I can remember some were ear-worms.

Jenni: Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m trying to think if there’s anything else to ask you or we have you.

Robert: I’m not going anywhere.

Jenni: Well, I’m so grateful to you for making the time. And I’m sorry that we’re not doing this on a stage at, you know, the Castro Theater with an audience where the audience could be asking questions.

Robert: Oh, that would be cool, yeah.

Jenni: I look forward to someday when some version of that will happen and that we’ll get to meet in person, then, you know, reconnect.

Robert: I would love to do that. And I’d love to visit San Francisco again.

Jenni: Yeah.

Robert: Actually, Cleve Jones was the one that told me about the Bressan Project.

Jenni: Oh, that’s right. I ran into him at some event back when we could go to events, actually it was a LAMBDA literary event, and we chatted and it’s been so great talking to people and having them tell their old stories about Artie and he was saying he connected with you.

Robert: Well, there’s all kinds of little things I remember about him. He loved meat. He was not a vegetarian.

Robert: He loved going to steakhouse. You know, just little stuff.

Jenni: Everyone talks about how he loved opera and how he had a really amazing singing voice.

Robert: That’s right. I’ve forgotten about that, too. Yeah, he did.

Jenni: He was a particularly big fan of Jeanette McDonald, apparently.

Robert: Yes. And the movie San Francisco.With Jeanette McDonnald and Clark Gable.Saw many times. Yeah, that was a big influence too, that movie.

Jenni: Well, thank you. Thank you so much. And just to wrap up, I want to say thank you to everyone who is involved in the preservation of the films, including Vinegar Syndrome and Frameline and the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation. And then, of course, PinkLabel.TV, which are our exclusive hosts for both films. And I guess I hope everyone, you know, gets to see them and, you know, help us spread the word.

Robert: I want to say thank you to you and to everyone involved as well. And I’m actually very, very moved by the response and every one that’s worked so hard to re-release and restore these storms. I, you know, I hope a lot of people get to see them so you can make your money back. And I’m very, very grateful. Thank you.

Jenni: I have to say that, you know, it’s quite remarkable to feel so emotional about old porn films and they really are this incredible history, and it’s a really beautiful thing. So thank you so much for all of your work and for doing this with us.

 


 

Watch Passing Strangers and Forbidden Letters on PinkLabel.TV, available for rental or streaming library, or enjoy these films and more with a PinkLabel PLUS Membership.

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Meanwhile, at the CrashPad:

Happy Valentine’s Day! CrashPad’s NSFW Sex Toy Shopping Guide

CrashPad's NSFW sex toy shopping guide inspires self-love, gift buying, and supports other queer and female-owned businesses.

The post Happy Valentine’s Day! CrashPad’s NSFW Sex Toy Shopping Guide appeared first on CrashPad Series.