HIM (1974 gay Jesus porn)

Thanks for liking my post, reahizard. I will elablorate some on what I said above, in relation to some big city newspapers not being online, in this case online for free.

Some of the individual newspapers do have online archives, but those archives are not for free viewing.

Many online newspaper archives with a large number of newspapers are very sneaky and deceptive in their advertising. They claim to have millions of pages of newspapers available for "free" viewing.

But then you investigate further and what they mean is that the newspapers are "free" only for paid members of their archive.

And, then you find out that the big city newspapers that would have ads for HIM, are often premium items which require a higher priced membership rate.

DoulbU found a run of HIM at the 55th Street Playhouse in NYC in early 1976, which was advertised for three straight weeks, in the Village Voice. But, the exact dates the film started its run, and the run ended were not given in the ads.

If the 55th Street Playhouse had 7 days a week listings in the New York Times, the daily listings could be checked to determine exactly when the first and last days of that apparently 3 week run of the film were. The NYTimes does sell individual memberships in their archive, but it would not be worth it to me to pay their prices, which I can't remember, just to check that one detail.

Some public libraries have group memberships in newspaper archives, so if an amateur film detective is near such a library, he or she, or it might be able to find out more about where HIM played.

With what has been uncovered, we now know there were at least 2 prints of the film in circulation (Phil Hall, in his book, accurately estimated it could have had a low run of "one or two" prints, and we do know of enough playdates to make some guesses of varying accuracy of where the film might have gone on its tour of the USA.

I just posted this to Zombie Auxiliary Quilting Bee, and it might also be of interest to Lost Film Detectives here on this message boars.

As Ian Whitcomb asked where do Farah, and Bo and others go?

They go Hollywood!

Where do well healed film detectives with money to throw away go, to solve the mysteries of Ed D Louie and HIM?

They go EBSCO.

EBSCO Life, is an online archive of LGBT publications. And, as with other such archives, they are not giving it away.

They're Out For Hire!

Here is a link to their price list:

www.ebsco.com/request-information

They have different types of people requesting to use their archive, from institutions such as the military, and I don't remember how many others, but "individual" is not on the list, so what would an amateur film detective, interested in a virtually forgotten and supposedly lost film from 44 years ago, claim as his or her qualification to use their archive, on the link above, just find out what the prices to use their archive are?

As far as newspapers.com goes, I feel that I will have gotten my money's worth when my membership expires in less than 3 months from now, with researching things mostly not connected for the search for Ed D Louie's HIM.

But, at this time, I am not ready to Go EBSCO,as a Buyer, or even pursue further research of their outfit, for free, but if any of you other Film Detectives, Pro or Am, want to, please do, and save this amateur film detective, a lot of time and money, that, even if invested in EBSCO might not result in one single piece of data useful in solving the mysteries of Ed D Louie and HIM.

Has anyone tried to contact Steven Toushin, the owner of the Bijou Theater?

Thanks from this film detective for your kind words, thesupermetroid02. The mystery of this lost film and where it might be has had a lot of people working on it, and no one person is going to solve it themselves. It will require a combined effort.

Since, for now, the Kinsey material has not been found, another place to look would be the film collection of Ted McLvenna (not sure of the spelling, but he is well known), if his humongous collection
of films is still intact.

Hello everyone.

It's been quite a while anything was posted here, or on any of the various hubs containing info on 'Him'. Happy to say I was recently contacted by filmmaker Sam Ashby (who had contacted me with various useful sources in the past) who has been hard at work with his own research, doing a lot of leg work that would be more or less impossible for me to do from behind my desk. He's given me his blessing to forward his findings to this forum, for as he so rightly pointed out, us film detectives are all in this together. I'm re-posting verbatim [with any bold text being my additions] a large section of his latest email to me. I've also taken the liberty of replacing the dead name of an individual who transitioned in the time since this email was written with their initial. I'm sure you'll all agree there's some pretty big breakthroughs here. I've also added the following information to my essay, which I've already uploaded to my website (www.jackwholman.com).

"Last summer I made contact with Joe Rubin over at Vinegar Syndrome, who is an expert on “all male” movies and has a lot of them in his collection (though he hasn’t released any of them citing their lack of commercial potential). He has heard of him, but is quite dismissive of it, suggesting that it probably wasn’t particularly good example of the genre, and stating that 20% of all “all male” movies on film are lost.

Joe put me in touch with his friend Martin Brooks (who uses the pseudonym '[redacted for privacy reasons]’ Facebook), another expert on porn movies. Martin told me that he had noticed the photo credit Valerie Brown on the HIM Village Voice ad [December 2, 1974] and had found Valerie online through her website [www.valeriebrownphotos.com/]. She replied, and even had the original negative for the shot and sold the image to Martin. He sent me a small image of it [imgur.com/a/RfRvmgW]. The subject is Mike Foldes, her friend who Valerie gave Martin his contact information. Martin gave me both their contacts and I sent them emails. Valerie had this to say:

"I must say I do not recall anything about the film. Eddie Louie lived in my loft building in Soho and he may have done filming there. The picture that Martin purchased is of Mike Foldes and I’m not sure if Eddie asked me to shoot it for ad or if he used a photo I already had.”

I made contact with Mike Foldes. He told me the correct spelling of Ed’s surname: Lui. I called him and we spoke for a short while. Here are the highlights:

—Mike tried and failed to track “Eddy" down in Hawaii "some time ago”.
—Mike owns an artwork by Ed [imgur.com/a/Q5Cy328], pen and ink on silk.
—Eddy was a multi-disciplinary artist.
—Eddy was bisexual.
—Eddy was cynical about religion.
—Mike didn’t know what the film was about, until after it was already in production.
—Mike didn’t recall being in the film, and if he was doesn’t think it would have been a speaking part. He says he was doing a lot of drugs at the time which might be why he doesn’t remember.
—Mike, Valerie and Eddy were friends from Columbus, Ohio and moved to New York together.
—Mike is the man in the advertisement, but he says the photo was taken in a house in Columbus Ohio before they moved to New York. This would corroborate Valerie’s memory that Eddy might have chosen a photo she had already taken to promote the film.
—Eddy was Chinese, spoke with an accent but was articulate in English
—Mike believed an artist called Thomas Fichter would know more, and might have even appeared in the film. (I contacted a Thomas Fichter in Brooklyn, but he tells me I had the wrong one)
—Eddy moved to Hawaii because he was tired of the New York scene and din’t think it was worth staying around for. Mike thinks he may have had family there.
—Mike thinks he saw the film more than once. He thought it was "kind of dragged out” and long but he liked the idea a lot. He didn’t consider it gay porn. He thought that if he had had more of a budget it could have had a bigger run and really shocked people. The thesis of the film wasn’t just about being gay, "it was philosophically and theologically bigger than that.”
—Mike only really remembers the scene of Christ dragging the cross.
—I sent Mike the image of [an] Ed Lui from LinkedIn page I found and he said he believes that it is his friend.

Martin Brooks sent me a review for HIM from HUSTLER magazine. They give the film a limp dick rating, but are quite complementary about it in the short text (imgur.com/a/yzBLWFt).

I also made contact with E. Purchell, another gay porn historian. E. runs the Instagram account Ask Any Buddy [www.instagram.com/askanybuddy/] and has an impressive collection of films and related ephemera. E. sent me a couple of things of interest. One is an advertisement for a screening of HIM at the French Quarter All Male Cinema in Houston, Texas on Friday, August 29 (imgur.com/a/OpIAlaC). The year is not on the ad so I need to follow up with E. on that [the Friday, August 29 date would suggest 1975]. Another is an obituary for the gay porn star and director Christopher Rage, which lists HIM among films he had appeared in. This is particularly interesting because Christopher is an important figure in gay porn history. (imgur.com/a/h94xDyY)

E. was doing some research at the ONE Archives in LA and came across a model release form (imgur.com/a/hm30N3u) that Tava had signed for a 1987 video called GOODJAC TOO! [www.gayeroticvideoindex.com/V/2/10272.html] [bijouworld.com/DVD/Goodjac-Too/Page-1-10.html - NSFW]. Tava doesn’t look to be one of the main credited actors and I haven’t managed to find a full copy yet, but hopefully this means we will have some footage of Tava if HIM never shows up.

I met with Vincent Parillo, who was a real character! He gave sent me an amazing collection of images of Tava’s artwork which I might hold back from sending for now as there is a lot of it! I interviewed Vincent on camera so can send something over once it’s edited a bit.

So, ultimately quite a lot of good information which adds some more details to the narrative, but I think the biggest lead is the correct spelling of Ed’s surname..."

I've personally done some digging on Ed Lui now that we know the proper spelling of his surname, and it's possible that between Sam and I's research that we've found the man himself, although I'm understandably hesitant to post any identifying details until I'm certain we have our man.

This are amazing news! Did anything happen these last few months?

Holy shit this is awesome. You did a lot of great research!