Don’t let the gently mocking, faux-anthropological title of Penelope Spheeris’ riotous and hilarious Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years fool you into thinking this is some kind of staid, academic approach to the decidedly anti-academic world of drunken trashy 1980s hair metal. Starting with a blast of Alice Cooper music over the opening credits montage of Die Hard Metal Fans (looking nigh indistinguishable from the frizzy-haired masses assembled in the epochal Heavy Metal Parking Lot), the film maintains a full-throttle pace, leaping between interviews with all the major and not-so-major players in the scene, thrilling and not-so-thrilling concerts, and the occasional satirical or surreal aside.

Granted, Spheeris and her crew (including the husband and wife production team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who would later direct the ultra quirky overrated indie darling Little Miss Sunshine for some bizarre reason) don’t have to work very hard to land satirical blows when their well-known subjects already inhabit a lifestyle that surpasses self-parody and approaches total megalomania, and their unknown or lesser-known subjects are merely pretenders to that throne of supreme excess. First we meet Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, better known as the legendary power-pop duo KISS; their interviews are filmed in separate locations but share the common theme of unbridled carnality bordering on satyriasis.

Stanley, in the sack with a trio of identical white women, issues braindead would-be-inspirational platitudes about years of hard work paying off and virtue being its own reward or some such shit. What the girly-man says isn’t as important as the way he wishes to portray himself; the shot is so immaculately composed, so clearly planned out weeks or months in advance that its inherent staged quality transcends its obvious falseness and speaks volumes about egoism, insecurity, and the soul-draining emptiness of “success”. Did any of these women even know Stanley before the film shoot? Were they floozies picked at random from Central Casting? Is this even Paul Stanley’s bedroom, or is it merely a smoke-filled soundstage? Who knows? Who cares? The issue of the film’s authenticity has been called into question more than a few times by its detractors, concerning a handful of scenes that will be covered later.

More amusingly, Gene Simmons gives a lucid interview in a Frederick’s of Hollywood high-end lingerie boutique wearing his trademark leather biker jacket and looking for all the world like a sleazy sexual predator. In a contrast to his comrade Stanley’s empty-headed oratory, Simmons is quick to point out the high burnout rate in his particular strata of success, and the temptation to succumb to self-destructive urges can be unavoidable in such a high-pressure, high-profile lifestyle … before his gaze wanders to the particularly well-built behind of a passing lady, and his train of thought derails completely.

From there we are introduced to a few followers of KISS, glam-rock bands such as the soon-to-be-forgotten Lizzie Borden (who perform an underwhelming power-metal cover of Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” before an indifferent crowd) and the outrageously smutty Faster Pussycat, who dress like a debauched biker gang and wear an obvious Russ Meyer influence on their tattered sleeves. Thrill to the tender, sensitive lyrics of “Bathroom Wall”, a romantic love ballad about a steamy hookup facilitated via restroom graffiti, like a much less subtle version of “Jenny (867-5309)”. We briefly sojourn backstage after a successful gig at one of LA’s better-known sleazepits to discover that after performing songs about wanton drunkenness and screwing, they commence with wanton drunkenness and screwing. Hardly inspired, but at least their self-deprecating candor and lack of pretense is refreshing compared to the unchecked egoism of some of their hair-metal compatriots.

Unknown, deservedly obscure bands such as Seduce and Rigor Mortis perform loud, sloppy, derivative and just plain crappy sets, then retreat backstage for some debauchery and boasting about all the multimillion dollar record deals, world tours headlining sold-out shows in the biggest stadiums on Earth, and all the bitchin’ shit they’re gonna buy to fill up their 80-room mansions; generally behaving like entitled douchebag clowns, overgrown children who feel success is owed them simply by virtue of being able to bang out three or four power chords and investing in enough Aqua-Net to burn a hole in the ozone layer the size of Canada.

Granted, this could hardly be called a newfangled 1980s phenomenon, as these idiots are simply the next generation of washouts, just like all the hippies of the 1960s and 70s who would ingest copious amounts of marijuana, LSD and psilocybin and form shitty psychedelic bands in the hope of becoming the next Jefferson Airplane. Likewise, all the Seduces and Rigor Mortises of the hair-metal era would place a much higher priority on partying than honing their musical craft, as if Motley Crue or Van Halen became successful due to the amount of alcohol consumed rather than the amount of time spent practicing or songwriting. For every Metallica that could somehow pull off an awesome set while knocking back cubes of lager onstage, there were countless pretenders lacking in any semblance of talent. Partying was somehow seen as an impetus to greatness, rather than a reward for hard work. Surely, the fact that Spheeris and her crew with following them with cameras and sound techs must have been a sign that they were headed for the big time, and their narcissistic delusions are fueled all the more.

For a surprisingly nuanced account of a depraved, alcoholic and drug-addled existence (with occasional music), we turn to none other than the poster boy for that lifestyle: Ozzy Osbourne, the man who was once kicked out of San Antonio, Texas,  for the crime of drunkenly urinating on the Alamo.

In a sequence nearly as spellbinding as the climax of The Thirty-Nine Steps, Ozzy recounts the bad old days spent in a perpetual narcotic haze while touring with Black Sabbath, and the alcoholism that continued to plague him after the legendary heavy metal pioneers broke up and he pursued his solo career. While he recounts hilarious and cringe-inducing anecdotes in a jovial, conversational tone, Osbourne is preparing breakfast in the modest kitchen of his home in Los Angeles. The boiling tea, scrambled eggs and sizzling bacon strips on his griddle are captured with all the fetishistic detail of your typical Food Network program. It’s a strangely humanizing moment for this larger-than-life caricature of a man; compared to the KISS interviews, or the scene with some jackass from Poison talking about his “brand” with all the passion of a record company shill, Osbourne is as humble and down-to-earth as you can get while still being a world-famous rock star with more money than God.

With alcohol abuse becoming more and more of a dominant theme in the film, we meet various drunken fans, drunken wannabe successes (one kid with a towering blonde mullet, when asked about any contingency plans, claims without irony that he’d “probably die” if he did not achieve success as a musician), and perhaps the most egregious cirrhosis case in the making: Chris Holmes of W.A.S.P., a self-proclaimed “full-blown alcoholic”. In the most notorious scene in Decline Part II, he’s interviewed sitting on a floating pool chair, downing at least one and a half bottles of vodka while his own mother looks on, horrified but powerless, from poolside. When asked the reason for his suicidal and downright idiotic alcohol abuse, Holmes unscrews the cap of a fresh bottle and repeats his mantra: “I’m a full-blown alcoholic!” Then he proceeds to guzzle about a third of the bottle in one pull. Nostrovia, indeed!

One thing that most, if not all, of the drunken party groups depicted in the film have in common is that, musically, they’re all terrible in their own special, unique and precious way. While most seem to be content with being slapdash, forgettable, and slipshod in arrangement and performance of their uninspired material, Odin is a band that is terrible in a kind of transcendent, all encompassing shittiness. Their segment begins, apropos enough, with a creepy old man running a beauty pageant, an old Vaudevillian who wants to “keep it clean” while he parades around a couple dozen half-naked bimbos; the rowdy crowd soon usurps him and turns his pageant into a striptease contest, setting the stage for Odin to come out with their spandex, waist-length hair, and unspeakably shitty musicianship. The androgynous, presumably male vocalist rocks his assless chaps and lashes out his disturbingly long, lizard-like prehensile tongue while humping his microphone stand in a prone position on stage; all the while the old man is trying to pump up the crowd with an “Odin! Odin! Odin!” chant that somehow fails to catch on. The whole sequence is horrifying and inexplicable, all the more so when we join Odin backstage for familiar drunken hot tub hijinx and the insufferable vocalist is going on and on about how they’re gonna take over the world, etc. etc.

As of the time of this writing, Odin is still waiting on their record deal; their biggest exposure came from Decline Part II and their myspace profile, the best efforts of the old Vaudevillian all for naught.

All the sober personalities seen in the film, on the other hand, are not only much more articulate and distanced from the subject matter at hand, but their level-headedness seems to bring about a total lack of ego. Aside from the jaw-droppingly soulless musings of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry (who were much more interesting when they were constantly Hoovering rails of cocaine throughout the 70s), we have musings on originality and shock value from the always fascinating Alice Cooper, interviewed on stage in freshly applied bloody corpse makeup, and surprisingly passionate anti-drug sentiment from Jeff Young and Dave Mustaine of Megadeth.

While Young’s ideas about sobriety may be as trite as the verbiage from a D.A.R.E. workbook (“I don’t get fucked up when I’m practicing at home, so why would I cheat the audience that way?”) and Mustaine is still visibly bitter about his ejection from Metallica, but once Megadeth comes onstage to perform their epic “In My Darkest Hour”, all their words become meaningless white noise in the face of PURE METAL SHREDDING AWESOMENESS, which whips the crowd into a frenzy and creates a turbulent, swirling, dangerous environment filled with impromptu mosh pits, vicious elbowing, and unprovoked fistfights breaking out between concert patrons. Then Mustaine’s solo incites crowd-surfers to charge the stage and fling themselves headlong into the pulsating crowd. From the camera angle just below the edge of the stage, Megadeth towers like metal Gods before a worshipful congregation, a unified mass of rabid fans churned up into a frenzy and becoming one mindless organism, with a heart that beats to the relentless tempo of the music. Then slapstick comedy ensues after the crowd’s frenzy has sated somewhat but the crowdsurfers continue to charge the stage. Some end up crashing down painfully to the concrete, some poor folks are nearly flattened, and others misjudge their angle of approach, crashing headfirst into a towering amplifier.

While Megadeth gives far and away the best performance in a film packed with wall-to-wall music, Decline Part II should not be judged solely on the strength of its concert scenes. Some are terrible, as discussed earlier, so be sure to get as sauced up as the performers. The greatest strength of Spheeris’ epic documentary, aside from its invaluable importance as a late-80s time capsule, is its multifaceted approach to the subject matter. In a dramatic improvement from Decline Part I, which focused on the early 80s punk scene and was more or less a collection of concert scenes bookended by brief interviews, Part II adopts a more kaleidoscopic approach, making the already cartoonish personalities depicted within somehow both even more ridiculous, and yet achingly human. Those who don’t try to drown their insecurities in an alcohol blitzkrieg realize their limitations not only as artists but also as fragile human beings who generally aren’t cut out for the insane workaday lifestyle of a touring band. While the delusional drunken idiots are far more entertaining to watch, the handful successful sober individuals are the heart and soul of the film.

Sorry. I take that back. The heart and soul of Decline Part II is the universally horrendous hair. But the few who successfully combine artistry with badass guitar shredding and their awful hair are those who are most deserving of respect. Everyone else is just a fool with an enlarged liver and way too much Aqua-Net.

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl epitomizes the old chestnut “To be great is to be misunderstood.” This meticulously balanced documentary, clocking in at an epic three hours, traces the life of the notorious creator of the Nazi magnum opus, Triumph of the Will. Director Ray Muller creates a fairly sympathetic portrait of the Riefenstahl, but his documentary is hardly an apology for cinema’s most infamous auteur. Muller asks plenty of pointed, tough questions, and he never backs down from the objections of this feisty, defensive woman. The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is a portrait of a woman immersing herself in total cognitive dissonance as she completely revolutionized the art of film editing and cinematography. And say what you will about Triumph of the Will, at least it had an ethos, and it DID win the film competition of the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris. Apparently French moviegoers were just as taken by Riefenstahl’s art as German moviegoers.

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is a beguiling chronology of a true Renaissance Woman. Before she made Hitler look so good, Riefenstahl was an accomplished dancer much in demand in Berlin. Riefenstahl explains how she fell into her fate while waiting for a train. She was on her way to the doctor for an injured knee when she found herself transfixed by a movie poster. She skipped the doctor’s appointment and went to go see Berg des Schicksals, directed by Arnold Fanck. This mountain climbing drama (a popular genre at the time, which Sylvester Stallone failed to resurrect with Cliffhanger) so impressed Riefenstahl that she got one of Fanck’s actors, Luis Trenker, to write a letter to Fanck on her behalf. She soon became a star in many of Fanck’s film, becoming an accomplished mountaineer and inadvertent stunt woman. She was often put in harm’s way by Fanck, who probably inspired Werner Herzog in his habit of almost killing his actors. She was asked to climb mountains without any gear, and Fanck even placed her in the middle of an actual avalanche.

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is more than just a biography; it’s also a fascinating look at the old school method of film making, and how techniques we take for granted were born from Riefenstahl’s craft. As the documentary tracks her progression of becoming a filmmaker in her own right, Riefenstahl gives us a tour of the editing room and the subtle techniques of stringing scenes together. Here, we get an engrossing and sobering reminder that the film editor is far and away the most important person in any film. Before the days of digital editing, film had to be cut and spliced by hand, a tedious, herculean task that you Final Cut Pro Scorseses could hardly imagine. Riefenstahl speaks at length about the art of lighting, film filters, night filming, and capturing dramatic angles. She even tries to direct Muller as he tries direct her, resulting in some heated director-to-director arguments, but Muller admirably retains a firm grip on his film.

The apex of her craft came when she was working for the Nazi regime. Before Triumph of the Will, Riefenstahl filmed another Nazi get-together, the clumsy Victory of Faith, a documentary of the Fifth Party Rally in Nuremberg. This film presages the technical brilliance of Triumph of the Will, as well as the limitations that Riefenstahl learned to overcome in her eventual dark masterpiece. When describing Victory of Faith, the narrator quips, “The Nazis had not yet learned to march like Nazis,” drawing a sharp contrast between the confused milling about of Hitler and his lackeys to the machine-like precision of Triumph of the Will.

Muller is not hesitant to explore the murky topic of just how much of a Nazi sympathizer Riefenstahl was. He pulls no punches, and confronts Riefenstahl with the bubbly, over-the-top telegram of praise she sent to Hitler in the wake of his victory over France. Riefenstahl gives the all-too common defense that a) she knew nothing of the Holocaust and b) Hitler had utterly mesmerized her through his charisma, not his racial policies. Riefenstahl also vehemently denies ever being buddies with Joseph Goebbels, as he had claimed in his diaries. Muller leaves the viewer to come to their own conclusions, but Riefenstahl does seem convincing and eloquent enough in her presumed innocence. For what it’s worth, she does point out that Triumph of the Will never actually puts forth any racial theories of German superiority. That presents any film historian with a rather complex, dubious quandary; perhaps Triumph of the Will did not depict Hitler actually slandering the Jews, but was it not the film editor who took these passages out? According to Wikipedia, Triumph of the Will does contain one racist reference, where Julius Streicher comments, “”A people that does not protect its racial purity will perish.”

Equally fascinating, though not nearly as lurid, is Riefenstahl’s life after World War II. Her punishment for her political blindness (or pretending to be so) was that she could never make a film again. But being who she was, she kept herself busy, eventually living with several African tribes and publishing a photography essay of her sojourn with the Nuba people of Sudan. This project would seem to contradict any notion that Riefenstahl is a Nazi racist, or perhaps one could grudgingly admit she was at least “rehabilitated.”

No matter your opinion of her, you can’t help but admire her consistent boldness; at the age of ninety, she became a certified scuba dive master, and there are some mind blowing scenes of her petting a huge stingray that could have killed her in an instant. But as I marveled at her daredevil antics, I could not help but think that even if that stingray did kill her, Riefenstahl would die knowing she led a full, amazing, perhaps reprehensible, but never mundane life. And on that account, I am envious.

John Curtis Estes was born in the humble rural hamlet of Ashville, Ohio in the balmy August summer of 1944. His father, an alcoholic railroad worker, quickly abandoned his child and most likely started a new family in some other town. John lived with an older brother and their mother Mary, who married Harold E. Holmes in 1946. He was also an alcoholic and a womanizer, who kept odd hours and would come home late at night, drunk, and treated the two children as nothing more than another surface to puke on. Mary divorced Holmes, as he wasn’t a very good role model for her kids. She was a religious zealot who sent her sons to a Southern Baptist academy hoping that they would enter a seminary upon reaching legal age. If she hadn’t married Harold Bowman, the history of underground cinema would have been irrevocably altered. At first, home life was as idyllic as their humdrum existence could get.

Soon, living conditions became unbearable when young David was born and became the center of attention, leaving John to be nothing more than a punching bag whenever Harold decided to go on one of his violent drunken rampages. At the age of 16, John retaliated and shoved Harold down a flight of stairs. After spending the night on the streets of Ashville, John returned home the next day when his stepfather was at work and issued an ultimatum to his mother: either he would stay home and end up killing Harold, or Mary would sign a waiver allowing her son to drop out of school and join the Armed Forces.

Estes spent three years stationed in West Germany serving in the Army Signal Corps, living an interesting but ultimately unfulfilling life. The rigorous structure of military life wasn’t made for him, and so upon being honorably discharged in 1964, he headed for the bright lights of Los Angeles as if they were a beacon directing him toward his destiny. John worked a number of odd jobs, none of which suited him: office temp, postal worker, door-to-door salesman, attendant at a Coffee-Nips factory. During his tenure as an ambulance driver he met his first love, a nurse by the name of Sharon Gebenini, in late 1964; by August of ’65 they would be happily wed.

Married life for the Estes family was wonderful for a brief time: John was loving and attentive, Sharon was ever loyal and the sex was fantastic. Forces beyond their control would soon tear them apart. After his right lung collapsed during his stint as a forklift operator, John would spend great deals of time convalescing at home. When that got boring he would socialize with some of his work buddies at a club for card sharks. He was hardly a born gambler, and was a bit out of his element. Then, as luck would have it, an enterprising producer was using a urinal beside John, and prying eyes couldn’t help but notice John’s distinctive equipment. The keys to the illicit world of pornography were within his grasp, and John would enter this seamy pool in the shallow end; low-paying gigs for cheap spank rags and eight-millimeter “stag films” were a decent source of supplemental income, that is, when the producers were honest enough to pony up cash for their cast and crew.

Obviously, Estes was a sex fiend, and offers for work of that nature were never in short supply. It was only a matter of time before John could no longer keep his second vocation a secret from Sharon. One night, he sat down with his wife and told her bluntly: “I’m a porn actor, and I want to keep on being one.” This was just one step removed from prostitution, as far as she was concerned, and the novelty of married life soon gave way to a frigid, distanced relationship. On the flip side of that coin, the newly introduced MPAA ratings system offered a window into the legal exhibition of pornography:

There were more opportunities to show off his skills than ever before. John appeared in innumerable cheapo productions for fly-by-night companies and reputable X-rated production houses alike.  His psuedonyms were wildly varied yet similar in nature: John Duval; Big John Fallus; John Rey; Bigg John; John Helms; Jack Himms; Long John Wood. He’d use different stage names throughout his career, but for the majority of his productions he adopted his first stepfather’s surname and became John C. Holmes. In 1971, he would have a fateful meeting with the esteemed adult film director Bob Chinn; initially offering to be a crew member, Chinn and his producer turned him down … before considering his potential as a performer. One look at John’s tool was all it took to launch his legendary career.

All the preceding information has been more or less true. After this point, things become a little hazy as far as distinguishing fact from fiction. While the luridly entertaining Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes does an admirable job tracking down Holmes’ surviving acquaintances and setting the record straight, there’s no denying that the man immediately ascended to mythical status, and his reputation may or may not have been erected on hyperbole and his ever-mounting ego. We will examine his various lies in due time. His filmic record cannot be distorted or hyped up; it is what it is, nothing more, nothing less than the lowest form of exploitation catering to an audience’s base desire for titillation.

Bob Chinn had loftier goals in mind: create a character with more substance than your average woodman, and put him in a story that would be compelling without hardcore sex scenes. Enter the fictional creation of Johnny Wadd. Part hard-boiled detective, part master cocksman, his capers became an instant sensation.

Wadd, the documentary, splices in numerous scenes from the Johnny Wadd “mysteries”, and while for the most part they are unintentionally hilarious thanks to skid-row production values and primitive fight choreography, Holmes sticks out as a more than competent improvisational actor. Perhaps he could have seen modest success as an honest straight-up thespian were it not for his insatiable carnal appetites. Folks like Paul Thomas Anderson, Kenneth Turan, Larry Flynt and smut pioneer Al Goldstein have nothing but genuine praise for Holmes and his screen presence, and it’s quite clear that the Wadd films benefited from the perfect synergy between character and performer. Swedish Erotica producer Bob Vosse goes so far as to compare him to Elvis Presley, and Goldstein proclaims Holmes “should have been a Kennedy.”

Audiences demanded more Wadd, so Chinn and crew immediately shoved more adventures down the pipeline:

Through the early 70s, Holmes’ career swelled to unimaginable magnitude, his star rising as he appeared in numerous other plotless porno flicks, which was still highly illegal. Sometime in this halcyon cocaine-free period, J.C. was detained by the cops and forced to choose between the lesser of two evils: either be sent up the creek sans paddle, or work as an informant for the L.A.P.D. In the first of many absurd twists of fate, Holmes not only became a stoolie, he relished the chance to act out his own Johnny Wadd fantasies in real life. While he mingled with drug dealers and his own trusted industry associates during the day, he would undergo a strange nocturnal transformation into John Holmes, Man of Mystery. His innate charisma and networking skills allowed him to get the skinny on competing low-rent XXX producers, getting friendly with them before ratting to the cops.

Holmes’ cooperation with the cops resulted in dozens of arrests and prosecutions, which had the added bonus of removing competition from the porno playing field. Wadd scores major points by getting a one-on-one with Vice Squad detective Tom Blake, who has nothing but praise for his erstwhile informer, even going so far as to spectulate on Holmes’ theoretical career as a vice cop. Prognosis was damn good on John’s skills as a stool pigeon, which kept him out of jail and fattened the wallets of his employers. Best of all, John got to play-act as a tough guy, a hard-boiled Raymond Chandler protagonist, a fearless macho man: everything he was not.

Somehow, through all of this, his marriage with Sharon was still limping on. Their off-and-on relationship lacked the passion of their early days, and John didn’t seem to care that Sharon was, for all intents and purposes, a kept woman, like another concubine in his harem. Perhaps he felt entitled to a swinger’s lifestyle; after all, this was the 70s and everyone was lettin’ it all hang out. In her shadow-shrouded interviews, she expresses nothing but regret for the relationship she could have had in a hypothetical universe, where her husband was not the most recognizable porn actor in the entire world.  John’s cavalier attitude towards the marriage reached its zenith when, in 1976, he brought home his 16-year-old mistress Dawn Schiller, who was homeless at the time.

Schiller remembers this period as a sunny, warm and beautiful time in her life, where she had a roof over her head and the love of none other than Johnny Wadd. But this was not to last; Sharon kicked both of them out in disgust. J.C. and Dawn would soon be living a destitute lifestyle, with the two of them bouncing between cheap motels and selling themselves on the street to support their ever mounting cocaine habit. John would allegedly force Dawn into prostitution and even gave her a beatdown in full view of motel staff and guests. Perhaps he fancied himself a pimp and was enacting another fantasy. Perhaps it was the coke. Perhaps it was love.

It was a demented relationship, at any rate, and Dawn was rescued by concerned motel staff and put on a plane for her native Florida. Within days of being at her parents’ house, she would recieve a tearful phone call from Holmes begging her to return. What made her come back to L.A. to start this miserable existence anew? John craved a stable relationship, yet his lifestyle would make such a thing impossible between all the film shoots and cocaine-fueled orgies that lasted all through the night and into the morning.

Holmes is depicted as both loathsome and pitiable, just an average Joe who hopped aboard a crazy rollercoaster and refused to get off, swept up by the spirit of the times and the rush of cocaine. None of his actions, especially when dealing with the warped relationship with Dawn Schiller, are excusable or even understandable. Part of what makes Wadd so fascinating is that all these facts are unadorned and free of analysis. When things get too lurid, there’s always some funny film clip to liven things up.

The 1981 biography/snow job Exhausted: The Story of John C. Holmes, directed by adult performer Julia St. Vincent, is a prime example of J.C. at his most narcissistic and self-aggrandizing: “Bigger than a breadstick, smaller than a compact car,” he quips; he must have had hundreds of these flattering comparisons floating around in his spaced-out subconscious. His interview segments are flat-out hilarious, full of boldfaced lies told with an absolutely straight face. He tells a decidedly different tale about his origin as an adult film performer, he claims to have slept with 14,000 women (a mathematical impossibility), he claims to have serviced a member of the English royal family. Holmes claims to have a degree in physical therapy from UCLA, when in fact “the closest John ever got to UCLA was breaking into cars in the school’s parking lot,” according to one of his close friends. Exhausted is a smutty and shallow work, clearly made by someone who was hopelessly in love with its subject, but its peek behind the scenes of the production of pornography is invaluable and endlessly fascinating.

A textbook sociopath, Holmes actually believed in his own myths and helped to propogate them, embellishing when necessary. Wadd is at its best when demythologizing the mighty Holmes, cutting him down to size and revealing him as the insecure drug addict he actually was. Various attempts at legit business ended in ignominious failure; “Just Looking Emporium”, a combination used furniture store and locksmith service started with his half-brother David, a short-lived production company called Penguin Productions. He began drifting toward a life of crime, running vast quantities of drugs and skimming cash from high-dollar deals. His involvement with Eddie Nash and the Wonderland Gang would lead to a ballsy theft and a vicious quadruple homicide.

Undoubtedly, Holmes was at the very least an accessory to the grisly murders; it was with his assistance that the four hitmen hired by Eddie Nash were able to access the Wonderland apartment. Further speculation about the case is kept to a minimum, blessedly, and so began the slow and steady decline of John C. Holmes.

Wadd is excellent investigative journalism, reporting the facts with as little spin as possible. There is no voiceover narration and the story is told entirely with interviews from Holmes’ many friends, enemies, and business associates. Co-directed by Wesley Emerson and a partner who chose to take an Alan Smithee credit, this would hint at some disagreements behind the scenes, which is odd because the film is focused, slim and efficient. Nobody passes judgment on John, even when recounting the bad old days of drug addiction and fleabag motels. An account of Holmes frittering an entire day’s worth of shooting by free-basing cocaine in a closet inspires more laughs than despair, and even the aftermath of the Wonderland murders becomes funny when J.C. and Dawn take an impromptu cross-country road trip.

Is John Curtis Estes a mythical icon, or just a holy fool? Wadd passes no judgment on its subject, which may irritate some viewers expecting this warts-and-all portrait to focus exclusively on the warts. His downfall is as tragic as it is predictable; unprotected sex and drug abuse are not a good combination. John Holmes was just another one of Estes’ alter egos, a film star stud who never tired of pleasing the ladies; unfortunately for John C. Estes, Holmes took over and started a self-destructive descent into a whirlpool of excess. Wadd can’t resist giddily wallowing in the sleazy atmosphere of the 1970s, where most of its running time is spent, but it treats the harsh 1980s with a gravity reserved for true-crime documentaries. Emerson’s technique is conventional, even invisible, edited with a hurtling speed with too many candid photos and smutty film clips to count.

In the words of Chuck Stephens, Holmes lived life to its fullest “until one thousand and one triple-X-rated nights swallowed him whole.” Wadd is both an unsparing depiction of an excessive lifestyle and a surprisingly sympathetic character study of an innately tragic figure. Make it a double bill with the rose-colored Boogie Nights for a three-dimensional peek into this funky, sexy, glorious, and sadly short-lived period in cinematic history.