I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole (2013)
*** 1/2 (out of 4)
Wakefield Poole isn't a name that a lot of people are going to know but his film BOYS IN THE SAND did for gay porn what DEEP THROAT would do for bringing porn to the mainstream. This documentary from director Jim Tushinski covers just about every aspect to Poole's life and best of all is that we get the man himself discussing his life and career.
Going into this documentary I had never seen a film from Poole so I was curious to hear more about the filmmaker and there's quite a bit of great stuff here. Poole starts off talking about his childhood, his love of movies and of course how he decided to leave home and try for something better. From here we get some great stories about his time on stage and then of course comes the discussion of the movies. BOYS IN THE SAND, BIJOU and BIBLE! are his three most famous films and we get some great stories about their production as well as the aftermath, which included some stories with Harvey Milk, the political maverick who of course would be assassinated.
If you're a fan of Poole then you'll probably already know a lot of the stories that are told here but there's no question that if you're not familiar with his work then this a great place to get a better understanding of who he was and why his films were so important. We get clips from several of his movies but the film stays well within a R-rating so people don't have to be worried about any hardcore scenes (although, I'm not sure why people would object to them in a film about a man who made hardcore pictures). I really loved the interviews with Poole who is obviously still quite emotional about certain aspects of his life and career.
