Wakefield Poole – Filmmaker
Boys in the Sand did more than launch a career. The 1971 film’s poster art, drawn by Ed Parente, became the first gay display ad published in the New York Times, and the film’s reception by mainstream critics helped move gay cinema out of the underground. Poole followed it with Bijou in 1972, The Bible in 1973, Moving in 1974 and Take One in 1977, building a body of work that treated gay erotic film as an art form. When Jack Fritscher interviewed him at his Haight-Ashbury studio in 1978, Poole had recently moved to San Francisco, where he also took part in the lavish Night Flight party that Fritscher covered for Drummer. That conversation became “Dirty Poole,” and Poole’s later memoir borrowed the title. For more on his life and films, see his Wikipedia biography.