There Are No More Closets: The Films and Videos of Wakefield Poole, Vol. 1

There Are No More Closets is a three-volume anthology collecting the complete works of pioneering gay film and videomaker Wakefield Poole. This first volume brings together Poole’s final three feature films and first two videos.

In the wake of the disastrous release of Bible! (1973), Poole relocated from New York to San Francisco and marked the occasion with Moving! (1974), a trio of vignettes starring Casey Donovan (Boys in the Sand) and Val Martin (Sextool). Three years later, he teamed up with local experimental filmmaker Edd Dundas to make Take One (1977), an ambitious “docufantasy” about the lives and lusts of a group of real gay men, including the iconic Richard Locke (Forbidden Letters). 

Poole returned to New York at the turn of the decade and reunited with Donovan once again for his final feature film, Hot Shots (1981). He made the transition to shooting on videotape in 1984 with Split/Image (1984), another trio of vignettes themed around a magazine photoshoot, and The Hustlers (1984), a narrative feature about two roommates who earn their living on their backs that began its life as a semi-autobiographical vehicle for Donovan and Robert La Tourneaux (The Boys in the Band).