WARNING!
Rocco's love of film got him to open a 16mm theater that could show the old movies he loved. He got his start in production by answering an ad for a photographer of male nudes. He then moved to private 8mm softcore loops with an innovation: a story line.
In 1968 the Park Theater in Los Angeles, feeling they were good enough for them to show, asked to show them theatrically, another first. People were worried that the public would revolt when men were shown kissing.
Rocco's films were romantic and showed masculine gay men in a positive light. Previously, gay characters were expected to be abused or shown as demoralized and depraved.
His films became so popular that there were big opening night celebrations. The performers that he used multiple times became recognizable on the street. There was even a long line of people asking to appear in a Rocco production, so much so that he had to put up a fence around his house and get a guard dog.
Rocco was also very popular in the community with his activism and can certainly be considered one of those on the forefront of gay rights. He was a part of the Christopher Street West Association and organized its first Carnival.
Evidently there was a police raid on his home in or before 1974. The entire Hollywood vice squad spent 11 hours searching his house for something incriminating, finding nothing. The accompanying court case took almost an entire year before it was dismissed.
Rocco didn't want to get into hardcore because people didn't want to wait thru a plot to see the sex. He wanted beauty more than he wanted genitals.
See Screw Magazine #27, Sept. 1969.
In 1969 Dick Winter (MCC), Brian Reynolds (Rocco model) and Jim Kepner (Advocate film reviewer) founded the Society of Pat Rocco's Enlightened Enthusiasts (SPREE) to further the making of gay oriented film and stage productions. It published a small newsletter of their activities.
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Used the name Stu Drexl as the producer for The Light from the Second Story Window.
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