The New York Times published an obituary Saturday.Poole, originally a dancer, made Boys in the Sand, an idyllic portrait of sex between men, after being disgusted by the gay porn films that were on the market.
He recalled seeing a film called Highway Hustler at a theater in New York City in the early 1970s. “He thought that the movie was sleazy, that its sex scenes were unnecessarily degrading,” the Times reports. “He started laughing out loud, and one of his companions fell asleep.