“This is a Farce”: Satire, Pseudonyms, and the Impact of Collaboration in Early Walter Sear/Roberta Findlay Films

This chapter examines the film collaborations between Roberta Findlay and the recording engineer Walter Sear, her life and business partner and with whom she made 20 adult films. Examining her films before their collaboration, as well as his early solo efforts, this chapter argues that a distinctive style emerges from their partnership that can be distinguished from Findlay’s earlier work. Efficient, economical, and often absurdist, the Findlay/Sear films might not have been up to the same level of quality that can be found in Findlay’s earlier body of work, but they illustrate the ways in which adult films of the 1970s were often made quickly and with very few resources but were nevertheless profitable.