Jawbreaker Pt 2: Location, Location, Location

By Josh Eliot

[Originally published 01/17/25]

Santa Clarita Studios
By far the most expensive studio location in Catalina history was when we booked the Santa Clarita Studios, but the management there made it all possible by throwing in Sunday for free if we paid for Friday and Saturday. This helped make the cost “doable.” The Santa Clarita Studios was the real deal, catering to big Hollywood productions, most recently including: Mayans, CSI: Vegas, Your Honor and Westworld. I searched all over the valley to find a studio with a jailhouse set and told Scott Masters about it. I have no idea how he was able to secure this place for us to shoot a gay porno in, but he did.

A side note here: Scott Masters is not credited on Jawbreaker as producer, even though he was. The reason was kind of a “twat-ish” move from our GM, because of his dislike for Masters. Masters and John Travis parted ways with the company midway through the production, so I took over the producing duties to complete the movie. The right thing to do was to credit Scott Masters and myself as co-producers, but our GM wouldn’t have it. When I re-cut the full feature PG version of Jawbreaker for my YouTube channel (here’s the link), I added Scott Master’s name back into the opening credits, like it should have been all along.

The studio was massive and featured several sound stages, with some having pre-built sets. There was a courtroom set, jailhouse set, sheriff’s station and even a 1950’s-style diner. I wasn’t about to let any of them go to waste, so I wrote dialogue for all of them. We started in the jailhouse set with models Chris Champion, Alex Stone, Bo Summers and Jeff Mitchell. The sheriff (Mitchell) and his deputy (Champion) end up in a fourway with Stone and Summers inside the jail cell. It starts with Champion shoving his ginormous cock through the bars, which Summers and Stone work on like two hungry junkyard dogs. We took our time and covered the oral extensively and then set up for everyone’s cum shot. After that, we set up in the sheriff’s office to shoot all of the dialogue associated with the scene. The next day, we started with Chris Champion’s box cover photo shoot and then went into the anal part of the fourway scene, which went very smoothly and ended up being a scorcher!

Our day wasn’t over, however, because three more models arrived to shoot the oral portion of their scene. The three models playing FBI agents were Anthony Gallo, Mark West and Sean Diamond. The hallway outside the sheriff’s office had a faux elevator that the boys walked out of and into a hallway that led to the offices. Everything was so well thought out with these existing sets that it made them feel so real! After shooting their oral, we were cleaning up when Brad Austin found something on the desk and brought it over to me. It was a shooting script call sheet for Melrose Place, one of the biggest shows at that time, and my personal favorite. The script was for a scene with red-headed vixen Sydney Andrews, played by Laura Leighton. They shot the scene a few days earlier where Sydney was taken into custody in the very same jailhouse set, before she was tied up in a straight jacket and dragged down the hall. Being an avid Melrose Place watcher, I waited patiently for months until the show finally broadcast that scene! I’ve kept that call sheet all these years, tucked away with other meaningful memorabilia!

On Sunday, our last (and free) day, we shot the fucking for the FBI agents and then took advantage of the courthouse set (frequently seen on L.A. Law), capturing some shots of the FBI agents walking through the courthouse prior to getting to the sheriff’s offices. I might mention that Sydney and the Melrose Place team also shot some scenes in front of the judge in that very same courtroom, as well, later in the season. I wasn’t about to let the only remaining set, the 1950’s diner, go unused, so I whipped up a scene where the FBI agents go there for lunch, only to have smoke blown in their faces by the country bumpkin chain-smoking waiter, who they refer to as a “fucking hick.” That studio was awesome, and as I am checking out their website today, I see they now have a real back lot, set up to look like New York streets. If only!! I would have done anything to have been able to shoot on a back lot!
 

Malibu Canyon
Chris Champion’s other scene in the movie was with Jake Andrews. It’s the final scene of the movie where Jake, the escaped convict, shows up to deputy Chris’ cabin on a mountain top shot in Malibu. It was a multi-million dollar view, for sure, and we took advantage of shooting the entire scene outside the home with all the gorgeous mountains surrounding them. Tragically, the property succumbed to a massive wildfire a few years later.
 

Arabian Horse Ranch in Garner Valley
This is where we shot the award-winning group scene with Ty Russell, Chip Daniels, Rod Majors, Daryl Brock, and Scott Russell. A gay couple owned this amazing property near Idyllwild, CA, with a huge barn full of Arabian horses, rugged mountainous acreage and small pond. Performer of the year awards go to Rod Majors and Daryl Brock for submerging themselves into that pond to shed their prisoner uniforms, take a bath and change into stolen clothes. The pair walk up onto the ranch and smart-talk their way into jobs working on the ranch with cowpokes Chip Daniels and the (two) Russells. Chip Daniels was definitely the hungry homeboy of the group and was all over every one of them with so much vigor that it was impossible for me to fuck this scene up. Chip’s versatility allowed me to shoot some great footage of him fucking while getting fucked himself, something always difficult to pull off.

The location was just over the mountain from Palm Springs, where we stayed overnight. The following morning, we drove back over Highway 74 to get to the ranch, which was about forty-five minutes away. Our route on Highway 74 is took us on a section of road that was used in the opening scenes of the classic movie Its A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World (1963).
 

The PONDEROSA Ranch Replica
Fans of the TV show Bonanza were able to rent out a replica of the Ponderosa Ranch in Lake Elsinore, CA. We rented the property for Jawbreaker, as well as for Brad Austin’s Hung Riders 1 and 2. Brad shot extensively for Hung Riders in and outside the Ponderosa replica, but I decided to use an outlying building on the property near a faux Saloon. It was more nondescript for this project, and the perfect place for cutie pie Tony Idol to hide out from the law (Vince Rockland and Hunter Scott). This set really came alive at night, and the two-story building was perfect for us to film some amazing aerial shots of the sucking and fucking.
 

Scott Masters left the company with one scene remaining to shoot, which took place at the bounty hunters' campsite. I wish I had a fabulous shooting location to mention for that scene, but it was literally shot in someone’s back yard just up from Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills. The bounty hunters were played by Dave Logan, JT Sloan and Doug Perry, who all looked very cute in their “Duck Dynasty” outfits. We shot a lot of that scene inside a tent, which was giving me flashbacks to one of the very first scenes I worked on in 1987, for the movie The Young Cadets. Cameron Leight was doing the videography while I was holding the fill-light, trying not to burn Derek Jensen or Eric Lange with it or set the tent on fire. Fourteen years later, here I was shooting this massive movie with the added pressure of having just accepted the position of producer for all of Catalina’s productions. Again, on my birthday, just like when I was hired, the GM offered me the position while I was celebrating my big day at the Gold Coast Bar in West Hollywood. I didn’t let the pressure of it all enter my mind, at least not until this movie was in the can.

The larger than life scale of Jawbreaker was something I embraced instead of allowing it to intimidate me. Walking around the locations prior to writing the script really flooded my mind with possibilities instead of the limitations normally associated with our productions. The GM even honored my wish as the new producer to include an actual pack of jawbreakers with each and every copy of the movie sold through mail order, as a promotional tool. Jawbreaker was a standout movie in my career for many reasons, and would have been a great catalyst for Chris Champion’s career. I really think, as the new producer, I could have tailored some interesting roles for him, and I’m confident that would have happened, had he not been hastily released from his contract.