More Than a Mouthful

By Josh Eliot

I’ve been told my blogs tend to run long so I have to leave some fun stuff out of them. Below are a few previous blogs where I had to leave some “pertinent information” on the cutting room floor. What can I say, I’ve got “more than a mouthful” of things to say that don’t always fit on the page!

In no particular order, I’ll start with the blog that is the most fresh on my mind, since I found a photograph to back up the story I told. It was my 48th blog called: “The GOLD COAST Gold Rush Boys.” In that story, I wrote about the Gold Coast Bar in West Hollywood and the Bijou hit, Steve Scott’s Gold Rush Boys. I told the story about an evening when porn star Anthony Gallo and my spouse Tony Fontana (who were dating at the time) were working front door security at the Gold Coast and were attacked by an unruly patron when they tried to escort him out. I mentioned how the patron hit Anthony Gallo on the head with an object, requiring a lot of stitches, and that the scar was visible in movies shot after that date in 1995. Well, Tony just happened to find the photo of Anthony Gallo right after the incident where you can see just how awful that attack was.

Anthony Gallo fully recovered from that injury and, as far as we both know, is living in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Now on to lucky blog #13: “Is That AL PARKER in Your Photograph?” In this one, I went rummaging through my partner’s photos and found one of him with Al Parker and another of him with Estelle Getty. Another photograph I didn’t include because the blog was running long was a photo plainly displayed in our office. A picture if discovered in a pile of photos might cause me to ask, “Is That Charo in Your Photograph?” In the photo, you’ll see Tony was lucky enough to draw Charo’s attention at one of her performances he attended with his friend Art. I must say, she looks the same now from what I see on her Instagram page! Anyway, when Tony and Art got together they were kind of out of control. That evening, they sat at a table with a couple of other “fun” girls who attended the show. Complete strangers, but they all shared lots of laughs with each other. The girls had a camera with them to use when Charo hit the stage. Unfortunately, the two practical jokers, Tony and Art, ruined that moment for them. When the girls excused themselves to the bathroom, Tony and Art thought it would be “cute” to take pictures of each other making silly faces and gestures. They put the camera back on the table just in time so no one knew the better before the girls returned. At the point when Charo came into the audience and right up to their table, the girls went for their camera and started to shoot the pictures but, to their dismay, there was only 1 shot left. The girl freaked out and started screaming to her friend that she thought she had more photos left on the roll. She ran to the gift shop in the lobby to buy more film. Tony and Art played dumb and unfortunately the girls missed it when Charo literally walked up to Tony, put her breast on his head, and Art shot this picture with his Nikon 35mm camera.

I would imagine those girls were really pissed when they got home and developed the film. Blog #6 was called “A Salty Fuck in Saugatuck,” where I talked about making Thrill Me! with Ray Harley, Steve Rambo and Donnie Russo. Donnie and Rambo got into an argument over something as ridiculous as a bumble bee entering the rental unit at The Douglas Dunes Resort in Michigan. Those two stressed me out so much that when it came time for Brad Austin to shoot them together in a sex scene for his movie Deep Woods Inn, I begged Brad to let me off of doing his videography for that day. I just could not be around them; the tension between them was physically making me sick. There was always so much stress on my shoulders because, at any place or anytime someone, could get pissed and refuse to do a scene and we would be fucked. Especially out in the middle of nowhere. That would mean thousands of dollars down the drain if we didn’t return to L.A. with completed scenes. The tension between those two models was just too much - I couldn’t be on that set. Bless Brad Austin for taking it on! Brad of course said, “You don’t have to be on my set. I’ll shoot camera, it’s not a problem.” He was an angel. I was so grateful but could never tell him what I did instead. Lake Michigan is like an ocean and they have miles and miles of sand dunes there. It just so happens those dunes are very “gay occupied,” as we noticed a couple days earlier when we shot a scene for The Men of Lake Michigan, another movie I was filming back to back. I took a ride over to those dunes, hiked a bit, laid my blanket down and it took less than a minute for a few new “friends” to show up. Of course, I had to be hospitable. When I returned to the motel where they were shooting, I was pleased to find out that both Rambo and Russo were cordial with each other on the set, and other than the fact that Russo pounded Rambo extra hard, everything went just “jiffy.” Naturally it didn’t stay that way, as they went back to being enemies later that night!

The final blog I want to add on to is #15: "We Waited 8hrs for a Cum Shot, Is That a World Record?" I certainly had a lot to say about how producer Scott Masters tortured us trying to get Vic Summer’s cum shot. Read the blog if you’re interested - I just can’t revisit that moment again! What I was unable to talk about was the day prior to shooting the scene. Scott Masters evidently had a bottomless budget for this movie, because several wooden box crates arrived at the studio containing a custom set of neon tubes and transformers. For the final scene with Matt Powers and Vic Summers, Scott wanted an all-white heavily draped set with lots of flowing material and four round columns, as elements of a four post bed. In the scene, he wanted the columns to magically come alive with color at their first kiss, and flash throughout the scene. He rambled off quickly over the phone how he wanted the color tubes attached inside the columns, but quickly cut us off when we had questions. I was lost about how to even hook up neon or handle all the wiring. Back then, you couldn’t just Google or YouTube an instruction video. It took us all night to attach wire and get the effects to work. On the shoot day when Masters arrived, he asked us to show him the neon lighting. We proudly turned on the lights, color by color, showing him how we could control each color on its own. We were happy it all worked flawlessly… until Scott Masters barked out, “No, I don’t believe this! You’ve got it all wrong!” Our hearts dropped and our blood pressure started to rise! When he barely described on the phone how he wanted the colored tubes placed, we understood each color would be side by side at the top and bottom of every pole. One red tube next to one blue tube, next to one yellow tube… if you get my drift. No, he wanted the top all red, the bottom all blue, then the next column would be all yellow on the top, orange on the bottom, next column top green... yadda, yadda, yadda. We were mortified but more pissed that he didn’t take the time to properly describe the placement initially. I don’t have to tell you that there was no changing his mind about the order of the tubes. Luckily, I had a full crew to help me unwire and re-wire these fucking tubes and get them properly placed for what turned out to be his lame-ass finale scene. Personally speaking, the way we wired the tubes initially would have looked much better than the re-wired version he demanded. Maybe if we didn’t have to take a few hours to rewire these tubes, the models wouldn’t have gotten bored, lost their boners for each other, and well, you know the (8hr) rest.

Bio of Josh Eliot:

At the age of 25 in 1987, Josh Eliot was hired by Catalina Video by John Travis (Brentwood Video) and Scott Masters (Nova Video). Travis trained Eliot on his style of videography and mentored him on the art of directing. Josh directed his first movie, Runaways, in 1987. By 2009 when Josh parted ways with Catalina Video, he'd produced and directed hundreds of features and won numerous awards for Best Screenplay, Videography, Editing, and Directing. He was entered into the GayVN Hall of fame in 2002.