The Making of HARD TO BE GOOD (1990)

I spent a couple of years working in the San Francisco Catalina studio, which was like living in a dream! With taking over as studio manager after Dan Allman (Cameron Leight) left and getting to direct my first two movies, all looked bright for the future. I can’t remember what scene we shot back then, in December of 1989, but Scott Masters and John Travis were both on set when it all went down. We wrapped the scene and the models were showering off while the crew and I started breaking everything down. The crew was Dan Ross as second videographer, Buddy Jones as the make-up man and my best friend Brian Wayne as the lighting and sound grip. We all knew we would be off for the holidays and everyone was in high spirits... until.

Scott Masters called me into the office, and when I arrived I saw John Travis sitting there, puffing away on one of his Benson and Hedges 100s. I could tell from the instant I locked eyes with him that something was up. They explained to me that they were shutting down the San Francisco studio permanently as it was getting too expensive, and due to the fact that a court ruling was in their favor - shooting XXX in the Los Angeles city limits was viable again. I was shocked - it literally came out of nowhere. They were quick to mention that they wanted me to relocate to Los Angeles and continue on as head of production. However, they were not extending the invitation to any of the crew members or the part time carpenter we had on staff. It was devastating to hear and painful when the three of us broke the news to the crew. Everyone always gave 100% and for them to lose their jobs like this with absolutely no warning and just before Christmas was unbelievable. Scott, John and the models hightailed it quickly after the news dropped, while the crew and I stayed back to try and make sense of it all. It sucked.

About a month after arriving in West Hollywood, I was settled into my one-bedroom condo rental a couple of blocks from Scott Masters' house. I was still in the process of interviewing applicants for my new crew. We needed a second videographer, a still photographer, a grip and a make-up man. My first hire was Reinaldo (Orlando Bello); he was a video production student from Venezuela, and though he lacked experience, I was confident enough to hire him in the position of grip. Warren was a New Yorker with some amazing photos of his make-up work, so he filled that position. Michael Wynter was a very cute James Dean look-alike, a still photographer who I immediately hired even though his book of photos was just okay.

Scott Masters was quick to schedule my first Los Angeles project: Hard To Be Good, a college-based story that we would shoot in Los Angeles and Arrowhead Lake. The cast of ten consisted of Tim Hunter, Mark Robinson, Neil Thomas, Alan Lambert, Charlie Stone, Rick Sands, Tony Davis, Sparky O’Toole, Mitch Cooke and Les Stine as the pledge master. Hunter, Robinson and Cooke, along with myself and the new crew, all headed up to our lake house rental. The house was nice and roomy and we set up in the basement for the opening scene where Hunter and Robinson are going through photo albums as they reminisce about their first time together.

I wasn’t fully prepared to direct a movie and train this new crew at the same time. There were a lot of “deer in the headlights” eyes from the new crew members who didn’t really know how to perform their jobs yet. Hands-on training for three people at the same time as directing was a bit much. I wished Scott or John had broken in the new crew on one of their movies first. Something must have happened when we shipped the equipment from San Francisco to L.A., because the second camera was showing a yellow hue on the monitor that we tried over and over to white balance, but it wouldn’t hold. I truly thought that they could fix it in post-production, so we shot the scenes using both cameras. I would lock Camera 2 on a tripod while I shot most of the assorted angles on Camera 1. Still photographer Michael Wynter jumped in and shot the second angle cum shots using the “yellow” camera. He actually proved himself to be a big help to me on that movie, but his stint with us was short-lived, as he and Scott Masters had an altercation with each other on the next movie we shot, Head of the Class 2. It was unfortunate losing our eye candy James Dean, but it worked out in the end because I then hired Jeff Burton as still photographer, who stayed with us for over a decade. (Read “DREAMLAND: The Other Place” for more on renowned photographer Jeff Burton.)

As things would have it, the yellow shots from Camera 2 were never able to be fixed because, like I said before, we didn’t have great technology back then. Even to this day, the DVD and streaming version still have every other shot with a distracting yellow hue. So fucking annoying. Another scene we shot was with models Mark Robinson and Mitch Cooke in a tried and true scenario of the hot plumber fixing the young boy's clogged sink. What made this one great was that the plumber had a big fat pipe that got rock hard and Robinson knew exactly how to handle it.

Back in Los Angeles, reality set in when we shot the dorm room scene and the fraternity brothers scene. We were shooting in a stark white, typically tacky valley-girl home. It was the complete opposite of working in those fabulous sound stage sets that I was used to. The dorm room scene with Rick Sands and Charlie Stone was cramped and nondescript; in addition, I now knew that we couldn’t fix the yellow hue from Camera 2, so we were down to shooting the rest of the movie on one camera while we put the other in the shop for repair. I then shot another oral scene in that damned 10’ x 10’ white bedroom with Sparky O’Toole and Tim Hunter swapping blow jobs. Sparky, the original valley-boy, like totally, was the only familiar face from our San Francisco days, and I was happy to have him back on set. He was so great as the farmer’s son in Top Man, which we shot in San Francisco shortly before closing the studio, so having him back for our first L.A. movie was comforting to me.

Even though the location was boring, the best scene, for me, with the hottest cast was Les Stine as the pledge-master with Tim Hunter and Tony Davis as the pledges. I remember thinking Stine and Davis were the hottest members of the movie and I can’t believe that we never cast Tony Davis again even though he performed in like 75 movies over that period. What happened? Regarding Stine, he worked in Head of the Class 2 for us and then never again. What’s up with that? He did probably double the amount of movies that Tony Davis performed in. I can only assume that Masters, who was doing all the casting at that time, must have thought them to be over exposed. The only models I ended up casting again for future movies from Hard to be Good were Sparky (of course) as well as Alan Lambert and Mark Robinson, who were both in Brother Trouble and Brother Trouble 2. Those two movies were eventually re-cut into one complete movie for the DVD release. The lead, Tim Hunter, only ever worked in Hard to be Good and, again, I’m not quite sure why. There is another Tim Hunter currently acting in Raw movies, but I’ve researched and it’s not the same guy.

After the Head of the Class 2 fall out with Michael Wynter, I promoted Orlando Bello from grip to second videographer, and he worked with us for a very long time. At some point, years later, Orlando became sick with the virus. Having refused to try any of the medications that were available to help, he succumbed to the disease. When Orlando left the crew for health reasons, I then hired Brad Austin as main videographer and I (mostly) retired from doing camerawork and focused on producing and directing. Brad Austin became one of our top directors with such hits as Cockpit, Hung Riders and Sunsex Blvd. Fun fact: Brad Austin was actually Gloria Swanson’s personal secretary, for years! Some great stories he told us!

I remember not really connecting with Hard to be Good - maybe because of the yellow distracting shots or the college jock storyline forced on me. Whatever it was, Hard to be Good was one of those movies I always tried to forget about. Revisiting it now, I think I was wrong to dismiss it.

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.