The Making of RUNAWAYS 1989

I was hired by Catalina Video in September of 1987 and worked in their San Francisco studio until December 1989, when they closed it up and moved me to Los Angeles. In addition to working as studio manager, set builder, and cameraman for John Travis, Scott Masters and Cameron Leight, I also worked my way into becoming a director. I directed my first two movies, Runaways and Full Service, in the studio and both were released in 1989. After relocating to Los Angeles, in January of 1990 I shot my third movie for Catalina, which was called Hard To Be Good. We shot on location in Lake Arrowhead and West Hollywood, which was a bit of a learning curve for me as I was used to shooting on a soundstage. In my next blog I will talk about the making of Full Service, followed by a blog discussing the making of Hard To Be Good.

In our San Francisco studio shooting Runaways, I was happy to get “hand me down sets” from John Travis and Scott Masters' movies that they were shooting at the time. My budget was minuscule because it was the first time they were letting me direct, so they didn’t want to chance a full blown budget on me. I was just fine with that, but getting sets that didn’t necessarily relate to each other made it difficult when writing the script. Three of the sets that really worked for that raw kind of runaway/homelessness feel were the “passenger bus,” “the dirt pit” and the “interior living room” sets.

The bus scene with Cameron Kelly and Tom Ross was lit for nighttime, as Cameron makes his way into the empty bus to spend the night when he encounters another homeless youth. A day or two before, I did videography for Scott Masters in the same bus for a scene with Chris Ladd and Keith Panther for his movie The Main Attraction. I made mental notes in my head about how I covered that scene with the camera and how I positioned the lights, which was a huge help when it came time to shoot my own scene. For many of my first movies, I directed from behind the camera while shooting the footage. The make-up man or grip would watch on the monitor and yell to me if the shot was dark, overexposed or out of focus. The day after shooting my scene in the bus, we shot another sex scene with Kurt Bauer, Mike Gregory and Johnny Davenport for John Travis’ My Best Buddy, just to give perspective on our scheduling.

The dirt pit scene had a runaway sleeping in the pit overnight; when the hardhat worker climbs down the next day, the young homeless fellow takes care of the worker’s morning wood. The day before, we shot a scene in this set for John Travis’ Powerline with Eric Manchester and Nick Cougar. In my scene, I ended up getting a verbal lashing because I had the contractor tie the runaway up while he fucked him. Producer Scott Masters made it sound like it was the end of the world and that it would all have to be cut out of the finished movie. Well, the editors never did that; they left all the shots in.

I can’t remember if the living room set was from John or Scott’s movie, but we converted it for Runaways. After that movie wrapped, we basically threw some trash around, covered the couch in a sheet, removed art work and sprayed graffiti on the walls, then pulled the door off its hinges. Both of those sets fit the storyline of homeless boys looking for a place to sleep and finding sex instead. Jake Corbin and John Hanks played a pair of buddies breaking in for the night. Jake and I hit it off immediately, as we were both born in Rhode Island and around the same age. It was like having my high school friend on the set, and he was very excited about starting his career. I knew I wanted to work with him again, as he was so much fun to be around and did a great job on the set. When it came time for my second movie, I did request Jake Corbin to come back, which he did, to shoot Full Service, and then Undercover. I will discuss more about Jake and his legacy in my next blog covering Full Service.

The hand-me-down “office set” I really had no idea what to do with or how to include it in the storyline. Additionally, Danny Wade was assigned to my movie as the lead star and box cover model. I don’t feel great saying this, but at the time I was really annoyed because at the same time we were scheduled to shoot the Runaways box cover, we were also shooting Matt Powers' box cover for The Main Attraction - a very hot and sexy cover with a chiseled stud on it. Danny Wade was a young guy with a very nondescript body and I wasn’t into “chickens.” I wanted a stud on my box cover! I didn’t have any options of mixing it up, so I had to figure out a way to make the box cover sexy. I went to a resale lot and found an old paint-chipped window frame for him to stand behind as a way to disguise his body for the box cover. We smudged all the window panes with Vaseline and broke glass in strategic spots where his face and bulging underwear would be. We kind of pulled it off, and his baby face looking sad played into the runaways theme. He actually did a good job sexually in his two scenes and hard-ons would appear on demand, which made me grow to like him more as the project progressed. Looking back on it today, his baby faced youthful look is exactly what runaways needed. Hot muscle studs don’t run away from home! I might add that most of the other cast members looked young as well, so I guess I was just being a judgmental brat! One thing of interest is that about half of this eleven-person cast only ever worked in this movie and did not go on to work in other porno projects, which is quite rare.

The final set I adopted was a “nightclub set” consisting of a dancefloor surrounded by multi-leveled tables and chairs, so large it took up a third of our studio space. This nightclub set was originally designed and used as a “mud wrestling” arena for the movie The Main Attraction. Again, another scene in The Main Attraction that took a layer of flesh to shoot. Just like the others. (Note: read previous blogs “We Waited 8 Hours for a Cum Shot, Is That a World Record?” and “More Than a Mouthful.”)

Cast for the roles in this mud wrestling scene were Peter Ashley and Tim Lowe. Scott Masters had a vision, and that vision was made of chocolate - chocolate pudding, to be exact. I can’t remember how we were able to purchase thirty pound bags of chocolate pudding powder, but I do clearly remember how fucking long it took to mix up bucket after bucket of the mix using water as the additive. Eventually, because we were running behind, we just poured all the remaining bags in the pit, turned on a hose and started mixing it with brooms and shovels. Hot studio lights beating on the chocolate pit didn’t help matters, and once the models entered, the pit the whole studio was already beginning to smell rancid. Peter and Tim sure were troopers to wrestle in this disgusting mess, and Scott Masters wanted the whole scene to be shot with mud (pudding) all over their bodies. I tried my hardest to get all the shots we needed from outside the mud pit, but at one point Masters told me to take off my shoes and hop in there. It felt absolutely disgusting, and I only had it on my feet; the boys' faces and bodies where smothered, and it seriously looked like they were covered in shit. We shot the first oral scene that way and it wasn’t sexy, it was bizarre looking. Thankfully, the boys started gagging on the rancid mixture and we persuaded Masters to make some dialogue up to let them exit to the shower. When we resumed they were squeaky clean, and finished up the sucking and fucking outside the pit.

For my movie, we got rid of the pit and turned it into a dance floor. I basically wrote a scene about two waiters at the club who get a visit from their “runaway” friend. A paper thin connection, for sure, and I got a lot of shit for not having a cohesive script once Runaways was released. That recurring critique in reviews bothered me, so much so that moving forward I made scripts a main focus. It wasn’t over night that my script skills improved, but I always tried to make sure that I would use unpredictable ideas when developing future movies.

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.