The Name is Bond, SCOTT BOND

When I was casting my movie Object of Desire in 1990, my producer Scott Masters was excited to let me know that a brand new guy on the scene from Canada was going to get the lead role. We sat at Scott’s kitchen table looking over the photos of this new model. His real name was Jeff and he was a year and one month younger than me, born on October 28th, 1963. Jeff’s stage name was Scott Bond and he had just completed work, in a supporting role, for Matt Sterling in the movie Backdrop for Falcon Studios. He had striking GQ facial features and a friggin' 8 pack washboard stomach. In fact, he worked as an advertising model for Eaton's, The Bay and Sears department stores, while attending the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. I was thrilled that I had this new hot model to grace the box cover of this movie, as Object of Desire was my first real passion project. He looked like James Bond, so I can totally see why he chose the stage name Scott Bond! A few weeks later, production was about to begin and I made my way back to my producer's home to meet my “star” who had flown in the night before and was staying in Scott Masters' upstairs guest bedroom. A guest bedroom, I might add, that was made famous in one of Scott Masters' classic NOVA shorts: The Spirit is Willing. It’s one of the loops in the 1983 movie Four in Hand. Drunken Bo Richards and Dino Hard go to bed, their spirits arise from their bodies and they have sex together. Well, anyway, he survived the night in that room without getting fucked by a ghost and was fresh as a daisy for our first day on the set.

When I met Scott Bond, his presence was even more striking than it was in his pictures. He was super friendly, polite and very excited to be working for us in his first lead role. I drove him to our photographer’s studio on the Sunset Strip for his box cover shoot, followed by a couple of hard-dick layouts for magazines. The movie Object of Desire had a “Twilight Zone” theme, entrapping its actors in situations that were somewhat haunting, fantastic and sexually charged all at the same time. The image I wanted for the box cover was to show an aerial shot of a naked Scott Bond sinking into quicksand, as if being pulled down into the earth. My big mistake was using black sand and not mixing it with beige sand; the effect never really landed, but his body and face looked incredible! Honestly, working with him was like working with a good friend, right from the start. He was a smart, intelligent, mild mannered guy who really wanted to do his best for the project and had a great intuition with suggestions and poses to make things look better. His hard shots for the glamour layouts looked awesome too, no hard-on issues at all.

The next day, I arrived at Scott Masters' house again to pick up Scott Bond for the video shoot. Scott rode with me in the white equipment van while the other cast and crew members followed us in a caravan to our location, a remote isolated farmhouse outside Topanga Canyon. We were both excited about the scene. In the movie, Scott’s character owned an antique shop, which included a large mirror that was a haunted portal, unbeknownst to him. The mirror opens up to show a mountainous meadow, Scott curiously walks through the mirror and finds himself back in the 1800’s, being pursued by a rifle wielding prospector played by Nick Romano. The scene went off incredibly well, Scott and Nick had some real chemistry, but it was when it came time for the cum shots that we got our real surprise. Scott’s cum shots go on and on and on and on, stream after stream after stream after stream. How the hell could this perfect 10 have impressed us more? It was literally the icing on the cake! Two slices, please!

The other scenes in Object of Desire also had their “twilight-creepy” edge to them like: Steve Kennedy, Jamie Hendrix and Chris McKenzie in a 1950’s gangster movie where Jamie literally gets pulled into the TV set; Bret Winters and Steve Burns in a vignette where Bret plays a ghostly hitchhiker who forces Steve’s car to crash, leaving them both in an automobile graveyard where victims are literally trapped in vehicles for all of eternity; the Michael Parks and Jason Ross scene, which takes place in “Leather Hell” complete with a wall full of glory holes, with one of those holes featuring a giant pair of balls from none other than Gabriel Rocas (who you might remember from my blog “Ball Both”).

Scott was so incredible to work with that it wasn’t long before he was back in front of the cameras for the Ryan Yeager “star vehicle,” The Rise, directed by Chi Chi LaRue. There is a fabulous scene between Yeager and Bond where they secretly meet in the forest. I mentioned to Chi Chi that we needed to shoot them both talking in only whispers, because I recently viewed the Twin Peaks pilot and there was a scene just like that, so we ripped it off and it came out fabulous.

It was 1992 when Scott returned for his next “star vehicle” movie, Classified Action. Again, he was the lead and was featured throughout the movie. I was in an Andrew Blake Night Trips phase. His movie was so stylish and impressive that I wanted to make Classified Action just like it! Only problem was Andrew Blake had a huge budget and shot on 35mm; our budgets were basically non-existent. Still, I had to try, much to the dismay of Scott Masters, who got pissed when he caught me shooting an entire scene through pantyhose, going for that soft focus sepia tone look. We couldn’t add those kinds of effects in post-production back then, so we had to improvise. He ended up being right though, as once that scene came out on VHS, it looked like mud. But the other scenes' stylized looks really did shine, especially the montages featuring Scott Bond. Again, the performance was stellar and he looked like a million bucks. We were all extremely excited to have Scott back on the set, a model who had it all and then some.

A month or so after wrapping Classified Action, Scott Masters received a phone call from Scott saying that he was retiring from the business because he was getting back with his boyfriend. I wish with all my heart for that to have really been the case. Without us really knowing the details until after the fact, on April 4, 1992 Scott Bond tested positive for HIV and was later hospitalized with complications. After a turbulent year and a half, he passed away on the evening of October 29th, 1993 at St. Boniface Hospital one day after his 30th birthday. It almost seemed impossible, again, and I say again because my producer Scott Masters and I had already been through similar situations before. Every time was shocking, but I have to say maybe this was the most rattling for me. Scott was such a positive spirit, so full of life, with so many life experiences and adventures ahead of him. Scott Bond is and probably will always be someone I continue to think about after all these years. It’s just hard to shake. This young, vibrant and wonderfully tempered man had everything ahead of him. It just feels like such a tragedy to me.

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.