Wet and Wild

The year was early 1993, and I was running all over Hollywood looking for a waterproof casing for our Canon L1 camera, which recorded on Hi-8 video tape. The L1 was a smaller camera that we would use when we needed to shoot some footage in any area where we didn’t have electricity. You would think that we could have used our big three-quarter inch main cameras that cost a fortune and gave an excellent quality image, but our producer Scott Masters did not want to buy the rechargeable batteries for them, as the cost was “too much.” Instead he invested in this little piece of shit camera as our solution; I think it cost around $2500. I truly believe I lost a few votes for Best Picture on Single White Male (1992) because of this damn camera. I was told it was a dead heat between SWM and Jerry Douglas’ Kiss Off, which ended up with the GayVN for Best Picture award that year. I was forced to use that damn L1 for all the exterior shots in Single White Male, including the finale where Rob Cryston chases Brian Hart with an ax! Whenever you cut the footage in a scene alongside footage from our main cameras it was so obvious that they didn’t match, and the footage that was shot on some cheap camera affected the viewing experience for sure. The only good thing about the L1 camera, in my opinion, was that I was able to find the casing for it and shot my very first underwater sex scene for a movie called Wet and Wild.

I’ll be the first to say that Wet and Wild is no great movie; it’s kind of all over the place, yet it has an amazing cast and the underwater scene between Aiden Shaw and Rob Cryston is worth the price of admission. The other thing I absolutely love about the movie isn’t in the movie, it’s on the original VHS box cover. Our make-up man at the time, “Mr. Ed,” hand-painted a swimsuit on the naked body of star Tom Katt - who, as everyone reading this probably knows, had an incredible physique at the time, and probably still does. There’s one other great thing associated with Wet and Wild, and his name is Joey Morgan.

The previous year, I worked with Joey Morgan in Down Bi Law (1992), where he played a sheriff looking for an escaped convict in a brothel. It was great to have him back with us, especially because we were shooting out of town, in Palm Springs, on gay-friendly Warm Sands Drive. We were just a few buildings up from the Vista Grande and Atrium, nudist resorts where we normally shot our movies during the era. This time we had a triplex that we rented out for the week and had the private pool area to ourselves. Somehow, while shooting a scene, the crew was talking about porn star/director Paul Barresi, and Joey Morgan had a fun story to tell us about working with him in the past. Everyone on the crew all thought that Barresi was a fucking stud, and so did Joey. When shooting the movie for director Paul Barresi, Joey told him that he was having trouble getting hard - all as a ploy, mind you, as Joey never had trouble getting hard. Joey played it well, saying magazines weren’t working, videos didn’t help, yada yada, and the only thing that would get him hard and able to shoot the scene would be if Paul pulled his dick out and let Joey suck it. That sly little fox! Brilliant! Joey was so proud of himself when he told us the story, and of course we all were so envious! That was very much in character for Joey, not afraid to ask for what he wanted. Like any good blogger, I decided to see if the story lined up with reality, so I searched and searched until I found that Joey Morgan did work on a movie for Paul Barresi in 1992 called Razor Close. It took me awhile to find it, because he worked under the stage name Aaron Gunn instead of Joey Morgan.

Wet and Wild was the one and only time that my partner, Mark Rutter, came along on one of my video shoots. I invited him because we had enough space for everyone to have their own private bedrooms and we were still in the honeymoon phase of our relationship. Joey was totally chomping at the bit for Mark and kept saying we were a hot couple, but of course a threeway was out of the question. As far as I know, they didn’t play around behind my back, but who knows, as I was busy on the set a lot and Mark did kind of look like Paul Barresi!

Aiden Shaw worked in a few movies directed by Chi Chi Larue and Chet Thomas, which I was videographer on, but this was the first time I directed him. What a dream - his huge piece would get hard at the drop of a pin and stay that way until climaxes. The evening he arrived, we shot his oral scene, which basically called for him to slide his hard dick through a lattice wall alongside the face of Joey Morgan, who was relaxing by the pool. Joey worked the very large, fat piece beautifully, making that oral scene really stand out among the others. For some reason, we put vampire fangs in Aiden’s mouth, which the viewer saw through the lattice hole. I guess he was supposed to be sucking off a vampire? Who knows. I think I was in a “smoking a lot of pot” phase and never really completed the script on this movie or explained the vampire fangs. I used to get all over Chi Chi LaRue for showing up to the set without a script, which she would then scramble to write on a paper towel or whatever form of paper she could find. Admittedly, I was guilty of the same thing periodically, because it really was exhausting pumping out two or three movies every month and Mark Rutter did like to party and he kind of pulled me into it for a while. One of the great achievements in our relationship was how I got him to give all that up!

Truly the best scene in the movie was shot the next morning, the underwater scene. I was thrilled to have Rob Cryston back with us, as I knew he could handle Aiden’s dick like a champ. I made sure to set up one camera shooting Rob and Aiden from above ground so I could intercut those shots with the underwater footage. I had my snorkel gear and was ready to go, quickly discovering that Aiden and Rob were the perfect choice for the task. They were both rock hard under the water, which helped me capture some great oral by Rob, while the above-water camera caught all of Aiden’s facial reactions. Scott Masters was a savior when it came to the anal. He sent me to the set with this powder that, when mixed with water, became slippery, where normal lube would have produced friction on the condom underwater. It turns out the powder is what they use when birthing cows. The vet would rub it on his/her arms to “grease ‘em up!” Yikes! The fucking was amazing, as were the underwater cum shots. This wasn’t the last underwater scene I would shoot; I pulled the L1 out of mothballs again for the movie CatalinaVille in 1999.

I remember getting a phone call after the underwater scene from Scott Masters, telling me that Tom Katt’s flight was now landing in Ontario instead of Palm Springs and he wanted me to drive there to pick him about around 10 pm. Ontario was almost as far away as Los Angeles, so I asked if he could tell Tom Katt to take a shuttle to us in Palm Springs. That request was “no bueno” and Scott Masters jumped all over me, stressing me out more than I was already, basically “ordering” me to go. I said I would, but after I hung up the phone I quickly made an arrangement with Dennis from Drake's Bookstore (aka Moist Towelette from my movie The Hills Have Bi’s), who was helping us out. He happily agreed to go when I offered to pay him $100. I was thrilled that I didn’t have to drive 100+ miles round trip to the airport after shooting all day and playing mother to the cast and crew. It was also a major fringe benefit to me anytime I could disobey a Scott Masters order.

Tom Katt arrived and I greeted him in the morning, as I was fast asleep when they got in from the airport. He always looked like a million bucks, never needing make-up, but this time the body make-up would be extensive. Mr. Ed did an incredible job for the box cover shoot. The hand-painted swimsuit over Katt’s bubble butt looked incredible; as you see from the box shot, his thin waist accentuating his built-up chest and hot ass made that picture one of my favorite VHS boxes ever.

Tom and Randy White shot a scene together in CC Construction Company, a fabulous discotheque in Cathedral City that was packed every weekend. Randy, Tom Katt and the other models all danced on stage, and the Catalina sales and management team came down to toss out videos to the crowd. It was a good time, but I seriously don’t remember much because Mark Rutter kept feeding me Gold Schlager shots and it’s a minor miracle that I was able to shoot the remaining scenes (with Joey Morgan and Jason Andrews, as well as Bill Watkins and Ren Lickitt) over the next couple of days. A total blur, as the crew started partying at CC and we didn’t stop until days later when it was time to drive home. I watched those two scenes before writing this blog and I remember “zip” about them. So I guess this is a good place to end.

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.