BijouBlog

By M. Webster

This photo from Arch Brown's 1973 production The Night Before captures a seemingly ordinary convergence on a film set. But the collection of individuals present together in the frame illustrates the intimate, intertwined, collaborative community who helped develop, then redefine East Coast gay porn film/video during the industry's first two decades. Captured during the second year of operation of influential studio Hand in Hand Films, this image depicts the initial connection point of three individuals whose mutually influential careers would continue crossing and joining paths, culminating years later at one of their own studios: legendary fetish video artist Christopher Rage, groundbreaking ultra-early gay porn filmmaker Arch Brown, and man of many hats of the classic gay porn world Frank Ross. The lineage they and their many other collaborators represent spans multiple critical periods and changes, which are reflected in their work: the beginning of the hardcore porn film industry, the socio-political shift from early LGBTQ liberation days to the AIDS crisis, and the technological shift from theatrically distributed film to home video.

Arch Brown was "one of the first above-ground underground filmmakers" according to Christopher Rage (aka Tray Christopher). His erotic filmmaking predated the birth of the hardcore porn film industry; he directed loops for venues like the Eros Theatre starting around 1968, before the shift to hardcore had truly (openly) begun. His movies stood out from the start because of their technical polish and inventiveness. He maintained a playful and trippy style throughout his porn film career, with a penchant for depicting everyday NYC encounters: average guys strolling and cruising on the streets and sites of New York, bumping into their next erotic adventure. 

As Rage described in one of his final interviews, he met Arch after hooking up with a guy who had starred in one of Arch's movies. At a cast screening, Rage (at the time working as an escort and erotic novelist) asked Arch about the logistics of making porn films ("I'm a natural producer type.") and was offered a role in Arch's next production, which he accepted. This was One and Two and... (aka Fantasy Island, circa 1972), Rage's entry into the motion picture porn world. Rage was mentored in filmmaking by Arch during this period of the emerging commercial scene, working with him on set on future productions. He studied his highly efficient, low-waste style: “I would shoot 5:1… I learned how to put together a movie fast."

It was through Arch that Rage met Jack Deveau and Bob Alvarez at Hand in Hand Films, one of the most important early NYC gay porn studios, whose experimental and narrative releases were particularly grand in scope for the ‘70s gay porn world. Arch’s only picture with Hand in Hand, The Night Before, was about to begin production, and Rage wound up choreographing a fantasy dance number for the film (pictured at the top). Jack and Rage hit it off immediately, becoming close friends. This also marked the start of Rage's long working relationship with the studio. He continued to do promotion for Hand in Hand, wrote copy for many of their ads, recorded voice-overs for several films, and - most substantially - co-wrote and starred in the studio's most ambitious project, 1974's Drive, playing, in drag, the lead character/anti-hero, Arachne.

The Night Before also served as Frank Ross’ debut working in adult cinema. Cast for his one and only performing role as one of the leads (credited as Michael Kade), this film was a broad connecting point for Ross, introducing him to both Brown and Rage, as well as to Hand in Hand. He became studio's still photographer and production assistant for most of their remaining movies (probably having taken a number of the photos in this blog and elsewhere on our site!). Ross described Hand in Hand as an excellent school for filmmaking: "Jack was a willing teacher if he thought you had a passion for filmmaking, and it was under his tutelage that I learned so much about the craft of filmmaking. Nobody on the crew had any one specific job. We all wore many hats, from general assistants to lighting, propping, set decoration, sound recording, and slating scenes. It was an excellent school for learning filmmaking from its ground up.” Ross also introduced the studio to his composer friend, David Earnest, who would go on to score many Hand in Hand productions; Earnest would also do soundtrack work well beyond with Arch Brown, further into Arch's career...

This early cinematic era of the 1970s captured the exuberance of the sexual liberation and LGBTQ liberation movements: freewheeling sexuality, cruising, and public landmarks of sex and gathering. Hand in Hand's output illustrates several threads common of East Coast work of the period: experimental film and theater roots, narrative emphasis and clever scripting, heavy focus on public/communal settings, rougher and more mature men than typical of the West Coast porn scene, and interest in the psychological dimensions of sexuality, rarely shying away from emotional complexity or kinky sexual material. This early period was one of experimentation, exploring the possibilities of the genre before its conventions crystalized. What could cinematic sex look like and be? And as Ross noted, the scenes on each coast , at that time, were distinct and tight-knit. "The New York gay porn community was very small and very loyal to each other,” with many points of overlap between the various studios, makers, and cast and crew members.

The technological rupture of the affordable home video camera fundamentally altered porn movie-making and the distribution model. In 1980, Rage borrowed an early video camera, and by 1981, he had debuted his first productions, Superstars 1 and Solojerk. Initially unsuccessful, he edited them together, the same year, into The Best of the Superstars for distribution via Joe Gage’s Gagetapes line with HIS Video. Best of… sold well and provided the funds for Rage to make further work, as well as to found his mail order business and production studio, Live Video Inc., making him one of the forerunners in the shot-on-video market. This quicker, cheaper format allowed for niche productions that the costly film theatrical model could not support, enabling Rage to exclusively self-distribute his more intense, transgressive, and fetishistic movies (including S/M, fisting, and watersports focuses) for a smaller, dedicated market.

The aesthetic Rage developed moved away from the cinematic tradition of Hand in Hand and '70s films and to a style very in sync with early video art: raw, gritty, intimate, and confessional. Shoots were simple and unpremeditated, often consisting only of Rage and the performer(s), plus maybe an assistant or two, and letting whatever the cast wanted to display reveal itself to the camera. The focus moved from public spaces and the gay community at large to private and interior. Rage summoned the subterranean desires and primal sexual compulsions of his performers, displaying them to the home viewer in candid direct address, disorienting montage, unusual and extreme bodily acts, and uneasy juxtaposition of image and sound (all was set to his own original musical compositions and haunting, layered soundscapes). Rage's darker, obsessive tone had been there from the start (clear in his Hand in Hand work on Drive), but deepened in his directorial pieces, driven by his need to make honest, personal, and provocative work. “I was always up to something. I wanted to corrupt society one way or another by saying, "Try this... Look at this... Did you ever consider this?... C'mon, don’t you want to see this... Aren't you amazed that people do this?... Maybe you don't want to do it yourself, but wouldn't you like to see it?”

Frank Ross, through the '70s onward, maintained a remarkably broad and sustained presence in the NYC gay porn sphere (also extending for a period into the West Coast) throughout his extremely lengthy career, moving beyond his work for Hand in Hand to serve in countless roles with a wide array of affiliates and studios. Ross seemingly worked with just about everybody in some capacity. If one were to map out the network of figures in vintage gay porn, Ross is certainly one of the nodes with the greatest number of connections; his list of associates is too vast to fully enumerate (encompassing figures including Steve Scott, Al Parker, Jack Wrangler, Toby Ross, and our own blog writer, Josh Eliot, to name just a few). 

The late '70s through the '80s saw a dense matrix of overlap among the trio and other key players. Rage's only shot-on-film directorial work, 1982's Sleaze, featured photography and editing by Arch Brown. This was one of Rage's handful of movies to be distributed by P.M. Productions, another prolific NYC studio in the '70s/'80s. P.M. also released a large number of Arch's films (including Pier Groups, Harley's Angels, Dynamite, Muscle Bound) - often with soundtracks by David Earnest, and occasionally with Rage's name popping up as photographer/editor. Ross directed extensively for the studio Satellite during the '80s, where he worked repeatedly with iconic performer Joe Simmons; Simmons' porn career began with Chris Rage (in They All Came, 1984, for P.M. Productions) and he remained a mainstay in Rage’s Live Video Inc productions. Arch and Rage collaborated frequently under the Live Video Inc. banner, with Arch doing additional photography for Rage's Wildside (1984), Tramps (1985), and more. J.D. Slater, another of Rage's most frequent stars, appeared in Brown's lone directorial piece for LVI, Rough Idea (1985), as well as in a second 1985 movie for Spike Video, Bring Your Own Man (stacked with a cast of Rage regulars). For both movies, David Earnest did music and Christopher Rage served in various behind the scenes roles. (A further extension: Hand in Hand's final film, the 1985's In Heat, features a performance by Slater.)

The AIDS crisis brought a new, heavier resonance to Rage’s work, which was always an emotionally honest reflection of what was going on in his life and mind - especially following his own 1987 HIV diagnosis. After learning this news and a taking short break from filmmaking, Rage returned but was having difficulty completing his movies. He brought his friend Frank Ross on board to help him finish his 1989 production Three Little Pigs. Ross: “I was to be assistant director, but was there were more for emotional support. Tray [Chris] wasn't feeling strong enough to get the project done and needed a collaborator.” From then onward, Ross’ presence at LVI increased in importance. The two worked together on a few more pieces as Rage’s health declined, and Rage asked Ross to begin directing for LVI, which he did beginning with Scum, released the same year as Rage’s death: 1991.

Ross remained with Live Video Inc. after Rage's passing, directing more videos through them and becoming the studio’s vice-president for a period of time. After eventually leaving LVI, Ross founded his own studio, 3rd World Video, which operated from the mid/late ‘90s to 2020 (Ross passed away in 2021). Ross credits Rage with introducing him to transgressive, boundary-pushing fetish and S/M material, and Ross brought this to 3rd World Video, an explicit extension of the LVI ethos. Ross: “I tried to continue the legacy of Christopher Rage, who always attempted to break barriers sexually and bring to the screen the reality and popularity of extreme fetishes which no one else would consider or produce... I happily became a porn pariah and enjoyed shocking the world in any way I could.” 

The sustained connection between Brown, Rage, and Ross is one example of a powerful lineage of the kind you’ll find when sifting through the credits and histories of classic porn. Compared to today, the amount of people working in the industry in its initial decades was tiny, so the overlapping and interconnectedness was more apparent. Tracing this one thread: Brown was a foundational figure from the start of the industry and mentored Rage; Ross met Brown and Rage at Hand in Hand where Rage and Ross continued to learn their craft; their three careers intersected again over the years in various places and ways, and with other repeat collaborators; Rage established his own influential studio, where he worked with Brown and Ross; and Ross continued sustained Rage's studio after Rage's death, then continued that legacy at his own studio until just a few years ago. 

Bijou just remastered and re-released Christopher Rage's Tramps, which you can now find on DVD and Streaming! And keep an eye out in future months for Arch Brown's Rough Idea and other Live Video Inc. productions.

Sources:

-Manshots, April 1991 (Interview with Christopher Rage)

-Good Hot Stuff: The Life and Times of Gay Film Pioneer Jack Deveau (Interview with Frank Ross)

-Gay Erotic Video Index (filmographies; vintage ads)

By Will Seagers

Hi folks, Will here! Since a very early age, I have had some very hot sexual encounters... in the woods! It's the perfect place (weather permitting) when you don't have a cozy indoor retreat! And, there's also that element of danger - of getting caught - that looms over you, as well.

I remember way back to the tender age of six or seven playing naked in the bushes with boys and even an occasional girl. At that point I hadn't made up my mind as to what turned me on the most! But, the key excitements were body contact and and the naughtiness of doing it out of doors. This took place in one of several beautiful suburban towns in northern New Jersey where I grew up. How we didn't get caught I'll never know. But, I thank the powers that be for that not happening. LOL.

Puberty hits. And, with all my hormones coursing through me, building tree forts and dragging the neighborhood boys into them became my modus operandi! "Swish Family Robinson" of sorts. LOL. At this point, my family was living just off the Jersey Shore in a new development. Formerly a woodsy area and full of scrap lumber, it was a tree fort builder's paradise. And, I took advantage of that several times. Some were even elaborate, like the one that I built over a stream with a fireplace. I never wanted "it's too cold" to be a possibility. This was all before I had any inkling about coming out or even being gay. It seemed late grammar school and early high school guys were all game to try it out.

Then, by the end of high school, details and sexual definitions started to fall into place. I knew who I was and what side of the fence was my preference. By 18, I was running into guys while just being out and about... chance encounters. Not having my own place yet, we would always opt for a secluded and undeveloped stretch of wooded areas to get it on. Ha, I remember ticks being the greatest problem of that day!

While living with my Aunt (yes, the Finnish one), I used to do my weight lifting in her garage that faced the street. One day, a handsome dark haired and nicely built guy walked by our driveway, paused, smiled and then was on his way. It was peculiar... but, very arousing! This happened again soon after. This time, I walked to the edge of the driveway and struck up a conversation. Well, after about the third one of these encounters, he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. I knew what was up and I agreed. He was married and couldn't use his own place. So, off to a local patch of woods for some fun! His name was John. And, he was hung like a horse... much to my delight. Nothing serious ever came of it. But, it was sure fun while it lasted. He was one of several guys with whom I carried on in this outdoor fashion. It was fun and quirky.

Fast forward to my years on Fire Island - working and playing. Although I could hardly consider it work, in the movie Fire Island Fever, I had a J/O scene that actually took place in a tree (as part of one of the other porn star's fantasies). I don't know what came over me. But, I really got into this fantasy and shot about 15 feet from my arboreal perch! Along with myself, most of the crew was amazed and pleased.

Being a naughty boy at heart, I loved to wander in the infamous "meat rack" section of Fire Island that straddled between The Pines and Cherry Grove. All sorts of mayhem could be found there and at all hours of the day and night. This stretch of thick shrubbery allowed for some privacy when needed. But, it was more known for being more of an outdoor gang bang. And if my memory serves me, I remember being the meat in several sandwiches when the opportunity presented itself.

San Francisco also had several fun outdoor wooded areas of note. One of them was literally up the street from where I lived on Buena Vista Terrace. It was Buena Vista Park - which I nicknamed "pants down park!" So close to my home and yet I never took advantage of it. I guess I was too busy with indoor activities! The other spot where I do remember having a few hot sessions was Lands End at the end of Golden Gate Park. It could be brisk and windy at times being right at the Golden Gate and the Pacific Ocean. I remember having my mouth pleasantly occupied while hearing a symphony of fog horns nearby! You did have to be on your toes as the police regularly patrolled the area!

All very pleasant recollections. So far in my past, yet still so vivid in my memories. Just a couple of months back during my family reunion week in Pennsylvania, we had an outing in a heavily wooded area. It was a hike on a trail in a state park. Although ambling along with my siblings on this 10 mile course, I could feel my mind drifting back decades to memories of sex in the woods!

Bio of Will Seagers:

Will Seagers (also credited as Matt Harper), within his multifaceted careers and participation in numerous gay communities across the country in the '70s and '80s and beyond, worked as a print model, film performer, and DJ, just to name a few. He made iconic appearances in releases from Falcon, Hand in Hand, Joe Gage, Target (Bullet), J. Brian, Steve Scott, and more, including in lead roles in major classics like Gage's L.A. Tool & Die (1979) and Scott's Wanted (1980). He brought strong screen presence and exceptional acting to his roles and was scene partners with many fellow legends of classic porn.

Will Seagers, recent photo

Usually a “mad scene” specifically refers to a particular scene from an opera written by bel canto composers of the early 19th century, such as Donizetti and Bellini. A soprano, usually suffering from a romantic love crisis, goes insane, and expresses her insanity, paradoxically, in difficult, complicated coloratura passages that require great vocal control.

The most famous occurs in the opera Lucia di Lammermoor. Lucia, in love with the family enemy Edgardo, is forced to marry someone her brother chooses, Arturo. Lucia kills Arturo on her wedding night. I grew up hearing the gay icon Maria Callas singing this scene on record, and I was mesmerized that she was able to invest the scene with such drama and a dark, complex timbre. Here was no Snow White singing tra la la to the birds. But, interestingly enough, the opera does not end with the mad scene. Lucia dies offstage, and her lover, Edgardo, kills himself. He actually gets a kind of tenor mad scene. But it’s generally the ladies who go mad, which reflects quite blatantly the misogynistic Victorian view that women, the "weaker sex," were more prone to mental disturbance: potential hysterics.

Callas as Lucia

 

The mad scene by the middle of the last century started moving to the end of movies, crystallizing to some extent in the grand dame guignol movies of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The end of Sunset Boulevard, the famous “I’m ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille,” scene of Norma Desmond, deconstructs the mad scenes of operas, because she thinks she is playing the necrophiliac Salome. One even hears a bit of music from the Strauss opera as she descends the staircase (that prop usually occurs in Lucia mad scenes). In fact, by the time Strauss wrote his opera Salome, one could even say the female protagonists of many operas written by that time were mad for the entire opera (or most of the time).

Norma Desmond at the end of Sunset Boulevard

 

Thus, Baby Jane Hudson in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? dancing on the beach with ice cream cones and others of her ilk come out of a rich tradition. The director Robert Aldrich really seemed to build his grande dame guignol films toward a final mad scene for the female protagonist, though in his underrated Autumn Leaves shows a male, played by Cliff Robertson, going mad, and he gets several scenes, but the most terrifying one occurs at about midpoint.

But it is also a scene of horrifying domestic violence (he throws a typewriter at his wife, played by Joan Crawford, after slapping her around). Like Edgardo in Lucia, he accuses her of treachery, but she is innocent. In reality, his father slept with his now former wife (she a willing accomplice), and discovering them together precipitated his descent into what, based on the movie, is paranoid schizophrenia.

Joan Crawford and Cliff Robertson in Autumn Leaves

 

Aldrich created another mad scene in The Killing of Sister George, a groundbreaking LGBTQ movie on so many levels, not only for its filming a scene in an actual lesbian bar, but, for the fact that the protagonist, June Buckridge played by Beryl Reid (known as George because of the character she plays in a soap opera, Sister George, a jovial country nurse in an English village) is out and proud as a lesbian. Many critics today tend to place this move in the “self-hating” LGBTQ subgrenre. Yes, George is certainly not the most stable person. She yells a lot, drinks a lot, and certainly, which one could argue isn’t really a character flaw in some of the situations she encounters, shows no compunction about telling some persons off in not the most dainty language.

Her relationship with Alice does not strike one as being the healthiest by today’s standards. I remember watching the scene where George, always jealous, punishes Alice for a supposed flirting (with a man) by making her kneel before her and eat her cigar. For the mid 1960s, this scene was risqué, and I perceived that perhaps there was some element of BDSM play involved, but it also seems to be moving into the realm of emotional abuse. And it’s not Alice as the victim of the “bull dyke” George. Alice is blatantly egging her on, and by pretending to enjoy eating the cigar; yes, she does take back control of the dynamic, knowing she is hurting George by, as George both yells and cries, “ruining” it.

Thus, one can see the characters aren’t camp caricatures. The character George plays gets killed off in the series (hence the title), and the fate of her career and relationship gets wound up in the machinations of the cliched reptilian predatory lesbian, played by Coral Browne.

Spoiler alert: she loses her job and her lover; the Coral Browne character in a scene of underhanded viciousness at George’s farewell party at the television studio suggests she get a job playing the voice of a cow in an animated puppets series for children. A gut-wrenching scene occurs when Alice leaves her. Reid masterfully plays it as both horribly hurt and horribly angry together, the emotion much like that of another spurned operatic character, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana (from the time of whole “mad operas”). Shortly thereafter, George enters the empty studio, smashes the camera equipment, and beings mooing like a cow. She is wordless. No romantic words, no ecstatic high notes like Lucia sings, no cameras for a Norma Desmond close-up.

Beryl Reid as George in The Killing of Sister George

 

But, is she really mad? Does she really enter another reality like Lucia and Norma Desmond and Baby Jane? She’s not fantasizing about a marriage that never took place, and she’s not retreating into memories of a forever lost stardom. It seems she’s justifiably enraged, but also, given her indomitable character, understanding that she will do that job. She knows she has lost. She knows it’s degrading.

And like many LGBTQ persons, she knows who she is, and because she knows, she can choose, or at least to try and choose, what happens in her life. What’s sad is that she feels like she can only choose her losses. I just wonder if she’s really at the same level of victimization and its sister, in those cases, madness as the Romantic heroines of opera or the characters like Baby Jane who are both torturer and victim in grande dame guignol cinema.

Similarly, the complex dynamic where the madness, or appearance of madness, exists perhaps to crystallize at the highest level of tension the torturer/victim binary appears in a classic gay porn movie, Drive, directed by Jack Deveau (which Bijou carries on DVD and Streaming). The mad lead character/anti-hero Arachne plots to kidnap a scientist and eliminate everyone’s sex drive.

Christopher Rage as Arachne in Hand in Hand Films' Drive (1974)

 

Arachne (played by legendary director Christopher Rage, here billed as Mary Jim Sstunning, in a script written by Rage) certainly camps it up as she attempts to set her diabolical plot in motion. But the movie unveils at the end how the one who desires to castrate is actually ferociously repressing her own sexuality. She is last seen in a dungeon with the men she had imprisoned. Secret agent Clark liberates the prisoners, and Arachne is left alone. But this whole mad porn opera contains a moment of somber lucidity. Arachne holds a glass bottle with a severed penis. She knows she is forever trapped in a cycle of endless desire like a spider in a web, consuming its mates but never satiated:

“I hunted at night until it wasn’t enough to hunt only at night, and then I hunted during the day too. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. My thoughts were only of hard bodies, rigid with the desire for me — beautiful men swollen with the need for me. They were all around me and I chose the ones who looked most eager.

“Until I saw a man who was so perfect, with a hunger in his eyes that reflected my own hunger — and I knew he was the one. I knew we could feed from each other, claw at each other with a need we didn’t care to understand.

“Drugged with desire for each other’s hot naked skin, tense muscles pushing — and then filling me with his need, white and hot. Crushing me with his strong arms, pressing down on me and into me, until I closed my eyes with the ecstasy and perfection of him, and I screamed for him — and I screamed for me. 

“And I opened my eyes and I was alone.

“And I vowed then that I would bring an end to it all. Man would have to search no more: Arachne would be the answer.”

She knows. She knows who she is, ultimately more frightening than the mad scene at the end, which usually ends in the liberation of death.

As I have pointed out in prior blogs, gay life was really unbelievable in the 1970s. This was particularly so in the cities of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and many others.

Bath houses and bars with their notorious "back rooms" were all the rage across the country. A sexual society had developed over that decade. I know for myself as a steward for a major airline, any "port of call" would have a Club Baths there and that would be pretty much a guaranteed good time. That chain was spread out all across the country... much to my pleasure. I will never forget an escapade I had in Miami. Towel-clad as usual, I was wandering the mostly outdoor and tropical grounds when I heard a voice softly call out my name. I turned around to find a childhood bestie that I had not seen in decades. He and his mother had moved from N.J. where we met and were pre-teen play pals. I had always had my suspicions about this "buddy" even though nothing had ever happened back then or that night.

Men in a bath house from Drive (1974)

 

Fast forward to the later part of the 70s when I moved to San Francisco. Besides the legendary baths like The Barracks, The Brothel and many many more, the Club Baths of S.F. was just two blocks from my South of Market apartment! My partner and I had a very open sexual relationship. We both loved to go "down the block" as we called it! For most of our years together we both had night time jobs. Most of the people that worked the bars and clubs that closed at 2AM would head down to 8th and Howard (the location for Club Baths S.F.) to "unwind" after work. There was sort of a social scene that had developed over the years. The big event, however, was on Tuesday nights when they had very discounted rates. There were literally lines around the block to get in. Once you got in, you quickly realized it was worth the wait! It was like being on a porn set. Being familiar with that... it sure felt like home to me! Lol.

Similarly, NYC had its bath house smorgasbord, too! Two of my favorite were the St. Mark's and the Continental Baths. The St. Mark's was one of the older facilities in town and well attended in the hours after the bars and clubs around town had shut for the night.

St. Mark's Baths interior

Continental interior sign and men dancing from Jack (1973)

 

For me, I would sometimes make a whole night of it there and skip the clubs and bars! Oink!

 

All of this came to an abrupt end. A scourge had hit the gay communities around the country. It was both frightening and sad to be losing friends and family to a disease that no one understood at the time. Almost immediately, openly sexual venues were forced to close. It sent a shockwave through the community. Being undaunted, a lot of the community went to "monitored" sex clubs. While visiting a friend in NYC, we went to one of these venues. I was surprised at how packed it was... given that people remained mostly clothed. There were actual monitors that wandered through the crowd admonishing and extracting individuals that went beyond the basic (hand-job) tolerated behaviors. "Lips above the Hips" was the chant that could be heard from these monitors as they walked the floor. For some people this might have worked. But, for me it was like the fast-food version of sex! It left me hungry.

It was at this time I noticed that porn was really taking off again. The industry literally exploded. After all, what could be safer than being a voyeur in the comfort of your own home? And, that was true again when COVID reared its ugly head just recently. Not only condoms but masks were featured in porn - ostensibly to set a good example. The almighty sexual drive of my fellow man was not to be daunted!

So, at nearly 72, I have seen the "Lavender Wave" rise from seemingly nowhere during the years of the sexual revolution. I have participated in it myself with great memories of the freedom I felt. The great cosmic pendulum swung back. I am now seeing the adjustments. But, Men being Men - there will always be a feast ahead.

Bio of Will Seagers:

Will Seagers (also credited as Matt Harper), within his multifaceted career and participation in numerous gay communities across the country in the '70s and '80s and beyond, worked as a print model and film performer. He made iconic appearances in releases from Falcon, Hand in Hand, Joe Gage, Target (Bullet), J. Brian, Steve Scott, and more, including in lead roles in major classics like Gage's L.A. Tool & Die (1979) and Scott's Wanted (1980). He brought strong screen presence and exceptional acting to his roles and was scene partners with many fellow legends of classic porn.

 

Early on in my career with Catalina Video, we had a pretty regular list of repeat actors we used in the movies we were shooting. As I mentioned before, a number of those actors were gay for pay or bisexual. I was 25 when I started with Catalina and before actually meeting these models, which included Johnny Davenport, Eric Manchester, Mike Gregory, Derek Jensen and Chad Knight, my friends and I would always scoff at the fact when someone said they were bisexual. It’s was just how the world reacted to the word bisexual at the time. We would roll our eyes on the set when the models had to watch straight porn to get hard in between shots. We thought that they were doing it for appearances' sake but they were really getting hard looking at the guys. You know, the way silly ass 20 somethings thought back then. In our minds it was always “cut and dry” - you were straight or you were gay, there was no in between. They were performing a gay sex scene so of course they were gay, right? Luckily life experience has shown us all to have a different perspective on things. Bisexuality is alive and well in the world.

 

Kurt Bauer & Mike Gregory

 

I became aware of a director named Paul Norman, a pioneer in the industry who some would call “The King of Bi-Sexual Movies.” He made The Big Switch and Passion By Fire in 1986, turning the industry on its head, and Bi and Beyond in 1987. I worked with Kurt Bauer from my first day on the set and many times afterwards in the movies Top Man, My Best Buddy, and The Big One, and he even did a non-sexual walk on in my directorial debut Runaways. Kurt also so happened to grace the cover of Bi and Beyond, which Catalina was distributing at the time, and it happened to be in our pile of tapes for models to watch while jerking their dicks to get hard. I borrowed it from the studio one day and took it home to watch. This was my first time watching a bisexual feature. The movie also featured Mike Gregory who I had literally just finished shooting for a movie called The Young Cadets. Watching Kurt and Mike performing with girls added another layer of understanding for me, opening my cynical mind to the fact that the world was not so black and white as one might think.

Unfortunately, an open mind was not something the straight porn industry was experiencing when it came to the idea of bisexual features. I felt like any connection to the gay world was just not something the industry would embrace, on any level, at that time in history. I think Paul Norman brought a sense of legitimacy to them, but they were not having any of it. At the yearly adult video conventions in Las Vegas, the gay and bisexual companies were literally in a completely different room or building! It was hard to get straight porn actors to even consider performing in a straight scene for a bi movie for fear they would be shunned. Paul and his fiancé Tori Wells became the toast of the town after she became a mega-star in the 1989 movie from director Andrew Blake called Night Trips. Blake shot it entirely on 35mm film, while most others were shooting on video. If you’ve never seen it and appreciate straight porno, it’s a “must.” Winner of the AVN Award for Best Film, Cinematography and Editing, it is truly the most stylish adult film I have ever seen. Tori Wells led a star studded cast including: Porsche Lynn, Victoria Paris, Randy Spears and Peter North. Did her mega stardom help move forward the acceptance of Bi movies, directed by her fiancé, within the industry? I’m not sure, but I feel like it opened the door.

Two actors that were able to go from gay movies to decades-long careers in straight movies under the radar without any push back from the industry were Jamie Gillis and Jack Wrangler. Back then, things weren’t streamed or online so it was easy to sweep the fact they performed in gay movies under the carpet. One of Jamie Gillis’ best roles was in Boynapped, re-released by Bijou - a Hand in Hand classic directed by Spencer Logan. Jack Wrangler (Gemini, Hot House, Heavy Equipment), well we all know his success story, and Bijou has tons of content featuring his hot-ass-self! Gay for pay? Or bisexual? I’m truly stumped. Another star that comes to mind is Matt Ramsey, made iconic from the desktop scene in The Bigger the Better with Rick Donovan, who went from gay movies to straight movies under the name Peter North. Luckily, by the time I met Peter North, the industry had come to its senses about bisexual movies and Peter was on my set shooting a straight scene with Leanna Foxxx for my Bi-Dolls series. I asked if I could credit him as Matt Ramsey instead of Peter North, but he respectfully declined, we came a long way getting him to act in the movie, but that might have been pushing it.

Then there is Paul Barresi (alleged lover of John Travolta and porn icon). Now, that hot number is in a league all onto himself! YOWZA! I saw him in person once, wearing super tight black slacks, at a movie cinema in West Hollywood some hot chick. I was with Catalina editor Chet Thomas and he pointed him out to me while we were in line... Gay for pay or bisexual? Who the hell cares!!! All Chet and I could focus on was that hot hairy chest and tight ass on him! I’m sure there are dozens more examples I could give of guys who were or could have been gay for pay or bisexual, but quite honestly I can’t stop thinking about Paul Barresi right now, I think I need to go stream Men of the Midway.

Correction: Bi-Coastal, previously cited as a Paul Norman movie, was a 1985 movie by director Tom DeSimone. We at Bijou apologize for the mix-up. We do make mistakes and are happy when they are pointed out so we can correct them so that we can make sure that the history is properly recorded.

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.