BijouBlog

Patience is a virtue, or so they say. There were more than a handful of times that my patience wore thin on a porn set. It’s not all fun and games, let me tell you that right now. I became an expert on troubleshooting situations throughout my years of producing and directing, but in the early days, the crew and I were not able to escape the inevitable when a certain someone was in charge. I wouldn’t say my producer Scott Masters was a perfectionist, but he tried damn hard at it. If I’m being completely honest, Scott Masters and I had a love-hate-love again relationship from almost the very beginning. We both shared the passion for putting out the best product possible, both of us were totally invested in the stories we were telling, proper lighting and camera angles. You would think it was a match made in heaven, and to an extent it was, but there was one very important difference that had us butting heads many times over the years. Flexibility, or the lack of it.

Probably the first time it really came to a head was when we were shooting Hard Men 3, the third installment of a very popular series in the 1980s called Hard Men: No Strings Attached. It was basically a Chippendales type video where dancers would dress as a theme character and strip. The twist was that our dancers would strip all the way and when their undies came off they had a huge hard on that they flopped around for the camera, shot from every angle imaginable. We even had a plexiglass floor made for the models to dance on while we were underneath. At the end of the video, there was ordering information where the viewer could purchase a J/O tape of their favorite dancer masturbating, complete with cum shot, sold via mail order. The series was perfect for women or gay men to purchase. It was also perfect for Scott Masters as “director” of the segments. Scott loved plays, musicals and anything to do with the stage, not to mention his “costume fetish” I’ve mentioned before. Our “head butt” came one day when Scott was directing Chris Dano, who was playing a matador. The matador was to enter the stage through separating walls that we built on wheels to open and close. Very theatrical. It was 10:45pm, we had shot the dance/strip, the j/o bonus movie and all we had left was the opening shot where he entered the stage through the walls and dozens of roses showered him from above. “What? Roses? What are you talking about (Scott Masters)? You never asked for roses on your list!”

Well, you would have thought I’d killed his first born. The look on Scott Masters' face said it all as he screamed back at me, insisting he mentioned the roses when he ordered his custom built set over the phone. He definitely had not, and it was too late to run to the store to purchase any. His flight back to L.A. was at 8am, so I apologized if I missed the “roses request,” but reinforced the fact that he had a strong scene and no one would miss the fact that there were supposed to be roses. Well, that fell on deaf ears. Back and forth, back and forth. Suddenly he had an epiphany: “The curtain!” “The curtain?” Yes, the red velvet curtain that the model used in his dance and wrapped himself in for the J/O bonus movie. Don’t you know that Scott Masters had me, the 2nd cameraman, the make-up man, the still photographer and even poor Chris Dano sitting on the floor until 1am cutting up that muther fucking curtain into small strips and making fake roses that were stapled together so we could shoot a 15-second shot of them falling from the sky onto Chris Dano. It took all of my will power not to purposely jiggle the camera during the shot. I think I got home around 3am.

 

Another more draining situation came on the movie The Main Attraction. This was a homage to his Nova Video movie of the same name. Matt Powers was Catalina’s new exclusive, and Scott Masters' secret (at the time) obsession. (I might talk about that “love affair” in a future blog; it’s personal so I’m not sure. But, then again, I do have a big mouth.) Anyway, Matt Powers finished the scene with Vic Summers, which, let me tell you, took a layer of flesh to complete, even before things came to a dead halt. We waited four hours while Vic would watch and rewind the VCR to get himself to the point where he could cum. He must have ran into the set screaming “I’m cumming!” seven or eight times, but nothing came out. Masters refused to let us put the cameras on a tripod because he had very specific angles in mind that called for me to be on a 20-foot ladder and 2nd camera to be wedged with the still photographer, literally on top of each other in the corner of the set. All of our backs were sore and aching but he refused to let us change the angle. At around midnight, Masters decided to end our misery but wanted us all back at 6am to try again for the cum shot, as they all had 1pm flights home. At 6am, we all returned to the studio hoping and praying that a good night's sleep would somehow empower Vic Summers to quickly blow his load. It was a repeat of the night before, so I requested to Masters that we lay Vic on his back on the bed with the VCR in viewing distance so he was comfortable and could just “cum” without having to run into the set and get in an awkward position. That and any other suggestions were met with a “no” accompanied by a long monologue as to why not. Just shy of four and a half hours later, drip... drip. A very un-dramatic visual presentation of what some might call a cumshot.

When I saw John Travis later that month to start shooting My Best Buddy, the crew and I shared our nightmarish experience. Travis was like, “What the fuck? We’ve got so many fucking cum shots in the can, close-up, underneath, overhead, fat dicks, thin dicks, straight dicks, crooked dicks, mushroom heads, no head… couldn’t he have just reused one of those?” Exactly.

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. 

By Josh Eliot

I had a nice long 22-year career with Catalina Video. I was hired just a short time after William Higgins moved to Amsterdam to open his “brothel” and continue his filmmaking with a European flair. It’s hard to fathom, but while I was producing and directing over 100 movies for his company, we never crossed paths or even spoke on the phone. I was always intrigued with the “idea” of him watching over us and wondered what he might think of my work or if he had any input to share when I was restoring his movies for DVD. Throughout my decades of service, this was something I always thought about, waiting patiently to get the word that Higgins needed the crew and I to fly to Europe to work on his next movie. That phone call never came. But one day Higgins did call - not to talk to me, but about me with Catalina’s general manager, Chris Mann. He phoned to demand my termination because of a 10-second shot in a movie I made called Full Service. It seems my little movie found itself smack dab in the middle of a lawsuit - a one million dollar lawsuit.

My second movie for Catalina Video was Full Service, shot and released in 1989 when I was 27 years old. As I previously mentioned, Scott Masters was my producer and Chet Thomas was the movie’s editor. My first movie, Runaways, was under my belt and since Chris Mann and Scott Masters were happy with its look and tone, they gave me some leeway on my next movie. We shot both movies in San Francisco at Catalina’s studio in the Potrero Hill District. Dan Allman left the company and they put me in charge of running the studio. We would build the sets according to John Travis or Scott Masters' specifications and they would fly up from L.A. with the models in hand for filming. Things were moving fast. I moved from the Tenderloin to a great three bedroom flat on 19th and Castro and hired my best friend, Brian, to work with me at the studio. When it came time to figure out the idea for my second movie, I knew right away what the story would be. While living in the Tenderloin, I would pass the Century Theatre on my way home from work and it seemed like Grease Monkeys was playing there forever! Even though I never saw the movie, the poster imagery was so effective that I knew I wanted to do something with a gas station theme. When I proposed it to the boss, it was the quickest I ever heard Scott Masters say yes to a project. In hindsight, I’m sure it was because he immediately got a boner thinking about the great “costumes” he could make for it. He was the wardrobe wizard and a costume connoisseur. Literally before I could even finish building the sets at the studio, he called to tell me that he had all the blue jumpsuit costumes being made and he found some “unnamed gas station company” tags to have sewn onto them. He also mentioned that I should go out and shoot some exteriors of the gas station for cutaways.

My movie was taking place in a small town, so during a weekend trip to Napa Valley with Brian, I took the camera along. It was like a miracle when we drove past this older looking gas station just outside of Santa Rosa. There were cows grazing in the field behind it and the main building looked like a log cabin. What a score! The wide shot of this gas station showed everything I needed it to: small town, rural, and the “brand name” matching the tags my producer was sewing on the costumes. I was so excited by this place that I failed to see what else was written on the building; so did Chet Thomas when he edited the movie, as well as Scott Masters when he viewed it to approve the cut before release. It was one of those things that was in front of your face, yet invisible. Months later when I was shown a photo of that same gas station on the front page of The Press Democrat newspaper, I saw for myself my grave error.

The owner's name was written on the wall of the gas station in big giant letters. It turns out the owner’s nephew lived in San Francisco, rented Full Service from a video store and, upon viewing it, saw his uncle’s gas station. The newspaper photographed the owner with his wife and children in front of the station, looking very sad. Long story short, Scott Masters and I had to give depositions, go through arbitration with the family and finally settle for a $30,000 settlement. Oy vey, my first BIG BUDGET movie! I don’t mean to make light of it, because it really was quite serious. Chris Mann had to reach out to every buyer of the movie to buy their copies back. The “unnamed gas station company” simply asked for their logo to be removed with no request for compensation. It was all very hideous and I came very close to having no career with Catalina Video at all. John Travis and Scott Masters went to the mat for me with Higgins but Chris Mann, the GM, was truly my guardian angel. Chris had Higgins' utmost respect, and when he laid out the reasons he wanted me to stay on with the company it didn’t fall on deaf ears.

Within a couple of years, Chris Mann went on to own Video Team, a “Boutique Adult Video” operation that brought Black porn genres to the mainstream. He also served on the board of the Free Speech Coalition and, after selling Video Team, became general manager of John Stagliano’s Evil Angel. Thank you, Chris, for saving my career! Things were never the same when Chris left Catalina and, due to new management conflicts, Travis and Masters shortly followed. Needless to say, copyright violations were something I always tried to avoid, moving forward from my experience with Full Service. Talk about being haunted by it. Do you know how traumatizing it is for a director to see these little pixels covering patches throughout his entire movie every time some hot stud shows up wearing a gas station uniform?

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. 

 

When I saw on the Bijou website that they are offering Nova Studios note cards (Set 1 and Set 2), I thought to myself, what a great collector’s item! I remember my older brother’s collection from 1966 of the Lost in Space “Topps” trading cards, especially the ones featuring my first crush at age 5, Don West. Card sets came in various sizes, small enough to include a flat piece of bubble gum and as large as Lobby Cards showcased in theaters. What an incredible taste of the 60’s and 70’s, and it’s no surprise to me that Nova Video’s founder Robert Walters (known to me as Scott Masters) included such items in his mail order business.

Walters started his business in 1967, producing male photo sets for bookstores, and then partnered with Reuben Sturman to shoot and print magazines. In 1970, magazines segued into loops (8mm short films designed for peep shows) and by 1976, Walters had directed more than 100 of them. The same year, he founded Nova Studios and shot their first production, Tub Tricks. The silent films were now 20 minutes in length and sold through direct mail as well as at adult bookstores.

Nova’s offices were right across the street from Pink's Hot Dogs, a Los Angeles landmark, where on any given day you can see A-List stars in line or in their limos waiting for Pinks’s Famous Chili Cheese Dogs. Several blocks away was another wiener stand called Oki-Dog, which was not as famous. Instead of Hollywood elite as their customers, the place was always crawling with street hustlers, making it a great location for Walters to pick up lunch and discover new talent for photographing.

The Robert Walters Nova era was prior to my meeting him in 1987, but my friend Chet Thomas worked for Walters at Nova from 1984 to 1986, when Nova stopped production and they both signed with Catalina Video. Once I moved to Los Angeles, Chet and I were attached at the hip and he would tell me stories about his times working for Robert Walters. William Higgins hired Walters as head of production, and he shot his first movie for Catalina called The Bigger They Come. Chet Thomas became the company editor. Walters, now known to everyone as Scott Masters, hired me in 1987 in San Francisco and then brought me to L.A. in 1989. He set me up in a fabulous condo on Sweetzer Street just a block from The Spike, a gay bar that Chet and I would hang out at.

Being new to Los Angeles, Scott Masters had me shadow him everywhere. Any day that we weren’t shooting sex, he had a list a mile long of “things” for me to do. At times I felt like an indentured servant, frequently getting him his favorite lunch (curry chicken sandwich from a Sunset Blvd deli) or organizing and inventorying his garage, which was filled floor to ceiling with wardrobe from his Nova and Catalina movies. Masters was a “costume queen” producer, always spending money from our budgets on them to satisfy his own fetish. Obsessed would be an appropriate word. When he wasn’t focusing on the latest Members Only jacket, he trained me on producing, budgeting, directing photo layouts, scouting locations, model scouting, and grooming. One day, we headed to San Diego to meet a potential new “exclusive” model, but stopped on the way to see a penthouse in Hollywood for a possible shooting location. The penthouse unit had the highest ceilings ever with a massive balcony overlooking the living room. It was beautifully furnished, very high end, until we got to one room in particular. Inside that room was a wall to wall wrestling mat, making it look like a sports facility.

The owner led us to an attached room where a couple of guys looking very “Street-Wise” were throwing back some beers. The owner of the penthouse was David Hurles, one of the first reality porn moguls famous for the Old Reliable video line. David would pick up ex-cons, street hustlers, straight dudes looking for bucks and pay them pretty well to smoke cigars, wrestle, flex their muscles, flip off the camera and jack off. His collection feels very authentic… because it is! The guys are exactly what they portray on the screen, hard edged and a little frightening in a very HOT way! It felt a bit tense being around them, for me. David invited us to stay to watch him film, which I thought would have been amazing, but Scott declined, as we were on our way to San Diego.

Once in San Diego’s Seaport Village, we waited at a table for the potential new model to meet us. Adam Grant came walking up with a huge smile, great personality, and very excited at the prospect of being an exclusive model for Catalina. We talked, then went back to his apartment where Scott Masters got some hard shots of him (fattest dick ever) while I waited in the other room with his female roommate - awkward! He was cast to star in Head of the Class 2, which we ended up shooting in Palm Springs instead of David Hurles’ penthouse. When grooming the new star, Scott Masters went all out, taking Adam Grant to stylist of the stars José Eber's salon. Adam looked great after the makeover, but introducing him to Eber kind of backfired. Once Head of the Class 2 finished shooting, Adam Grant and Eber started a decades long relationship and Grant was no longer interested in becoming a Catalina Exclusive Model or shooting any more movies.

Scott Masters produced all of my and John Travis’ features from 1987 to 1992. Catalina ownership changed hands and Masters and Travis could not come to terms with a new contract and left the company. It was a huge loss for Catalina Video, and the same year they both started Studio 2000. I was offered the role of producer with Catalina, which I worked at until 2007 when the company was sold yet again. I’ll write much more about Scott and John, as there are so many adventures that need to be told. In 2020, Scott Masters passed away at the age of 86 in Bloomington, Illinois. He was one of the very first in our field, paving the way for adult photographers and filmmakers to come. His star shines bright in the skies like a supernova.

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. 

By Will Seagers

I remember always admiring those built young  men when I first started cruising Christopher St. and going to Village bars and clubs. There was no doubt in my mind - likes attracted. So, "Gymming" had to become a part of my life.

My first experiences were "Health Spas" and the good old YMCA. The health spas offered pretty good workout equipment. But, they were more family oriented and had no sexual undercurrents. One thing that I noticed about the Ys was the additional activity going on in the wet areas. I could hardly wait to finish my workout and get to the showers! Lol.

During my stint as a steward for Eastern Airlines, I always opted to go off on my own on layovers when possible. This was particularly true when I flew between NYC and Montreal. L'Aero - Navette was the name of this shuttle flight. I spoke French and made the inflight announcements... usually with some chuckles form the French Canadian passengers. It seemed nobody could figure out what my accent was! Lol.

 

Anyway, Montreal was one of those cities where I stayed at the Y. It was smoking hot! I was especially drawn to the burly dark haired Canadian lumberjacks! They never failed to deliver the logs.

Fast forward to my arrival in San Francisco in the mid 70s, the Y came to the rescue again! Being new to town and not yet acquiring a gym membership, I made frequent visits to the branch downtown. I was most amazed at how brazen people's approaches were! Lots of grabbing and groping were to be had!

I don't remember what brought me to The Pump Room, one of the earliest gay men's gyms, but I sure made a home for myself there! It was a modest storefront location just above Church St. on Market St. It had two partners, Lee and Bob. The first was the primary partner and a very flamboyant type. The latter went on to partner with two other folks and create The Muscle System - AKA The Muscle Sisters.

I really liked the feel of the place and asked for a job. I was at a high point in my porn career, was recognized and was hired. I got hit on by a lot of the members and developed a thick skinned "attitude." Some members complained. But, I did my job, helped train new members on the equipment and was a recognized asset to the business. So, Attitude and all, I remained part of the staff for three years.

I mentioned that one of the owners was flamboyant. And, I should also add very talented at pageantry. There were festivals held at the San Francisco Civic Center called the Beaux Arts Balls - an annual event. I was asked to participate in several of these major costumed events. Lee was very clever with design. He made himself up in a huge blue plexiglass diamond. Along with several other buffed members of the gym, we "linked' together with Lee to form The Hope Diamond and its silver chain. It was very well done and garnered awards.

Perhaps the most vivid memory of these Beaux Arts Balls was one where we came as the signs of the Zodiac. Lee was the Sun. And, once again gym members were recruited and made up the twelve signs. Even though it wasn't my sign, I was given a very fetching costume of a Centaur - Sagittarius - complete with bow and arrow! Lee had crafted the rear, horse half of the centaur from chicken wire covered in purple (Sagittarius' color) velour with the horse feet on castors. I strapped it to my butt and it blended with my purple leotards. It was a knock out costume. When we presented ourselves on the runway, we were met with cheers and screams. Due my recognition in the porn biz, this spectacular costume and a little extra bravado on my part, the place went nuts as I was announced and I trotted down the runway with this horse's ass attached to me. I certainly didn't mind be a Sag for a night!

The gay gym topic is a huge one for me. More to come au future!

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.