7 Years with Colt Model MARK RUTTER

By Josh Eliot

 

I popped into work to see how editing was going on my movie Easy Riders. Chet Thomas was the post-production supervisor and a good friend. I mentioned to him that I was asked out on a date by a bartender from the Gold Coast, a bar in West Hollywood. He asked me which one and I described him. “Oh my God, you know who that is don’t you?” And I was like, “What?” He jumped up and started rummaging through a large plastic bin, throwing magazines left and right. He stopped when he found Pit Stop magazine from Surge Studios. On the cover was Al Parker and Mark Rutter and inside was a full layout of hardcore shots. “Is that him?” Chet asked while I did a double take, “Yes!” Chet went on to tell me the history of my mystery date. After shooting the layout for Al Parker’s magazine, Mark Rutter was introduced to Jim French and was signed as an exclusive film model with Colt Studios.

 

Pit Stop magazine: Al Parker and Mark Rutter

Pit Stop magazine: Al Parker & Mark Rutter

 

His scenes are in:
Genuine Leather - scene 1 with Joe Falco
Best of Colt Films 1 & 2 - scene 9 with Rocco Rizzoli (aka Giorgio Canali)
Best of Colt Films - 1 & 2 scene 7 with Ed Wiley
Best of Colt Films - 3 & 4 scene 6 with Clint Lockner
Best of Colt Films - 5 & 6 scene 6 with Hank Ditmar
Vault Classics - scene 6 with Bill Eld, Dick Trask and Long John

 

Colt models Clint Lockner and Mark Rutter

Colt models Clint Lockner & Mark Rutter

 

I was nervous as hell for this date because in the magazines he definitely looked like a bad ass, even though when I met him a few days earlier at a house party held by the Gold Coast manager, Karl Etheridge (Melissa Etheridge’s uncle), he was really nice and easy to talk to. It turns out he was nervous too, so he invited his friend Valerie (ex-mayor of West Hollywood) and her girlfriend to join us. We met at a bar called Rafters in WeHo and all got along great. We had lots of fun and drinks, and of course I wasn’t about to not go home with him on the first date - that would just be foolish. He seemed to know everybody, no matter where we went, and even managed to get himself a walk-on scene with Donald Sutherland and Leslie Ann Warren in The Great Train Robbery. Early on, he surprised me with a camping trip, but when we got there I discovered it was a huge group site with the Satyrs Gay Motorcycle Club. He would always shock me with things like that. The weekend was bizarre and quite intimidating!

 

Mark Rutter on the Great Train Robbery set and Mark and Josh camping with Satyrs Motorcycle Club

Mark on the Great Train Robbery set (top); camping with Satyrs Motorcycle Club (bottom)

 

Within two months, we moved in together. I was 29 and he was 41, but that never made me question our relationship. Mark had never lived with a boyfriend or partner, so this was huge for him. It took a ton of persuading because he had always been very independent, doing exactly what he wanted to do with no one to answer to. Let’s just say he moved in kicking and screaming, but shortly afterwards admitted it was the best decision. His cat Boba Leni got along with my cats Elvira and Little Ricky, and we lived as one big happy family for years. He continued his job as bartender, which was perfect for him because he was very social, and he never had anything negative to say about my work with Catalina Video (but he did refuse to do any kind of cameo in my movies). We took great vacations to Puerto Rico, Canada and San Francisco to visit his family. His mom is super sweet and only spoke French, so Mark translated. He was the best uncle to his twin nephews, and won over my mom and dad too.

The majority of our relationship was smooth sailing, always progressing and moving forward. Until 1994, when Mark and I attended the Gay Erotic Video Awards. It was going to be a pretty big night, as the movie Revenge of the Bi Dolls was up for numerous awards. Things were going well until former Catalina star Kevin Williams (Hot Rods: The Young and the Hung II) came over to our table. He started talking to Mark, who became uncomfortable and got up from his seat, walking Kevin over to the side. I was like, what the fuck is this? I had never met Kevin Williams, and as far as I knew neither had Mark. I went to the bar and caught up with Chi Chi LaRue, where we did kamikazes. When Mark returned to the table, I joined him and started quizzing, which I wish I hadn’t. After much push and pull, he told me that Kevin was at the Gold Coast the other night where he cornered him in the bathroom…. so he let him suck his dick. What!!! I was really kind of shocked and pissed. Sure, he sucked your dick, that’s all that happened? Right! The rest of the night turned to shit, I had many more shots and when they called my movie as winner for Best Bi-Sexual Picture, I went up on stage and made a complete ass of myself. It was like that scene from Gaga’s A Star Is Born, but at least I didn’t piss myself. I rambled on and on and on, the depravity haunted me for weeks. Some comedian co-host named “Ant” basically whisked Sharon, Chi Chi and myself offstage because, yes, I verbally graveled to them in the audience until they came up on stage! Yuk! Sally Field had nothing on me. Mark felt badly for hurting me and really worked hard to win back my trust.

 

Josh and Mark at the awards show and the following Thanksgiving

Josh & Mark at the awards show (top); the following Thanksgiving (bottom)

 

Around 1998, Mark started having medical issues and his body started breaking down. When he was diagnosed with CMV and dementia, he lost his job at the Gold Coast, which sent him into a great depression. Catalina allowed me to set up an editing suite so I could work from home and look after him as things regressed. Early morning on January 13, 1999, I was awakened by a beeping noise from his bedside monitor. CMV caused him to lose his sight a couple days prior and he was on morphine. I turned the light on and leaned over to see if he was okay, and saw his eyes wide open. I jumped on top of him and started shaking him, begging him to wake up, to come back, but after a moment I realized he was gone. I jumped off the bed, let out a blood curdling scream and fell to the floor, unable to do anything but wail for the longest time. The worst moment in my life. I am thankful that I was lying by his side when he passed at age 48.

We held his ashes until summer and buried him over his father’s grave in a beautiful seaside cemetery in Maine. Mark Rutter was an amazing man, adored by his friends and family, and I wanted to honor him with this record of our time together.

 

Mark Rutter on the cover of Colt Men

Mark Rutter on the cover of Colt Men

 

Thank you to Josh Eliot for use of the photos.

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. 

 

You can read Josh Eliot's previous blogs for Bijou here:

Coming out of my WET SHORTS
FRANK ROSS, The Boss
Our CALIGULA Moment

That BUTTHOLE Just Winked at Me!
DREAMLAND: The Other Place
A Salty Fuck in Saugatuck
Somebody, Call a FLUFFER!
The Late Great JOHN TRAVIS, My POWERTOOL Mentor
(Un)Easy Riders

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Blue Collar

Ed Wiley in Rough Trades
Ed Wiley (aka Myles Longue) in Jack Deveau's Rough Trades

When I was younger, much younger, I slept with a guy who one could safely say was blue collar. He worked at various constructions jobs (mostly unskilled). He was hot (muscles, beard, deep voice, big hands) and he was gay, and he was kinky. What more could one ask for? In fact, at a gathering I held when I was sleeping with him off and on, a cultured friend of mine who sold suits to mostly white collar executives met him. He blurted out to me, “You slept with him! Can I touch you?” He meant it jokingly, but I think much was implied in his reaction, much about class, education, sexual orientation, and how that all ties into how we view what is masculine.
 

Hot Truckin' before/after color correction images from upcoming restoration
Before/after color correction from Bijou's NEW restoration of Tom DeSimone's Hot Truckin' starring Gordon Grant and Nick Rodgers as truck drivers

Where does the term blue collar even come from?
 

Hot trucker

The term blue collar was first used in reference to trades jobs in 1924, in an Alden, Iowa newspaper. The phrase stems from the image of manual workers wearing blue denim or chambray shirts as part of their uniforms.
 

1930s men's work uniforms

Some blue collar workers have uniforms with the name of the business and/or the individual's name embroidered or printed on it.

Historically the popularity of the color blue among manual laborers contrasts with the popularity of white dress shirts worn by people in office environments.

The blue collar/white collar color scheme has socioeconomic connotations, which comes from the British class system, especially as it transmuted because of the Industrial Revolution.

The people who worked in factories were called the working class, and they varied in degrees of respectability, ranging from the skilled laborers who could afford a small house and raise a church-going family (think Archie Bunker types), to unskilled day laborers at the bottom of the social ladder.

These individuals, because of their lack of education, were stereotyped as coarse and ill-mannered, but also as physically strong and big-hearted; perhaps Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners exemplifies the best and the worst of this image.
 

Ralph Kramden
Ralph Kramden

The people who ran the factories and eventually created the big corporations of the Gilded Age and beyond, combined with the older, genteel professions of teachers and doctors, became the white collar middle and upper middle classes, and at the top of that ladder, the nouveau riche.

This structure pretty much held for a long time in the United States, but once factory jobs moved to China and other places because of globalization, a new working class replaced it, working lower paid service and retail jobs jobs, and also in office jobs, ostensibly white collar, but working mostly as servants to upper middle class and upper class high level professionals like lawyers and corporate executives.
 

Robert Rikas in American Cream
Robert Rikas as a power-hungry white collar executive degrading his employee in the brilliant and satircal 1972 gay porn classic, American Cream

Now, how do gay men fit into this social picture? The stereotype of gay men is definitely not the “rough” guy who works with his hands, but the effeminate artsy-fartsy queen who thrives in refined cultural environments, the “sissy.” If you weren't out in that way and consigning yourself to stereotypical gay professions like acting and hairdressing, you conformed to the social structure above, and if you were in the working class, you definitely didn't proclaim your sexual orientation.
 

Henk Van Dijk and Garry Hunt as a ballet dancer and a trucker in Ballet Down the Highway
A ballet dancer (Henk Van Dijk) & a closeted truck driver (Garry Hunt) having an affair in Jack Deveau's 1976 film, Ballet Down the Highway

Thus, in the book Maurice, the aristocrat Maurice is really taking a risk by loving Alec Scudder, a gamekeeper, much below him in social class.

So, what was a gay construction worker or trucker to do?

Hide their true selves, it seems. But note, so many gay porn fantasies involve these blue collar guys in places like truck stops and construction sites, but how much are they the projected fantasies of white collar gay guys who fetishize the conventional masculinity of these straight guys?
 

Vintage ads for Grease Monkeys and Hardhat
Hard working mechanics and construction workers in the vintage Jaguar releases, Grease Monkeys and Hardhat

Tellingly, we saw this projection become dominant very soon after the initial liberation of Stonewall, when the gay clone look involved construction boots, denim, and keys hanging from belts.
 

Richard Locke in Cruisin' the Castro
Richard Locke, the ultimate blue collar man of '70s gay porn, in Cruisin' the Castro

And of course, one of the Village People guys was a construction worker.
 

Village People construction worker

Thus, in my case, it was almost a status symbol that I really slept with a real blue collar guy (I also slept with a fireman).

Neither relationship worked out, and it wasn't because of the social gap.

Yet, since the 1990s, when those relationships occurred, some social distinctions have blurred, but not all. Even in the increasingly mainstream LGBTQ community, upper middle class wealthy white educated males have wielded the most power and influence, ostensibly for the good of all in a diverse community, but the dynamic mirrors the class structure of the society as a whole.

The Veda Pierces (the snobbish daughter of Mildred Pierce) who looked down upon dollar days and men who wear uniforms (today what many retail employees have to wear) still exist, but they come from all social classes as the world of cyberspace creates a level playing field for everyone.
 

Veda Pierce
Veda Pierce

Yet, the world of Twitter can create identities that don't correspond with one's real life social status, and thus the opposite of the above can occur: an Amazon delivery person can show more class and education and insight than a nouveau riche person, the most powerful man in the world, who embodies the worst stereotypes of the blue collar worker every time he tweets.

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