BijouBlog

When Catalina Video moved me to Los Angeles in 1989, I developed a great friendship with the post production supervisor Chet Thomas. Chet was a 5'8” fair skinned blond California boy. We were in our late 20s and enjoyed the same interests. Our bonding happened the night we went to a premiere screening of the movie Scandal with Bridget Fonda and Joanne Whaley Kilmer. The movie was about two loose girls and some politicians whose actions created a scandal in England. We both took on their quirky free-spirited attributes and made a running joke of it by calling each other “Sal” - the name they used for the “loose” one in the movie. Chet was the Kilmer (wild child) character and I was the Bridget Fonda (along for the ride) character.

Our hang out spot at the time was the Spike in West Hollywood. It was just a block and a half away from my apartment and within walking distance to Chet’s as well. We would turn on the “Sal” mode whenever we partied there and Chet, being a “loose goose,” was rubbing off on me. It was like a competition of who could score first. Chet always won; it was quantity not quality with him and he was more open to things like running out into the parking lot for a quickie.

I did beat him at least once, with a hot muscleman named Moses. Yes Moses, and I have to say he was heavenly. I don’t think Moses ever left his house with a shirt on, or if he did it was always unbuttoned and wide open. At least every time we saw him at the bar he was that way. He was one of those guys that you thought was completely unapproachable, but as things turned out he approached me one night. Chet was pissed the next day, when we caught up with each other, because he was trying to close that deal forever!

Chet knew every hot spot in Los Angeles and would introduce me to all of them, good and bad. One night after drinking he took me to a place called the Coral Sands Motel. Not necessarily a “good” one. This place was a bathhouse disguised as a motel. It was quite a large and in a dingy part of the city between Hollywood and Silver Lake. He didn’t explain a thing to me, just took me there one night after drinking shots at the Spike. The place had two levels with exterior doors in a rectangle, facing each other and a courtyard with pool and sauna in the center. I guess the protocol was that you go to your room (leaving your door open of course for passersby to look in), strip down, wrap yourself in a towel and walk the grounds. How was this possible? Large apartment buildings on each side could look right down into the courtyard! I just followed Chet’s lead and did what he did. Sal and Sal were in full swing, hoping from room to room, talking with the occupants. If we liked them then we would stay for a while, if not we were back to walking the grounds. We ended up in two guys' room that we thought were hot, but once inside it felt like they were straight out of The Sopranos, and maybe on the run??? After smoking some weed with them we made up some story and left the room, continuing our pursuit of happiness on the grounds. This night was probably the wildest I’d ever been I my life. It’s a little embarrassing for me to share but I can write about it now because it was quite a unique experience.

Chet and I had a very close friendship and for about two years we were literally attached at the hip, but it all came to a screeching halt when he met a guy named John. He was smitten and instantly turned from the Happy Hooker to Dolly Madison overnight. It was shortly after this point that I met Mark Rutter, who I discussed in my previous blog “7 Years with Colt Model Mark Rutter.” We were both now pretty much “married up” and slowly started only seeing each other at work. Chet was editing my movies and as our friendship became distant so did our working relationship. In my movies, I started noticing constant “choppy” cuts where I knew there was the ability to make the edits look smooth. We were still friends but if Chet got a hair up his ass about something, you’d better watch out. More and more as time went on, I felt like he was sabotaging some of my movies by including funky sound or choppy edits, etc. Chi Chi noticed it on her movies too. It got so bad that on a movie that was super important to me, Single White Male, he actually reversed the order of two scenes, making the storyline a little messed up. That year I won Best Screenplay and Rob Cryston won Best Actor for Single White Male, but I was still pissed about the out of order scenes which I didn’t catch until it was released on VHS. I walked a fine line between respecting our friendship or totally calling him out on what he was doing. Luckily, things were resolved when I asked the general manager to let me edit my own movies, which he agreed to and purchased a separate editing bay for me to use. Chet and I remained friends, but the “Sal” days were over forever.

On New Year's Day this year, I was finally able to put the mixed up scenes from Single White Male back into the proper order. It’s not that way in the XXX version, but it is in the PG version I put on my YouTube Channel, which you can take a look at if you like. Rob Cryston slays in that role! Chet Thomas and I first met when he came to San Francisco to shoot The Big One, where we bonded over creating special effects for the earthquake scene in his movie. Upon moving to L.A. we became like brothers, and with brothers there are always some bumpy roads. In this blog I have an obligation to tell the truth, good or bad. The truth is I look at my friendship with Chet, including the bumps, as one of my fondest relationships from the past. Chet, in addition to editing for Scott Master at Nova and Catalina, directed some amazing movies for Catalina including: Sex Crimes, The Getaway, NightForce, Cruise Control and Too Damn Big. He, like many other talents in our community, was taken from us way too early...

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 settled into my new West Hollywood apartment with Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls playing on my TV, when Jeff Burton showed up at my door to interview for the still photographer position. In 1989, Catalina Video moved production to Los Angeles from San Francisco and we needed a new crew. Upon viewing his photographs, I got very excited. They didn’t have your traditional framing or expected angles, so I was intrigued and hired him on the spot.

On the movie sets, Jeff would shoot stills alongside me while I videotaped the action. There was a “blimp box” that the still camera sat inside in order to silence the clicking noise. Jeff hated it and we would go back and forth over the years bickering about how cumbersome the box was until we finally came to the agreement that he could stop using it. One day, I was shooting a scene and I heard his camera click, which ruined the sound, so I turned to him and noticed his camera wasn’t even facing the set. I thought it was a fluke, then it happened again, and again, and again on different sets. It wasn’t until we were sitting at the bar in the historic Congress Hotel that he finally came clean. We were in Chicago to shoot the International Mr. Leather Contest, as well as scenes for upcoming movies. The Congress Hotel was ground zero for the leather men in town and the place was packed. They were lined up along the walls of the lobby bathroom jacking each other off and packed into the lobby where some where flogged, tied up and wrapped like mummies. The crew and I were celebrating wrapping the shoot by running around the place and somehow ended up on the rooftop of the Congress Hotel partying under the large letters, reminiscent of the Hollywood sign.

Later in the lobby bar, Jeff was mustering up the courage to talk with me about something. The strange clicks I’d been hearing on the movie sets for months were Jeff shooting shots of the sex from strange angles for his personal collection. He might see a reflection of the models fucking in a coffee table and shoot that or he’d take a picture of a bowl with out of focus models fucking in the background, making them look like steam rising from it. He went on to tell me that his photos showed at an amfAR AIDS Auction, where a studio owner saw them and offered him a show in New York, and someone else saw them and offered him a show in Japan. He was nervous because he was shooting these pictures while on the clock. I told him not to worry about it and I was proud of what he accomplished and thought the whole idea of what he was doing was so creative and impressive. He must have been relieved and decided to let loose, because hours later we spotted him, in the lobby, sitting on the lap of this huge muscle daddy in a cop uniform. We joked about how he looked like a ventriloquist puppet!

Jeff attended the show in Japan, where a publisher saw his work and offered him his first hard cover book, Jeff Burton Untitled. As time went on Jeff released two more books, Dreamland and The Other Place, an oversized coffee table book with stunning photos suitable for framing.

Years later, we reunited on the set of a bisexual movie I was making called Cracked, with Sharon Kane as a sexy hatchet-wielding nutcase. He was shooting for an upcoming fashion festival in the South of France, where young designers would compete and he was a guest juror showcasing his work. He dressed my cast in head to toe Prada and shot his special brand of photos while I videotaped partially clothed sex scenes. At one point, Sharon Kane was getting out of her skin tight sequined dress when her head got stuck in the overly long collar. We heard screaming and panic and everyone ran over to help. She was freaking out and it took forever to get her head out, but the best part was once the dress was off, Jeff peeled back the long collar material and there was a perfect impression, from the make-up, of Sharon Kane’s face with a “Death Scream” look. We all rolled in laughter, except for Sharon; it reminded us both of the good ole days when we worked together, so much laughter.

Jeff’s impressive resume includes work for Tom Ford, Cartier, Yves Saint Laurent, French Vogue, Vanity Fair and Wrangler Europe, to mention a few. His primary gallery, Casey Kaplan, the Barbican Centre in London and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao all displayed his work. His newest accomplishment, releasing in November 2022, is the Louis Vuitton: A Fashion Eye Travel Series book, Las Vegas: Jeff Burton. (He says the shots he took octagon side at the UFC are amazing!) Staying true to his voyeur sexual style that he discovered and originated on a California gay porno set and expanded to different perspectives, Jeff’s work reached across boundaries to become embraced internationally. You have to check out his webpage, jeffburtonstudio.com, for a gallery of his work. The shots where the Tom Ford cologne is being poured over three bubble butt boys is priceless! Congratulations to my friend Jeff Burton on your major success, transitioning porno into the mainstream.

Thank you to Jeff Burton for allowing your photographs in this blog.

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.  

Greetings P(r)icksters,

The whole stay at home thing has me kind of out of whack. I’m falling asleep by midnight, losing track of what day it is and just generally off track. I haven’t had to be at work or on time for much of anything. Gone are the days when I have a deadline for a special party or event at the bar. Not even sure when we will get back to work, so planning the next event is really up in the air. I wrote off April, now May. Even June and possibly July are looking iffy.

So I don’t have to get out an email blast to the bar patrons timely for this week’s parties since there aren’t any. I don’t have to work up an ad or poster to promote something down the road because there’s no road to follow yet. I also don’t have to order product to serve though I am trying to get rid of all the beer in the house before it goes out of date. Every time the crew comes by to get paid I load them up with a case.

And I kind of miss my Tuesday deadline to draft what should be my weekly P(r)ick of the Week message to you all. Trying to get back on track but have been distracted by “projects”.

Since the bar is closed (6 weeks and counting) some of my crew are also getting bored and are coming in to do some cleaning/remodeling. We’ve torn apart the cabinets behind the main bar to sand and refinish all the woodwork. Installing new hardware and such. Eventually we will sand and restain/refinish the bar itself.

Some of this work we have to schedule when weather permits. It’s still April in Chicago and one day can be warm and sunny followed by days of rain and cold air (like today). Yesterday was great, we lined up the cabinet doors and benches for sanding and staining in the alley. Otherwise all those fumes in the bar and no windows. So that’s how I spent this past Tuesday.

Today is another story, the rain has been coming down all day along with a wind off the 40 degree lake water. Which leads to me here with a cup of tea at my computer today doing some writing.

All this sorting and sifting are letting me find little gems or reminders. At the bar, I came across the plastic cover that held the first dollars Chuck earned when he took ownership on November 1, 1977. It also included a photo from Gay Chicago magazine of the previous owner Wally handing him the keys that day. I remember that hanging on the wall behind the bar when we were still on Lincoln Avenue.

Lots of pictures of friends and customers long gone and luckily many others still with us. I’ve got a couple of piles at the bar, one for the Leather Archives & Museum and the other for Gerber/Hart Library with stuff from old events, leather club history and more. Just like the stuff piled at my apartment, I’m waiting for these places to reopen so I can donate this history.

Being in a “historical” mood, I think after I send this off to you, I’m going to enjoy a bit of history from Bijou. So grab my P(r)ick this Week and join me for some home schooling on the history of porn.

My first “lesson” this week is Erotikus from Hand In Hand films, released in 1974. Nowadays you can just go online or on your phone to find porn. But there was a time before cell phones and internet and back then finding movies or just photos to satisfy your lust was a challenge. Directed by Tom DeSimone and narrated by Fred Halsted, this history of gay porn from physique magazines to full out hard fucking 8mm film movies is something you will enjoy. Erotikus presents many of the firsts in gay porn, fist kiss between two men, first cum shot and more. Every fan of Bijou films should have this in their collection. I enjoy watching and sharing it with friends whenever I can, they are amazed by this “history lesson” and appreciate what we all enjoy today.

My other P(r)ick for you this week is a similar lesson Good Hot Stuff also from Hand In Hand films. The history of this film is the coming together of Jack Deveau, Robert Alvarez and Jaap Penrat to create the studio that would produce many of the all time classics of gay porn in the 1970s. Not just the guys that appeared in the movies, but the creation of these films, the writing, music, sets and of course the sex. It was a novel concept at the time, create a movie studio for others to create movies that included men having sex with men.

This was at the time when most gay porn was limited to the 8mm film reel that could be purchased to watch in the privacy of your house on a movie projector. Those home projectors were for 8mm film and the rolls to fit them limited you to about 15 minutes or so of viewing time. Early 8mm films had to set up the premise of the scene locker-room, construction site, etc, introduce the characters, get to the sex and ultimate climax in that 15 minute limit. There was no sound and since many of these films were low budget, the quality, lighting, camera work was not always the best.

Hand In Hand films made it possible for directors with vision to create a more fleshed out story, film bigger more involved sex scenes and move characters though more encounters with better quality. Music, sets, costuming and more were possible and more time to edit and finish a film. It was because of these Hand In Hand films and then other studios that the Bijou Theater and theaters across the country were able to come about and flourish during the 70s and beyond.

Grab my P(r)ick of the Week and enjoy some history with me. It’s okay to pull on your dick while you “study” - it will make history more fun.

David

To order from Bijou, visit bijouworld.com, call 800-932-7111, or email bijou.orders@gmail.com

 

According to the holy haters, the coronavirus lockdown is turning an already sinful nation (its sins are reproductive rights and the fact that LGBTQ persons are allowed to exist, not robbing and cheating the widow and the orphan) in Masturbation Nation (and in their “minds,” that means Pornography Nation).

According to a report in LGBTQ Nation, some denizens at Liberty Counsel and the likes of gay sex-obsessed Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, (the ones who are defending those death cult astors who insist on holding in-person services, are claiming that many are now succumbing to such lustful cravings and are now so, so unhappy.

(Of course the above assume men, and especially gay men, are the “perpetrators,” because I doubt it would even cross their minds that a woman might masturbate or watch pornography, but that’s another blog.)

So, lockdown is making more guys pull their puds and watch porn (probably on their phones). Yeah, right, If you’re a hetero guy locked down in a house with a spouse and kids with Grandma quarantined in the basement, I’m sure you could easily find and a time and place to watch some porn and jerk off. You could escape as many have to the forest preserves, but I’m not certain shelter in place deems this pastoral journey to essential travel.

(Yet these “family men” are many times the politicians who get caught in hotel rooms with underage persons or in public bathrooms, of course.)

So, once again, it’s the gays. Yes, we are now using the pandemic lockdown to indulge even more in nonprocreative sexuality that their God so hates.

What’s so disturbing about this both irrational and psychologically harmful world view is that during the AIDS crisis, gay men actually embraced masturbation, including the director Michael Goodwin in The Goodjac Chronicles and the other movies in his Goodjac series, as a responsible, safe sex practice in order to stay alive and keep from potentially infecting others. Yes, in order to stay alive.

The current lockdown situation is caused by an impersonal virus which does not discriminate (and it isn’t transmitted, according to the haters, by only those who indulge in “dirty” sex or “dirty” drugs, and thus are easy targets for discrimination and scapegoating), because anyone can get it from something as mundane as a sneeze (itself something of a taboo act, which is why we say God bless you, because some believed it could cause the soul to be ejected from the body!).

But yes, even the Bible-toting Southern Baptist Meemaw known for her famous church basement hot dishes lauded by Perkins and his ilk for her virtues can become sick; she can get it, and she can also transmit it to others as well. So, to stay alive, everyone, yes, everyone, has to stay away from everyone else. Alone and yet alive.

But even in this scenario, the haters still need to somehow accuse, scapegoat LGBTQ persons, and in this case, especially gay men, of somehow “desecrating” the lockdown, but at the same time, these are the ones who are complaining about the fact they even have to lockdown, claiming they are forced to do so especially by tyrannical, godless Democrats.

All in all, as usual, these holy haters confuse what being holy really is, and it doesn’t mean hating the world or escaping from it. Some can lockdown voluntarily, in order to find that ineffable “more” than the “I” by becoming monks or nuns. Many are called, few are chosen.

But the majority of humans, everyone, not just specific Christian sects, are now being locked down involuntarily, in order to preserve life, and all that lives is holy, proclaimed the great poet and heretic William Blake. We have to separate now to stay whole in order to preserve life for ourselves as individuals and as parts of communities, now and for the future.

Masturbation may not be an ideal sexual activity on a psychosocial level for everyone, but the act keeps the sex drive alive. Your orgasm literally screams out that you are still alive. Your imagination is thus still creating and by doing so is able to transcend boundaries this non-living virus is both breaking and imposing on its victims.

And who knows, some imaginative person now might be doing some kind of Zoom virtual masturbation session. Just make sure you protect it from the holy haters who would love to bomb this sort of thing, not because they hate it, because they really want to participate in Masturbation Nation.

Sex Play, which appears to be an early 1970s gay porn “naughty picture book,” features an article by gay porn star Jim Cassidy entitled, “Why Be A Homosexual.” (Cassidy appears in several vintage gay porn flicks - Whatever Turns Ya On, A Deep Compassion, The Light from the Second Story Window, and Chapter 3 - available on DVD at those links and streaming at BijouGayPorn.com.)
 

But the piece needs some immediate context. This picture book's full title is Sex Play: A Marital Guide for the Gay Male, which is most interesting, because of course at that time gays could not get married, but it assumes that there will be gay couples in long-term but not legally recognized relationships: “homosexual marriages.”

And the forward/editorial by a doctor lends the contents of the book, mostly pictures of different sex acts and positions with some explanation about their benefits to a healthy sexual relationship; authority and credibility. For example, the good doctor proclaims, “There must be a basic reason for homosexuality – it's been with us since the beginning of time and at certain plateaus, during the world's existence, was actually approved of and considered highly aesthetic.”

Yes, true, but here's where pre-existent prejudices come to the fore, “A homosexual can be as masculine as any hetero male and sometimes even more so. If a list were published of the inverts in professional sports, every phase of government, teaching, scuba diving – you name it – it would certainly seem unbelievable.”
 

It's quite daring that he mentions gays as teachers, given the false claims that gay guys are pedophiles, but the use of the word invert really shows prejudice. More significantly, in the late 19th and 20th century, invert was equated with homosexuality, an inborn trait; male inverts inclined to traditionally female behaviors and interests, and vice versa.
 

Yet this theory seems to refer more to transgender individuals, looking at it hindsight, but, more significantly in the context of the times, the good doctor feels the need to show that the homosexuals aren't necessarily “nellies” but also that the masculine ones are the ones who hide their true inversion by living in the closet with a male lover. Very much a product of the times, this view: sexual liberation was occurring, but in the long shadow of the closet, a closet which confused often sex with gender.

Thus, perhaps, the question about why one should be a homosexual in the last article of the publication, seems initially to be almost a tautology. This article begins with the usual arguments that no one knows why someone is a homosexual, but one can spot the nelly ones; it's the more macho ones need to stay underground. Cassidy does allow for a “middle” category, “architects, artists, dress designers, hair dressers, and yes, teachers and members of the clergy ...” Yes, anyone can be a homosexual, but are there degrees by which one behaves as one? The author seems to assume that homosexuality most probably equals, to a great extent, sexual inversion.

But, later in the piece, Cassidy makes some valid points about how young men, using the example of his own experiences in the small town of Delaney, are socialized to be around homoerotic situations, like locker rooms, but that these situations involve references to heterosexual behavior, boasting about “conquests,” even though these guys are experimenting with each other sexually in circle jerks and the like.
 

Perhaps referring obliquely to his own experience, he claims that, “once in a while, again more often than you would think, a true homosexual will emerge ...” Or, maybe, the person discovers he is already is one, was born that way, but there's a caginess going on here about the issue, followed, though, by some honest insight about how heteronormative sex/gender roles are constantly pushed on male youth, with emotionally damaging results to a young gay guy.

But, ultimately, Cassidy argues, it's all about “wildly throbbing cocks or hot, pulsating cunts.” Even the guy who feels like he must have sex with a girl, but then finds his true sexual fulfillment in a male relationship, having experienced both, he implies that sexuality exists on a spectrum, with bisexuality as a flexible, not rigid, center, an “and” instead of an “or.”

Thus, the supposedly restrictive social norms of a small town, with its rigid patriarchal gender roles, can actually, even for both sexes (though it's clear that the men who end up the choices, not the women, a serious, even lethal inequality reflective of the time this piece was written), end up transmuting into, as Cassidy claims, a “new generation [that] doesn't believe in merely love for the opposite gender; they are including their own sex for what it's worth, a delightful, sexual experience, although opposite from early training, and professing love for all people.”

Anyone can be gay; anyone can be straight; anyone can be bi. Homo, hetero, invert, whatever. Enjoy! The cause and the end result are the same.