BijouBlog

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. 

“Hi, Professor. I am for extra help with the assignment, said the young blond jock with the tight buns accentuated by the tight Levis.

I think you need more help than that, said the hot daddy bearded muscle hunk professor dressed in a sharp business suit.

The professor puts his hand on the student's thigh.”

Yes, the above is a pretty lame attempt at the genre of classroom porn. But it's easily recognizable, not just the inevitable sex that usually occurs in a public or semi-public institutional space, but the power dynamic.

Where I teach (a college) and pretty much everywhere, one can assume that students are not part of the dating pool. Of course not all teachers have abided by this rule, some fairly egregiously, especially those in positions of great power in the academic field.

In one interesting case, a famous woman professor, Arvita Ronell, was accused of sexually harassing a gay male student. It’s a case definitely out of the norm, where a powerful cis heterosexual male teacher sexually harasses a younger cis heterosexual female student.

Yet it reveals nonetheless that a spectrum of predatory sexual behavior can and does exist, and that no matter what the specifics of the case, institutional structures that are based on hierarchy often encourage such boundary violations. One taboo generates another taboo.

Toby Ross, whose pioneering films glorified youthfulness, seems to in many of these films to flaunt sexual and social taboos. When a teacher does gets involved in their sexual activities, the power dynamic is already levelled. For example, in Reflections of Youth, Big Bill Eld, the gym teacher, is primarily there as a Priapus figure who towers above the hot young studs literally; he likes to get on the desk and masturbate his gigantic cock.
 

In Toby Ross' flick Classmates, the institutional space becomes the home of the teacher. When a sexy college student crashes at his art teacher's house, the sexual attraction is palpable but unspoken. The student feigns sleep while the teacher's mind races with images of the student fucking his ass with long, smooth, deep strokes. When the student's hard-on edges out of his boxer shorts, the teacher (nerdy but sexy) tentatively takes it in his hand and proceeds to jack him off. Still fantasizing, the teacher then jacks himself off. Tension -- release -- sleep. This realistic scene is played and edited beautifully.
 

In the Nova classic Kept After School, one sees the classroom porn genre treated with a humorous edge. Handsome teacher keeps students after school, and they aren't getting punished. He falls asleep, and an orgy ensues. He loses his power to the student's overwhelming sexual power.
 

In The Academy, by Hawk Productions, a military school teacher is seduced by his two students. A student fantasizes about the porn icon Roger. And much, much more.
 

And often teacher-student relationship becomes subsumed into the spanking fetish. In the Man's Hand video A Lesson Well Learned, the title pretty much self-explanatory. Naughty “boys” get spanked by coaches (and each other).
 

Overall, here’s the rub: reality and fantasy of course aren’t the same, and the teacher/student sexual fantasy has always been a major trope in erotic art, literature, and films, primarily heterosexual, and in many cases, the woman, strict headmistress or even nun, takes on the role of a dominatrix, punishing the “naughty boy.”

Thus, the teacher/student fantasy ends up involving often BDSM activity, accentuating the tension between what on one level many approve of as an affective/intimate relationship but one that is restrained by a public social order that pretty much proclaims, beyond this point you may not cross.

But crossing boundaries, breaking taboos one could say is precisely reason for the tension-release dynamic of porn in all its manifestations.