Secret Boys Club

By Josh Eliot

[Originally published 12/20/24]

I’ve made a few “humdingers” - especially in my early years as a director for Catalina Video. In 1990, I was finally adjusting to life in Los Angeles and easing into the idea of shooting most of our movies in people’s homes or, once in a rare while, on a rented movie set. One day out of the blue, my producer Scott Masters called me and said we had a possible new location to go look at out in the valley. I remember him picking me up but not telling me where we were going, and I didn’t ask, but I became very excited when we pulled up to what appeared to be a very dated-looking, somewhat run-down building. It turned out to be the back entrance to the Sherman Square Roller Rink in the city of Reseda. I couldn’t control my excitement and Scott Masters could see it. The owner walked us through the facility and I immediately started imagining scenarios for sex scenes in the different sections of the rink. The public bathrooms, the roller skate rental room, the rink itself and, my biggest thrill, the snack bar restaurant. The whole place smelled very musty and looked like it had not been updated in decades, but that made it really enticing to me.

The owner was going to charge a lot more than we ever spent for a day of filming, so Scott Masters said it wouldn’t work for his upcoming movie, but if I agreed to shoot an entire movie in one day he could book it for me. I didn’t hesitate and said yes right away without even thinking about the logistics. This was the most exciting location since shooting Lunch Hour: When The Big Boys Eat in 1989 (read the blog). In Lunch Hour, we shot in a very cool sheet metal machine shop, also in one day. Chi Chi LaRue simultaneously directed that one with me, but this time it would be all on my shoulders to complete shooting of an entire movie in about ten hours. We would arrive at 8 am and had a “hard out” at 5:45, as the rink would open for business at 6 pm sharp. I agreed to this and threw caution to the wind, because I was not about to let this classic location slip through my fingers.

I had no idea about the amazing history this dumpy little rink had in its hey-day until I decided to write this blog. Around 1971, avid skater Helena Kallianiotes, a Greek immigrant, belly dancer and actress from Five Easy Pieces, discovered the Sherman Square Roller Rink when her friend Michelle Phillips asked if she’d give her skating lessons. Michelle (the Mamas and the Papas) was going to audition for a role in a roller derby-themed movie. The film ended up being Kansas City Bomber starring Raquel Welch, and also featured Helena, who got the role over her friend Michelle. Helena garnered a Golden Globe nomination for her performance and the movie became a cult favorite. Flash forward to the late 1970’s, Helena was listening to friend Ringo Starr complain about Los Angeles not having any fun places to take his son. It was through this conversation that she came up with the idea for Skateaway. She called up friends and invited them to a mystery location - was the Sherman Square Roller Rink, which she rented out. She made it a weekly event, which became so popular for the celebrities and their kids that Skateaway Mondays had an A-list of regulars including Jack Nicholson, Jeff Bridges, Angelica Huston, Rebecca De Mornay, Francis Ford Coppola, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Joni Mitchell, Penny Marshall and Cher. No Cameras, No Drugs, No Press was one of the few rules, and it was in full swing for four years. Helena pulled the plug on the event after there was a shooting outside the rink, albeit not on her Monday night booking.

Flash forward to 1990 as we showed up to this amazing location to shoot what would be called Secret Boys Club, released in 1991. Scott Masters was playing chauffeur all day by bringing models in for their scenes and then taking them home afterwards, while dropping off others. There was one point during the middle of the day where all the models were on set at the same time and that is when we shot the main portion of dialogue. It was basically a pledges vs pledge masters set up - on wheels. No one was really that good at skating, so there were a lot of falls and slams into railings, but everyone was having fun with it. Shooting moving shots while on skates wasn’t too much of a challenge for me, from my experience rollerskating as a child. I did, however, go to a celebrity birthday party at a roller rink a few years later with co- worker Peter Romero and had a hard fall, breaking both my wrists! The GM of Catalina let me fly home to Rhode Island for six weeks to stay with my parents, gifting me a great summer vacation in New England. Today was all business, though.

My first scene was Charlie Warner and Rod Abbott in the men’s public bathroom. Rod skated himself into a stall and found a secret note waiting for him, basically telling him to feed his really fat cock to a pledge master under the bathroom stall. They eventually fucked over the sinks. I remember thinking how cool it was to be shooting sex in an actual public bathroom without worrying about the cops coming in. Cum and run to the second set-up, which was in the skate rental storage room. Sean Hunter rolls up to find Ross Lambert working there and complains that his skates are hurting his feet. Bada-bing, bada-boom, Ross removes the skates, massages the pledge master's feet and then, per the secret note instructions, works his hands up the leg and directly to the crotch, featuring - you guessed it - an erect boner.

The movie only has four sex scenes, as opposed to five, because we thought that was what I could pull off. Scene three was my absolute favorite, starring Tony Erickson (aka Tony Sinatra) as the handsome pledge and waiter on wheels. In the snack bar restaurant, he is ordered by “bitchy” (in the movie and in real life - If I remember correctly) pledge master Chip Matthews to bring him a wiener on a bun. One of my favorite camera shots ever is when Tony Erickson pulls up on his skates and says, “Your wiener, sir,” as the camera pans down his body to show his rock hard cock filling the soft and delicious hot dog bun. Scott Masters, after viewing the movie for release, didn’t get the charm, but whatever! I always felt that particular shot and set up were pure cinema magic! I am from the Porky’s (1981) generation, after all. By the time scene four was ready to shoot with Marcus Braun and Robbie Anderson, I was ready to drop and the crew was already exhausted. We had to finish quickly, which Scott Masters kept telling me, as the rink was opening for business soon. We set up on this little stage alongside the rink, which wasn’t the greatest setting, but it had a table we could use for fucking. One of the models - I truly don’t remember which one - had hard-on troubles and the inability to cum. That was truly the icing on the cake, as the clock kept ticking. When we finally did wrap and started moving our equipment out the back door, skaters were arriving into the area!

I was so grateful for this cool location and the ability to film there. If money wasn’t always the issue and I didn’t have to rush, we could have really made this movie special with five full scenes and a more focused vision. This history-filled roller rink really deserved it. But, as life and reality would have it, Secret Boys Club was the epitome of a “rush-job” and the fabulous Sherman Square Roller Rink, home of celebrity-filled Skateaway, is now a fucking Walgreens Drug Store.

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.