Straight to Bed

By Josh Eliot

By 1990, Chi Chi LaRue had a number of Catalina Video features under her belt including the award winner The Rise. The Rise received honors for Video of the Year and Best Erotic Scene with Ryan Yeager and Scott Bond (“The name is Bond, Scott Bond”) at the GayVN Awards. It was a definite high point in Chi Chi’s career with Catalina Video, but one glance at her bio and you see how massive an influence Chi Chi LaRue really was, and still is, to the industry. Born November 8th, 1959 in Hibbing, Minnesota, Chi Chi LaRue moved to Minneapolis and started performing in drag as one half of "The Weather Gals," a drag revue. In 1987, Ch Chi moved to California and was hired by Catalina Video, holding a position in sales and promotion. Excelling at the role of publicist and endearing herself to Higgins, John Travis and Scott Masters, Chi Chi’s directorial debut for the company came in 1989 with Billboard starring Joey Stefano. It should be noted that Chi Chi was directing for In Hand Video prior to being added onto the directorial staff at Catalina Video.

Around the same time as The Rise, 1990, Chi Chi also started a simultaneous successful career for the #1 straight porn company, Vivid Video. Vivid Video was famous for its “Vivid Girls” under exclusive contracts. Jenna Jameson was one of those girls and became close friends with Chi Chi during a time where the straight and gay factions of the industry couldn’t be any more divided. Once the leading girls in the industry welcomed Chi Chi with open arms, it had a ripple effect with the girls' male co-stars and the industry leaders. It was through this connection that Chi Chi thought of a concept that, in my mind, was absolutely brilliant! The leading ladies made buck in the straight industry, but at that time the guys, even though they were famous as well, only made around $400 a scene. About half to a third of what the girls made. Chi Chi was now working regularly with the top guys and girls and came up with an idea for a movie called Straight To Bed. She proposed the idea to the GM at Catalina and he was immediately on board with it. Since the starlets always received the promotion and high rates, Chi Chi thought “Let’s flip the script.” Catalina offered the straight leading men in the industry, at that time, double their normal rate: $800 to do a J/O and another $300 for a glamor magazine photo layout, shot at the same time as filming their J/O. $1100.00 total for a few hours' work. Every male star that was asked accepted! The top straight stars jacking off for a gay company, selling the product to gay men. That would be a first as far as I knew!

Randy Spears was at the top of his game and graced the box cover of Straight To Bed. Randy Spears won the Performer of the Year Award in 2004, 2007 and 2008 for XRCO and also the Best Actor Award for Adult Video News in 1991, 2000, 2004, 2006 and 2007. He also received many awards for Best Supporting Actor and was inducted into the Hall of Fame for AVN in 2002, and in 2003 for XRCO. Straight To Bed included other top performers: TT Boy, Sean Michaels, Cal Jammer, Lex Baldwin and Derrick Lane. The scenes were all beautifully shot and edited, and the magazine layouts were a great promotion for the project. The movie won the Best Solo Video Award at 1990’s Adult Video News show in Las Vegas. We were all there to root Chi Chi on!

The entire cast was fantastic to work with and one or two of them brought a girlfriend on set to “fluff” them. Chi Chi’s outgoing personality kept the set light and prevented any awkwardness from occurring. It felt groundbreaking at the time, almost like a stigma was shattered. It goes without saying that the whole crew was just drooling over Randy Spears!

In the later years, Chi Chi’s connections with the straight industry really came in handy as she and I were shooting our bisexual movies back to back, sometimes in the same house at the same time! Her Vivid Video connections came into play when casting the “straight scene” performers in our bisexual productions. Because each Bi movie had a straight scene with no “bi activity,” we were able to secure some of the top girls of the time including: Bionca, Madison, Lois Ayres, Jeanna Fine, Lexi Erickson and Leanna Foxxx. It all was a bit chaotic for our first pair of Bi movies, because we were shooting simultaneously for two different movies to save expenses. Chi Chi was shooting Bi-ology upstairs while I was shooting Down Bi Law downstairs, and we kept yelling to each other to “be quiet” when we were filming dialogue. It was a bit of a shit show, but we always had a good laugh about how loud each of us was when directing! It also helped that the starlets could shoot two scenes in one day. So once Lois Ayres was done with her sex scene for Bi-ology and I finished my sex scene with Patricia Kennedy, they would swap sets and I would shoot Lois in a three way for Down Bi Law, while Patricia Kennedy would run upstairs and get it again on Chi Chi’s set of Bi-ology, with brand new male co-stars, of course! This way the girls would get paid for two scenes in one day, making it desirable for them to accept the roles.

One take away from Straight To Bed was Lex Baldwin, now famously known as Talon in the world of straight porn. We signed Lex Baldwin to a several picture deal in an exclusive contract, starting with the bisexual movie Sex Bi Lex. Gay for pay made a comeback! He went on to star in King of the Mountain, Powertool 2 and Man of the Year. Sex Bi Lex and Bachelor Party: The Big Switch 3 were other examples of when Chi Chi and I shared a location, shooting two movies at once. Jenna Fine was going to jump from one set to another! I remember her telling me in the middle of her sex scene with John Dough for Sex Bi Lex that she was starting the clock. I was like, “What??!” She explained, as she tapped her watch, that I had four minutes to catch the fucking, because she had a whole other scene and box cover to shoot for Chi Chi when we were done. I was like, “Sure, no problem.” I don’t think I’ve ever bounced around with the video camera so fast from angle to angle. Side, side wide, side pan, overhead, underneath. I covered the whole thing with John Dough only needing to insert his cock once into her pussy, because they were so into each other. Jeanna was happy when I said, “Okay, let’s go for the cum shot,” even though I’m sure I got five minutes of fucking out of them and not four! It wasn’t the best set-up, having the girls shoot two scenes in one day, but it really was the only way to get these high profile girls in our movies with their busy schedules and high prices!

Success kept coming for Chi Chi LaRue with Best Director wins at the GayVN Awards for: Songs in the Key of Sex (1992), Echoes (2001), Deep South Parts 1 and 2 (2003 - shared with John Rutherford from Falcon), Wrong Side of the Tracks Parts 1 and 2 (2006) and Link: The Evolution (2008). That list is just the GayVN Awards; I didn’t even mention the sixteen Grabby Awards for everything from Best Non-Sexual Role to Best Screenplay. Chi Chi was also inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1999. There’s no doubt that Chi Chi LaRue is the most awarded in the Gay Adult Industry, but in true Chi Chi fashion, and in the words of “The Greatest Showman,” it’s “Never Enough!” So the show is still going on with Chi Chi LaRaw, streaming on a site near you!

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.