What Really Happened BEHIND THAT BARN DOOR!

By Josh Eliot

It was intended to be a “star vehicle” movie for one of the most in-demand actors of the day, Blade Thompson. Blade burst onto the scene in Matt Sterling’s Score 10 in 1991 playing “Football Player #24” and was matched perfectly with Chad Knight. Score 10 was a pretty awesome movie with a who’s who cast including Mike Henson, Ryan Idol, Dolph Knight, Danny Summers, Chris Stone, Craig Slater and Dcota. Blade was another “it boy” of 1991-92 with roles in Idol Worship, L.A. Sex Stories, View to a Thrill 2 and magazine covers everywhere. It was the same year Catalina sensation Cody Foster’s career took off and they both dominated in the Industry, but they both took two completely different paths in life and career. I wrote extensively about Cody Foster recently in my blog “The Malibu Pool Boy: Cody Foster,” and it was a bit of déjà vu working with Blade Thompson on Behind the Barn Door (1992). But, in this case, Blade didn’t get rattled despite Scott Master’s best attempts. Behind the Barn Door was very loosely based on Robert Walters' (Scott Masters) Nova Studios film Down on the Farm (1982), starring Lee Marlin and available from Bijou Video.

In Behind the Barn Door, Blade and Rush Adams were co-stars with an equal amount of sex scenes. Scott Masters secured a farm location in central California, so it was a good four and a half hour drive from L.A. and, unfortunately for the cast and crew, it wasn’t a designated “travel day,” it was a “shoot day.” Before leaving town, we needed to shoot some shots of Rush picking up Blade in his “Datsun” truck from the back of a warehouse. We could have used the Catalina warehouse, but for some reason Scott had us just pick one at random on our way to the 101 freeway. We were only able to get a single take in a wide shot before we were approached by security and asked to leave the grounds. That shot seems to go on forever in the finished movie, because of all the voice-over it needed to cover. If we could have taped different angles and close ups, the finished segment wouldn’t have been so painful to watch. We were about four hours into our drive through the countryside when the crew in my van started getting on my case because we hadn’t eaten, despite passing a number of fast food and full service restaurants. I finally started flashing the headlights at Scott’s car to get him to pull over. No cell phones back then! Once he did, I ran up and told him everyone was starving and asked if we could we pull over at the next restaurant we saw. Blade and Rush, who were in Scott's, car said that they were hungry too! I was answered with a big obnoxious scream from Scott, basically telling us all to fuck off because we needed to get to the location first and shoot some shots before the sun went down.

I went back to the van with my tail between my legs, and when I told the crew they weren’t very happy. It’s not like I knew the address of the location and could just meet Scott there if we were to pull off for food at a drive-through. His controlling nature had us following behind his car in the van with no other location info, and let’s just say it, he drove like an old lady. As soon as we arrived, the farmer greeted us and we were instructed to set up before it got dark. We needed to get a shot of Blade and Rush running through a field and into the barn. They were dressed like children in elementary school, with their school books in tow, and I felt a little embarrassed for them in their Pee-Wee Herman outfits. Couldn’t we have shot that same angle the next morning? The barn location was booked for two days! It was foolish decisions like this one, not to feed the cast and crew, that always haunted us on Scott Masters’ movies. It was a pattern of inflexibility that we became accustomed to, but that didn’t make it any easier on us. Blade and Rush then shot a J/O together in the barn, but the generator we were using for power was so loud that it was drowning out all the audio. It was decided that we would record voice-over dubs later when we got to our accommodations for the night. It was around 7pm when we drove to our house rental and I was immediately instructed to set up the video decks so they could record Blake and Rush’s voice-overs and then told to go to the local market and pick up something to cook for everyone. I was super pissed and took the photographer Jeff Burton and make-up man Mr. Ed with me, getting them mega-stoned while we drove to the market. We were dying of hunger by this point and started eating Suzie-Q’s and Ding Dongs in the aisles while we shopped, saving the packages so the cashier could ring them up, naturally. Unfortunately, the small mom and pop market sucked! All we could find to make for dinner was spaghetti, sauce from a jar and frozen meatballs. What a shit show.

The next day was not much better, because that generator from hell was so loud and obnoxious it was getting on everybody’s nerves. The sex scene with Rush and Blade was “good,” but they both were totally over Scott Masters' behavior and started talking back to him and getting in petty arguments. We went back to L.A. the following morning, and the day after that we shot Blade’s scene with sexy Rick Bolton in a classic car on the grounds of the Eight is Enough TV show house in Universal City. That actually went off quite well. The other scenes required another road trip to a country estate with a beautiful pond and several out buildings. This time, I took the initiative to load the van up with lots of snacks, drinks and pre-made sandwiches, just in case “Debby Downer” tried to starve us again. You have to realize that it was going on six years of dealing with Scott’s behavior, and I was really at my wit's end with him.

The first thing I noticed at the location was the amazing landscape and how picturesque the property was. Rush Adams was matched with a newcomer, to us, named Tom Katt. Tom Katt went on to work with us for years to come, however Rush only worked in two movies for Catalina and one for Vivid Video called Widespread. Rush co-stared in a little sleeper I directed called Good Vibrations. Good Vibrations was a super quirky, stoner vibe video with a mixed up, messed up storyline, which I made early in my career. I will go on record to say that even though I previously claimed Brother Trouble to be the worst movie I ever made, maybe Good Vibrations takes that honor. I linked a teaser of each - you decide.

It’s too bad Rush left the porn scene, because he had a big fat cock that worked and a macho yet endearing personality. For the Rush and Tom Katt scene, I spotted a fantastic camera angle featuring an incredible pond with a barn and farmhouse in the background. I remember walking Scott Masters over to where I thought we should set up the cameras, saying that it would be “gorgeous” to use that camera angle as a wide shot for the sex scene because it was so incredibly picturesque. He reminded me that the pond was only going to be used as the script warranted, for Blade and Rush Adams to be in a rowboat while Rush tells Blade about his encounter with Tom Katt in “a shower.” What a huge waste it was to only use the pond for a tiny piece of storyline in a stagnant shot with weird voiceover dialogue. With his wishes made known, we went on to shoot the scene in a tiny shower instead of simply modifying the script to have Rush’s dubbed voice-over tell the story about how he had sex with Tom Katt on the shore of that pond instead of a shower. Oy vey!

At least when the tiny shower wasn’t working visually for Scott, I was able to persuade him to move the boys to the front porch of the cabin for some sort of visual interest. Tom Katt and Rush had good chemistry once we got them out of that crammed shower, and the scene was saved.

I think it was Scott’s roommate Don who showed up with three new models midway through our day. Scott neglected to mention to any of us that we were doing a double shift; we had yet another nighttime scene to shoot on another area of the property near some hay bales. Thanks for the notice! We begrudgingly set up after eating the pizzas that Don brought with him. The scene was with Cory Evans, Jason Andrews and Joey Morgan and, despite the circumstances, the scene flowed very well and it kind of renewed our spirit because they were so into each other. I think the only scene without generator noise was a tag-on we shot in L.A. with Bo Summers and Todd Marshall, which I remember absolutely “zip” about. In fact, the generator problem was such a big deal that we had to shoot most of the storyline as voice-overs, which emulated a NOVA film from Scott's past. That could have been a good thing, because I love his NOVA films, but for this project it just didn’t work and the final cut of the movie was a disappointment for sure.

Some believe that, after viewing the finished version of Behind the Barn Door, it was the final straw for the GM. This would turn out to be the last movie Scott Masters directed for Catalina and, in addition, he and John Travis left the company within weeks. When one door closes, another one opens. John and Scott jumped into action and formed the company Studio 2000, where they released many hit movies for years to come. Movies directed by John Trennel (John Travis) and produced by Scott Masters always proved to be a winning combination. As for Blade Thompson, his career as a top box cover star covered the lengthy period of 1991 to 1997. He then transformed his career to that of director, working behind the cameras during the years 1997 to 2003.

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.