For more than
35 years, the Circus of Books bookstore was a place where Los Angeles LGBTQ
people could socialize and celebrate themselves without judgment.
Not just ‘a
book store,’ the retail venue was a gay porn emporium run by a straight,
mainstream Jewish couple – Barry and Karen Mason – whose three children
attended religious schools and were unaware for a long time about the nature of
their parents’ business.
Executive
produced by Ryan Murphy for Netflix, Circus of Books is
now a new documentary set to drop on April 22. The project is the debut
film from Rachel Mason, one of the children of the owners.
In the
newly-released trailer, which alternates between interview soundbites and clips
from vintage gay porn, one of the Mason children shares, “We were just kept
completely in the dark.”
“If anyone asked
what our parents did, the official answer was ‘We own a book store,’” added
another.
“In the 1980s,
we were probably the biggest distributors of hard-core gay films in the United
States, but I never felt free to let anybody know what we did,” says Karen in
the trailer.
The conflict
was due to the family’s attendance at a “stuffy, conservative synagogue” and
having a business that sold gay porn and sex paraphernalia to the LGBTQ
community.
According to
press materials, the Masons didn’t set out to be gay activists, just “everyday
entrepreneurs.”
But then came
the AIDS crisis and the Masons found they were losing employees to the
epidemic. Phoning the parents of those employees, they realized how
marginalized so many LGBTQ people were as many responded to the news with “I
never want to see them again.”
And so, the
Masons became accidental activists recognizing the humanity in their customers.
One former
patron shares to the camera, “Circus of Books was my first glimpse into the
fact that I wasn’t alone as a gay person.”
Another: “This
book store, it kept me out of harm’s way.”
“I think what
we did was small, human kindnesses in a very small way,” says Karen Mason in an
interview clip.
Check out the
trailer below, and mark your calendar for the April 22 release of Circus
of Books on Netflix.
SOURCE: INSTINCT MAG
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