Emmys 2020: 'Circus of Books' writer Kathryn Robson hopes film can fuel talks about 'sexual openness and honesty'
One of the deceptively simple but landmark documentaries on Netflix, with Ryan Murphy as executive producer and Rachel Mason as the director, is the proverbial 'little film that could'. It tells the story of 'Circus of Books', a mom-and-pop chain of 'adult' stores, described as the "center of the gay universe", which was run by director Rachel Mason's parents, Barry and Karen, a conventional, heterosexual Jewish couple, who hid the reality of their business from relatives, their synagogue, even their own children. Through the '80s and '90s, 'Circus of Books' catered exclusively to the gay community, selling everything from adult magazines, books, sex toys and videos and at one point, Barry and Karen became producers of porn films themselves.
Going from the intimate and familial to the historical legacy of a legendary LGBTQ bookstore that served as a counterculture "safe" space, the film was a labor of love. At the Creative Arts Emmys it was nominated for 'Outstanding Writing For A Nonfiction Program', with the writing credits shared by Rachel Mason and Kathryn Robson.
MEA Worldwide (MEAWW) caught up with Robson after the nominations were announced for the film on which she served not only as a writer but also as a producer and editor. According to Robson, Mason first connected with her about partnering on the film because of her graduate thesis documentary, 'Female POV: The Hetero Female Use of Online Porn', an examination of the relationship between heterosexual women and pornography in the digital era. Robson's research background meant that she was instantly on the same page with Mason about how to treat the subject matter of 'Circus of Books'. "It [Research background] was helpful in how we approached the film. That was something that was so important for Rachel -- to work with somebody who understood that porn for the gay community was not just this source of entertainment. It had been a lifeline for so many people for so long and this really important cultural space where they could see themselves represented when there were essentially no other spaces for [representation] that existed. So because of my academic research and because of what I knew about the history of pornography, obscenity laws, and the importance of it [porn] to the gay community, that from our first meeting, Rachel understood that I got it. That's partly why we were able to develop this very trusting relationship with each other while working on it."
The Emmy nomination came as a welcome but completely unexpected surprise. "I had actually been working on another project the night before the Emmy announcements came out and had been up really late. So I woke up and I actually didn't remember that the announcements were coming out. But a friend texted me and asked if I had heard anything. And I said, 'Oh, you know, I haven't heard anything yet'. When I went and checked the website and saw Rachel [Mason] and my name, it was like, 'Oh my God, we were nominated...' -- really very exciting, very exciting. I think the first person I told was my roommate actually. And I heard her squealing from the other room."
It is one of the latest milestones for the film that caught its first big break when Ryan Murphy came on board as an executive producer and helped get them in a room with Netflix. "We were a very bare-bones production, initially. It was just Rachel [Mason] and I working on my laptop in my dining room. I can't quite remember how Ryan [Murphy] heard about it, but I think he reached out to Josh [Braun of Submarine Entertainment] who was working really hard to get some interest in this film. We all just met and we did the screening of the film at Netflix and there was so much support for the film in that room from the Netflix team and from Ryan and from Josh. It was very exciting. It was really beyond our wildest dreams of what was ever going to happen for the project, but it was very cool."
For Robson, the main pull of the movie while scripting and editing the footage was how it showed that "we are okay with such tremendous contradictions within ourselves and we just keep going, day after day". And her task was to bring in an outside eye to what was an intensely personal story for Mason. "When I met Rachel and she told me the story of her family, her mother's contradictions, in particular, were just hard to imagine -- having been this sort of kingpin in a way in the gay porn world but also being this incredibly religious person. Being this maternal figure to her employees and her customers, but when her own son came out [as gay], she couldn't initially show up for him in the same way. I think Rachel, although she knows, I mean, she's lived with it and she knows all the intricacies of this story but I think she knew she needed somebody who had an outside perspective, who could look at it through a slightly more objective lens as an editor and a writing partner.
To familiarize herself with this story meant having countless conversations with Mason about her family, her perspective and experiences growing up around the store."It was really just a constant download so I could understand what that personal experience was and try to bring some outside insight, and analysis into what was so meaningful and beautiful about this story because I think it's hard for people to see what's remarkable about their own families, you know?," explained Robson.
In fact, the project originally conceived by Mason was centered more around the store. "I think when Rachel started the project, she really saw it as this kind of historical homage to the store and to the LGBTQ community in LA. That was so important to her. I think the family piece was less clear to her initially but that was the heart of this story. Watching Karen and Barry -- they're just such characters. They are so funny and charming and it just became clear, really quickly looking through the footage, that this family story had to run through the film, that this was the real heart of it," said Robson.
While scripting and editing the piece, a lot of the tangential stories about the LGBTQ community had to be left on the cutting floor, which is why Robson hopes that there will be a companion piece to 'Circus of Books'. But for now, she is happy that the work is being recognized by industry peers. "What we were hoping to do is to open up this conversation and remove the shame and say that it's okay to talk about sexual identity and sexuality and to do it with a measure of agency. That people can speak to these things for themselves in their own voice and there doesn't have to be any shame around it. I think the LGBTQ community has been instrumental in getting people to understand this and get straight communities to open up to these conversations. They [the gay community] were forced to in many ways because their survival depended upon it, but we [the straight community] have gained a lot, more broadly, from having those conversations and asking those questions of ourselves and creating that space for just more sexual openness and honesty, while removing the shame around it."
'Circus of Books' is available to stream on Netflix.