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Described as “the center of the gay universe,” Circus of Books offered the LGBT+ community a judgement-free zone to socialize and celebrate themselves for over three decades. Few customers of the Los Angeles-based gay porn shop would’ve guessed that it was owned by Karen and Barry Mason, a straight, mainstream couple who sent their kids to religious school. Rachel Mason tells her parents’ unlikely story, and pays tribute to the legacy of their game-changing store, in “Circus of Books.”
Both Karen and Barry are camera shy, and Karen especially so. Rather than hiding the tension making “Circus of Books” caused in the Mason family, Rachel Mason chooses to highlight it, and includes footage of Karen encouraging her daughter to turn the camera off and indicating that what she’s filming isn’t interesting. “It was hard for her to understand that I was doing something important, and making a point that she was doing something important because she spent so many years hiding the story and downplaying their role in it,” Mason explained in an interview with us.
“They’re not offended. They’re not scandalized. It’s their job,” we’re told of Karen and Barry. Despite their personal feelings about the work they did, the couple did feel pressure to maintain secrecy about their business, particularly Karen, who is described as spending much of her time at her synagogue. “We were probably the biggest distributor of hardcore gay films in the United States,” Karen explains, “but I never felt free to tell anybody what we did.”
Neither Karen nor Barry seem to feel especially passionate about their merchandise or their role in distributing it. The former was working as a journalist and the latter in special effects when they stumbled into the business. Selling Hustler mags led to more business opportunities and they — reluctantly — seized the opportunity, believing that running Circus of Books would be a temporary situation. They ran the store for 35-plus years before it was shuttered. The doc shows Circus of Books in its dying days.
Karen and Barry don’t appear to take a homophobic or judgmental attitude towards their clientele, but it’s interesting that neither seems especially political, at least not at first. The store seems like a way to generate income — not a political act. Still, the very existence of the store, and their involvement in it, is inherently political, and by offering this space to the LGBTQ community, they were serving as allies, even if they don’t necessarily see themselves as activists. So it comes as a big surprise when Karen reacts poorly to one of her children coming out as gay. She explains that, even though she worked with, loved, and respected LGBTQ folks, she couldn’t accept Josh, her gay son, with open arms — at least not initially. “Circus of Books” depicts Karen’s journey towards accepting, and later celebrating Josh, overcoming her own prejudice to advocate for a more inclusive world.
Some of the film’s most powerful moments come from Circus of Books customers and staff speaking to the store’s impact on their lives. At Circus of Books, they saw themselves represented. In a hostile world that often made them feel less than and isolated, Circus of Books offered a much-needed reprieve, and the chance to connect with the wider LGBTQ community. Mason told us that she’d love for those who watch “Circus of Books” to “think about what other stores have done for the communities around them, and about what other small pieces of history are yet to be written when you look at the vantage point of LGBTQ history.”
“Circus of Books” is now streaming on Netflix.
