For three decades, her parents ran an LGBTQI porn shop in LA, now she uncovers it all for Netflix
For more than three decades, the Circus of Books on Santa Monica Boulevard was at the center of the LGBTQI universe in Los Angeles, a pornshop run by a mother and father who are now the subject of their director daughter’s documentary.
Rachel Mason finally asks the least radical people she knows – her parents, Karen and Barry Mason – how they became American’s biggest distributors of gay porn.
“I have always thought it was kind of a fun, quirky little ‘facts about Rachel’ that would just entertain people at a party.” However, Mason’s Yale University professor stressed to her that the bookshop once filled a crucial void and was an important part of gay history.
The documentary originally premiered at 2019’s Tribeca Film Festival before being snapped up by streaming giant Netflix. Watch the Circus of Books trailer below. The documentary lands today.
