‘Circus Of Books’ Director Rachel Mason On Documenting Her Parents’ Secret Life As ’80s Gay Porn Merchants: “People In The Sex Industry Are Not Crazy Outlaws”
Chances are, you haven’t seen Rachel Mason’s debut film, The Lives of Hamilton Fish, a surreal, arty musical about two men—one a politician, the other a cannibal—who died on the same day in 1936. It toured the indie festival circuit, and that’s about all, and Mason didn’t expect a whole lot more from her follow-up, the highly personal documentary Circus of Books. That all changed when Ryan Murphy came on board as executive producer, and she was amazed to see the film’s profile rise dramatically.