(A quick YouTube scan reveals the Tiger King-rivalling number ‘Pop It In The Pooper’). There’s moments of humour, such as Jeff Stryker – star of many of their ’80s films and a man once dubbed ‘the Cary Grant of Porn’ by cult director John Waters – showing off his atomically-accurate He-Man style action figure, and clips of him singing a rock song called ‘Bigger Than Life’ from a vintage skin-flick. It wasn’t until Rachel Mason was a teenager that she discovered that what she had assumed was a quaint book shop her parents owned was in fact a gay porn and adult goods emporium – and that her strait-laced mum and dad were secretly one of the biggest producers of hardcore gay porn in the United States with titles like Rimnastics Gold (“It’s not just fantastic, it’s rimtastic!”) Now, she’s directed a tender, low-key documentary for Netflix, Circus Of Books, which tells the story of the titular store’s place at the epicentre of gay LA life, and attempts to untangle her complex family dynamic.Ĭircus Of Books starts off in surreal fashion, almost like a Spinal Tap-style mockumentary: with owner Karen Mason, an elderly, devoutly Jewish woman, rifling through the stock – that includes a cornucopia of cock-rings and copies of Handjobs Magazine, and averting her eyes from the dildos she hawks.