January 26, 2021 | The Biz

RIP: gay producer, director Scott Masters

News has come out that talented producer and director Scott Masters, a prominent figure in the gay porn world for four decades, died late last year. According to XBiz, he had been living in a care home for the past year.

Masters helped launch the careers of some of the biggest names in the biz, from Ryan Idol to Ken Ryker to Joey Stefano.

His career began in the 1960s. He started by selling sets of naked photos. Due to obscenity laws in the US, his work landed him a suspended sentence in 1972.

He explored film in the 70s, with his first full-length movie being White Lightning in 1973.

"I can't think of any gay adult producer more consequential than Scott Masters," Lucas Kazan told XBIZ, "with a career spanning decades four decades and relevant contributions in each decade — as a magazine publisher in the late '60s; as the man behind Nova Studio in the '70s; as the producer in charge of Catalina in the late-'80s; and as the co-founder of Studio 2000 in the late '90s and early 2000s."

Art and queer theory researcher Dr. Martin Pozsgai told XBIZ, "Scott Masters' ouevre offers the rare opportunity to explore and follow the representations of gay sex and the artistic development of masculinity in visual culture over four decades in the context of social, cultural and political changes almost continuously — from the gay liberation movement to the AIDS crisis and the establishment of equal rights for queer people after the turn of the millennium." 

In April 2006, Masters and his creative partner John Travis sold their company Studio 2000 to former Falcon Entertainment consultant David McKay. 

Rest in Peace