Netflix's Circus Of Books trailer introduces the kindly couple behind an iconic gay porn purveyor

Ryan Murphy is an executive producer of Circus Of Books, a new documentary named after the family-run hub for gay pornography it chronicles. This isn’t merely a celebration of Circus of Books, but rather a deeply personal look into the straight couple, Karen and Barry Mason, that’s been running it for more than 35 years. Because, while the store evolved into an inclusive safe space for Los Angeles’ gay community, the Masons themselves were more conservative in their personal lives, having hid the nature of their work from both their friends and their three children. That’s something of a shock since, as Karen puts it in the below trailer, the store was at one time “the biggest distributor of hardcore gay film in the United States.”

That all makes the fact that Rachel Mason, one of Karen and Barry’s children, helmed the documentary that much more interesting. While her film aims to unpack the AIDS crisis through the lens of the business, it also reckons with how Karen and Barry’s secret rippled throughout the lives of their children, one of whom met resistance from his mother when he came out as gay.