{"id":1966,"date":"2013-01-16T12:42:21","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T19:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/?p=1966"},"modified":"2013-01-21T21:08:59","modified_gmt":"2013-01-22T04:08:59","slug":"fire-and-rain-a-tribute-to-john-bruno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/2013\/01\/16\/1966\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire and Rain: A Tribute to John Bruno"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By A.J. Llewellyn<\/p>\n

Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone… I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought that I’d see you again<\/em>. – from Fire and Rain<\/em>, music and lyrics, James Taylor<\/p>\n

When I first started writing gay erotic romance fiction six years ago, I didn’t tell many people. It was a new medium for me and I wanted to see how it went. I had coffee one day with my friend John Bruno, who had been struggling to find work as an artist. I’ve never met a kinder, more talented man. I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t get a break. He told me he was getting work here and there…and suddenly mentioned a movie he’d directed. When I probed he wouldn’t say what kind of movie at first. He finally said he was directing gay porn.<\/p>\n

I was delighted. I told him I was writing gay erotic romances and we had a good laugh that we were such shy puveyors of porn. John\u00a0Bruno (his porn name, not his real name), became one of my biggest supporters and introduced me to Adam Killian before Adam became the multimedia superstar he is now. Adam and I did a shoot for three of my favorite bookcovers and John showed an intense interest in my work.<\/p>\n

We’d talk shop and he told me hilarious stories of life on the set. Then one day he casually suggested we should work together. We had big ideas. Actually, the ideas were his. He had this vision of porn webisodes based on a book he thought I should write. John was brilliant that way. He was cutting edge.<\/p>\n

Today, he is gone. Way too soon.<\/p>\n

His life cut short by his own hand.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I learned he took his own life on Monday evening\u00a0and I am in grief. I am in torment, but I have had to accept that he had tried before with pills. This time he made sure there would be no rescues. It wasn’t a cry for help.<\/p>\n

He was, as a mutual friend said to me last night, done<\/em>.<\/p>\n

John had a gun nobody knew about and\u00a0left his family house\u00a0in Michigan where he’d been visiting his parents. His father followed his footsteps in the snow and found his body. He’d shot himself and I cannot imagine his father’s pain and grief.<\/p>\n

Everyone I’ve spoken to has beautiful memories about this man\u00a0and feels a deep, deep sadness at his passing.<\/p>\n

John Bruno died because his dreams not only didn’t come true, they were trampled once too often.<\/p>\n

He couldn’t get work in porn, in\u00a0spite of his obvious talent\u00a0 because the hot new thing is porn stars doing their own directing.<\/p>\n

He couldn’t get work in mainstream media, in spite of his prolific background in it, not to mention his awards, because\u00a0executives would find out he’d directed gay porn.<\/p>\n

It happened more than once. He wouldn’t get the job.<\/p>\n

Because he’d directed porn.<\/p>\n

So what?<\/p>\n

We discussed this devastating issue the\u00a0last time he tried to kill himself. He was matter of fact about it. He was sad, but trying so hard to be positive. He quit the porn industry two years ago after a near-fatal overdose when he couldn’t handle losing work, losing his home and…his crushing, severe depression.<\/p>\n

He moved home to be with his family for a\u00a0while and worked as a waiter. He had hilarious stories and suggested a book.<\/p>\n

He was as usual, wonderfully funny, sweet, but sad at the same time. He wanted to work. He took up photography again and would send me photos. He had bright ideas and suggested Moby’s Dick<\/em> for a new book. Based on his idea, D.J. Manly and I wrote it and the book came out at Silver Publishing last year. I loved his cover for it and wished I could have paid him a lot more for it than I did but\u00a0he was excited. He had other ideas, too.<\/p>\n

I wondered, if it was this hard for a director of porn to get work, what must it be like for performers? Gay, or straight, it’s difficult. Last night I heard on the radio a story about a beloved female teacher who lost her job because one of her students found a very old\u00a0snippet from a movie she did ten years ago.<\/p>\n

What hypocrisy!<\/p>\n

What pisses me off is that the same executives who wouldn’t hire John were probably watching his movies. At Falcon Studios and his own private label, Massive Studios, he discovered and honed many talented performers.<\/p>\n

Adam Killian was one of them.<\/p>\n

He was John’s videographer and it was John who encouraged Adam’s first foray into porn – his scene-stealing sex scene with Zeb Atlas in The Best Man<\/em>.\u00a0John nurtured Adam’s porn career the way he did other performers like Samuel Colt, Tristan Jaxx. I could go on.<\/p>\n

John suggested to me a series of books, the first of which became Laid<\/em>. He did the cover. I wrote the story. Our plan was to shoot it as webisodes. Falcon deemed the sex scenes too expensive too shoot so John set his sights on the second book, Bad Cops<\/em> and this time he controlled the sex scenes and I wrote them from the actual shoot.<\/p>\n

He did the webisodes with frankly mixed results. I still laugh over Rob Romoni’s scene where he and another guy watch each other jack off. Even to a novice like me it was obvious the two men were filmed at different times – thanks to a broken camera.<\/p>\n

But we had dreams. Big ones.<\/p>\n

We ended up doing more in the Laid<\/em> series but only Bad Cops<\/em> made it into webisodes before Falcon crushed his last hope and treated him shamefully by diminishing the work they gave him. It was out with the old. In with the new. His planned projects were handed over to a gay porn performer who was also directing.<\/p>\n

John wasn’t a performer. He was an artist.<\/p>\n

As such, he encourged his friend Erik Rhodes to direct and they worked on a couple of movies together. I know he was devastated by Erik’s suicide. I know he felt that same hoplessness, that John too, fumbled in the dark.<\/p>\n

John Bruno loved people. He came across tough but was a big marshmallow. He was the kindest, most giving man. He got up time and again and kept trying. He gave his friends help and hope. He loved cats. He loved life. He just kept getting beaten up by it.<\/p>\n

Last night, I looked at his model mayhem page where he is listed as a photographer under his real name. His work is there and he last checked in just a few days ago. John had begun a new life in Atlanta and was actively pursuing his photography. He was a brilliant photographer but when I looked at the comments on his page, they were all requests for help.<\/p>\n

For his opinion.<\/p>\n

Nobody offered him work.<\/p>\n

It is perhaps fitting and of course ironic that in his last days on earth people saw him as a master craftsman. Which he was. Perhaps they didn’t know the panic and pain of not being able to get work. Of being overlooked. Brushed aside.<\/p>\n

I listen with a broken heart to that other master craftsman, James Taylor and can’t help thinking of his line from Fire and Rain<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things to come. <\/em><\/p>\n

Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.<\/em><\/p>\n

John was a sweet dream to all who knew him. And our beautiful, wonderful, high\u00a0flying machine is finally in pieces.<\/p>\n

On the ground.<\/p>\n

Good-bye my friend. I hope you are in a better place. I hope you have no more pain.<\/p>\n

I hope choirs of angels, other artists and writers want to listen to your words. I hope they appreciate with wonder your great art.<\/p>\n

And I hope above all, more than anything, that you can once again fly.<\/p>\n

Aloha oe,<\/p>\n

A.J.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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