Mikal Edward Bales was born in Pomona, California in 1939.
As a California baby, it seemed almost preordained that he would end up in the movie industry. But he went about it in a direction most wouldn’t have. He did make his start in a traditional manner as a Hollywood publicist, representing some of the leading ladies of the day including Bette Davis, Doris Day and Elizabeth Taylor. While it wasn’t readily obvious then, this would prove to be invaluable to his future.
In the 1970s, as a gay man who had a fetish for leather and kinky sex, he began to become frustrated with the porn of the day. There were so many companies that offered images of handsome men in sexual situations. But Mikal wanted to see these beautiful men in situations involving bondage and BDSM. He took the initiative and arranged a loan with a friend to found Zeus Studios. The initial output was magazines of men in bondage, in provocative situations. They were instantly popular, and after a few rounds of these, Mikal and his business partner moved into the then new world of video. The original videos were stylized and ritualistic—they were christened the Tightropes series, with Tightropes One coming out in 1988. Shawn Farnsworth, owner of Los Angeles’ notorious Faultline Bar from 1984-2015, was also a cameraman and editor for both Colt Studios and Zeus, took interest early. “I noticed this very specialized Zeus Studios product. It wasn’t particularly sexual; in fact, most of the videos didn’t even have a guy having a climax or having sex, it was very ritual, Japanese style bondage.” Again, the videos were an immediate hit and Zeus’s mail order was launched.
Friend and frequent fetish compatriot Race Bannon noted that Mikal had a certain flair when it came to how he chose models. “Mikal loved beauty in men. He had a certain kind of aesthetic, a very certain way he liked men to look. He accepted everyone, but in terms of what he found, himself, uniquely erotic, he had a certain kind of look. I still fondly remember us joking about his hands in the video, because it was just his hands, and he was just Daddy Zeus, and he allowed the bottom model to be the highlight. He was just the hands in the frame doing the bondage and the work. He was interesting when he did adult stuff, because there was nothing quite like it at the time.”
The Tightropes series would become a mainstay of Zeus’s catalog, with editions up to Tightropes 30 still available at ZeusStudios.com. Hardbodied and handsome men, provocatively bound and tormented by a pair of hands, credited to “Daddy Zeus.” This was really Mikal taking credit for his time behind the camera and torturing his models. He’d often use the Tightropes series to introduce new models to his videography, including favorite models Robert Black, Kristofer Weston (then christened Steve Landess), and Brian Dawson. Kristofer, who had a multi-year relationship with Mikal as Mikal’s boy, recalls how the relationship started. “Mikal first cast me in a movie called Tightropes 16. That was my first movie for Mikal. We really hit it off, even though I wasn’t his type. He liked muscle boys with pecs. I may have grown into that but back then I was a pretty skinny twink with bleach blonde hair. I was the antithesis of everything he liked! I think he really liked the gusto I had for bondage, being tied up and my reactions. Once you get me in bondage, I love to struggle and moan and that turned him on.”
“Tightropes was a niche, so it wasn’t like mainstream fuck-porn.” Brian Dawson, who was second runner up for IML in 1988 and was International Mr. Drummer in 1989. “It was a very specific niche. Those people who liked that were ardent admirers of his. They would buy anything he produced, because he was the only guy doing it. I was running an architectural firm, so I probably shouldn’t have been doing any of it anyway, but my ego got in the way and it was fun! I did it for shits and grins, not for the money. I knew that I would stop short of (fuck-porn), and so did Mikal. They were sexual, and I was naked, and I jacked off but for me I felt somehow, professionally, if I stopped at that boundary, I had room to argue if I ever got brought up on anything.” Brian was not only in Tightropes 8 but would ultimately star in the classics Steel Dungeon One and Two.
Mikal spoke with me for the magazine Rubber Rebel in 1996, and explained where he wanted his videos to go. “It’s always been my philosophy that if you’re selling fantasy, it had better be pretty. I’ve admired the Colt products for years—I don’t think anyone touches Jim French at what he does. I think his art form is pure. But…the idea of you or me scoring with some of those Colt men in all their airbrushed perfection takes away from the sexuality or the eroticism of the photography for me. I would like to think that, on a good night, you and I could score the Zeus models I choose! These are real people. I never use airbrushing, never use make-up, I never take away from what they bring to me on the shoot. There is a realism there that translates to sexuality if people watching think ‘I might be able to score that!’”
Zeus Studios was still doing publications on the side, including yearly calendars, and the classic science-fiction BDSM tale, Sado Island, which he was so fond of that he requested that it be serialized and reprinted in the fledgling Vulcan America magazine. “Mikal was a writer and storyteller on page and screen. As a filmmaker and publisher, he used storyboards for his Zeus videos and his Zeus publications like the graphic novel, Sado Island,” explained Drummer editor, author, and noted leather historian Jack Fritscher.
Mikal was extremely proud of that particular publication, and it was an early example of graphics being drawn to match an otherworldly story. His desire to promote his work was also evident in his generosity with his photography. The cover of the premiere issues of Vulcan America and The Leather Journal were Zeus models. Dave Rhodes, editor of The Leather Journal, recalls how important this was to his new publication. “We did not know what to put on the cover of Issue #1, but Mikal graciously offered the use of a photo of one of his models. The man was HOT! We were given a handful of black and white photos of J.D. Slater. We selected one with his hands bound in front of him and a rod placed between his elbows and his back. The cover was produced on 50-pound book stock, not thick gloss like everyone else. The reproduction was absolutely horrendous. I’m surprised that neither J.D. nor Zeus sued us.” Steve Cannon of Fetish Sex Fights One was both the cover and centerfold of Vulcan America’s first issue in 1997 and Zeus photography frequently adorned issues of Drummer. Jack Fritscher’s admiration of Bales’s photography extended beyond just Drummer Magazine. “I respected Mikal’s essential leather photography so much that in 1994, I included mention of him and pubbed one of his photos (of JD Slater) in my book, Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera.”
It still took a little nudging to push Mikal’s videos to the next level. When Shawn began showing Mikal what he was doing with camera work and editing, he brought him on board as a cameraman and also took another suggestion. “Mikal was the first person to say, ‘here’s the camera.’ For a lot of those films, I met him about a year before the bar opened, which would be around 1994, so maybe around ’92, I started working with him, and he said, ‘I’ve got my camera, but I want you to have a camera, and I want you to get a little more.’ He’d always done a one-camera shoot, but he told me that I want you to move around. He wanted more of a 360 vibe to this whole thing. That’s when Zeus started expanding to a little bit more. The first thing I suggested was that, after that proved to be a success, ‘Mikal, just jerk the guy off at the end?’ These men were in it frequently getting worked over for three, three and a half hours, and they’re ready to pop. You know the audience wants to see that. Mikal had always been kind of reserved about it; he either started by stroking the guy off or releasing him enough so that they could do it themselves.”
Mikal also wasn’t above taking a tweak with his image. He was a member of the notorious L.A. performance troop, the Cycle Sluts, a group of men who were a cross between a glam rock band and drag burlesque show. They were popular enough to have once opened for like-minded shock-rockers The Tubes and reviled enough to have graced the most despised Drummer cover, for a 1976 Halloween issue. Recalls Jack Fritscher, “In the Cycle Sluts, Mikal Bales’ drag name was ‘Mother Goddam.’ Bette Davis…the original ‘Mother Goddam’…was his avatar. I remember after the Mr. Drummer contest in 1989 when Mikal, always trailing clouds of WeHo, arrived to meet me at the Eagle in San Francisco. A white stretch limo pulled up to the curb at the entrance where I was standing. Three doors opened and his Zeusmen family all dressed in black leather climbed out. Then, Hooray for Hollywood, the fourth door opened, and Mikal emerged waving like a star, all autographs and sunglasses, wearing a full-length white mink coat Liberace would have loved. We fell into each other’s arms laughing.” Robert Opel, most infamous for streaking The Oscars in 1974, shot the genderfuck cover of the Cycle Sluts. Readers hated it. But a little publicity never deterred Mikal.
In fact, as Zeus Studios ventured into heavier BDSM videos, Mikal was happy to push buttons. As he explained to me in the 1996 Rubber Rebel interview, “Zeus is dismissed by a lot of people into the scene as being Hollywood bondage. Anybody who watches Brute Force and thinks that it’s Hollywood SM, I don’t think knows what they’re looking at! Even though we went after something that was much heavier than the ‘typical’ Zeus video, there was such a connection between Fred Katz and Casey Battle, then Jeff Burnam and ‘Ponyboy’ Spike, and such a sexual connection between Brian Dawson and David Keefer, that anyone coming away from watching Brute Force has to realize that it’s tough to separate the passion and feeling from the SM.”
Fred Katz was both a close friend to Mikal and an exclusive to Zeus. “I was in three of the USSM videos. We did one in San Francisco while I was visiting. He had this place that was on the outskirts by the water. It was somebody’s home, but it was also a play space. I did this film with Joe Gallagher (Brute Force), and we went to the house. Mikal just said, ‘do your thing’ and he just shot it. That was kind of hot. I whipped Joe, and there was this final close-up, and a tear came down his face. We did another one at Tony DeBlase’s house, with Henry, where he had this deck. I still have a picture. It was Chris, Henry and the then Mr. Drummer from Australia, Clive Platman. I had them tied standing loosely together. I walked around them and flogged and whipped them. I came up with the ideas and he just filmed. He trusted my abilities. He went around with the camera; there were no retakes, no ‘let’s do this again’—he just filmed it.”
It was the extreme nature of the USSM series that brought Mikal his brush with the government. Kristofer Weston recalls the trouble in the time of the likes of porn-crusaders like Jesse Helms. The raid was ultimately unsuccessful at shutting Zeus down because Mikal kept intricate and detailed records, and the raiders couldn’t find anything out of bounds. “USSM 2 was one of the movies that got pulled from distribution after the government staged a raid on Zeus’s headquarters. The movie they were really after was USSM 3, because of the scene where, I think it was Brian Dawson dripping red candle wax on someone and the FBI thought it was blood. They thought it was too brutal. So, Mikal, out of caution, pulled all the USSM titles out of circulation. Mikal told me about that once. He had every record intact, in the right place and in the right file and in the right order, so there was nothing they could do to touch him. But the FBI made a demand that the USSM series be yanked and that was the only thing he could do to keep them off his back.”
Brian Dawson also recalls, “I got a call from Mikal, telling me ‘Brian, be ready, you may be getting a phone call.’ I was about to shit bricks, because I don’t want to get brought up on charges. It was USSM 3 that they made an example of, and of course I did number three. Luckily it got dismissed. We had to pay for being a bad boy, and not produce that video anymore.”
In light of this kind of harassment, Mikal once called upon several of his contemporaries to band together and form a coalition of producers to unite and exchange ideas to protect themselves, to the point of suggesting retaining a lawyer who could specialize in First Amendment issues. “Is there sufficient mutual interest to call a meeting?” he wrote in February of 1988 in a letter that he, and his business partner Jim Hawkins, sent out. “A meeting for the purpose of exchanging information and ideas assisting us to stay in business…safely.” It was under this atmosphere in the late 80s that President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese and the Meese Commission were attacking adult video marketers with particular zeal, and Mikal pushed for his fellow creators to protect themselves. “Knowledge, networking, and legal counsel are our best defenses,” he followed. It was his, as well as other members of the adult entertainment community, forward thinking that helped keep their businesses safely operating when the government was targeting them for prosecution.
These roadblocks did not hinder Mikal’s creativity. Zeus continued to push boundaries with creative settings and plots. In Steel Dungeon One, he used an actual working steel mill as the setting for the action. Brian Dawson was the top in that film and recalls some of the action that took place. “There was Steel Dungeons One and Two, one of them won a GAYVN; these were done in the 90s. Jeff Burnham’s dad owned the steel mill in L.A., so we filmed them there on a Sunday morning. His dad was there while we were filming, which was a little weird, but it worked. Mikal had a vision, but he had never been to the steel mill before. We were improvising; okay, we’re going to do this, etc. There was a gate, and we looked good against the gate, and the hoist thing, where the men get hoisted across the steel mill was classic. ‘Okay, we’ve got three boys, we’re going to tie them up, they’ve got to be able to take this long enough for us to shoot it for them to go flying across the steel mill.’ We really only had one chance to do it, and it worked.”
His aesthetics also led him to start shooting his models in latex and rubber, as he explained in 1996.” I started with Rubber Roughhouse & Auditions 4. I’m frequently accused of designer bondage and Hollywood SM anyway, so my approach to latex and rubber videos is kind of Hollywood rubber…because I love color! I’ve always thought that the smell and feel of rubber was primary as far as someone being interested in it, and my company being a visual one, then I would try for color. That’s the reason it started out as an experiment, but now I’m even more interested in the filming of rubber as wardrobe! I want it to attract them, and color has always attracted people for whatever their fetish may be.”
Robert Black, who was Mikal’s selection as Zeusboy 1999 and became Mikal’s boy during the time, was one of Mikal’s rubber models. “In Robert Black: Back For More, I was in latex. That was probably my third video with Daddy Zeus. I made those videos and the two of us had a great connection. I think people assume it was like this traditional Daddy/boy relationship, but it wasn’t. I didn’t wear a traditional collar, he got me a dog tag and it said “Rocky’s Dad” on it. His nickname for me was Rocky, for two reasons. One was for the muscle man character in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the other was for the film, Rocky, because I was so feisty. Our relationship was never sexual. When we played, 99% of the time it was observed. It was on a stage doing some kind of demonstration or show or for a film. If we played, it was not something that we did behind the scenes.”
“Mikal was even kind enough to cast me in a Zeus film in the spring of 1999. While I am sure he was just being polite (after all, who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to be part of an afternoon where four extremely good looking Zeusmen are strutting their stuff while you’re with them?), I modestly agreed. The result was the Can-Am/Zeus co-production Brutal Kombat. In it, I got to play Brutux Khan, evil overlord who entertains himself by having newly captured slaves wrestle and fuck in his presence. With a cast that featured Eric Evans, Robert Black, Beau Bradley and Brent Banes, Mikal essentially offered me what many men only get to dream about. I was garbed in full body black rubber and a pair of bizarre glasses, and seated upon a throne as my subjects were paraded before me and had really hot sex as I looked on, trying to appear above it all. Believe me, trying to be detached while these men were going at it may have been the hardest acting gig I’ve ever taken on. The other trip is when the Brutal Kombat DVD version was released; it is my rubber-clad stare that takes up half on the DVD menu screen. Brutal Kombat became the focal point for Vulcan America’s sixth issue, the first to appear entirely online, and gave me a listing on the popular Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB.com).”
“That’s something that was very important about Mikal, and where I think his background as a publicist came to the fore. The men I approached in the formative stages of this profile all said the same thing again and again: that Mikal was a friend and a generous man with his time and resources. Be it his casting me in a Zeus film or sharing his idea about forming a coalition to protect himself and others legally, everyone described Mikal, as Brian Dawson did, as “a consummate gentleman. His advice was to ‘always reply to people approaching you. Don’t ignore them. If they took the time to cruise you, say something back’. I always appreciated that about him. He was the consummate gentleman. I never saw him be rude to anyone. He always had a good word to say. He would always find that. He guided me. Even though I’d become Mr. Drummer, I still looked to him for guidance. We were doing sampler in Palm Springs, and we were all going out to dinner, and I had on a tank top, and I forget what the tank top said, and he pulled me aside and said, ‘Brian, that’s not appropriate. Change your shirt.’”
When Robert Black was forging a greater role as an actor, “He’s responsible for helping me create who I am right now as Robert Black, helping me build my confidence and do and become what I wanted to do and become a mentor. I called him ‘Dad.’ He was the first person to really make me feel valued. He was the first person to make me feel like I had a lot to offer.” Robert now operates RobertBlack.one, a podcast series and maintains a Just For Fans site.
“He had a great eye. Aesthetics mattered a lot to him,” adds Race Bannon. “The perfect photo, the perfect look, the perfect outfit. He loved dressing his boys. That was one of his fetishes. Dressing them exactly the way he wanted to see them. To the best of my knowledge, if he was in some sort of Daddy/sub relationship, he pretty much dressed the sub the way he thought he wanted to see them, the way he thought he wanted to see them while he was with them.”
“I’ve often thought,” Shawn Farnsworth muses, “how lucky was I to have worked with most aesthetically-interesting producers of erotic material in Los Angeles. Jim French—who was like the Rolls Royce of gay porn—and the most stylized and aesthetically-informed fetish videos of Daddy Zeus? I don’t think anyone’s even come close to it since.”
Mikal even kept a friendly relationship with his competitors, like Jack Fritscher and Palm Drive Video. “Mikal and I had a long and loving (no sex) relationship with my pubbing his work in Drummer and both of us, directors, running parallel video companies. In the best sense, we belonged to, as the song goes, ‘a mutual admiration society.’ Many phone conversations. So, yes, I would very much like to keep his memory and esthetic alive.”
“Mikal was very generous at being a good friend,” remembers Fred Katz. “We were as good of friends as you could be from 3,000 miles away. Then, when I was ready to retire, I had to think of where I wanted to go. I thought of different places, and I didn’t know anybody anywhere outside of New York, but I knew economically I couldn’t live there. I had a condo that was worth a lot of money, so I needed to sell that and get out. Daddy Zeus said, ‘why don’t you come and live in Palm Springs?’ I figured at least I’d know one person. That’s why I moved here. Our friendship developed because he lived very close by. We had spent a lot of time together and he would come to New York, and I would come to California. He would call and we would have lunch or dinner, he introduced me to a lot of people in the local scene.”
Mikal retired from Zeus and moved to Palm Springs in 2001. He continued to consult with different video companies, including Bound Gods, occasionally directing or even being featured in the odd film project. He chose to leave us on November 10th, 2012, at the age of 73, with more than 150 BDSM videos to the credit of Daddy Zeus and Zeus Studios. It happened to be Palm Springs Leather Weekend, and as a couple of the participants in this article put it, he planned on it, so that when news got out, it would be what everyone was talking about. He was a showman, after all. And I’ll leave the last word to fellow video vanguard Jack Fritscher. “Always a trendsetter, Mikal Bales was the quintessential ‘Black Leather Swan.’ He was a leader of the migratory flock of handsome midcentury Black Leather Swans who have moved from everywhere in the world to Palm Springs to feather retirement nests, enjoy life, and sing swan songs of our survival.”
Author: Tim Brough
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Zeus Studios