John T. Bone, the British-born adult director who also performed in his self-directed Harry Horndog series between 1992 and '95, has died, reportedly of pancreatic cancer in late January 2019. At the time, he was an inmate at an unnamed prison hospital in North Carolina, having been sentenced approximately one year before in Colorado Judicial Court on charges of dealing in illicit drugs—this, after having served much of a federal court's 11-year sentence on similar charges, which landed him in the same institution. Bone was 71 years old at the time of his death.
Before entering the adult industry in 1985, Bone, whose real name was John Bowen, was an antiques dealer in his native England, and was also peripherally involved in the country's fashion industry, an interest he maintained and worked in when he emigrated to the U.S. and joined the adult industry. His chosen "porn name," John T. Bone, was a spoof of the phrase "jaunty bone," meaning a playful, confident cocksman.
"I've been friends with John T. Bone for decades," recalled director/scripter/musician Will Ryder. "I first worked with John in the '80s when I scored some of his movies, I did the music for some of his movies. I lost track of him over the years, and many, many, many years went by without my talking to him, and when I got full-time in the porn industry on the business side, I reconnected with John because he had a distribution deal with New Sensations, and I had just started doing PR and marketing, and he became one of my clients, so I got to work with John on a few titles. I don't remember exactly which ones they were, but during that time, we became friends. Of course I heard all the good, the bad and the ugly about John, all the stories, and John was a very opinionated guy, and a lot of people did not like him, but I never had a problem with him at all. ... John was the kind of guy who, I think, if you were on his bad side, or if he didn't like you, that was not a good place to be."
In all, Bone directed more than 250 adult titles between 1985 (Geisha Girls) and 2006 (School of Cock), and performed in 44 of them, though some were non-sex roles. He worked for such companies as Western Visuals, Zane Entertainment Group, Arrow Productions, Essex Video and several others, and also released what would eventually become known as "gonzo videos" through Fantastic Pictures, a company he co-owned with Peter Reynolds and another partner.
But perhaps Bone's main claim to fame was his gangbang titles, and while he didn't invent the genre, no one has surpassed him in the number of "gangbangers" hired to have sex with the female star. Some early Bone gangbang titles included the Starbangers series and All I Want for Christmas Is a Gangbang, one of whose stars was Annabel Chong, a Bone favorite who later that year (1994) also appeared in I Can't Believe I Did the Whole Team, but whose best known title was 1995's World's Biggest Gang Bang, where she took on 50 sexual partners in 251 sex acts. The feature sold extremely well, despite having won XRCO's "Worst Tape of the Year"—in fact, so well that Bone followed it up with 1996's World's Biggest Gang Bang II, this time starring former investment banker Jasmin St. Claire taking on 49 studs in 300 sexual encounters—and in the process garnering worldwide attention, an AVN Award for Best-Selling Tape of the Year ... and lots more money for Bone. (Another attempt at setting a new gangbang record was World's Biggest Gang Bang 3: Houston 620, starring popular star Houston and directed by Greg Alves, released by Metro in 1999.)
"I was the head of sales for Zane Entertainment and Fantastic Pictures for a few years between 1993 to 1996," Peter Reynolds, now of Plaid Bag Media, told AVN. "During those years, John T. Bone and his partner Bill Whitrock headed up the Fantastic Pictures division of Zane, and his first release was a Savannah gangbang, which certainly put Fantastic Pictures on the map. Both of them were very talented producers, and John and I really got along great. He was very flamboyant, very intelligent, very creative, and he wanted to really make an impression in the business, and as far as I'm concerned, he did. He had a series of really strong releases and we had a really good run during those three years, between him and Max Hardcore on the Zane side and some other lines that we had, we were really rocking and rolling; it was quite the experience. John T. Bone's personality, Chuck Zane's personality, and probably 40 employees and me the general manager overseeing sales, it was just a wild time. Another example of having fun and also making money. He was very witty, very smart, hard worker, and I was very sad to hear of his passing."
Bone was fluent in several languages, and two of his favorite countries to shoot in were Brazil and Thailand—and he wasn't averse to taking some friends along with him on such shoots.
"When I decided I wanted to become a director and producer, John invited Scott David and myself down to Brazil, to shoot in Brazil, and we went to Brazil twice to shoot movies, and it was quite an adventure," recalled Ryder. "I don't remember which trip it was [2004], but we shot Chloe and Rose: Fucked Up Adventure, with the late Chloe Jones and the beautiful Asian talent Rose, and John at the same time shot a big movie for his company called Chloe Jones You Don't Know Me [eventually released in two parts]. We shot on a beach in Rio de Janeiro and we shot in Buzio, the seaside resort town, and that was when Chloe Jones was paired up in a three-way with a very famous television actor in Brazil named Alejandro Frota, and I believe he was the equivalent of a major soap opera star down there who later ran for political office and I believe won."
Ryder also credits Bone, while both were in Brazil in '04, with teaching him an important lesson in cinematography.
"We were shooting in a farmhouse resort, beautiful scenery, with lush Brazilian gardens, with a big pool—spectacular," Ryder recalled. "Anyway, Scott and I set up a bed by the pool, and there was a little farmhouse with utilities like hoses and gardening equipment leaning against the farmhouse wall, and we put the bed in front of the farmhouse wall, the pool was behind it, I set my camera up between the pool and the farmhouse wall, shooting at the farmhouse wall, and I took my female talent down there and started shooting the pre-scene sexy posing, and John comes out of nowhere and he says to me, 'Can I talk to you?' And I said, 'Sure.' He was standing behind me and put his arms on my shoulders and he turned me 180 degrees around toward the lush green scenery of Brazil's jungles, and he whispered in my ear, 'Brazil.' Then he turned my shoulders back 180 degrees in the original direction I was pointing, and he said the words, 'Van Nuys.' He turned me around again and said, 'Brazil. Which way do you want to shoot?' And I said, 'Brazil,' and that literally changed everything because I didn't know shit about anything, so something as simple as that has a long-lasting effect on somebody who is thirsting for knowledge."
Bone spent quite a bit of time in Brazil in 2004 and '05, releasing 14 movies that featured South American talent—but it wasn't long after that he began running into legal trouble.
"After Brazil, he disappeared from me," Ryder told AVN. "In around 2006 or '07, maybe '08, he went to the Philippines and ended up opening up a restaurant and a hooker bar, and that's where he met his wife Glaiza, a young early 20-year-old Filipina girl, married her, and she ran the bar with him, and they had a very successful business."
Peter Reynolds remembers Bone and Glaiza's wedding well, since it took place in North Hollywood and he attended it.
"It was at a Thai temple in North Hollywood, the famous temple here in LA where they have an outdoor swap meet on weekends, but mostly great Thai food in the parking lot," Reynolds said. "I'd never been to a Thai wedding ceremony before and that was an experience, so I saw him get married to this lovely Thai girl, and great food and it was really, really cool, unique, and that was John all the way."
But Bone and his bride returned to their business in the Philippines, and it wasn't long before trouble found them.
"One day, I get a call from the American Embassy in the Philippines saying that they wanted to repatriate John," Ryder reported. "Now, John was a British and a U.S. citizen; he had dual citizenship, I believe. What happened was, John got in trouble because he stopped paying off the cops so they shut his business down, padlocked it, and he was about to open up a second business and they padlocked that business too, saying that he was hiring underage prostitutes to work in his club, which he claims was not the case. They even arrested Glaiza's sister, who definitely was not underage, and so it was just a money grab.
"The American government was willing to repatriate him but he had to have a job in place before they did so. And I said to Scott, 'You know, we've got to hire John,' and of course Scott wasn't a real fan of doing that, but we had no choice, so John came back to America, I met him at the airport, and he was staying at a shitty hotel, so I gave him $1,000 to live on, because Scott wasn't convinced we were going to hire him; we just said we would, and then later we did hire him and he was fantastic for our company; he helped us immensely in the office for a couple of years, and then he went off and did his own things, got involved in some shady businesses."
Those "shady businesses" apparently began in Thailand, where Bone was busted twice, once in 2007 and again a year later, both times for shooting porn in and near the country's capital, Bangkok, which was strictly illegal. During the raids on Bone's studios, police seized cameras, lights, costumes, sex toys, lube, condoms, computers, business records and hundreds of sexually-explicit DVDs and photos. Bone admitted under questioning that he rented the apartment five months ago to produce hardcore content featuring Thai women and transsexuals. Although Bone and his associates faced fines and three years in prison, the government decided to banish him from the country instead.
After returning to the U.S., Bone abandoned the adult business, got an apartment for himself and his wife in Denver, but worked in Las Vegas, where he began a business of buying, selling and refurbishing old cars—until, according to Ryder, in 2012, the federal government came crashing through his doors at 5:00 in the morning and arrested him for narcotics.
"What happened was, he was very good with dealing with the Chinese, and he was the de facto communicator with the Chinese for a number of companies all across America that sold various forms of legal synthetic marijuana—legal at the time—but he got out of the business and it came back to haunt him a year later when the feds busted down his door," Ryder said. "We didn't think he'd be in prison for very long. I remember I flew out to Vegas with my then-girlfriend and we gave his wife—because they seized his bank accounts, they took his Range Rover, they took everything—and we gave her some money so she could live for the next month or so, and that turned out to be a number of years, and he was transferred to a few different federal prisons."
However, when Bone's pancreatic cancer was diagnosed, he was moved to the North Carolina hospital facility. By then, he'd also lost his hearing and developed a bad case of diabetes—and with no income, Glaiza could barely afford to visit him.
"He died peacefully," Ryder reported. "He also converted to Christianity full-time. I know he had nuns praying for him; they sent me letters talking about John, and he wrote me a letter before he died, saying that he was at peace and that he wasn't fearful of dying at this point, and that he had lived a full life.
"The thing I want to say about John is, he was an incredibly charming guy, especially with women. Maybe it was the English accent, maybe it was the white Santa Claus-like hair, but he had a real and definite charisma that I was kind of blown away by, and he was definitely a character and he'll be missed."
At press time, it was reported that Ashley West of The Rialto Report had recorded seven hours of interviews with Bone, and an article based on those recordings is expected to be posted to The Rialto Report website in June.
