A native of Des Moines, Iowa, Douglas attended Drake University and did his graduate work at the Yale School of Drama. Among the Broadway and Off-Broadway plays he has written and/or directed are Rondelay, Circle in the Water, Score, Tubstrip,Max's Millions, and most recently, the New York and Los Angeles productions of The Deep Throat Sex Scandal. He also wrote the screenplay for Radley Metzger's film version of Score. In the early 1970s, he directed two adult films, The Back Row and Both Ways, then left the industry to focus on his career as a free-lance journalist and editor for such publications as The Advocate, Update, FirstHand, and Stallion. He did not make another film until 1989, when he was urged out of his self-imposed retirement by Rick Ford of All Worlds Video. Between 1989 and 2007, he made on average one film per year, six of which were named Best Picture by industry organizations such as the Adult Video New Awards, Gay Video Guide Awards, and the Grabby Awards: More of a Man, Kiss-Off, Honorable Discharge, Flesh and Blood, Dream Team, and BuckleRoos. Five of the actors who played leading roles in his productions have been named Best Actor: Tim Lowe , Joey Stefano , Michael Brawn , Kurt Young , and Dean Phoenix. Douglas was also the creator and editor of Manshots magazine, and his collection of short stories, Mantalk, was published in 1991. His first novel, The Legend of the Ditto Twins was published by Bruno Gmünder Verlag of Berlin, Germany, in 2012. In 2019. Chelsea Station Editions published his play, Tubstrip''. He married his partner of forty years, attorney John Stellar, in November 2011, and they currently live in New York City.
Plays
Never Say Dye - director, book writer, lyricist
Rondelay - book writer, lyricist
Circle in the Water - director, adapter
Score - director, playwright
Tubstrip - director, playwright
Max's Millions - director, co-author with Raymond Wood
Mandy Merck's Perversions: Deviant Readings includes the chapter "More of A Man: Gay Porn Cruises Gay Politics," analyzing the intersection of gay political activism and pornography in Douglas' 1991 film. Media scholar Jeffrey Escoffier describes Douglas' 1973 filmThe Back Row as the first example of homorealist gay pornographic cinema, which "created a synthesis of a documentary-like view and the more psychopolitical themes of sexual liberation." Theatre scholar Jordan Schildcrout discusses Douglas' 1973 play Tubstrip, a comedy set in a gay bathhouse that ran for approximately 500 performances, as the most widely seen example of gay erotic theatre, a theatrical sub-genre in the early years of gay liberation, which offered "the most exuberant and affirming depictions of same-sex sexuality heretofore seen in the American theatre."
