In 1980, a young straight-porn director called Chris Covino walked into a New York City fetish club and met a man who introduced himself as J.R. Lewis. Over the course of that conversation, Lewis agreed to fund something Covino had always fantasised about: a high-production gay porno, shot like a Hollywood epic, set in ancient Rome.
The budget was $100,000. The result was Centurians of Rome, a film that would become the most expensive gay porn production of its time, featuring real horses, catering, daily cash wages, and a fisting scene that was included solely because the director of a club called Fist Fuckers of America offered a free lifetime membership in exchange.
But J.R. Lewis was not who he claimed to be. His real name was George Bosque, a closeted, deeply conflicted former Brink's security guard who had walked off with $1.85 million from San Francisco International Airport just months earlier, in what was then the second-largest cash robbery in American history. The porno was funded entirely with stolen money. When Bosque was eventually caught, the legal fallout dragged one of the most prestigious insurance institutions in the world, Lloyd's of London, into a courtroom fight over ownership of a hardcore gay film. The story of Centurians of Rome is a collision of ambition, repression, absurdity and tragedy that none of its participants could have predicted.
What Happened with Centurians of Rome?
Centurians of Rome began as a conversation between two strangers in one of New York's most notorious gay clubs, the Mineshaft, in the early 1980s. Chris Covino, a 27-year-old director who had built a successful career in straight pornography under the alias John Christopher, met a charismatic newcomer to the city's gay scene who called himself J.R. Lewis. When Covino mentioned he'd need around $100,000 to produce a gay porn film to the standard he wanted, Lewis agreed on the spot.
Covino wrote a script set in ancient Rome under the reign of Emperor Caligula, following two countrymen, Demetrius and Octavius, who are arrested for unpaid taxes and sold into slavery. He cast established performer George Payne and an up-and-coming stripper called Scorpio, whose real name was Wilbur James Weiss Jr. The production was unlike anything the gay porn industry had seen. There were costumes, catering, Roman-style sets, and real horses. Actors were paid daily in cash from Lewis's limousine.
The problems started almost immediately. Lewis constantly interfered with the production, rewriting scenes, interrupting filming, and having sex with actors between takes. The set was awash with cocaine, with Lewis apparently keeping a ten-pound bag of it in his car. Actors fell off stages, entire sets collapsed, and the horses, which none of the performers could ride, wandered freely through scenes. The shoot, originally planned for four days, lasted twelve. The budget blew past $150,000.
When filming wrapped, Lewis threw a lavish party and then disappeared. Covino, left with unusable footage and mounting debts, signed over ownership rights to an adult production company called Hand in Hand Films in exchange for post-production funding. He never consulted Lewis, reasoning that no written contract had ever existed between them.
The identity of J.R. Lewis only became clear when George Manuel Bosque was arrested in November 1981. Bosque had been a closeted gay man from Miami, the son of a Cuban immigrant, who had spent years trying and failing to enter law enforcement. On 15 August 1980, the day after his partner Carl Denton left him, Bosque drove off with $1.85 million in cash from a Brink's armored van at San Francisco International Airport. He fled to New York, assumed his false identity, and spent virtually all of the stolen money within a year, including funding Centurians of Rome.
The federal prosecutor who handled Bosque's case was Robert Mueller, later known for leading the Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Bosque was sentenced to fifteen years and served five. He was released on parole in 1986 and died of a drug overdose in 1991, aged 36.
Because the stolen money had been insured by Lloyd's of London, the insurance giant pursued Bosque through the courts and eventually won ownership of the film. In a memorable courtroom moment, Hand in Hand Films' lawyers passed around explicit stills from the movie and asked Lloyd's executives whether they truly wanted a hardcore gay porno on their books. Lloyd's said yes. But the film was a commercial failure. Critics found it too serious, too long on dramatic monologues, and too short on what audiences expected from hardcore pornography. It was also released with a permanent typo in the title: "Centurians" rather than "Centurions". Lloyd's quietly sold the distribution rights to independent adult film companies.
In 2019, journalists Ashley West and April Hall published a detailed investigation into the story for The Daily Beast. Within weeks, the screen rights were acquired in a competitive deal by Valparaiso Pictures and Permut Presentations, with David Permut, the producer of Face/Off, attached. A mainstream film adaptation has not yet been announced.
Why This Story Matters
The story of Centurians of Rome sits at an unusual intersection of LGBTQ history, criminal justice, and the economics of the adult film industry. It is, in one sense, a story about what happens when serious money meets an industry that has never had any, and how ambition without discipline produces spectacular failure. But underneath the absurdity is a much darker thread about the cost of repression.
George Bosque spent his entire youth suppressing his sexuality under the weight of his father's expectations. He wrote homophobic editorials while secretly dating men. He collected Nazi memorabilia while struggling to understand why institutions kept rejecting him. When he finally found liberation, it was as a fugitive spending stolen money in the clubs and bathhouses of 1980s New York, a scene that would itself be devastated by the AIDS crisis within a few years. Bosque's trajectory from closeted conservative to fugitive pornographer is extreme, but the forces that shaped it, shame, repression, the desperation for approval, are recognisable.
The fate of the cast underlines the human cost of the era. Of 34 actors tracked by the Daily Beast investigation, 22 died before the age of 45, predominantly from AIDS. Chris Covino, the director who had always planned to use pornography as a stepping stone to Hollywood, contracted AIDS and died at 31. Scorpio, who grew up openly and comfortably gay in a New Jersey trailer park with the full support of his mother, died on Christmas Eve 1998 from stomach cancer and AIDS complications. Carl Denton, the man Bosque called the love of his life and whose departure triggered the robbery, died in Houston in 2000 at the age of 41.
And then there is the institutional absurdity. Lloyd's of London, one of the oldest and most respected financial institutions on earth, the company that insured the Titanic and processed claims after 9/11, fought in open court to own a film featuring gladiatorial fellatio and a fisting scene filmed at a club called Fist Fuckers of America. The film bombed. The title was misspelled. And Lloyd's sold it off quietly when their more conservative clients complained.
Centurians of Rome endures as a cult classic not because it is good pornography but because the story behind it is stranger, sadder and more compelling than anything its creators managed to put on screen
Topics Include
The true story behind Centurians of Rome, the most expensive gay porn film ever made
George Bosque's $1.85 million Brink's robbery and the year he spent as a fugitive in New York
The chaotic production of a Roman-era porn epic funded entirely with stolen money
How Lloyd's of London ended up owning and then quietly selling a hardcore gay film
The hidden lives and tragic fates of the director, actors and financier behind the film
Why the 2019 Daily Beast investigation sparked a competitive Hollywood movie deal