Willard did his physique and leather photography under the pseudonym Bruce King, under which he also started "Gay Scene", the first gay magazine in NYC.
In 2011, Cary Kehayan wrote about how the film came to be: "A few months ago, director Ira Sachs and I took a trip to the New York Public Library's Manuscripts and Archives Division. Ira had first heard about Avery Willard through singer Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons. When Ira and Adam Baran asked Antony what films he would want to show at their Queer/Art/Film series at the IFC Center, Antony said that he wanted to show films he'd only heard about but never seen: the lost films of Charles Ludlam and Avery Willard. Ira and Adam had restored and presented the Charles Ludlam films at their series, and now it was time to see what could be done about Avery Willard.
Upon requesting access to the Avery Willard Collection at the library, we were presented with three nondescript cardboard boxes. Each contained dozens of tangled, decaying reels of film shot by Mr. Willard from the 1940s through the 1970s. After restoring and viewing four of the prints, we were instantly mesmerized. The films were so wonderfully strange and enchanting that we knew there had to be a fascinating life behind them. And so, with almost no clues, we set out in search of Avery Willard."