Calson was born to a Romanian father and a Jewish-Romanian mother. They left Bucharest when he was 7 years old and settled in Glendale, California. He went on to enroll at Antioch University in Los Angeles, California. Developing an interest in music at an early age, he eventually became a music writer for the now cancelled Los Angeles LGBT magazine "4-Front". Later Calson expanded his interests to include filmaking.
Calson's films include Shiner and Flirting With Anthony. Rife with foul language and bad behavior, his characters and storylines are usually about sexual anxiety and a blurred line between sexuality and violence. He's been considered part of the NEW New Queer Cinema (Frameline) but he has strong feelings of displeasure at most gay themed films coming out of the United States. With the release of Shiner, he told The San Francisco Chronicle, "I want people to respond on a visceral level... I'm not after their minds, I'm after their gut. ... I'm not trying to make friends with this film."
