Jim Mitchell (film producer)

James "Jim" Lloyd Mitchell (born November 30, 1943 in Stockton , California , † July 12, 2007 in Petaluma , California) was an American porn film producer and in the spring of 1991 as his brother's murderer in the media.

Jim and his two year younger brother Artie grew up as the sons of a professional wrestler. In the mid-1960s, Mitchell studied film studies at San Francisco State University . He also worked in a cinema that showed erotic films. He quickly realized that you can make a lot of money with such films. In 1969 he opened a mix of cinema and theater with his brother and his wife Meredith Bradford in San Francisco with an affiliated film production company, where they shot their first film with Flesh Factory in 1970 . The theater was quickly considered the Carnegie Hall of Sex . Over time, the Mitchell brothers built an empire consisting of several cinemas and a film and video production company. Their guests included Huey P. Newton , Hunter S. Thompson , who also worked for them briefly, and Robert Crumb .

In the 1970s they produced some artistically very ambitious pornographic films, including classics of the genre such as Behind the Green Door (1972) with Marilyn Chambers in the leading role, Resurrection of Eve (1973) and Sodom & Gomorrah (1975). Mitchell also directed many of these films . Behind the Green Door in particular was also a huge financial success with a profit of $ 25 million at a production cost of $ 60,000 and made the brothers millionaires. The brothers co-founded a wave that went down in history as porn chic . Jim Mitchell's last major film was the 1985 Traci Lords film Grafenberg Spot .

Jim was the quieter of the brothers, although he too was married several times and had several children. Artie was a rather extroverted person who, over time, fell under the spell of alcohol and other drugs, thereby permanently damaging the brothers' business. Jim finally shot his brother dead on February 27, 1991 in an argument about the future of their business. In court, Jim Mitchell stated that the killing was an accident. The armed rifle and pistol with which he had driven to his brother's house spoke against the correctness of this statement . He was eventually sentenced to six years in prison, of which less than three years were served in San Quentin State Prison .

After his release, he lived on his ranch near Petaluma until his death in 2007. The story of the brothers has been the subject of several books, many articles in newspapers and magazines and on the TV movie Rated X .

The murder case was described in the episode "Death in the Red Light District" of the crime documentary Medical Detectives - Secrets of Forensic Medicine .

Web links

• Jim Mitchell in theInternet Movie Database(English)
• Jim Mitchell in the Internet Adult Film Database (English)
• Obituary at newsday.com (English)