Early Life
The Mitchells' father, Robert (known to all as Bob), an "Okie," was a professional gambler. He and his wife, Georgia Mae, settled in Antioch, near San Francisco and, according to the Mitchell brothers' biographers, provided a relatively stable childhood for Jim and Artie; the boys were popular and their childhood friends would become important members of the Mitchells' porn empire.
Jim, a part-time filmmaking student at San Francisco State University in the mid-1960s, aspired to become an "important" director like Francis Ford Coppola and Roman Polanski, and headed a clique of classmates with similar ambitions. While in school, he worked at the Follies, a cinema showing "nudies" (brief, plotless films featuring naked performers), and observed that each night the theater was filled with "horn dick daddies" (masturbators) who arrived simply for the onscreen nudity. He therefore perceived pornography as a potentially lucrative career opportunity for himself and Artie, who had just been discharged from the Army.
Read more about this topic: Mitchell Brothers
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)