An Educated Man: Jamie Gillis

An interview in full

My friend, actor Jamie Gillis died in 2010 after a long struggle with cancer. He was a legend in the sex film business whom I've written about over the years the way 20th century movie critics wrote about Meryl Streep.

They broke the mold with this guy.

Gillis grew up in the City, one of six kids with a father who was known as "The Mayor of the Roseland Ballroom." He graduated from Columbia University in 1970. He is an only-on-the-island man.

He was a classical repertory actor, scrounging extra money as a cabbie, working as a mime in the Park, when he answered an ad in the Village Voice for a movie gig that turned out to a casting call for porn loops— the kind of tiny movies that used to be shown in peep shows. 

Film still of Gillis from Richard Mahler’s (aka Roger Watkins) “Midnight Heat,” 1983

Gillis went on to act in the most important movies that were ever made in American erotic cinema — Radley Metzger titles like The Opening of Misty Beethoven— and his unforgettable roles in the fi…