The Rialto Report

When adult film star Jamie Gillis, and his restaurant critic girlfriend, Gael Greene, started to write Jamie’s autobiography together, Gael wanted to meet his friends and family and interview them about their feelings towards Jamie.  And one of these was a former girlfriend, Renee – one of the most important people in Jamie’s life. Jamie had met Renee over ten years earlier, back in the late 1960s. At the time, he’d just returned from Europe after trying to make a living as a mime. When he got back to the city, he took a small room in the house of an older man, Paul, a dentist, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Being Jamie, it was a typically unusual arrangement: Paul was infatuated with him, and gave him living expenses while Jamie got his New York life together.   And then Jamie met Renee – and they started a close and intimate relationship that lasted for years. But here’s the rub: Jamie met Renee when she was 15 and still at school. He was 22. They moved in, and were living together when Jamie first answered an ad for nude modeling which resulted in his adult film career.   When Gael spoke to Renee, Jamie and Renee had been split up for years, but were still close friends. She was a natural for Gael to speak with. Gael wanted to hear about their time together, his family – his distant mother, and his father Abi who he took after in many ways. And, at the very heart of their conversation, was the overarching question that had come to dominate Gael’s life: could Jamie change?   Gael taped the conversation with Renee, and it remained unheard for the last 50 years. This is Part 4 of the story of Jamie Gillis and Gael Greene in 1978: Renee’s Story You can listen to Part 1 of the series here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here. This podcast is 39 minutes long. * The post The Porn Star and the Foodie: Jamie Gillis & Gael Greene in 1978 – Part 4: Renee’s Story – Podcast 179 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

It’s 1978, and Jamie Gillis is one of the most famous sex film stars in the world. Not just that, but he has a well-known girlfriend too – the high-profile restaurant critic for New York magazine, Gael Greene. Their relationship has opened the door for Jamie to New York society – elegant events, exclusive nightclubs, and most importantly for Jamie, the best restaurants. On the face of it, they’re well-suited: their business is sex and their passion is food. Or is it the other way round? And does it even matter? Jamie is at his peak, darkly handsome, deeply sexual, aloof, and mysterious – but shunned by polite society. Gael is the opposite: a cool blonde, ten years older, and well-regarded in cultured circles. Gael believes in Jamie and encourages her famous well-connected friends to hire him as a legit mainstream actor: people like super-agent Sue Mengers, or writer Peter Maas, author of Serpico, who is casting for the lead role of the film adaptation of his book, King of the Gypsies. Gael was obsessed by Jamie’s sexually wanton lifestyle and she decides that she and Jamie will write a book together – and the source material will be a series of audio diaries that Jamie will record detailing his life. She thinks it should be named, ‘The Prince of Porn is a Happy Man.’ There is one problem: Jamie’s isn’t particularly happy, and his life is backsliding. You see, his age weighs heavily on his psyche, as does a feeling that a fulfilled life is getting away from him. Sure he’s started therapy sessions with Robert Firestone, a clinical psychologist – but Firestone pursued him to be a client after spending hours admiring Jamie’s pornographic film appearances in Times Square theaters. Jamie loves the theater and is a regular at Broadway plays, but that also serves as a reminder that he’s an anonymous and failed actor – even though he’s recognized every day on the street as a porn star. And so, his life goes on: by day, he continues to appear in the city’s low budget sex films, in the early hours he can often be found in the city’s underground poker games, and in between times, he listens to piano concertos, gazing out of his apartment window on West 48th Street at the hookers, pickpockets, and street life. And then there’s the sex. It’s an all-consuming hunger in his life. He’s recovering from a failed love affair with Lorey Sebastian that had promised so much but went sour so quickly. Now he’s returned to casual hook-ups with a vengeance and an unquenchable desire. A bewildering variety of partners, some including Nelson, a Puerto Rican rough trade boyfriend, who was often his wing-man partner in carnal adventures. Needless to say, most of these sexual escapades are without Gael. After the initial thrill of their union, Jamie is increasingly conflicted by their relationship: he recognizes that she provides security, safety and opportunity – it’s just that he isn’t sure he really values those qualities. Above all, he’s dissatisfied with Gael sexually, admitting that he needs the added stimulation of a men’s magazine when he’s with her. It all leads to a spiraling turmoil of self-questioning with occasional flashes of optimism and happiness. And these innermost feelings, thoughts, and reactions are documented in these tapes made almost 50 years ago. They’ve been hidden away for decades, unheard until today. These recordings, after-hours reflections, candid, honest, and unfiltered, are presented here for the first time. Needless to say, turn off now if you’re liable to be offended. This is Part 3 of the story of Jamie Gillis and Gael Greene in 1978: Backsliding Into The Dark. You can listen to Part 1 of the series here, and Part 2 here. This podcast is 37 minutes long. * The post The Porn Star and the Foodie: Jamie Gillis & Gael Greene in 1978 – Part 3: Backsliding Into The Dark – Podcast 178 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Tina Marie straddled two completely different worlds: by day, you could find her behind a desk in a Beverly Hills legal office or by the pool of the senior living community she found her way into. On nights and weekends, she was Bad Tina – an adult film star and high-end call girl whose image was plastered across men’s magazines and movie screens. Tina was conflicted and wanted out of the business, but the bills kept piling up. Then she met aspiring porn producer Mark Carriere who traveled halfway across the country to find her. They built an adult industry empire together that earned them plenty of money – but how much is enough when all you really want is to be Good Tina. In this second part of her story, Tina Marie talks about transactional sex, the price of a deathbed promise, and what happens when you finally decide not to be ashamed anymore. Tina Marie calls it an exorcism. I call it an affirmation. This podcast is 58 minutes long. Listen to the first part of Tina Marie’s story. —————————————————————————————————————— Tina Marie         with Richard Milner   * The post Tina Marie – Good Tina, Bad Tina – Part 2: Podcast 177 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

When you think of adult video vixens in the 1980s, you may think of Ginger Lynn, Christy Canyon, or Traci Lords. But they weren’t the only fan favorites on the scene. Take Tina Marie: she was like a Robert Crumb goddess come to life. She started out in men’s magazines and sex loops in the early 1980s, and quickly moved on to starring roles in feature films before stepping behind the camera to produce and direct adult movies with her husband Mark Carriere.  It wasn’t the professional path Tina imagined for herself growing up as the daughter of a fundamentalist Samoan minister in New Zealand and Trinidad. And while it was a career that introduced Tina to many things she prizes to this day, it was a job that came at an existential price: how do you reconcile the idea of yourself that you grew up with – the dutiful daughter, the spiritual sister, the good girl – with the adult industry powerhouse you became? In this first part of her story, Tina Marie talks about growing up as a preacher’s daughter, finding and starting to question her identity, getting her start in porn, and the wild party scene that wrapped around the adult industry.  This podcast is 64 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————— Tina Marie     Laurie Smith with Tina Marie * The post Tina Marie – Good Tina, Bad Tina – Part 1: Podcast 176 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

A look back at Ray's controversial life and work in his last years, in light of the investigation into the disappearance of several women.