Their fame rose quickly, reaching cult status with "Behind the Green Door." Several other films followed and they made millions of dollars. When the AIDS epidemic struck, they made "safe sex" films, such as "Behind the Green Door, the Sequel," in 1986.
The movie also featured "dwarfs, fat ladies and mythical creatures." Their hub was an office above the gritty theater on O'Farrell and Polk streets, which they opened on July 4, 1969, in part because no other theaters would screen their movies. Thompson once served as night manager.
Thompson, who killed himself in 2005, once dubbed the theater the "Carnegie Hall of Public Sex." Often, the brothers hired old buddies from Antioch to work for them. A manager at the club declined to comment on Mitchell or his death, saying: "It just happened.
We're just trying to take care of business." In 1990, Artie Mitchell and other family members were rescued from a rip tide off Ocean Beach. Jim Mitchell used a surfboard to rescue his son, Storm.
Artie was hospitalized with hypothermia. A year later came the end of a brotherhood. Prosecutors described the shooting -- which occurred on a rainy night at Artie's home in Corte Madera -- as a cold-hearted bid to control a younger brother.
Jim Mitchell's lawyers claimed Artie, 45, was in an alcohol and drug-spurred tailspin and threatened to kill Jim. They painted the shooting as a desperate attempt to convince Artie to seek treatment. Jim Mitchell was armed with a rifle, a handgun, a knife and a box of ammunition when he entered the house and fired on his brother, hitting him three times.
The fatal shot hit him in the head. When police arrested Jim as he walked from the home, he had a .22-caliber rifle stuffed down a pants leg and a revolver in a shoulder holster.
Mitchell kept a wide cast of friends in San Francisco, and some of the city's political elite threw their support behind a lenient sentence, writing letters to the judge. But the judge, in handing Mitchell a 6-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter, likened him to Robert De Niro's crazed, driven killer in "Taxi Driver," saying: "You became Travis Bickle and as a result, Artie is dead. And despite his faults, Artie did not deserve to die.
" Mitchell, who walked away from San Quentin State Prison in 1997, has since lived a quiet life with horses on the ranch, family and friends said. Earline Lane, a cousin, said Mitchell raised and showed horses. "He seemed terrifically happy," said Jeannette Etheredge, owner of Tosca Cafe in North Beach, where the brothers often partied two decades ago.
Etheredge, who said she had spoken with Mitchell but hadn't seen him in years, fondly recalls "a lot of good times at my bar." "It just all happened too quickly," she said. Their fame rose quickly, reaching cult status with "Behind the Green Door.
" Several other films followed and they made millions of dollars.
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