Bottom Feeders

Hubner ( Monkey on a Stick ) presents a raw, compellingly lurid account of Jim Mitchell (b. 1943) and his younger brother, Artie (b.1945), who pioneered ``mainstream'' pornographic films during the 1970s. Raised in an ``Okie'' family in California's San Joaquin Valley, the brothers started out filming ``loops'' of topless hippie women in '60s San Francisco, where they later opened the O'Farrell Theater as a venue for their work. As they progressed to more explicit fare, they added plots and creative camera angles as means to justify their movies' artistic merits and thus get around antipornography laws. During their heyday, the brothers tangled with antiporn activists, including Dianne Feinstein (elected to the U.S. Senate last fall) and convicted S & L felon Charles Keating, and gave porn star Marilyn Chambers her start in Behind the Green Door . Hubner concentrates on the Mitchells' headstrong, country-boy mentality as he leads up to their last act: in 1991 Jim fatally shot Artie, who had become a drug addict and alcoholic. Jim was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. In a book that no doubt will receive major local attention, Hubner neither sensationalizes nor flinches from the sordid facts in the lives of these emblematic ``pornographers of the flower children.'' (Mar.)