Shirley Clarke's extraordinary portrait of Jason Holliday, a 33-year old black male prostitute and sometime nightclub performer, was shot in one all-night session in Clarke's living room, where Holliday talked for 12 hours straight. Jason does his “numbers” for the camera--female impersonations, tales of his houseboy days in San Francisco, and wildly funny stories of his sexual adventures. As his act gets more serious, Portrait of Jason becomes a disturbing view of a soul laid bare--and a powerful revelation of what society can do to a man it doubly rejects, as a black and as a homosexual. Clarke and her crew also play a role in the film; not mere spectators, they become participants in Jason's monologue, a provocative audience to whom he reacts. Clarke has noted, “Little did I expect how much of ourselves we would reveal as the night progressed. Originally I had planned that you would see and hear only Jason, but when I saw the rushes I knew the real story of what happened that night....” Using minimal camera techniques, Clarke saw Portrait of Jason as an experiment in cinéma verité in which, for the first time as director, she felt “able to give up...intense control and allow Jason and the camera to react to each other.”