For twelve hours over the course of the evening of December 3, 1966, director Shirley Clarke and her friends interviewed Jason Holliday about his life, his loves, his work, and his beliefs. Jason, a thirty-three-year-old hustler dreaming of a career as a nightclub entertainer, dazzles the audience with stories of confrontations with his family, growing up in Trenton, orgies he has attended, and the hustling that has formed the pattern of his life as a black gay man. He recalls his college days before dropping out, his time as a bar hustler and a servile houseboy in San Francisco, and his days on heroin, in jail, and on a hospital mental ward. In Portrait of Jason, Holliday is given the entire screen for nearly two hours, during which time he makes probably as candid a self-revelation as has ever been seen on film or read in books. And yet, how much is true and how much is performance?