Jeff Stryker

Early life

Jeff Stryker grew up in Springfield. His father was a car salesman and his mother was a nurse. Springfield was struggling economically, and there was a crime wave. Consequently, Jeff was often involved in fights. At age 13, he was sent to military school by his parents, who got a divorce while he was away.

Pre-film career

Jeff Stryker worked as a male stripper and delivered balloon-o-grams before a local photographer sent shots of him to gay adult film director John Travis in California.

Film career and sexuality

Stryker is primarily known as a performer in gay pornography films, although Jamie Loves Jeff was one of the biggest selling heterosexual adult movies of all time for its producer, Vivid Entertainment. He describes himself (in a somewhat joking fashion) as sexually "universal". He has also said, "I don’t define myself as anything."

He also tried his hand at acting, starring in a 1989 Italian-produced horror movie called After Death (Revenge of the Zombies), in which he was credited as Chuck Peyton but later in the USA DVD release the name Jeff Stryker was used as well a trailer interview was added with Jeff current at the time describing the experience he had while shooting this movie in Manila. Jeff also starred in the short film by German cult director Rosa von Praunheim Can I Be Your Bratwurst Please?. Under character Jeff Stryker, Charles also co starred in "The Judge who loved death" starring James Brolin, as well as in a feature titled "Dirty Love".

Awards and tributes

Merchandising

The “Jeff Stryker Cock and Balls,” a dildo fashioned from a cast of his penis, is widely sold in sex stores. The dildo was academically analyzed in a paper presented at the 1995 Bowling Green State University Conference in Cultural Studies: Lesbian Pornography and Transformation: Foucault, Bourdieu, and de Certeau Make Sense of the Jeff Stryker Dildo, by Mary T. Conway, then a graduate student at Temple University. The sex toy is notable not only for being popular, but also as Stryker and the manufacturer of the item litigated for the rights to its likeness as part of Stryker's "intellectual property". (The case eventually reached a mutually acceptable resolution - see Legal Battles.) In a 1999 Salon.com article written by Jeff Stryker, a New York journalist and the porn actor's namesake, the dildo is even described as an object of higher culture. It was mentioned in Allan Gurganus' 1997 novel Plays Well with Others, where the novel's narrator cleans up a closet filled with dildos, the premium find being "a Jeff Stryker, a monster, but somehow Roman in its genial fluted civic beauty."

Stryker has released a compact disc (Wild Buck) of country music that he performed, and in his pornographic video, Bigger Than Life, he performed a rock song of the same name.

Reaction from other celebrities

Legal battles

Stryker later sued Health Devices Inc. and California Publishers Liquidating Corp. for over $1 million for breach of contract and piracy when they sold a bootleg dildo of his genitals without paying him sufficiently. The case was heard before a judge in Los Angeles, who eventually brokered a deal whereby the case was dismissed upon payment of $25,000 to Stryker and the return and right to reproduce all items which Stryker endorsed.

Stryker has also had arguments with Kulak's Woodshed, a folk-music nightclub, that is next door to his office. He claims that the club causes disturbance normally associated with large late-night urban venues: noise, drugs, unruly patrons, vandalism, graffiti, public urination and parking headaches. James Britton, who operates a floor covering business on the other side of the club, also complains that the club has damaged his business. In January 2009, the L.A. Weekly reported that Stryker blamed the nightclub for preventing him from completing his autobiography, as the noise and crowds disturbed his concentration. “(My writing has) been put on perpetual hold until I can get myself back together,” he told the newspaper. “I got a $25,000 advance on (the book) but could never complete it.”

But Paul Kulak counter claims (according to the L.A. Weekly) that Stryker has made threats to him and the club's customers: “He constantly reminds me he’s a firearms expert and will hide behind his back door when I dump the trash. Once, he started making mechanical gun clicks. I could see he had a pistol in his hand as he was dry-firing it... I’m willing to risk my life to keep this [club] going.” Stryker responded to Kulak's claim and was quoted as saying, "That guy is so out there!"

Stage shows

Stryker appeared in "A Sophisticated Evening with Jeff Stryker" in Los Angeles, Summer 2006, and also in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Summer 2007. The show was produced by comedy writer Bruce Vilanch. In that show, Stryker performed a comic monologue about his life and adventures in adult films, conducted a "porn acting demo" comedy skit with an audience member, and danced in a nude finale where he greeted the audience.

In 2001, he did a stage show called Hard Time. The play was a comedy set inside a prison and was homosexual in nature. In the finale Stryker danced nude. After the play Styker met with the audience at the door. It appeared in several cities including Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; and Houston, Texas.

Gay

Heterosexual and bisexual

Other