There was a time when you’d have to say Dick Miller was symbolic of the success of the adult industry. I’d go to industry gatherings or meetings, and there would be Miller at the bar, springing for drinks, pulling a ball of hundred dollar bills, held together by a rubber band, out of his pants pocket.

“Hey, buddie!” is the way Miller would greet you. If he saw you across the room, it was even a louder ‘hey, buddie.’ Miller was the consummate salesman, back thumper, firm handshaker. Always had a funny story. Miller back in the day wore his blond hair Rod Stewart-style and cocked his head in a way to emphasize the hair cut.

Today I wonder if Miller has become the signpost for where the adult industry is going. Because things are not going that well. Truly, one of the coolest dudes on the planet, Miller, who was in town since May, took his life over the weekend and went out the way Hemingway went.

The way Hunter S. Thompson went. Maybe when you’re like those guys, that’s the way you’re supposed to do it. There was talk that Miller had suffered some business setbacks. But I’m hearing from people who just talked to him recently, that Miller was as exuberant and optimistic as ever. Maybe it’s because he never married. Exuberance stays with you a lot longer.

When I lived in Philadelphia and would make occasional trips to LA on behalf of AVN, I’d stay at Miller’s house in the Valley.

The first time Miller tells me, he’ll be waiting for me at LAX. I get there, no Miller. I call Miller to find out he’s at Jim South’s for the Thursday night poker game. I didn’t know about this little weekly ritual, but Miller tells me to take a cab to South’s. I’m kind of pissed off to tell you the truth. Later we went back to his house and spent most of my visit hanging by the pool, drinking like fraternity brothers and telling seduction stories.

Miller’s lifestyle struck me as a guy who dug shallow roots and was ready to move on at a given notice. Always well dressed though, his clothes closet was minimal. He was a guy who loved the written word- I know because he was always busting my ass with some critique of an article I had written- but I couldn’t find anything resembling a book in Miller’s house.

I do remember an old 8 by 10 black and white photo he kept of himself in the kitchen. It was from his younger days and he’s cradling an old Bell & Howell movie camera. And to explain the photo he’d tell me about his days on the Sunset Strip and how he’d hustle a buck every which way.

There were times later when “Dickie” and I met Friday nights- at the Red Onion on Canoga and Victory which is now the sports bar BJ’s. Miller wanted to do some project involving director Radley Metzger. It was a vampire movie, and Miller asked me write the script. But I think that project wound up in some cemetery in Trannsylvania because I never heard a word about it after several weeks of these get togethers.

I wrote a treatment but after awhile never bothered to ask where this project was headed. Miller’s gleeful personality was such that you avoided bringing up minor issues and details such as that.

Miller, who used to own Intropics Video back in the Eighties, left the country years ago to live in the Czech Republic. There he shared a house with Scotty Fox, a well known director from the business and another hard fisted drinker like Miller. I heard from Miller as soon as he got there. He urged me to move in with him, that the women there were the most beautiful in the world. And Miller would then bring me up to date with the latest dormitory yarns involving him and Scotty chasing these broads.

Miller was always chasing women. The younger the better- but not to be taken in an evil sense. Miller was also known for bringing this girl named Angel into the business. She was a big thing for the time, then left. Later Miller tried bringing her back with disastrous results, and I busted his balls about that.

Miller would still come into town. Doctors, had, by this time, informed him of a brain aneurism and Miller had to have surgery. So when I met up with him at TGI Friday’s in the Valley on one of those visits, I half expected to see Frankenstein. But Miller looked fine and was joking and laughing though his hair was cut much shorter.

Miller was this Ponce de Leon character who carried the fountain of youth around with him. Though perhaps age and illness finally told him you can’t be Ponce any more.

The perennial schoolboy lives for the weekends and the eternal summers and the latest adventures they bring. For this you can’t wait to spring out of bed. When you grow older, with the attendant aches and pains and knowledge that you might be the funniest 60 year old guy in the room but no longer the object of some 20 year-old’s affection, you wonder if you’re going to wake up at all. And, if so, is it worth it for the rest of what life’s about to deal you.

Maybe Dickie, like a Hemingway or a Hunter S. Thompson, was too tired of playing the guessing game.