I heard about Russ Meyer films ever before seeing one, but when I did see my first - I believe it was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - it was obvious that he was a director with a personal stamp. Over the top acting/plotlines, big bosums, square jaws, rapid editing, way out camera work - Meyer films have a definite style, something confirmed when I saw my second Meyer, Seven Minutes.
From reading this thorough bio on the man it seems the two most formative things of Meyer's upbringing were (a) he didn't have a dad and relationship with mom was a little weird (she worshipped him and he her but it was a bit tormenting) and (b) he loved being a photographer in the army during World War Two. Once Meyer got out of the army, he didn't want to stop living life like that so he went into the next best thing, show bix. After putting in years and years as a photographer (he did stills of Jimmy Dean in Giant, something I didn't know), he started making movies and earned a fortune. But be careful what you wish for - a life surrounded by bosums, sycophants and sex meant Meyer wound up with no relationship (he was married three times - his second wife was the Great Love of His Life, but that pasison burned out, as it often does in such cases) and he was ga-ga for the last few years of his life (actually probably longer than that). Those sort of endings sort of ruin the good natured fun of the book - Meyers' Alzheimers is always hanging over it. Would he have avoided it had he led a "normal" life? Who knows.
The book is full of sad stories which kind of ruin the fun - none of the people in his films became a film star (Tura Santana should have and Charles Napier almost did), none of the people who worked on his films became a major player, so you have lots of depressing "they went through hard times" stories. McDounogh tries to keep things positive, to his credit; he also tries to tell both sides of the story of Meyer's last years (when people said a nurse basically took him captive) and has done a large amount of research. I occasionally found his writing style a little hard to take, especially when he used slang and swear words and talked about himself getting aroused by photos (this sort of cool-talking style was also used by Clinton in his book on Orson Welles; both Clinton and McDounogh have written rock biographies, maybe it's something about that genre). It goes into long descriptions about the quality of still photographs - it's a shame we couldn't have seen more of these in the book instead. However, it is very good on the films and it basically a largely entertaining read.
1 comment:
Well written article.
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