My Weekend With Myra

Here I am, crashing the party otherwise known as the Camp & Cult Blogathon, presented by Stacia at She Blogged by Night. While I may often believe that those two adjectives should be relegated to the other forbidden C-words in modern conversation, I certainly do love a little celebration of the histrionic and the dementedly devotional, so there's no reason to be a sourpuss just because a few people don't understand that not every movie with overacting is automatically funny, and not every ultra-low-budget poverty production deserves to be ranked in the same company as those that earned their legions. Dare I say it, you don't have a good camp experience without a good counselor, so here I am with my whistle, though I'm more apt to blow on it to chant along with a Donna Summer song than to call stop. And in this situation, I think I have a rather amusing little story for the bonfire.

While I was never a particularly devoted reader of his books, I had a fine respect for the late Gore Vidal. I had grown up hearing him name-checked by people of many stripes whom I knew were smart, and coming across a money quote of his - "As I looked upon my life, I realized I loved nothing - not art, not sex - more than going to the movies." - I sensed that this was someone who had my number. But as an individual who also grew up being told "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him," and "If your mother says she loves you, check it out," I often found myself in disagreement with some of his pronouncements. So, with the help of some distance past his passing from the corporeal realm, I choose to commemorate his life by ruminating on my personal relationship to something he thoroughly detested: the film adaptation of his 1968 novel MYRA BRECKINRIDGE...because, to paraphrase what was once said about Led Zeppelin, I can only honor the great contrarian by destroying him.


For the uninitiated, MYRA BRECKINRIDGE was an amusing book by Gore Vidal that was turned into a harshly comic, proto-FIGHT CLUB rant on Hollywood by director Michael Sarne. The mysterious Myra (Racquel Welch), an inveterate lover of old-time movie glamour, comes to town to subvert and destroy all the trappings of new Hollywood -- overt macho, method acting, etc. She will run riot on her ersatz uncle-in-law, fallen cowboy star Buck Loner (John Huston), and seduce both man's man Rusty (Roger Herren) and his sugar-sweet girlfriend Mary Ann (Farrah Fawcett). The movie had instantly piqued my curiosity when my seventh-grade teacher, already savvy to my film obsession, lent me her copy of the Medved brothers' now-rather-harsh-and-easily-debunked book "THE FIFTY WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME," and it had a very detailed chapter about its notoriety. At the dawn of videotape rentals, I insisted my dad bring it home to watch, and it quickly became one of my favorite bizarre movies (and, if you wanna get technical, my first X-rated movie). As a child, I had embraced this as gonzo camp, under that unbearably hoary cliché of "so bad it's good" (which is so overused, it's done!), but over the years I've turned a corner (and I know I'm quite alone in this assessment) and openly declared this a misunderstood classic. Part of my reasoning came from reading the source novel it was based on a few years later as a full-fledged hormonal teenager: somehow, I just wasn't as entertained by Vidal's prose as I had been by the movie's repurposing of it. And I found the constant references to then-obscure-to-me-names like Pandro S. Berman and Francis X. Bushman to grow tedious. I could sense that this was subject matter that Vidal, through his protagonist, was not joking about, that he really was waging some sort of culture war against those damned hippie actors and their "Stanislavski" and their "naturalism" and wanted them all to get off of his Hollywood lawn. I found new cement for my reappraisal upon seeing David Fincher's groundbreaking FIGHT CLUB in 1999, because in its approach to adapting Chuck Palahniuk's best-seller, it was really following the exact same template: not only do both films satirize their target subjects, but they satirize their very own selves, reminding the audience that they are watching a movie and to not take anything seriously. Rather than treat the author's work like sacred canon, they openly challenge and exploit the flaws in the source material, an approach which a post-modern writer like Palahniuk seemed to enjoy, but which clearly rankled the comparably self-serious Vidal.

I stumbled into opportunity by meeting the movie's embattled director Michael Sarne in 2003 at my then-workplace. Sarne, whose career never truly recovered from the debacle that was MYRA, came into town from England, where he was working steadily as a character actor, to record a commentary for the then-upcoming DVD release. I gushed to Sarne like the excited movie geek I was, telling him how much I enjoyed MYRA and how underrated I thought it was. He in turn told me about his good fortune and that he was recording his commentary that Friday afternoon. He said he had never done one before, and was unsure how to go about it. I mentioned my experience with Tamara Hernandez and recording the commentary for MEN CRY BULLETS. GUESS WHO GOT TO SIT IN ON THE COMMENTARY RECORDING THAT FRIDAY AFTERNOON? (Yes, that moment still delights me that much that I needed the color emphasis on that rhetorical question.) Besides myself, Michael invited Stanley Sheff, an old friend, apprentice to Orson Welles, and director of LOBSTER MAN FROM MARS, to give him pointers as well. This setup was nice -- my first time in a soundproofed room, with timecode, synchronized recording with the master tapes -- way more pro than the D.I.Y. manner in which I had done Tamara's recording. Only Michael would be miked however -- we could prompt and comment during dead spots, but it would not be included -- the final audio is a complete stream of talk from him, though on occasion, you can tell he is answering a question one of us asked. And it was great, with good dishy details on the fighting and studio politics that went down during production. I was happy to be a part of it, however small. Afterward, the three of us went to brunch at Du-Par's, and I got to hear great tales of how long ago, when Sheff was working at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, he would raid movie lab dumpsters for stuff to run as loops behind bands and dancers, and how it became a mini-phenom there. And how he got to work under Welles on some of his later projects. I then gave Sarne a lift back to where he was staying, and he invited me in for a quick drink. We talked, I told him some of my film ideas and how at that point of my residency, despite four years and the big ups and downs I had taken, I loved this place and never regretted coming. He made me feel really significant. And he gave me an invite to watch the reediting later that week.

Oh, I should elaborate. In an extremely interesting turn of events we shall not likely see from a major studio again, 20th Century Fox not only commissioned a de riguer commentary track, but they allowed him to make minor reedits to the film. MYRA punctuates it's story points with classic film clips (a la DREAM ON if you remember that HBO series), and initially certain clips were denied him despite being in a workprint that tested well in San Francisco. Most notoriously, a MYRA character's fantasy sequence would have been followed by a clip from REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM, where Shirley Temple attempts to milk a goat and gets sprayed with the white stuff. She was not amused at the juxtaposition, and used near-Presidential influence to have it removed. While Sarne was still not allowed to use that clip, he was allowed to use a similar substitute (if one could be found), to smooth out and fix transitions between the film and the clips, and to make a key alteration to the film's ending in the manner of the DVD-only, "easter egg" B&W opening sequence on THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. So now, I had not only sat in on the recording of an aural history of one of my favorite films, I was going to watch it get reedited, an enormous privilege!

So early one afternoon, before going to work, I politely blustered my way into the telecine/color correction session for MYRA BRECKINRIDGE. When I arrived, the work was already underway, just Sarne and a computer colorist named Sheri. The primary task at hand was to sort through the miscellaneous B&W clips interspersed within the film, and provide appropriate tinting to help them match the color scenes they bisected. This was NOT "colorization," like Ted Turner was trying to foist in the '80's, but just tinting the image so that if the color scene happens in a beige, muted room, that the B&W scene doesn't jar the viewer -- instead, it would have a similar color injected, warm the image from cold grayness. Sarne had always suggested that since the story could only exist as fantasy, that the clips should suggest that Old Hollywood was present in the "New" environment as these events were happening, and making commentary upon it. Watching the process, and having seen MYRA a few times, the tints made dramatic sense, and made the snippets more organic, less distancing. Actors and photos looked to have more fleshtone, were not so harsh. And it was amazing what the computer could do. For example, for some inexplicable reason, in the original theatrical print, a clip featuring Tyrone Power as Zorro had a weird, deep red tint applied, even though the scene it was interrupting was not dominated by red. While it could not be completely eradicated, the operator was able to mute it down, take it to a more palatable tan. I am unable to make vidcaps from my DVD to show you the specifics, and this detail seemed to elude DVD reviewers who watched both versions and failed to notice these subtle changes, but you can play this Zorro excerpt in each version on your home unit and see the difference for yourself.

But then, there was the big task. As I said before, there was the matter of that payoff to the dream sequence and the Temple clip was still off limits. But Sarne had permission to replace the mundane "cannon fire" clip that had been ultimately inserted in the original version. We had discussed during a break in the previous commentary recording why that scene was so funny in it's original conception. It wasn't just the juxtaposition of a face full of milk to an physical body reaction, it was that it was Shirley Temple, America's sweetheart and paragon of purity and virtue, getting the mess. So the best way to try to get the same effect would be to find a clip of a similarly beloved movie star looked to for her "virtue". At the session, only two movies had been provided by the Fox archivists for us to search for clips -- AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, and MOVE OVER DARLING. (Interestingly, MOVE OVER DARLING had originally been intended as a Marilyn Monroe film -- the unfinished SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE -- and footage from that abandoned shoot does appear in MYRA, in a scene where Marilyn appears to meet the characters in another scene shot at the same poolside). When I arrived, they were trying some scene from AFFAIR, involving Deborah Kerr reacting with mock revulsion at Cary Grant over some affront while swimming, as the replacement clip. I could see the logic, but we all agreed quickly it wasn't doing the job. So we put MOVE OVER DARLING in the deck and fast-forwarded looking for stuff. Doris Day certainly fit the bill as the kind of "good girl" archetype that could provide our punchline, provided we find the right clip. First, there was a scene of her peeking behind bushes at a romantic encounter between James Garner and another girlfriend, and her facial expressions of shock and huff played well, as if reacting to the event it would be preceding. But we wanted to keep looking. And then, comedy gold fell into our laps. A chase scene led to Doris driving a tricked-out Chrysler Imperial convertible into a car wash. And by nervous fumbling with the auto controls, down went the windows and water began to rain into the car. Then came the soap and wax dispenser (0:46-0:49)...

 
As John Ritter said in SKIN DEEP, "THERE IS A GOD! AND HE'S A GAG WRITER!" Instantly, all three of us were nearly out of our chairs; we didn't even need to try inserting it to know we had our, sorry but I gotta say it, money shot. We did a bit of fine-tuning to figure out when to start and stop the clip (ideally, it was supposed to use the exact same number of seconds as the clip it would replace), but for all purposes, we were very happy. A test screening a week later for friends and video department brass had everyone laughing at the new edit.

However, much as with Ms. Temple Black, the former Doris Van Kappelhoff  was not amused either by this editorial choice, and would not sign off on its use. The fact that the bulk of her career consisted of many innuendo-laced comedies opposite the biggest closet case in Hollywood history would have implied to me she oughta have a more developed sense of humor about such things. In the final cut that made it to DVD, Sarne used a good-but-not-as-good Laurel & Hardy moment for his punch line. But o! what a fine moment that was. The thrill of discovery, the belly laughs, the ability to say "I was there, I saw it happen." I got a preview of what it would likely be like to edit my own movie, and find a moment on that bench that really works, that you know is solid. And though it could not survive in reality, it survives in my head, and now in this account.

So, Mr. Vidal, I hope you can respect the notion of agreeing to disagree on this movie. Not like you're in any position to castigate me now, you motherfucker...as the children say nowadays.  

Fallin' on the floor for STANDING OVATION!

In one of my earliest blog entries, I dabbled on the subject of loveably misbegotten films...the TROLL 2s, the HELLO DOWN THEREs...movies that confound conventional adjectives because they don't meet the artistic or intellectual standard of "good" but deliver more genuine pleasure than most films that do reach that arbitrary measure. The bearish Dave White is bullish on this type of film, what he has branded "Awful is the New Awesome," and if you consider that said adjective literally means "full of awe," he is spot-on in that description, because audiences in the right frame of mind, myself included, indeed sit in awe, wondering if what we are witnessing on screen is really happening. And in my still-controversial gobspit on THE ROOM, I delved into the appeal further, proclaiming that an audience's true enjoyment of these movies cannot be based merely in feeling superior to them, but in fact in feeling sympathetic with them, meshing the open flaws of the film to our own life's previously best-laid plans in a moment of familial love. The message to the filmmaker is you dun goofed up, and the consequences of me watching your movie will never be the same, but I can't deny the fact that I like you, right now, I like you!"

And right now, I can't deny the fact that I am currently in the midst of a ridiculously ebullient love affair with such a film: STANDING OVATION, an independently-produced East Coast-lensed spectacle attempting to be the tweener intersection of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL and "JERSEY SHORE." In a summer that has given us all manner of underwhelming and mediocre movies, and only a few legitimately brilliant ones, this shiny, scrappy, and occasionally strident film is the wild card I didn't even know I was looking for. In its short theatrical run, I have seen it twice, and if I can drag any more brave friends along while it's still onscreen, I'll return again; the as-yet unreleased DVD is as good as on my shelf when it comes out. And yes, as that preambling (and prerambling) opening paragraph indicates, most of my enjoyment is in that dreaded "meta" zone of irony that is abused so much in pop culture you could mistake it for Luka on the second floor, the kind of reaction that, to invoke legitimate irony, does get explored at one part of this movie, which concerns me a touch because I don't want any of the nice kids who worked on this film to think that I'm laughing at them...at least not in any kind of mean way that would have easily upset me when I was their age.

Let's make this clear, STANDING OVATION is not "a movie for the whole family to enjoy" as the marketing would have you believe. The majority of families who have grown accustomed to the clean, professional, and star-laden output of Walden Media for the last decade will quickly grow impatient with the abrasively low-budgeted staging on display here. And those progressive hipster parents - the kind that decry anything associated with Disney, forbid sweets, and try to accelerate their offspring's development of righteous anger by playing Consolidated in the nursery - well they'll be downright horrified at what they see as a celebration of prefab pop and the quest for shallow stardom. So unless you live in one of those households where mom, dad, and the kids pop popcorn and sit in the living room to enjoy an evening of reading out loud from the latest issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, this movie is probably not for you.

But if, like me, you find the Monkees more interesting than the Beatles, you miss Crystal Pepsi because you liked the taste, and feel a wonderful tingle every time you hear Bela Lugosi's "Home? I have no home!" speech from BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, this is a movie made for you. In the grand tradition of THE APPLE and THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE, to paraphrase from the "Stimutacs" episode of "SEALAB 2021," STANDING OVATION is a movie that makes me feel like a koala bear hacked up a rainbow in my brain...and to me, that is a pleasant thing!

STANDING OVATION, which opened in over 600 theatres on July 16th, the day before my birthday, and plummeted to 72 matinee-only screenings in its second week, is having a hard time finding any love in the marketplace, either from published critics...

And oh, the music...generic and empty, with derivative music and lyrics consisting of nothing but baseless, idiotic self-assertion. One group sings that they're "one in a million." Another sings that they're superstars. Then a little girl sings about how she's going to be a star.
Everybody's going to be a star, and could you imagine what a nightmare it would be if everybody who wants to be a star actually became a star? You wouldn't be able to walk from your front door to the car without hordes of people following you, singing and singing and singing...
It would be a nightmare. It would be even worse than this movie. But until that dreaded day, "Standing Ovation" must hold pride of place. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Standing Ovation could barely muster a golf clap from an audience. Unless you're a female senior citizen. The Kelinworth Film Production's debut flick will simply not work for anyone outside of the above mentioned and possibly a five year old. Everyone between the ages of six and sixty-five, wait for this to show on the Disney channel. In the afternoon. On Saturday. When it's raining. – Joe Belcastro, Tampa Movie Examiner

For us grinchy adults out there without children to sedate, the whole thing feels slightly less like a movie than like the filmed record of a mutiny at a juvie talent agency - Adam Markovitz, Entertainment Weekly

...or from IMDb commenters...

"Ugly kids movie...only a pedophile could love"

"Should be called 'How to Make a Narcissist.'"

"How the HECK did this get a theatrical release?"

...or even from moviegoers themselves. In a wide release of 623 screens, STANDING OVATION's opening weekend total of $343,125 (or $551 per screen) was the worst opening since TRANSYLMANIA in December of 2009, and ranks 5th in all-time worst openings since 1982. Despite the best of booster press in its location cities of Atlantic City, Cape May County, and Delaware County, PA, as well as national talk show plugs from its producer, venerated actor James Brolin, STANDING OVATION was unable to find the family audience it aspired to. And I suspect that the kids and parents who busted their buns and boiled coffee to make this film may not be 100% thrilled to hear that one of the few large contingents that's energetically trying to support it also seems to be regarding it as a post-millenial PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

I would like to assure all parties that this is not an accurate assessment. While there are still remnants of the initial Harry & Michael Medved school of snotty dismissal mingling with the too-cool-for-school detachment dinguses (or is that dingae?) that may watch this movie to mock it, everyone I've talked to who has seen STANDING OVATION knows its faults, and openly embraces it regardless. It's a stance that maverick San Francisco film programmer Jesse Hawthorne Ficks calls "neo-sincerity", which he describes as as "post-ironic...you know you can make fun of something if you want to; but, you don't really need to." It's that kind of lopsided love that fuels the cults that embrace TROLL 2, or TEEN WITCH, or any of the films that despite their perceived disposability, have somehow kept their fanbase years after their shelf life should have expired.

So sure, I could make jokes about the numerous plot threads about gambling addiction and unrequited crushes and parental absence that are introduced and then abandoned, or how the 5 Ovations are supposed to be the working-class heroes in contrast to the spoiled Wiggies yet they seem to have a budget for back-up dancers and costumes that exceeds their so-called rich rivals, or how the character of Joei Badalucci engages in stereotypes so egregious that I half-expected Joseph Columbo to rise from the grave to file a posthumous complaint from the Italian-American Civil Rights League, or that Alanna Wannabe's bratty antics are not so much adorable as more likely to inspire a response similar to Strong Bad's reaction to 'Cute Little Girl from Sit-Com Sings Patriotic Song', or the fact this story relies on so many deus ex machinae that it becomes a veritable deus ex officina...but see, those are the very things I love about the movie! Its daffy committment to what is clearly a blinkered and hyperactive 12-year-old fantasy worldview made me a little daffy too. And when left to contemplate whether to sit through the bloated emptiness of THE LAST AIRBENDER or the pained seriousness of TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE or the autopilot blandness of KNIGHT AND DAY or the calculated familiarity of THE KARATE KID...a movie like STANDING OVATION that's riddled with wrong yet smiling all the way through it is a lot more entertaining.

STANDING OVATION will never be regarded on the same level playing field as the gleaming Disney franchises to which it wants to, dare I say, Step Up. But like many determined knockoffs of bigger films (PIRANHA to JAWS, KING FRAT to ANIMAL HOUSE, LOVE AND A .45 to PULP FICTION), it is most definitely destined for cult movie status; even Brian Orndorff and Roger Moore, while both panning the film, acknowledge it's kook appeal and camp potential. There is already talk in a couple cities of reviving this in midnight screenings...when of course, the kids would be in bed and the grown-ups would have all the fun. Personally, I would love to see this become the teenybopper training film for THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW: book a theatre on Saturday mornings, let the tweener set learn how to shadow-cast and make funny callbacks, get them prepared for the sexier midnight movies when they get older. Who knows, maybe even some serious hard-partiers and ravers would still be awake from the night before to come watch as well and make it a hip destination.



Now then, in the off chance any of the kids from this movie are reading this essay:

First off, congratulations! This may not be the rave review you wanted to read in reward for your work, but what matters is you worked hard and whether people like it or hate it, you did it, and years from now you'll always be able to look back at it and think of all the fun you had. And as I am predicting, a lot of us will be watching and having fun too. Now some of you are probably also going to be looking at a decade's worth of ribbing and schoolyard taunting in the interim, so I'm hoping you've started building up a sense of humor about that. It might be cold comfort when the jokes get mean, but keep in mind that you did something big, and most people who feel like being nasty to you never will. You should read some of the rude things people said about me when I did "BEAT THE GEEKS" years ago!

And since I keep talking about this thing called "irony" and how it relates to your movie, I suggest you watch a really great documentary called BEST WORST MOVIE which was made by a former child actor about a movie he starred in, TROLL 2, that also didn't get the success or acclaim he hoped for, but earned him fans that years after the fact, are some of the best people he's ever known. I also suggest reading an essay by my friend and fellow blogger Witney Seibold about one of the other movies I compared yours to, THE APPLE, a musical that started me on my love of films like yours, and if nothing else, you can always point your friends to when they give you grief and say, "You think my movie is strange?"

Finally, I hear rumblings that you all may do a sequel. DO EET!!! Do it fast! Make it so fast we can see it this Christmas, where it will stand out in opposition to all the serious stodgy awards-season bait that will be in theatres. After all, who wants to watch another English broad in a corset suffering when STANDING OVATION II: WIGGIE WEVENGE is playing next door?

Oh yeah, and when you make that sequel, hire these boys:

No Hard Feelings?

From the day my father brought home the soundtrack album, to as recently as a few weeks ago, my love and support for THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, and the exemplary Los Angeles shadow cast Sins o' the Flesh that keeps it alive and Vegas fan-kicking every week, has not abated. When I still blogged with training wheels last year, I came out publicly as an unrepentant Rockhead. In full disclosure, I should add that despite the fact I have not worn so much as a shred of mesh and lace in the last ten years, I am a member in good standing of Sins o' the Flesh, a privilege that I hold quite dear.


This fall, the ambitious folk behind Sins o' the Flesh are marking the film's 35th Anniversary with a large-scale convention, taking place in Downtown L.A. September 23rd-25th, securing such so-hot-it-hurts venues as the downtown Standard Hotel and Club 740 to host convention events. And tonight at 7:30 PST, a webcast will go online announcing the first of what will be many high-profile convention guests. Lest one think this is the nerds-in-lingerie equivalent of "THE SIMPSONS" infamous Bi-Mon Sci-Fi Con, it ain't. Personal friendships aside, the Sins crew are busting all protruding body parts to make this a world-class event. You can see an example of their hard work in this initial video promo, NQSFW:



Recently, I was offered the opportunity to create a small promotional piece for the convention. Taking into account the recent flame wars between the devotees of certain cult movie musicals, as well as my own ongoing battle with a specific film's fanbase, I decided to take a cue from this infamous instance of Super Bowl detente and craft a short message of peace and brotherhood for all midnight movie lovers:



Yes, the fellow in the bad suit and worse wig should look familiar.

So if you feel like bringing your Jack, knife, and spoon to L.A., here's where to get more information:

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sins-O-the-Flesh-Convention/51414056952
Twitter – http://twitter.com/sinscon
MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/sinscon
LiveJournal – http://community.livejournal.com/sinscon2010/
email notifications - http://sinscon.com/subscribe/

Posthaste and Posthumous

There is something irresistable about the notion of finding and viewing a "lost" film, though nowadays the label gets bandied about so often as to carry no heft. What constitutes "lost" anymore? To some, it means that the film has always been around, just ignored upon it's first release. To others, it implies an unavailability that has been rectified. And really, you could say if you've never heard of it, it's "lost" to you. Nonetheless, part of the reason for this circumstance is because that damned adjective always gets your attention. And when it is properly applied to the category of a film that has never had any public screening previously, it works every single time, beckoning both casual viewer and hardcore cinemaniac alike. It's been the basis of novels like Tim Lucas' excellent THROAT SPROCKETS, and movies both acclaimed like BROKEN EMBRACES or infamous like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. There's inherent drama in the reality even if the finished product itself disappoints: a troubled production, a stolen negative, a warehouse fire, a worldwide hard target search - it's like getting two narratives for the price of one. And while we wait still for Peter Bogdonavich's promised reconstruction of Orson Welles' THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, and as Jerry Lewis will likely have the footage from THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED buried with him in Forest Lawn, I and other Los Angeles film fanatics have recently been able to finally view two productions that had been on the proverbial milk carton of Hollywood for decades, and with the help of progressive film bookers, they could appear in your city as well. While they couldn't be more different in terms of subject matter or target audience, they are united in their auteur's singular focus and devotion. And, sadly, the fact that neither of them are with us to enjoy their emergence.

Duke Mitchell would have already merited a decent-sized paragraph in Hollywood history solely through his short-lived teaming with comic Sammy Petrillo, which resulted in the infamous B&W quickie BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA and the apparently lifelong ire of Jerry Lewis, and for providing the singing voice for Fred Flintstone in multiple episodes of "THE FLINTSTONES" (one which initally featured the fingers-drawing-a-square gag repeated by Uma Thurman in PULP FICTION). But after seeing Francis Coppola's THE GODFATHER, and influenced by years of performing in nightclubs with criminal influence behind them, he decided to one-up the presiding Italian-American filmmaking hyphenate and single-handedly produce, write, direct, and star in a cheaper, shorter, punchier, and bloodier epic: MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE. In 1975, despite the fact that his first film had not yet received theatrical distribution, Duke and his friends set about making a followup with bigger ambitions.

Perhaps motivated by the changes and heated discussions emerging from Vatican II, or perhaps just surreptitiously stealing from espionage novelist Robert Ludlum's then-just-published comic caper book THE ROAD TO GANDOLFO, Mitchell again multitasked himself to tell a story of Three Wise Guys embarking on a most impossible kidnapping attempt. Shot under the title KISS THE RING, using short ends and borrowed locations, with no complete or organized script, it would gather dust and legend under the title GONE WITH THE POPE. Mitchell shot all that he could afford to shoot, and assembled some rough scenes together, but died in 1981 leaving it unfinished. Almost 15 years later, longtime Sam Raimi house editor (and partner in revival company Grindhouse Releasing with Sage Stallone) Bob Murawski sought out Mitchell's son Jeffrey after becoming a fast fan of MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE, and Jeffrey gave him all the elements for the otherwise-abandoned film. Stealing time away from high-profile jobs like editing the SPIDER-MAN trilogy, and working from notes scribbled on art pads and cocktail napkins, Murawski took another 15 years painstakingly contructing Mitchell's wild vision. And on Friday, March 12th, days after he and his wife won an Academy Award for editing the Best Picture winner THE HURT LOCKER, Bob Murawski, Jeffrey Mitchell, and assorted friends and family came to Hollywood Boulevard and presented the finished product to an excited house of exploitation lovers.
GONE WITH THE POPE is a strange and fascinating film that suggests Abel Ferrara and Martin Scorsese had a distaff uncle not quite ready to drop lounge music for punk rock. Playing like a geriatric predecessor to BOTTLE ROCKET, Mitchell is a contract killer who after a large whacking helps spring his longtime jailbird friends to join him on a deceptively leisurely boat trip to Italy. Once in international waters, he tells them the truth: using one of them as a double, they will abduct the Pope, and demand ransom of $1 from every living Catholic in the world. Naturally, the peaceful Pontiff patiently and politely humors his captors, as the bibically-named henchmen try to keep him comfortable, and Mitchell lets loose with a tirade on all the abuses and crimes of the Catholic Church that have angered him - no doubt inspired by his real-life years in show business among Jewish entertainers who lost family in the Holocaust and among influential Catholic mobsters who could kill their rivals and still go to Sunday services with no sense of guilt. It's a borderline shaggy-dog tale that is held together by the single-minded moxie of its creator, transcending camp and becoming a sincere cri de coeur. Anything this unique and personal is worth the wait to glimpse for oneself, and you have never seen another film like it, I assure you. (Trailer below is Not Safe For Work)

While Perry Henzell would certainly have been appalled at the violence and vinegar of Duke Mitchell's work, he was very much a kindred spirit united with him in their goal of self-expression. A white European born, raised, and ultimately buried in Jamaica, he was fiercely proud of his home country and its people, and looked upon filmmaking as an opportunity to counter what he felt was the inaccurate and patronizing portrayal in mainstream movies of his environment. His debut film THE HARDER THEY COME was the first film made in Jamaica by Jamaicans, introduced Jimmy Cliff and reggae music to an eager world, spawned one of the greatest soundtrack albums ever released, and is noted by critics/historians J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum in their book (and later documentary film) MIDNIGHT MOVIES as one of the six most influential cult films of all time. Its final images of a movie theatre audience watching the conclusion of the protagonist's story sent an important message to the world: We do not need your second-hand heroes and myths, we will make our own now.

While his debut was an insider's portrait of Jamaica, Henzell's follow-up NO PLACE LIKE HOME introduced outsiders into his ongoing narrative. Taking advantage of a U.S. commercial assignment, he integrated the participants (including P.J. Soles in one of her earliest film appearances) along with alumni from THE HARDER THEY COME into a half-scripted, half-improvised snapshot of the country in transition, as an American representative of the ad agency filming the (semi-)fake commercial takes a long trip through the cities, accompanied by a wily driver/small businessman and a politically-minded poet. The three of them witness vacationers from all over have just begun to discover the beauty of the country, and the natives are happy to cater to them and earn some money. However, it is clear that the natives are being muscled out by rich hoteliers, corrupt politicians, and heavy-handed militias and gangsters, and that soon the already large divide between the haves and have-nots is going to get even larger.
The production had to shut down and relaunch multiple times due to money troubles. When the East Coast warehouse where the footage was stored went bankrupt, the elements were seized and feared lost until a fan located most of it in the early half of the noughties and notified the family. By this time, Henzell had been diagnosed with cancer, and with the help of David Garonzik, they set about quickly reassembling the film, filling gaps in the surviving negative with dupe workprint material, newly shot cutaways, and some video material, to render it complete. Henzell was able to premiere it at the Toronto Film Festival in summer 2006, before succumbing to his cancer the following November, just before it was set to premiere at a festival in the original location of Negril.
Where POPE was lucky to have a team determined to finish on film and tweak all elements to make the presentation as clean as possible, HOME lacked the time and budget to do the same; the final film is only viewable in the digital realm, and visibly shows many flaws. But while most films' effectiveness can suffer from such technical problems like mismatched footage, bad sound, and print damage, in this film it practically enhances its raw beauty; there is a shot of a Pepsi truck that is clearly from the modern day that should not mesh with the '70's setting, but thematically, it makes perfect sense, because the message is the same, if not more obvious through the time leap, that big business is coming to stay. The lack of polish is overcome through the confidence and depth of the story within.


Grindhouse Releasing is aggressively promoting GONE WITH THE POPE, lining up midnight shows in many markets before its eventual DVD release with MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE. NO PLACE LIKE HOME is in a more difficult situation: its digital-only availability has limited the number of venues that can play it, and ongoing music clearance issues have interfered with any kind of home video release. But if there is a theatre or film society in your town with a sense of adventure, let them know these iconoclastic gems are waiting to light up their screen - and your consciousness.