Misplaced Pages

#332667

72-549: Russell Albion Meyer (March 21, 1922 – September 18, 2004) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer , and editor. He is known primarily for writing and directing a series of successful sexploitation films that featured campy humor, sly satire and large-breasted women, such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! . Meyer often named Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) as his definitive work. Russ Meyer

144-779: A strip club in Van Nuys , before moving on to the California desert later that night. The film's early racing scene was shot on the dry salt flats of Cuddeback Lake , the gas station scene was filmed in the town of Randsburg , and the scenes at the Old Man's house at Ollie Peche's Musical Wells Ranch outside the town of Mojave . During principal photography, the cast and crew stayed at the Adobe Motel in Johannesburg . Meyer, who got his start making films while serving in

216-493: A Meyer film, it was a box office failure upon its initial release. "When it first came out, it was not successful", said Meyer. "At the time, people didn't understand that women could have a relationship with other women." It was generally dismissed as an exploitative "skin flick" by the few critics who took any note of it at all. John L. Wasserman of the San Francisco Chronicle , for example, reviewed

288-466: A big enough bust! I said I could use pushups in my bra, which I did. He didn't know whether it would work, but then in rehearsals he finally said okay. I kind of did my part like a cartoon, like the rest of the film, bigger than life." Faster, Pussycat! had a modest budget of about $ 45,000 and was shot in black and white in order to save money. The film began shooting at the Pussycat Club,

360-415: A burning orphanage and a treat for the emotionally retarded." Contractually stipulated to produce an R-rated film, the brutally violent climax (depicting a decapitation ) ensured an X rating (eventually reclassified to NC-17 in 1990). Despite gripes from the director after he attempted to recut the film to include more titillating scenes after the ratings debacle, it still earned $ 9 million domestically in

432-514: A close friend and key artistic collaborator for the remainder of Meyer's life. The film bears no relation to the novel or film adaptation's continuity, a development necessitated when Jacqueline Susann sued the studio after several drafts of her script were rejected. Many critics perceive the film as perhaps the greatest expression of his intentionally vapid surrealism, with Meyer going so far as to refer to it as his definitive work in several interviews. Others, such as Variety , saw it "as funny as

504-435: A club before racing their sports cars across the California desert. They play a high-speed game of chicken on the salt flats and encounter a young couple, Tommy and Linda, out to run a time trial . After breaking Tommy's neck in a fight, Varla kidnaps and drugs Linda. In a small desert town, they stop at a gas station where they see a wheelchair-using old man and his muscular, dim-witted son. The gas station attendant tells

576-410: A cult classic. It has a following all over the world and has inspired countless imitations, music videos and tributes. Meyer made the popular mockumentary Mondo Topless (1966) with the remnants of his production company's assets and made two mildly successful color melodramas : Common Law Cabin (1967) and Good Morning... and Goodbye! (1967). Meyer made headlines once again in 1968 with

648-531: A double bill of Faster, Pussycat! and Mudhoney in April 1966, saying that " Pussycat has the worst script ever written, and Mudhoney is the worst movie ever made." In the years since, the film has been regarded more favorably, gaining in both commercial and critical stature. On Rotten Tomatoes , the film holds an approval rating of 74% based on 31 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The website's critics consensus reads, " Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

720-458: A lead was the 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in), slim-hipped, huge-breasted Lorna Maitland (working with whom he admitted he found intimidating). Nearly all the other women he featured were no taller than 1.71 m (5 ft 7 in). Tura Satana 's performance as Varla in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was Meyer's only true portrayal of the large, strong and aggressive Amazonian archetype in

792-529: A made-for-video softcore production by Playboy . Pandora Peaks interpolated footage originally intended for The Breast of Russ Meyer (1979-c. 2001), an unfinished "gargantuan, umpteen-hour anthology film" that would have encompassed précises of Meyer's earlier films, memoiristic documentary footage (including voluminous accounts of his Army service) and Mondo Topless -style profiles of such performers as "Tundi" Horvath, Shawn "Baby Doll" Devereaux, Tami Roche and Kristine Mills. In late 1985, Variety reported that

SECTION 10

#1732775611333

864-507: A number of amateur films at the age of 15, and served during World War II as a U.S. Army combat cameraman for the 166th Signal Photo Company, ultimately attaining the rank of technician third grade (equivalent to staff sergeant ). In the Army Meyer forged his strongest friendships, and he would later ask many of his fellow combat cameramen to work on his films. Much of Meyer's work during World War II can be seen in newsreels and in

936-758: A panel discussion at Yale University , he was confronted by an angry woman who accused him of being "nothing but a breast man ." His immediate reply: "That's only the half of it." Russ Meyer's lifelong unabashed fixation on large breasts featured prominently in all his films and is his best-known character trait both as an artist and as a person. His discoveries include Kitten Natividad , Erica Gavin , Lorna Maitland , Tura Satana , and Uschi Digard among many others. The majority of them were naturally large-breasted and he occasionally cast women in their first trimesters of pregnancy as it enhanced their breast size even further. Rarely were there cosmetically enhanced breasts in any of his films until Up! (1976) and Beneath

1008-465: A proposed sequel to Valley of the Dolls in 1969, fulfilling Meyer's longstanding ambition to direct for a major Hollywood studio. What eventually appeared was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), scripted by Chicago Sun-Times film critic and longtime Meyer devotee Roger Ebert . Ebert, who became the first film critic to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1975, would remain

1080-608: A scene in the video for the Janet Jackson song " You Want This " was a direct homage to Faster, Pussycat! , showing the Porsche -driving singer and her female companions driving circles around two men in the desert. The music video for " Say You'll Be There " by Spice Girls was also inspired by this film. Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino referenced the film and thanked Meyer in the credits of his film Death Proof , and it

1152-694: A second working title— The Mankillers —and had already begun production when the sound editor, Richard S. Brummer, came up with the now-immortal final title. Although neither Moran nor Meyer overtly cited any prior works as inspiration, the plot has been called a "loose remake of The Desperate Hours , or possibly The Virgin Spring " by one prominent film critic and a " pop-art setting of Aeschylus 's Eumenides " by one classical scholar. Haji had worked with Meyer on Motorpsycho . She recommended Tura Satana to him. Lori Williams later said, "Russ didn't want to hire me because he didn't think I had

1224-412: A wall with her car, injuring him. She drives off in the truck and overtakes Kirk and Linda, chasing them into a gully . Varla and Kirk fight hand-to-hand. She gets the better of him until Linda hits her with the truck, and she dies. Kirk and Linda drive off together in the truck. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was a follow-up to an earlier Meyer film. "'We had just done a film called Motorpsycho , which

1296-468: Is also remembered for the performance of star Tura Satana , whose character Richard Corliss called "the most honest, maybe the one honest, portrayal in the Meyer canon". Faster, Pussycat! was a commercial and critical failure upon its initial release, but it has since become widely regarded as an important and influential film. Three wild, uninhibited go-go dancers —Varla, Rosie, and Billie—dance at

1368-621: Is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work on one particular motion picture . A number of cinematographers have become directors, including Reed Morano who lensed Frozen River and Beyoncé's Lemonade before winning an Emmy for directing The Handmaid's Tale . Barry Sonnenfeld , originally the Coen brothers ' DP; Jan de Bont , cinematographer on films such as Die Hard and Basic Instinct , directed Speed and Twister . Nicolas Roeg , cinematographer on films such as The Caretaker (1963) and The Masque of

1440-483: Is frequently mentioned on lists of the best B movies and cult films of all time. The film has also been influential on other filmmakers. Writer-director John Waters stated in his book Shock Value that " Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is, beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future." He later said on its re-release that "it ages like fine wine." Music video director Keir McFarlane acknowledged that

1512-540: Is known as "The Vegetable" due to his feeblemindedness ) and his elder son, Kirk. The group all have lunch together, and Billie taunts Rosie when Varla leaves with Kirk, hoping to seduce him into revealing the location of the money. Linda subsequently escapes the drunken Billie and runs away into the desert. The old man and the younger son pursue in their truck. The younger son catches Linda and seems about to assault her, but he collapses in tears as Varla and Kirk arrive. Kirk finally acknowledges his father's lecherous nature and

SECTION 20

#1732775611333

1584-751: Is said to be Russ Meyer's most busty discovery. The Russ Meyer female physical archetype is fairly complex to decipher. Firstly, it's not to be confused with today's surgically enhanced Hollywood porn starlets or even slim, naturally endowed actresses. Russ Meyer was almost as much about a shapely 1950s hip-to-waist ratio or " wasp waist " as he was about very large breasts. The six-pack abdominal muscles and built-up squarish appearance of modern Hollywood figures do not mesh with his pin-up aesthetic. Secondly, he required that even his most busty actresses looked good braless; "gravity-defying" and " cantilevered " became two of his favorite expressions. In his films such as Vixen! and Cherry, Harry & Raquel! , some of

1656-453: Is undoubtedly shlock, but director Russ Meyer's infectious affection for camp gives this anarchic joyride exhilarating flair." In his review of the film's 1995 re-release, Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars. Noted feminist film critic B. Ruby Rich said that when she first saw Faster, Pussycat! in the 1970s she "was absolutely outraged that [she had] been forced to watch this misogynist film that objectified women and that

1728-490: The Dirty Harry parody Blitzen, Vixen and Harry , ultimately thwarted by Meyer reneging on a profit-sharing agreement with envisaged lead actor and longtime collaborator Charles Napier ; a sequel to Mondo Topless provisionally entitled Mondo Topless, Too ; and a color remake of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! ) that stalled in development hell . "I don't care about making another movie," he concluded in 1988. "I got all

1800-519: The California landscape (replete with anti- marijuana voiceovers) and Uschi Digard dancing in the desert as the film's "lost soul." These plot devices were necessitated after lead actress Linda Ashton left the shoot early, forcing Meyer to compensate for 20 minutes of unshot footage. After the unexpected success of Columbia Pictures ' low-budget Easy Rider , and impressed by Meyer's frugality and profitability, Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown of 20th Century Fox signed Meyer to produce and direct

1872-730: The Naked West (1962). Audience reception of Wild Gals was lukewarm, and Meyer decided to change genres. He did a documentary, Europe in the Raw (1963), and tried a comedy, Heavenly Bodies! (1963). He then directed a version of Fanny Hill (1964) in Europe. Lorna (1964) marked the end of Meyer's "nudies" and his first foray into serious film making. He followed this with three other similar films, and would call this his " Gothic " period: Mudhoney (1965), Motorpsycho (1965) and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). Lorna

1944-604: The Red Death (1964), directed Don't Look Now (1973) and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Ellen Kuras, ASC photographed Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind as well as a number of Spike Lee films such as Summer of Sam and He Got Game before directing episodes of Legion and Ozark. In 2014, Wally Pfister , cinematographer on Christopher Nolan 's three Batman films , made his directorial debut with Transcendence , whilst British cinematographers Jack Cardiff and Freddie Francis regularly moved between

2016-600: The US Army's 166th Signal Photographic Company during World War II , had a reputation for running strictly regimented film shoots with a small crew composed largely of former Army buddies. Actor Charles Napier , who appeared in five of Meyer's films, said that "Working with Russ Meyer was like being in the first wave landing in Normandy during World War II." Meyer considered the Faster, Pussycat! shoot no different, saying "It

2088-585: The United States on a budget of $ 2.09 million. The executives at Fox were delighted with the box office success of Dolls and signed a contract with Meyer to make three more films: The Seven Minutes , from a bestseller by Irving Wallace ; Everything in the Garden , from a play by Edward Albee ; and The Final Steal , from a 1966 novel by Peter George . "We've discovered that he's very talented and cost conscious", said Zanuck. "He can put his finger on

2160-533: The Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979). However, by the early 1980s, when surgical advancements had made the gargantuan breasts of Meyer's fantasies a reality, many felt he had started viewing the female body as simply a "tit transportation device" and that his aesthetic vision was no longer attractive or vibrant. Darlene Gray, a natural 36H-22-33 from Great Britain who appeared in Mondo Topless (1966),

2232-538: The Valley of the Ultra-Vixens ). Even in the 1950s and 1960s, his films were sometimes centered on a woman's need and struggle for sexual satisfaction ( Lorna , Good Morning and... Goodbye! and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens ). Additionally, Russ Meyer's female characters were often allowed to express anger and violence towards men ( Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Supervixens ). Yet in his research, McDonough also notes that Meyer's female characters were limited in how powerful they could appear; often

Russ Meyer - Misplaced Pages Continue

2304-486: The actresses do not have large (by Russ Meyer standards) breasts yet their chests are always accentuated by use of camera angles and well-constructed bras. Reportedly, Erica Gavin was cast as the lead in Vixen! because her "smaller" bust would make the character "more relatable to women." He went on record numerous times to say that Anita Ekberg was the most beautiful woman he ever photographed and that her 39DD breasts were

2376-540: The advancement of cinematography, including: The A.S.C. defines cinematography as: A creative and interpretive process that culminates in the authorship of an original work of art rather than the simple recording of a physical event. Cinematography is not a subcategory of photography. Rather, photography is but one craft that the cinematographer uses in addition to other physical, organizational, managerial, interpretive and image-manipulating techniques to effect one coherent process. The Academy Award for Best Cinematography

2448-432: The advent of artificial lighting and faster (more light-sensitive) film stocks , in addition to technological advancements in optics, the technical aspects of cinematography necessitated a specialist in that area. Cinematography was key during the silent movie era; with no sound apart from background music and no dialogue, the films depended on lighting, acting, and set. The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC)

2520-511: The biggest in A-list Hollywood history, dwarfing both Jayne Mansfield and Sabrina . Dolly Parton was the only modern Hollywood actress Meyer ever expressed interest in working with. While he often referred to his actresses as "Junoesque" and "Amazonian", this was probably more in their spirit than their actual physiques" as Meyer rarely cast very tall or symmetrically built actresses with strong legs and large posteriors. So while

2592-412: The cinematographer and director vary. In some instances, the director will allow the cinematographer complete independence, while in others, the director allows little to none, even going so far as to specify exact camera placement and lens selection. Such a level of involvement is less common when the director and cinematographer have become comfortable with each other. The director will typically convey to

2664-453: The cinematographer what is wanted from a scene visually and allow the cinematographer latitude in achieving that effect. The scenes recorded by the cinematographer are passed to the film editor for editing . In the infancy of motion pictures, the cinematographer was usually also the director and the person physically handling the camera. As the art form and technology evolved, a separation between director and camera operator emerged. With

2736-569: The classic visual sense. Film historian and Meyer biographer Jimmy McDonough posits that Russ Meyer's usage of physically and sexually overwhelming female characters places him in his own separate genre. He argues that despite portraying women as sex objects, Meyer nonetheless depicts them as more powerful than men and is therefore an inadvertent feminist filmmaker. In many of Meyer's films, women eventually defeat men, winning sexual fulfillment as their reward, e.g., Super Vixen ( Supervixens ), Margo Winchester ( Up! ) and Lavonia Shedd ( Beneath

2808-550: The commercial ingredients of a film and do it exceedingly well. We feel he can do more than undress people." Per his new contract, Meyer then made a faithful adaptation of The Seven Minutes (1971). Featuring loquacious courtroom scenes alongside little nudity, the comparatively subdued film was commercially unsuccessful, and his oeuvre would be disowned by the studio for decades after Zanuck and Brown departed to form an independent production company in 1972. Richard Zanuck, who brought Meyer to Fox, had moved to Warner Bros and there

2880-466: The controversial Vixen! . Although its lesbian overtones are tame by today's standards, the film—envisaged by Meyer and longtime producer Jim Ryan as a reaction to provocative European art films—grossed millions on a five-figure budget and captured the zeitgeist just as The Immoral Mr. Teas had a decade earlier. He followed it with Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers! (1969), and Cherry, Harry & Raquel! (1970), which utilized long montages of

2952-460: The fact that he was abandoned by his father, an Oakland police officer, and coddled by his mother, Lydia, who was married six times. Meyer had a half-sister, Lucinda, who was diagnosed in her 20s with paranoid schizophrenia and was committed to California State mental institutions until her death in 1999. Mental illness ran in his family and was something he secretly feared. During his entire life, Russ Meyer always spoke of his mother and sister with

Russ Meyer - Misplaced Pages Continue

3024-625: The female lead is raped ( Up! and Lorna ) or brutally murdered ( Beyond the Valley of the Dolls , Supervixens , Lorna and Blacksnake ). While Russ Meyer may have championed powerful woman characters, he also forced them into violent and terrifying situations, making them prove their physical and mental strength against tremendous odds. He also ensured that women's breasts were at least semi-exposed during these ordeals for comic or erotic effect. Furthermore, according to frequent collaborator and longtime lover Kitten Natividad , Meyer's love of dominant women extended to his personal life, and he

3096-547: The few common interests among most humans—was a natural vehicle for satirizing values and conventions held by the Greatest Generation . According to Roger Ebert in a commentary recorded in 2003 for the DVD release of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls , Meyer continually reiterated that this irreverence was the true secret to his artistic success. Meyer was also known for his quick wit. While participating with Ebert in

3168-454: The fight scenes because nobody else knew how to do them, and so literally when I did the fight scenes, I really had to pick up each and every one of those guys and carry them through in order for them to look realistic. Basically I had to lay one guy on the floor because he was afraid he was going to get hurt. A lot of it actually had to be done in reverse, so try to imagine doing a fight scene that way. The film's title song, "Faster Pussycat!",

3240-521: The film Patton (1970). On his return to civilian life, he was unable to secure cinematography work in Hollywood due to a lack of industry connections. He made industrial films , freelanced as a still photographer for mainstream films (including Giant ), and became a well-known glamour photographer whose work included some of the initial shoots for Hugh Hefner 's Playboy magazine. Meyer would go on to shoot three Playboy centerfolds during

3312-412: The film had "rapidly [approached] $ 2 million in production costs" and was "nearly 12 hours in length." Russ Meyer was also adept at mocking moral stereotypes and flagrantly lampooning conservative American values . Many of his films feature a narrator who attempts to give the audience a "moral roadmap" of what they are watching. Like his contemporary Terry Southern , Meyer realized that sex—as one of

3384-640: The general public could easily perceive Jane Russell or Sophia Loren as "Russ Meyer material", their balanced bodies did not mesh with Meyer's precise aesthetic preferences." And indeed, Meyer said many times that it was Gina Lollobrigida 's smaller-breasted figure that he preferred visually over her larger-breasted, taller and bigger-hipped rival, Sophia Loren. Thus, Meyer's oeuvre shows the viewer that while his actresses could easily be described as voluptuous, buxom and curvaceous, it's debatable to some if they were strapping, stately or even statuesque as Meyer readily proclaimed. The tallest actress Meyer ever cast in

3456-471: The highest reverence. Meyer was married to: Contrary to some accounts, Meyer was never married to Kitten Natividad , his longtime companion and the star of his final two films. Meyer owned the rights to nearly all of his films and spent the majority of the 1980s and 1990s making millions reselling his films on the home video and DVD market. He worked out of his Los Angeles home and usually took telephone orders in person. A major retrospective of his work

3528-456: The magazine's early years, including one of his then-wife Eve Meyer in 1955. He also shot a pictorial of then-wife Edy Williams in March 1973. Meyer was the cinematographer for the 1950 Pete DeCenzie film French Peep Show , and the 1954 Samuel Newman production, The Desperate Women , among the few Hollywood films to depict a woman dying from an illegal abortion in pre– Roe v. Wade America,

3600-519: The money I'll ever need. You gotta be hungry to make a movie. I don't have the desire, the urge." Amid Meyer's cognitive decline, longtime collaborator Jim Ryan oversaw the 2001 direct-to-video release of Russ Meyer's Pandora Peaks , featuring the nude glamour model of the same name . (An analogous film featuring Meyer's then-partner Melissa Mounds was never completed.) Around the same time, he also participated in Voluptuous Vixens II ,

3672-406: The murder of her boyfriend. Billie refuses, but as she walks away, Varla throws a knife into her back just as the old man and his younger son arrive. Rosie and Varla hit the old man with their car, killing him and knocking over his wheelchair to reveal the money hidden inside. Rosie is stabbed to death by the younger son while trying to retrieve the knife from Billie's body. Varla tries to ram him into

SECTION 50

#1732775611333

3744-411: The old man's hold over his younger brother, and he vows to have his younger brother institutionalized. He tries to take the hysterical Linda into town in the truck, but the old man says that he has thrown away the keys, so Kirk and Linda set out across the desert on foot. Varla drives back to the house and tells Billie and Rosie that they should kill the men and the girl to cover up Linda's kidnapping and

3816-484: The original version of which is believed lost. His first feature, the naughty comedy The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959), cost $ 24,000 to produce and eventually grossed more than $ 1 million on the independent/exploitation circuit, enthroning Meyer as "King of the Nudies." It is considered one of the first nudie-cuties . Russ Meyer was an auteur who wrote, directed, edited, photographed and distributed all his own films. He

3888-428: The prospect of a Meyer production to be untenable and incompatible with the insurgent family values ethos in popular culture.) The project ultimately evolved into The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle . Despite hardcore pornographic films overtaking Meyer's softcore market share, he retired from filmmaking in the late 1970s a very wealthy man. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Meyer announced several projects (including

3960-418: The release of the surreal Up! (1976) and 1979's Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens , his most sexually graphic films. Film historians and fans have called these last three films "Bustoons" because his use of color and mise en scène recalled larger-than-life pop art settings and cartoonish characters. In 1977, Malcolm McLaren hired Meyer to direct a film starring The Sex Pistols . Meyer handed

4032-439: The scriptwriting duties over to Ebert, who, in collaboration with McLaren, produced a screenplay entitled Who Killed Bambi? According to Ebert, filming ended after a day and a half when the electricians walked off the set after McLaren was unable to pay them. (McLaren has claimed that the project was scrapped at the behest of the main financier and Meyer's erstwhile employer, 20th Century Fox, whose board of directors considered

4104-408: The set (necessitated by Bernard's being a sixteen-year-old at the time). Bernard has said in interviews that she was truly scared of Satana, and some have thought that this contributed to her performance as a frightened kidnapping victim. According to Satana, Everybody [on set] did everything from moving props to marking scenery and marking spots where we had to be in the next take. I had to stage

4176-497: The two positions. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a 1965 American exploitation film directed by Russ Meyer and co-written by Meyer and Jack Moran. It follows three go-go dancers who embark on a spree of kidnapping and murder in the California desert. The film is known for its violence, provocative gender roles, and eminently quotable "dialogue to shame Raymond Chandler ". It

4248-476: The window, I was able to psychoanalyze myself and discern what was best for me. I looked myself square in the face and realized I couldn't do everything." In 1975, he released Supervixens , a return to the world of big bosoms, square jaws, and the Sonoran Desert that earned $ 8.2 million during its initial theatrical run in the United States on a shoestring budget. Meyer's theatrical career ended with

4320-410: The women that the old man was disabled in a railway accident, "going nuts" as a result, and that he received a large settlement of money that is hidden somewhere around his decrepit house in the desert. Intrigued, Varla hatches a scheme to rob the old man, and the three women follow him back to the ranch, with their captive in tow. At the ranch, they encounter the old man, his younger son (who they learn

4392-505: Was able to finance each new film from the proceeds of the earlier ones, and became very wealthy in the process. Meyer followed Teas with some shorts, This Is My Body (1960) and The Naked Camera , then made a second nudie cutie, Eve and the Handyman (1960). This starred Meyer's wife Eve and Anthony-James Ryan, both of whom would be crucial to the production of Meyer's films. His next features were Erotica (1961) and Wild Gals of

SECTION 60

#1732775611333

4464-421: Was about three bad boys, and it had gone through the roof. So I said, 'Well, let's do one with three bad girls'." The screenplay is credited to Jack Moran from an original story by Russ Meyer. The first draft was titled The Leather Girls and was written over a brief four-day period by Moran, who also collaborated with Meyer on Common Law Cabin and Good Morning and... Goodbye! The screenplay went through

4536-647: Was almost always in a tumultuous relationship. During World War II , according to Meyer, he was in a French brothel with Ernest Hemingway who, upon finding out that Meyer was a virgin, offered him the prostitute of his choice. Meyer picked the one with the largest breasts. Despite his reputation, Meyer never employed the casting couch during his career's peak years (though that shifted during his post-1980 unfinished projects) and rarely had sex with any of his actresses. He had no children, though there were rumored unsuccessful pregnancies with his second wife Edy Williams and last serious girlfriend, Melissa Mounds, who also

4608-465: Was born in San Leandro, California , the son of Lydia Lucinda (Hauck) and William Arthur Meyer, an Oakland police officer. His parents were both of German descent. Meyer's parents divorced soon after he was born, and Meyer was to have virtually no contact with his father during his life. When he was 14 years old, his mother pawned her wedding ring in order to buy him an 8 mm film camera. He made

4680-593: Was formed in 1919 in Hollywood , and was the first trade society for cinematographers. Similar societies were formed in other countries. For example, the British Society of Cinematographers (BSC). Their aims include the recognition of the cinematographer's contribution to the art and science of motion picture making. There are a number of national associations of cinematographers that represent members (irrespective of their official titles) and are dedicated to

4752-564: Was found guilty of assaulting him in 1999. There is a long-standing rumor among his closest friends and at least one biographer that he had a son in 1964 with a secret lover who he would refer to only as "Miss Mattress" or "Janet Buxton." Meyer was very upfront throughout his life about being too selfish to be a father or even a caring partner or husband. Yet he is also said to have been very generous with all his friends and acquaintances, and never isolated friends from one another. Biographers have attributed most of his brutish and eccentric nature to

4824-496: Was given at the British Film Institute which Meyer attended in 1982. The Chicago Film Festival honored his work in 1985, for which he also made a personal appearance, and many revival movie houses booked his films for midnight movie marathons. Cinematographer The cinematographer is a subordinate of the director , tasked with capturing a scene in accordance with the director's vision. Relations between

4896-586: Was performed by California band the Bostweeds. The lyrics were written by Rick Jarrard and the music was written and sung by Lynn Ready, who formed the Bostweeds and sang leads. The track was never released commercially, but it did appear in February 1966 as a promotional -only 45 rpm single without a B-side . Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! premiered in Los Angeles on August 6, 1965. Atypically for

4968-532: Was really just short of soft-core porn ." Upon viewing it again in the early 1990s, however, she "just loved it" and wrote a piece in The Village Voice reappraising the film and discussing her change in opinion. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is currently number 674 on the tenth edition of the often-referenced "1,000 Greatest Films" list and 377th on the Sight & Sound "Greatest Films Poll". It

5040-917: Was some talk Meyer would make a film at that studio. However, Meyer would never make a studio film again. He returned to exploitation-style independent cinema in 1973 with the blaxploitation period piece Black Snake , which was dismissed by critics and audiences as incoherent. Foxy , a proposed vehicle for Edy Williams, was cancelled in the wake of the United States Supreme Court 's Miller v. California decision in June 1973, which modified its definition of obscenity from that of "utterly without socially redeeming value" to that which lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". His marriage to Williams subsequently disintegrated. "Those years were very confusing to me", said Meyer. "But instead of rushing off and throwing myself out

5112-422: Was the usual thing with me. It's like being in the military. Everybody has to get up and do their jobs to get things together, and that's it." Meyer's directorial style and the rules he imposed upon cast and crew caused clashes with his equally strong-willed star, Tura Satana. There was also friction between Susan Bernard and her director and co-stars, much of which they attributed to the presence of her mother on

5184-400: Was very successful commercially, making almost a million dollars. Mudhoney was more ambitious, based on a novel, and did not perform as well. Motorpsycho , about three men terrorising the countryside, was a big hit—so much so Meyer decided to make a film about three bad girls, Faster Pussycat . Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was commercially underwhelming but would eventually be acclaimed as

#332667