Russ Meyer
Russell Albion Meyer was an American filmmaker. He was primarily known for writing and directing a successful series of sexploitation films featuring campy humor, sly satire and large-breasted women, which have attracted a considerable cult following. His best-known works include Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Vixen!, Supervixens, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, and the film he considered to be his definitive work, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Early years
Russ Meyer was born in San Leandro, California, the son of Lydia Lucinda Hauck Howe and William Arthur Meyer, an Oakland police officer. 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 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 at the rank of technician third grade.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 the film Patton.
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, 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 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 and remained on the periphery of Hefner's Playboy Mansion West "gang list" milieu long into the 1990s, likely in part due to their shared interest in monitoring First Amendment litigation.
Film career
Early films
Meyer was the cinematographer for the 1952 Pete DeCenzie short 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, the original version of which is believed lost.The "nudie-cutie" period
His first feature, the naughty comedy The Immoral Mr. Teas, 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 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 and The Naked Camera, then made a second nudie cutie, Eve and the Handyman. 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 and Wild Gals of the Naked West. Audience reception of Wild Gals was lukewarm, and Meyer decided to change genres.
He did a documentary, Europe in the Raw, and tried a comedy, Heavenly Bodies!.
He then directed a version of Fanny Hill in Europe.
The "Gothic" period
Lorna 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, Motorpsycho and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.
Lorna 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 a cult classic. It has a following all over the world and has inspired countless imitations, music videos and tributes.
Color melodramas
Meyer made the popular mockumentary Mondo Topless with the remnants of his production company's assets and made two mildly successful color melodramas: Common Law Cabin and Good Morning... and Goodbye!.Meyer made headlines once again in 1968 with 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!, and Cherry, Harry & Raquel!, which utilized long montages of the California landscape 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.
20th Century Fox
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 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, 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 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 a burning orphanage and a treat for the emotionally retarded." Contractually stipulated to produce an R-rated film, the brutally violent climax ensured an X rating. 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 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 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. 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.
Return to independent filmmaking
Richard Zanuck, who brought Meyer to Fox, had moved to Warner Bros and there 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 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 the release of the surreal Up! 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 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. The project ultimately evolved into The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle.