D-FOB-cohen-40 RUSS MEYER, 82 Artist to those who know better, celluloid ...
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RUSS MEYER, 82 Artist to those who know better, celluloid scumbag to others, Russ Meyer was one of the cinematic geniuses of our film century; he died at his home in the Hollywood Hills on Sept. 18 after sufferingappropriatelywhat his spokespeople called "dementia."
Throughout his 23-film career, from his first effort, 1959's The Immoral Mr. Teas to his late-60s classics, Meyer was a self-styled renegade. And though his films seem almost half-tame by today's topless-Kate Winslet standards, it's Meyer's pioneering thematic focus on teenagers and sex that has left an indelible imprint on later directors. With a formula of equal parts tits and gore, Meyer grabbed himself a seat in the burgeoning late 50s and 60s independent film scene. An inheritor of Ed Wood's scatalogical insanity and total production involvement, Meyer worked on almost every aspect of his films: directing, yes, but also writing, editing, producing and pretty much anything else that had to get done.
Probably Meyer's most famous film is 1965's Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, a morality tale without a moral, dealing with three go-go girls who embark on an anything-but-feminist revenge kick, murdering men dumb enough to do them wrong. Thelma and Louise with much more skin and a better soundtrack, Pussycat inspired a legion of lesser films on the girls-gone-wild trope, including the French porn-murder classic Baise Moi and Tarantino's recent double-feature.
Vixen, a filthy Lolita-goes-apeshit film, appeared in 1968 and proved to be the grandmommy of the skin-flick, responsible for defining a trash-genre that inspired the likes of John Waters as well as every Elvira-hosted USA up-all-night midnight marathon. Its surprising success with a teenage audience garnered attention from major studios.
Next came Meyer's greatest artistic triumph (in addition to the pinnacle of Roger Ebert's career). The major-studio-released Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, cowritten with the then-young film critic, was a hybrid of genres that seemed to have been invented, or reinvented, on the spot. Murder, sexual deviancy and drugs all whipped up in a vortex of adolescent angst, Valley remains a classic; alternately brilliant and unwatchable.
In a 1996 interview, Meyer described his films as "passion plays beauty against something that's totally evil." This seriousness, almost earnestness, places Meyer in distinguished company with many of the great horror filmmakers: You never know what to take seriously.
But academia seemed to know. In the 70s and 80s, with the birth of film studies on American campuses, Meyer's work, bolstered also by screenings at avant-garde film festivals, earned him both money and acclaim; museums followed with retrospectives, and with the rise of Tarantino's glam post-modernism, Meyer's shock-schlock was firmly enshrined in the official pantheon.
Meyer had been married three times. According to his studio, he left no survivors. o