Film History --Was Russ Meyer Gay? Could be . . .

Russ Meyer is legend among exploitation film followers. Frantic, unrestrained plots, odd humor, those amazing wild, out-of control women with their inescapably huge breasts, and despite the generally puerile tone of the films, surprisingly good technical skill with the camera work and editing. And with titles like “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill!” and the amazing posters and trailers, it was inevitable that I’d seek them out at some point.      

As I write, I’ve seen around a dozen of Meyer’s films, starting with the bigger, better known titles, then working through his lesser known creations as I find copies. I’m also working through an illuminating, well-researched biography called “Big Bosoms and Square Jaws –The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film.” (Written by Jimmy McDonough, copyright 2005, Three Rivers Press, New York)

And the more I see, the more I read, the more I find myself wondering “Is Russ Meyer gay?”

Strange question, some will say. Laughable, others will argue.  And everyone knows that one of the marks of the classic intellectual lightweight, pseudo-intellectual is that he or she pulls names of well-known historical figures almost at random and asks completely hypothetical questions to support absurd allegations of repressed homosexuality and an alternate sexual orientation.  But I can’t shake it. The more I see, the more I read, the more sense it makes.

For those who don’t know, Russ Meyer was, among other things, a former Playboy photographer who is known in film making for creating “The Immoral Mister Teas,” widely known as the first film that used graphic nudity with no pretense at being educational, in other words naked women being shown mostly to entertain an audience that liked to see naked women, a very, very shocking idea in 1959 when released.  When the era of the X-rated movie came along, an era better known for films like “Midnight Cowboy” (1969) and “Clockwork Orange” (1971), both seen as important, ground-breaking, cutting edge art films that stretched boundaries of discussion by using an X rating, few remember that it was Russ Meyer’s film “Vixen” (1968) that paved the way. “Vixen” was the first commercially released X-rated film. His 1964 film “Lorna,” a drama, also paved the way for the use of nudity and portrayal of sexuality and nude women in films. (“Lorna” did not have an X-rating as it was released years before the letter system for grading films was created. My guess is that if it had been released a few years later, it probably would have had an X-rating but today it would probably get an R, and that as much for the violence in the film as much as for the nudity. I hope to write a bit more on “Lorna” at some point.)  

If one picks up a good book on the history of pornography, you will find Meyer’s name in there a few times, usually for breaking ground and paving the way for people who came later. (I’ve included links to a couple interesting and entertaining such works below. Remember if you buy them through these links, you are supporting this blog.)

Not to mention that the man obviously has a thing for women with large, very large, very, very large breasts, the bigger the better. [1]

So, how in the world could one wonder if such a man is gay?

Well, for one thing, if you watch his films, while they simple ooze with unrestrained heterosexuality, after a while (and I’ve seen about a dozen of his films) you can’t help wondering if he’s just plain trying too hard to demonstrate and display his heterosexuality.

Second, after a while, it’s pretty obvious that he’s not very comfortable around women. The female characters in his films are often down-right frightening, the sorts of women who, through one means or another, would destroy a man’s life and then laugh about it as they survey the damage. Furthermore, throughout his films, these women when they are not victimizing someone else are inevitably being victimized themselves, and in a Russ Meyer film, both events happen with an unrestrained graphic brutality of a sort rarely seen on film, before or since. And worse, more than once when women in his films get raped or sexually assaulted, nearby men often cheer the assault on as if this is a natural and normal reaction. In fact, if you catch the sexual assault in the bar scene in “Up!”, you can spot Russ Meyer himself in the crowd cheering just as loudly as anyone there. (Of course, such things do happen in real life. On the other hand, I maintain they are an anomaly and a more normal male reaction would be shock and horror, leading ideally to finding a way to assist and intervene.)

Third, his men, the good men, not the villains, rarely seem to actually enjoy sex or have good relations with the stunningly built women around them. Often they are not able to sexually satisfy the women in their lives, and because of this the women abandon or hurt them.

Fourth, while depictions of actual homosexuality in his films are rare, the only one I can think of having encountered in his films occurs in the film “Up!” (1976) and the reactions of the female character is significant. “Up!” is a very strange film and begins with a geriatric Adolf Hitler living under an assumed name in a castle in the deep woods of the west coast USA. Geriatric Hitler with the assumed name is holding an orgy in his castle. The orgy features several women off different races and one man all being paid by Hitler to sexually humiliate him. The man engages in at least two homosexual sex acts with the geriatric and decrepit Hitler. While depicted quite graphically by the standards of the day, the acts would be considered implied by today’s standards (no male genitalia is portrayed for instance). Nevertheless, there can be zero doubt in the audience as to what is happening and what the man is doing to Hitler and what Hitler is begging to have done to him. Finally, the orgy ends and geriatric Hitler with the assumed name pays the man and sends him on his way. Which is all quite strange, graphic, and weird (and if one complains that I did not give “spoilers” all this occurs in the first five or ten minutes of the film BEFORE we have any plot or context for it, so, in my opinion, at least, it not exactly spoiling the film in any way to reveal this. I mean you turn on the film and this is what you see, suddenly and without warning. Surprise!). Now what’s truly significant for this argument is (and NOW we have some SPOILERS) the man’s wife’s reaction to all this. (SPOILERS)

The wife becomes jealous. She fears that these paid sexual acts that the husband commits with geriatric Hitler living under an assumed name could cause her husband to leave her.

Let me explain that again. And, again, SPOILERS,  a wife learns that her husband is engaging in gay sex for pay with perhaps the most evil man of all time (particularly in the eyes of Russ Meyer, world war two veteran) and she fears that he might end the marriage and leave her for Hitler. Ummm, okay. Ummm, no, I’ve thought it over a second time. It’s not okay. In fact, it’s just plain downright weird. Weird as in clinically significant weird. Sex with a wrinkled, ugly, and absolutely despicable man might be more appealing to him, she fears, than sex with her, despite, of course, that she is an extremely attractive woman in the classic Russ Meyer mold.

Reading the biography, there’s more hints. His relations with women usually were unstable and involved women who were more than anything else a trophy to impress his male friends. The way he seemed most interested in them was through the lens of a camera. His arguably most stable and intimate relationship was with his second wife, Eve, who, once described him as a “photosexual.” (p. 78) Page after page of the biography, describes how he would usually only become aroused with a woman after an hour or more of photographing them.

According to the biography, Eve probably had affairs with other women and once accused Russ of having a romantic or sexual relationship with one of his army buddies and business partners. (p. 142)  In the end, in his autobiography, Meyer included a multi-page photo spread of eve and at the end summed up his feelings for her with “And did I love her? Hell, yes! Maybe, I think so.” (p.147)  Obviously, not the clearest statement of his feelings for the person most consider the love of his life.

  Now, let me get this clear. I’m straight. Because of this I sometimes miss things involving homosexuality. I asked a friend, a gay friend. “Are the men good looking? That’s the key thing you need to watch for," he advised. "If he’s gay, but doesn’t know it, the men in his movies will be really good looking.” Well, next Russ Meyer film, I watched was “Lorna,” a tale of a beautiful and large breasted, not very nice woman, who cheats on her really good looking husband with a really good looking fugitive. ‘Nuff said. The question remains.

1.     Obviously, he judges the attractiveness of women by the size of their breasts, the bigger the better. If look at another way, perhaps he needs an easily measured metric to determine which women are attractive and which are not.

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For some reason, Russ Meyer films are difficult to find and there seems to be confusion about who owns what or something is going on. Regardless, aside from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, whose rights are owned by a major studio, the others are not easily found and seem to become commercially available in a haphazard fashion. Therefore I just offer what's available and am not able to comment much on actual editions.   

This is the biography I have been reading. It's very well done. 

  

Two good books on the history of pornography

Finally, my books . . . 

Yeah, I've written books. Please check them out and see if they interest you.