Special Guest Star: Russ Meyer

(There are too many opportunities for cheap infantile jokes about female breasts that come too easily to this aging though immature mind as I write this next piece about my brief encounter with legendary outlaw filmmaker Russ Meyer. I will try to restrain myself as much as possible, but keep in mind that in my advanced age, I still have the sensibilities of a twelve year old. It doesn't take much to make me titter. Shit! That's one.)

As the old jokes goes, if you look up the word "anomaly" in the dictionary, you'll see Russ Meyer's picture. The name may not be familiar to those of you not in the know, cinephile-wise, so here's  a brief run down of the man, his work and why he deserves the exalted status of Special Guest Star in my book or blog as it were.

Meyer was a pioneer film director in the realm of sexploitation in the days before the hardcore boom of the 1970s. His movies featured or basically led with extremely endowed females, mostly all BUXOM in all caps. His early titles like his debut feature, THE IMMORAL MISTER TEAS, seem almost chaste in nature until boobs start popping out like popcorn from the concession stand. Though he found success in this genre, earning the nickname "King of the Nudies", Meyer had more on his dirty mind and began to inject pointed satire, oddball humor and embodied his leading ladies with a sense of female empowerment unseen on the screen at the time, most notably in the outrageous FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!

starring cult icon Tura Satana. His success as an independent led him to a brief foray into the mainstream...sort of. Meyer was hired by 20th Century Fox to make the sequel in name only BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS with a screenplay by a young Roger Ebert. But after his next picture THE SEVEN PICTURES died at the scene, Fox showed Meyer the curb. He returned to the indie circuit where remained for the rest of his career.

In the late Seventies, I had been in my film critic phase for the University of the Pacific in Stockton, pulling double duty for the school newspaper and their public radio station KUOP. Not bad for someone who never attended the school. While they were both volunteer positions, they did afford me a lot of freebies including movie passes, a trip to the Los Angeles Film Festival known as Filmex and a chance to interview celebs passing through town, the latter of which led me to Russ Meyer. 


The D.W. Griffith of Major Yabbo Cinema came to town on a promotional tour when his film UP! (not a live action version of the Pixar cartoon) opened at the legendary Bijou Theater. Bob Carson, owner/operator of said porn palace asked if I would join him in a live on-air interview with the filmmaker at KUOP. I was chosen for my close association with both Carson and the Bijou, but mostly for my extensive film knowledge which, to tell you the absolute truth and nothing but, was lacking in Meyer's filmography. Very little had been written about him back then and access to his work was next to nil since there were no video stores or cable and streaming had something to do with waterways I think. So I didn't get a chance before the interview to bone up on his films. (ahem) However I have a few choice facts at my disposal, certainly more than Bob knew.

Resembling a pudgier version of  a latter day Preston Foster, Meyer arrived on the UOP campus along with one of the stars of UP! and his current paramour, the mammarily gifted Kitten Natividad. The director arrived in a full cantankerous mood, though that might have been his persona. He did seem genuinely pissed that his film was being shown at the Bijou since his pictures, X rated yet technically softcore, normally played in “legitimate” theaters. Perhaps a better venue might have been the 99E, basically Sexsploitation Central in the Central Valley, but that would have meant UP! would been downgraded to a drive-in flick. This was the dawning of the age of the multiplex and movies like Russ Meyer's didn't fit the bill. I changed the subject to his days at Fox which made him proudly proclaim that he had occupied Darryl F. Zanuck's office. While explaining this, one of the radio station’s sound engineers slipped in to give Kitten a KUOP t-shirt. This prompted the starlet to whip off her top to expose her Mount Killimanjaros as she oh-so-innocently donned the KUOP shirt.

“Excuse me, Mr. Meyer,” I interrupted, “I think you’re being upstaged.”

“Oh yeah. She does it all the time,” he groused.

I looked up to see that the sound booth was chock-full of UOP boys, some who worked at the station, many who did not. It looked like one of those old college pranks of how many students can you cram into phone booth with their faces were all pressed up against the glass trying to get a gander at one-or both of God’s greatest creations

After the interview, we offered to take Meyer and Kitten out, but he respectfully declined. He said he had to take his bombastic gal pal back to their motel room so that she could change into something a little more conservative since that evening they were scheduled to have dinner with his mother. Here was Russ Meyer, a founding father of cinematic sex, still worried about what his mommy might think. 

Following UP!, Meyer made only one more film, BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA VIXENS also featuring Kitten. Over the years, he had a few more in development including a proposed film starring The Sex Pistols, also scripted by Roger Ebert. In Jimmy McDonough's biography about the man, the myth, the legend, Meyers stated, "I don't care about making another movie. I got all the money I'll ever need. You gotta be hungry to make a movie. I don't have the desire, the urge." He lived to see his filmography reach new audiences in both video and DVDs, enough to elevate him into the pantheon of great American filmmakers from the latter half of the twentieth century. Never keeping his ego in check, he wrote a three volume autobiography called A CLEAN BREAST (natch). Four years after publication, Meyer said  "ta-ta" to all those ta tas and life itself. I discovered only recently he was buried in Stockton Rural Cemetery right next his mom. His tombstone reads: RUSS MEYER-King of the Nudies "I Was Glad to Do It"  

It's at this point that I should sign off with "So Long, Russ. Thanks for the mammaries." But I won't. Nope. Not me. 

I'm no boob.

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