Russ Meyer, the "legendary breastman," as he refers to himself on the RM Films Web site, died in Hollywood Hills after a bout with pneumonia. He was 82.
Roger Ebert, screenwriter of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, has written a lovely appreciation of the exploitation auteur. An excerpt:
He made one film after another, all of them involving unlikely plots, incongruous settings and abundantly voluptuous actresses. "Where do you find those women?" I asked him. "After they reach a certain bra size," he said, "they find me." He disapproved of silicone implants: "They miss the whole point."His films were unique in that the women were always the strong characters, and men were the mindless sex objects. The film critic B. Ruby Rich called him "the first feminist American director." Meyer took praise with a grain of salt. After "The Seven Minutes" (1971), an attempt at a serious mainstream big studio picture, flopped at the box office, he told me: "I made the mistake of reading my reviews. What the public wants are big laughs and big tits and lots of 'em. Lucky for me that's what I like, too."
The cinetrix has a bittersweet Russ Meyer memory. Back when she was a video store drone, she encouraged Mark Sandman of the band Morphine to rent Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The reasons were selfish: He was clearly one movie away from the five-flick special, and it was nearly closing time. "Here," I brightly said, "try this" and thrust the movie at him. Later that week when he returned his films, he made a point of seeking me out. That was the only movie he liked, turns out. And he'd been to a party at the house in the film, the one with the pool where you could swim from outside to indoors. Who knew then that Meyer would outlive Sandman?
One thing's for certain, Meyer has at least 40 busty virgins waiting for him in paradise.
