| 11th January 2007 08:17 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Mick Jagger's 'Performance' To Be Released On DVD
10 January 2007
musicrooms.net
Performance makes its long awaited arrival onto DVD for the first time on 5th March 2007.
This psychedelic British classic explores the dangerous world of an East End gangster played by James Fox and the hedonism of a drug-fuelled rock star played by Mick Jagger.
Made in 1968 and released in 1970, PERFORMANCE was extremely controversial in its day due to the explicit scenes of sex, violence and drug taking. So many myths surround the film that it has become a modern movie legend.
There are tales of Keith Richards keeping a jealous eye over girlfriend Anita Pallenberg while she filmed sex scenes with bandmate Jagger, lab technicians so shocked at the sex scenes they refused to develop the film and people
vomiting during screenings.
Although Roeg has enjoyed a long and critically acclaimed career and continues to make films, co-director Donald Cammell tragically committed suicide in 1996.
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| 11th January 2007 08:28 PM |
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| fireontheplatter |
awesome |
| 11th January 2007 08:44 PM |
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| killerbitch |
What the hell kind of sex scenes would make people vomit and refuse to
develop the film? That is really crazy. |
| 11th January 2007 10:38 PM |
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| Bruno |
"Mick Jagger's 'Performance' To Be Released On DVD"
I think the girls here may "misunderstand" it...  |
| 11th January 2007 10:41 PM |
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| GotToRollMe |
I'm picking this one up, pronto.
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| 11th January 2007 11:07 PM |
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| glencar |
I'll have to sell the VHS copy on eBay! |
| 11th January 2007 11:14 PM |
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| Sir Stonesalot |
I wonder if the extras will include the infamous deleted hardcore scenes with Mick & Anita.
Probably not. But that would be really cool. |
| 11th January 2007 11:16 PM |
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| pdog |
quote:
Sir Stonesalot wrote:
I wonder if the extras will include the infamous deleted hardcore scenes with Mick & Anita.
Probably not. But that would be really cool.
anita naked would be enough for me... |
| 11th January 2007 11:23 PM |
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| Sir Stonesalot |
Well hell, that's in the regular release. Bush, Boobs, Butt...all the b words.
Legend has it that the deleted hardcore scenes made the rounds of the Amsterdam Red Light cinemas back in the day.
Don't know if it's true or not...but supposedly, there was about 45 minutes of actual fucking that hit the cutting room floor. And that was what surfaced in A-dam.
Don't know what happened to it since. My guess is that Jagger's people got their hands on it, and either destroyed it, or it's in Mick's vault.
[Edited by Sir Stonesalot] |
| 11th January 2007 11:59 PM |
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| pdog |
quote:
Sir Stonesalot wrote:
Well hell, that's in the regular release. Bush, Boobs, Butt...all the b words.
Legend has it that the deleted hardcore scenes made the rounds of the Amsterdam Red Light cinemas back in the day.
Don't know if it's true or not...but supposedly, there was about 45 minutes of actual fucking that hit the cutting room floor. And that was what surfaced in A-dam.
Don't know what happened to it since. My guess is that Jagger's people got their hands on it, and either destroyed it, or it's in Mick's vault.
[Edited by Sir Stonesalot]
Of all the stuff that's been bootlegged, I now have a life's quest. |
| 12th January 2007 02:15 AM |
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| Sir Stonesalot |
Hey...I'm frunkin' duck.
Bad night at work, had to go hang one on.
If I had any horse...I'd do it.
I would too.
OK, I probably wouldn't...but I'd pretend that I would! No, I'd snort some.
Not a big line like that chick in Pulp Fiction...but enough to make me puke!
Doesa that make me a pussy?
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| 12th January 2007 04:23 AM |
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| FotiniD |
quote:
Sir Stonesalot wrote:
My guess is that Jagger's people got their hands on it, and either destroyed it, or it's in Mick's vault.
That's one funky home video to share with friends  |
| 12th January 2007 05:21 AM |
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| corgi37 |
Hope like fuck there is a commentary! Bet its all "Ah, i cant remember" or "Did we film that?" or "What the hell is this scene about?"
Must buy! |
| 12th January 2007 05:27 AM |
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| Zack |
quote:
pdog wrote:
anita naked would be enough for me...
Frankly, that's the movie's only redeeming feature. I thought it sucked so bad it was scary.
That bit about the hardcore scenes being shown in Amsterdam (and winning a prize too!) is an urban myth. If that was the case, it would be in circulation somewhere, and the final quest would be over. |
| 12th January 2007 08:37 AM |
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| Olompali |
The deconstruction of the bourgeois idoltry of gangster machismo and the magical realism of bohemian sorcery as a solution was brilliant and far ahead of most cinema at the time.
Performance is an amazing piece of writing and film making.
[Edited by Olompali] |
| 12th January 2007 04:40 PM |
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| glencar |
A great film! |
| 12th January 2007 05:44 PM |
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| Gimme Shelter |
Finally!!! |
| 12th January 2007 05:50 PM |
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| Gazza |
1. I dont remember Anita's bush makin' a cameo. Maybe I need to look closer next time.
2. I've my doubts about these lost hardcore scenes. Surely, if they actually circulated at some 'festival', they'd have been copied or pirated by someone - they'd have been hot property after all. Think I read a thread somewhere before (on IORR I think) and Mathijs (I think it was) mentioned something about the porn festival story being true. I'd always took it as another urban myth, up there with the Mars bar and the "Muddy Waters paintin' the goddamn ceiling" stories.
3. It's an excellent film. I've always liked it. James Fox is especially terrific in it.
[Edited by Gazza] |
| 12th January 2007 08:54 PM |
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| Brainbell Jangler |
It really is an ambitious work for the reasons stated by Olompali. It is definitely not "cinema lite." Some familiarity with the works of Nietzsche, the history of Hassan ibn Sabah and the Hashishin, and the writings of Jorge-Luis Borges is helpful in comprehending its themes.  |
| 12th January 2007 09:41 PM |
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| Carol Sigmaringa |
I downloaded a copy of Performance that circulates on the internet, but the sound quality is so terrible that I never really watch the movie. I just can't understand what they say!
I wonder what kind of scenes would be so shoking... |
| 13th January 2007 01:58 AM |
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| Doxa |
quote:
Gazza wrote:
2. I've my doubts about these lost hardcore scenes. Surely, if they actually circulated at some 'festival', they'd have been copied or pirated by someone - they'd have been hot property after all. Think I read a thread somewhere before (on IORR I think) and Mathijs (I think it was) mentioned something about the porn festival story being true. I'd always took it as another urban myth, up there with the Mars bar and the "Muddy Waters paintin' the goddamn ceiling" stories.
Gazza, I remember the discussion on IORR but I recall Mathijs denying the truth of the film getting an award from a porn festival in Amsterdam, and that there even existed that sort of festival in the first place... but I'm not sure; the memory, it makes tricks..(not Mathijs's but mine, and perhaps yours, Gazza, probably, too)
- Doxa |
| 13th January 2007 07:07 AM |
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| Olompali |
Newly published here:
http://www.drkrm.com/cammell1.html#pt2
Interview with Donald Cammell
by David Del Valle
DANGEROUS TIMES PRODUCE DANGEROUS ART. The cinema of the late 1960’s reflected a wild and dangerous mood that was best crystallized in Performance, a witches’ brew of crime, decadence, and drug-induced hallucinations. This film of “Vice… and Versa” was the work of two directors: Nicolas Roeg supervised the cinematography, while Donald Cammell wrote the screenplay, directed the actors and supervised the editing. It took nearly two years for Warner Bros. To distribute Performance in the United States, where after it immediately assumed cult status throughout the counterculture.
In the wake of Performance, Roeg directed a number of acclaimed motion pictures, while Cammell's appeared to stall. The common assumption that Roeg’s success resulted in feelings of envy and sour grapes is unfounded: no ill feeling existed between the two directors. I emphasize this because, in the interview you are about to read, Cammell makes certain comments tht might be mistaken for a kind of animosity that simply was not in his nature. If they were rivals, it was only as siblings would be. When he heard that VIDEO WATCHDOG was planning to print the following statement about Cammell, Roeg said, “I feel like a part of me has been taken away. He was like a brother.”
Anyone familiar with Cammell’s work habits knew that he liked the collaborative mode and the communal environment of filmmaking. He took everyone’s suggestions, never subscribing to the auteur theory. It wasn’t the way Hollywood pictures are made, but no one ever accused Cammell of making a Hollywood picture. In 1978, when his directorial solo Demon Seed was being produced, Cammell envisioned it as a comedy. He found that the idea that technology would lead to sexual reproduction between woman kind and a machine, hysterically funny. The studio, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, wasn’t laughing.
Donald Cammell was an extremely bizarre and eccentric artist. His views were very personal and he refused to conform, not in Europe, and certainly not in Hollywood, to what was commercial or politically correct. This previously unpublished interview was conducted in June 1988. At the time, Cammell had just completed White of the Eye (1987), a billiant, mesmerizing odyssey through the mind of a serial killer (David Keith) and his loving wife (Cathy Moriarty). It anticipated films like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and The Silence of the Lambs, and at the same time, went light years beyond them. It was critically acclaimed, even publicly endorsed by Marlon Brando, yet it was too potent and unique a work to attract a popular audience. Ironically, I was trying to get in touch with Donald a couple of weeks before his suicide to urge him to appear at The American Cinematheque for a screening of Performance. However, days before the screening, Donald phoned to beg off. He apologized, saying that it was “bad karma” to look to the past. For him, nostalgia was a waste of time. He lived life in the present tense, preferring to leave the explanations to people like myself. He ended our conversation by saying if he ever consented to another interview, he would give it to me. Well, Donald, it seems to have worked out that way after all. –David Del Valle
Was Duffy your first major screen credit as a writer?
I think so… yes, Duffy must have been. I saw it long ago. It’s based on an adventure that really happened to a mate of mine, or maybe it was all my lovely group-Susie York, James Mason, James Coburn, and Willie (James) Fox. It’s not a serious movie, more of a bon bon, very carefree. Not worth discussing.
James Fox played a far more important role in your next, Performance.
Indeed! It changed his life, mine… everybody connected with it, actually, Performance is a landmark and a swan song for the era of Swinging London, not a success when it came out. Warner Bros. wanted none of it.
To what extent did Warners want it changed?
When they saw my rough cut, they were appalled that Jagger was not onscreen until maybe an hour into the film. So, in a vain attempt to keep it from being shelved permanently, I tried to rescue the work. I mean, I completely re-edited it three times, compressing it more and more. By then, Nick Roeg was completely absorbed in filming Walkabout, so he blissfully wasn’t involved in any of this.
What did Roeg say when he saw the re-edited cut?
He wanted his name removed, because he felt that too many liberties had been taken with the continuity. You have to realize, it was a collaborative effort, yet it was my screenplay, my concept. I directed the actors and Nick did what Nick does best, which is the director of photography.
Did it bother you that Roeg got the lion’s share of credit for Performance?
I don’t really want to discuss Nick, but I will say this: Nick went on to several features on the strength of Performance, and when you realize that the whole project was based on my friendship with Jagger, and the fact that Jagger trusted me, it does aggravate an already open wound. Enough said.
How did you get the idea to combine the gangster world with that of a faded rock star?
Well, in Britain, the underworld was typified by the Krays. The Krays were very macho, very dangerous and rather glamorous. This I saw as sort of a parallel with the rock world and, particularly, The Rolling Stones. Originally, my script was called The Performers because each of the characters is a performer, in one sense or another.
You seem to have a healthy disrespect for Hollywood storytelling.
I have a very healthy disrespect for Hollywood altogether! One of the reasons I think Warners hated the film so much is because it forces an audience to consider the construction of their own fragmented selves, the various aspects of sexuality, which is something people never question. Nick loves to tell the story of one Warner executive who observed, “Even the bath water is dirty in this film,” referring to the menage a trios in Turner’s bath. Nick could only say, “Well the water looks that way because they just took a bath!”
I’ve always been impressed with the film’s opening shots. They seem unrelated at first, a rocket taking off, an overhead view of a Rolls Royce moving through the countryside, a couple making violent love with mirrors. What was you concept here?
It’s to emphasize the sense of transition, of change, of continual mobility. Some of it is subliminal and Nick loved to intercut. (Laughs)
The cinematography seems to me to be from the school of Psychedelic Expressionism.
(Laughs) Well, perhaps the whole film is Psychedelic Expressionism! Yes, I like that very much. Can I use it?
Seriously…I showed John Clark, our art director, several examples of artists like Aubrey Beardsley and Francis Bacon. We deliberately wanted [to reflect] an artist’s vision. Every film I’ve been allowed to make owes a very heavy debt to art because, after all, I’m basically a painter.
The editing technique, in my opinion, was a cross between someone like Alain Resnais and Aram Avakian.
Are you sure you’re not with Cahiers du cinéma? (Laughs) If you mean that seriously, yes. Quite so. It ha s a precision and formality which could be like a Resnais film, and yet it’s very flashy and glamorous in the manner of Avakian. However, that technique is nowadays referred to as “Nicolas Roeg.”
At one point, Turner says, "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
The line comes from Nietzsche. Performance is about the trans-valuation of all values. Perhaps the film is Nietzschean in the sense that I believe in living one’s life that way. The film brings the Neanderthal gangster and the effete yellow book world of the rock star into one demonic fusion. The gangster is really more bisexual and in touch with his feminine side; once again, the fragmented self. It’s really a provocative love story. The margin between love and hate is exceedingly narrow and I’ve made an effort to show that, where violence exists, it’s as indicative of love as much as hatred.*
What was Mick Jagger like to work with?
Well, Jagger is Jagger. His life is his art. Turner is Jagger-ish is something Mick really didn’t want to deal with, as he was trying very hard to make that transition from rock star to movie star. At the time, Mick and the Stones had been offered A Clockwork Orange, but Jagger wanted something a bit more solo. Something apart from the Rolling Stones. But Mick is not acting in Performance. That is Mick to the teeth. He even wore the Turner makeup on the street. He tried to look like that for years. The relationship between Mick and Anita (Pallenberg) was real. They became lovers, even though she was Keith Richards’ lady. I’ll never forget Keith Richards’ Rolls Royce parked across the street from the location, keeping an eye on his paramour. Jagger simply took Anita under the house for sex. Keith would come on the set looking for hanky-panky, not realizing that he was standing about three feet above the action!
*Cammell is mistaken here. This celebrated line appears in William Burroughs novel Naked Lunch, where it is atributed to Hassan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, leader of the 11th century Ismailli sect known as the Assassins. Turner mentions Hassan in the film and the quote latter served as an epigraph in David Cronenberg's film adaptation of Naked Lunch.
What has become of Anita Pallenberg? I read that she was involved in witchcraft and was very overweight.
That’s all rubbish. Anita’s doing just fine. I look in on her whenever I’m on the East Coast. She’s dropped a lof of weight and I think she is writing. Anita is a survivor and a great lady. I love her.
What was James Fox like on the film?
Willie, his nickname, was a great observer and was learning his craft. He had already made some films and fell into this one with great gusto. He literally became a gangster in the name of research. He spent eventings in the company of London’s most notorious thugs, to the extent that he actually frightened people. Now imagine this very macho, violent behaviour being shattered, once again, under Jagger’s influence. It was perhaps a tragedy that Willie became so traumatized by Jagger’s sexuality that he succumbed to it and ultimately quit acting altogether and went to India. It took him forever to snap out of it.
Jagger does make a rather late enterance, a rather grand entrance, like Rita Hayworth in Gilda.
Well, perhaps more like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. That’s how I gave Jagger the line, “Why don’t you go to a hotel?” when Fox tries to rent the flat. It’s the sort of remark an aging bitch would say to a lesser mortal.
At the end of the film, after Chas (Fox) shoots Turner (Jagger) in the head, it’s Jagger that we see leaving the house with his old gangster cronies-presumbably to be murdered by them. You meant to indicate that Chas had absorbed Turner’s persona?
In a sense, yes. I was thinking of Jorge Luis Borges and the Sanish bullfighter El Cordobes, who kisses the bull between the eyes before placing his sword therein. Jagger is very much that bullfighter. In terms of painting, if you look at the “Memo from Turner” number, Jagger’s character has already assumed the Harry Flowers persona (in terms of Chas’ perception). So this further absorption seems natural. The “Memo from Turner” sequence, by the way is probably the first rock video. You may not know it, but I’ve directed several rock videos in the last few years. In point of fact, I did a bit of editing on Gimme Shelter for the Maysles Brothers.
Why did it take you so long to mak another feature?
If you only knew how many unrealized projects are littered between 1970 and Demon Seed, you wouldn't ask. One of those projects that caused a bit of a stir on the Riviera was a “caper” screenplay entitled Avec Avec, which was made much later by my old mate James Coburn. This was the kind of luck I had up until Demon Seed.
What was the Demon Seed experience like for you?
Well, it was a very unhappy experience. It was a pretty frustrationg experience. My personality just does not gel with these studuio people. And MGM was no different than Warner Bros.. was with Performance. I was the reason they got Julie Christie, who was red hot at the time, and an Oscar winner to boot. The front office loved everything until they got their hands on my rough cut. It could hve been a great film, but even though it got bloody repectable notices, it wasn’t my vision. As I’ve said before, I am a painter who happens to make films. But enough of that! Would you mind if we go on the film you just saw, which I’m very proud of.
White of the Eye.
Yes, around 1985, after God knows how many unrealized projects (including one reuniting me with Jagger, believe it or not, which was to be called Ishtar, but don’t get me started on that…) I was prepping this film for EMI, which was shelved when the company got taken over by Cannnon. So as a sort of compensation, I was offered this strange little novel by Margaret Tracy called Mrs. White, which my wife and I adapted into White of the Eye. Basically, her novel explored this woman’s feelings as she discovers that her husband is insane and yet she is completely dominated by him. Well, I rethought all that and decided it was more interesting to have her deeply in love, so that when she discovers he’s a serial killer, she has to make that decision to leave him or confront him and continue to love him. Even to the point where he degenerates into bestiality. It really seemed to be an extremely powerful and moving idea. In fact, in the final reel, I tried to create the sound and fury of madness and take you into a world of transcendent horror.
You certainly made Arizona seem very surreal.
Well, I’m European, and Arizona looks very exotic and a little surreal when I’m confronted by it. The Indians have tremendous karma and glamour. I could easily see Picasso on a reservation. The location was a real trip. My main set piece is a run-down mining town called Globe, which is on the edge of an Apache reservation, where a crumbling civilization has this uneasy coexistence with violence-pagan violence. It had been the second largest copper mine in Arizona and then became this relic, this kind of scarred, extraordinary landscape. I vividly remember shooting the final scene in a kind of stepped, zig-zagged structure, like an inverted Assyrian temple.
Once again, your painter’s eye seems to be at work here.
Well yes, I painted it as best I can, and if art is to be involved at all, you hope that some kind of energy or sincerity will result in some kind of revelation.
I see it as a portrait of a schizophrenic who views the suburban sexuality of his victims as a kind of waste.
That’s your opinion. I didn’t try and diagnose or make a judgement on the reasons for serial murder. I suppose I’m really asking if we really know the people we love. Do we really understand their motives? I mean this bedroom community of Globe, Arizona is full of waste and boredom. The killer has a painter’s eye, which I suppose is mine.
My favorite line in the film occurs when the homicide detective says to his assistant, “Did you ever look at a Picasso, Lucas?” referring to the crime scene as resembling a work of art.This serial killer happens to be a psychotic with an aesthetic imagination. I like the concept of murders being arranged as art. But my favorite line is on the poster art. “The only difference between a hunter and a killer is his prey.”
I heard that White of the Eye was going to receive an X rating, but it received an R. What happened?
What happened was Marlon Brando. He sent a letter to the MPAA, a brilliant letter, analyzing sequences in the film in great detail, and praising it for it originality and artistry. I mean, you wouldn’t have believed this letter! Eventually they passed the film with a couple of nominal cuts. About 90% of what I wanted is on the screen.
That was a beautiful thing for Brando to do.
Brando is a phenomenal human being. And I am pleased to say that he’s going to be my partner on my next film, which he has written. At the moment its called Jericho and I have really good feelings this time around. But let’s not jinx it! You’ll be the first to know when I have something concrete to show. •
[Edited by Olompali] |
| 13th January 2007 10:40 AM |
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| Gazza |
quote:
Doxa wrote:
Gazza, I remember the discussion on IORR but I recall Mathijs denying the truth of the film getting an award from a porn festival in Amsterdam, and that there even existed that sort of festival in the first place... but I'm not sure; the memory, it makes tricks..(not Mathijs's but mine, and perhaps yours, Gazza, probably, too)
- Doxa
I think it was actually me who brought up the lack of credibility in the story about there being having porn festival awards as far back as the early 70s - if I remember right, Mathijs did counter that with something suggesting the existence of the footage may have indeed been possible.
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| 13th January 2007 10:41 AM |
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| Gazza |
quote:
Carol Sigmaringa wrote:
I downloaded a copy of Performance that circulates on the internet, but the sound quality is so terrible that I never really watch the movie. I just can't understand what they say!
I wonder what kind of scenes would be so shoking...
Looking at it now, its relatively tame by today's standards, but by 1968 standards the sex and drug taking was seen as quite shocking. Warners subsequently refused to release it for over two years. |
| 13th January 2007 02:14 PM |
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| Bruno |
"At the time, Mick and the Stones had been offered A Clockwork Orange, but Jagger wanted something a bit more solo".
Wait a minute: he means the Kubrick film, Mick being Alex and the stones, his gang?! Holy shit! |
| 13th January 2007 09:09 PM |
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| Brainbell Jangler |
Thanks for posting the Cammell interview, Olompali. The interviewer's correction of Cammell's attribution of the "Nothing is true, everything is permitted" quote is misleading, however. The quote does appear in Naked Lunch and it is correctly attributed there to Hassan ibn Sabah, as the interviewer's note asserts. It also appears, as Cammell states, in Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, where Nietzsche--unlike Cammell--correctly attributes it to Hassan.
  
Note also Cammell's allusion to Borges. I didn't catch this reference the first few times I saw the film, as I wasn't familiar with Borges and didn't recognize what Mick/Turner was reading aloud onscreen. I was informed when I saw it in law school with a friend and his girlfriend who taught Spanish literature. Here's where it gets eerie. On the way out of the movie, just after she'd pointed out the Borges reference, we stopped at a bookstore. I picked up a copy of Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia (book, not film) not thinking it had any connection to the conversation. I opened it to the Introduction or Preface or whatever and read these words: "In the autobiography of Jorge Luis Borges . . ." |
| 14th January 2007 01:08 AM |
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| WhenTheWhipComesDown |
Why was Mick having an affair with Anita when he knew she was Keith's lady?
Was he trying to do to Keith what Keith did to Brian? |
| 14th January 2007 06:33 AM |
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| Fabio Hot Stuff |
quote:
killerbitch wrote:
What the hell kind of sex scenes would make people vomit and refuse to
develop the film? That is really crazy.
Agree, what does they felt if they' had see Caligula? |
| 14th January 2007 06:51 AM |
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| Fabio Hot Stuff |
Mick and the Stones had been offered A Clockwork
incredible, this same lines I have read it on a Malcom Mc Dowell book interview!!!
can't believe Stanley had a conversation with Mick.
By the way, if you look "Alex"/Malcom, well, he's looking a lot with Mick! I have always look that.
Clockwork is absolutely my favourite movie ever, I saw it 10 or more times |
| 14th January 2007 08:06 AM |
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| Doxa |
quote:
WhenTheWhipComesDown wrote:
Why was Mick having an affair with Anita when he knew she was Keith's lady?
Was he trying to do to Keith what Keith did to Brian?
I think you are asking the questions from a wrong angle. Perhaps Anita was the active person in both 'three is a crowd-dramas'. Both Keith and Mick couldn't resist the temptation when such an occasion was offered to them... who cares the loyalty to a friend or to a band when such a hot chick is concerned... And we have to remember that it was the late 60's, and having sex here and there wasn't such a big thing then... or perhaps that was what liberal-minded Mick and Anita were thinking about; Keith always been more conservative in these matters, I think.
- Doxa
[Edited by Doxa]
[Edited by Doxa] |
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