Torture Dungeon

Last night I watched TORTURE DUNGEON, a film by Andy Milligan. I was in a weird mood because I had just finished reading THE GHASTLY ONE, a book all about Andy Milligan's life and work. I had never seen a Milligan film, but the book was very intense and made me extremely curious and excited, and full of apprehension.

Basically there were all of these people prancing around in medieval costumes, trying their best to deliver bad dialogue in believable and intriguing tones, with more or less success. There was a pleasant mix of actors and non-actors, and of campiness and seriousness. But it was all rather solemn, seemingly an attempt at creating CINEMA. The soundtrack was well-timed with the action, and had a grandeur and sadness reminiscent of IVAN THE TERRIBLE. The performances were earnest, sometimes even sweet and moving. There were really fabulous costumes, great hennins and emblems, and great dressing for interiors and use of exteriors. All in all, it had a real atmosphere, created for pennies, while it is not easy to create an atmosphere on any budget.

Some of my favorite scenes included the heroine, an innocent lass whom we first see romping nude in the pond and woods with her lover. She has an atypical figure for a nude actress, with small breasts and a very large rear, but her shape is pleasingly plump and her face very pretty, almost like a young Susan Hayward. She has an innocence you don't often see in nude actresses which is very refreshing, and which seems quite intentional. The actors all had great faces, were very cinematic, wore their clothes well. The camera movement was exciting, and the shots and editing effective.

You could instantly see that Milligan had been inspired by watching old movies. The scene that includes the torture dungeon itself is right out of a 1930's black and white horror film...I can't remember which one...where a mad scientist has a horrifying chamber of grotesqueries, medical experiments. In order to deflect away from cheap visuals there is moody lighting and a camera swinging around so you can't see anything too well, but it all works.

The thing I noticed about this Milligan movie is that is that takes itself very seriously. It's not trying to be schlock, it's trying to be good. When I see that it's very weird, because it's what I do. I've never quite seen anyone do what I do before; that is, try to make a period masterpiece with no money and no help. It reminds me a lot of my Super 8mm stuff, where I made everything out of nothing, just hobbled it all together.

The other thing Andy and I both do is use film as a kind of gestalt therapy, to purge emotional demons. Hardly anyone else ever does that either. And using nudity prudishly. Another unusual combination. He's more a sadist and I'm a masochist, but the impulses are basically the same. I'll have to see more of his films to see if the connection is as strong as I think, because it may be more so in this medieval one, but I have a feeling the empathy goes pretty deep. I guess we're just a couple of prancing dressmaking set decorating old movie buff drama queen feverish flesh peddling weirdos out of hell. Oh, well!

Film within a Film (A Brief Sketch)

In the movie Peeping Tom there is this incredibly beautiful camera that the main character carries around. I asked around and found out that it's a Bell and Howell Filmo, a heavy industrial 16mm portable camera that makes a sound like a coffee grinder. It's the kind that was used a lot for newsreels back in the day.

Seeing that great camera gave me the idea to do a film within a film. There would be a director filming his movie on an Eyemo, the 35mm version of the Filmo. It would be sort of a sequel to VIVA, (my boyfriend calls it "Viva Deux," which sounds dreadful), shot somewhere in southern Europe, possibly on the Riviera or in Greece.

Anyway, I had this dream where John Klemantaski, who plays the British sleaze theater director in VIVA, and Jared Sanford, who plays the alcoholic husband sleaze in VIVA, and I were all staying in the same beach house somewhere on the Riviera. We were all wearing these dresses or tunics made out of the same colorful striped terrycloth. Mine was one-shoulder and so short in back that my bare rear end was totally exposed as I walked around, but I didn't mind at all. And we were all hugging and kissing effussively like disgusting Hollywood actors, so pleased to be shooting a new picture together.

So I was thinking I'd put John's character, Arthur, in the new film as the director of a comedy in Europe. But he's totally neurotic, and he insists that all the acting be method. So the girls (Bridget and me) have to join the police force in order to play cops in his movie, and some crazy mix-ups happen, including our involvement in a real murder.

Some images I have so far are a man in a gorilla suit on a motorboat (See my post "Cinema on LSD"), girls running in tight beige police uniforms with corsets underneath, a blah love scene on an ocean raft, speeding down the road in Ferraris, and scenes at the wharf with the director trying to capture his crane shots, inspired by How to Murder Your Wife.

Fairy Tales and Women's Pictures

I've realized that the stories that move me the most usually are a twist on the Cinderella story: a young girl that is terribly abused by an adult female, and who has to make her own way until she is saved somehow. So many of the fairy tales revolve around this theme. We also have Peau d'Ane, or Donkeyskin, in which a young princess flees from her home disguised in a donkeyskin to avoid the amorous advances of her father, and is ridiculed and snubbed by villagers who are disgusted with her rancid smell inside of the foul animal skin. Then there is Mother Trude, where an overly curious girl goes into the forest and sees what she shouldn't through the witch's window, and the witch throws her on the fire and warms herself to the new blaze. And of course there is Snow White, where the stepmother is competitive with the beautiful daughter, and hates her and plots her death.

I wonder why these stories are so unpopular now, except among children. They're so universal. There used to be so many fairy tale movies, movies about girls and women. In the 30's EVERYONE watched Shirley Temple movies. They were very sophisticated entertainment, with great writers, directors, performers, songs, choreography, stories. They were the cream of the crop, the finest Hollywood had to offer.

The other day The Little Princess with Shirley Temple was on, and it was so moving, I was sobbing by the end of it. Literally, tears pouring down my face. Where it really gets me is when she is having a perfect little birthday party at the boarding school, and news comes that her father has been killed in action. He hasn't paid the bill at the school, and apparently she is left penniless, so the evil headmistress takes away all her presents and sends her up to her room, where she is promptly informed of her father's death, stripped of all her fine possessions, and put to hard labor as a scullery maid. It all comes out all right in the end, but watching it is too much.

The Shirley Temple movies are remarkable in that she usually gets herself out of her tight spots, rather than relying on a handsome prince (or, her case, a dashing daddy), to get her out of it. The daddy figures often do help, but it is always her own resourcefulness that pulls her through in the end.

In the 30's and 40's there were so many great women's pictures. One that I saw recently for the first time that really did a number on me is The Locket, with Larraine Day, Brian Aherne, Robert Mitchum. One of the most haunting films I've ever seen. A woman has mental problems, and it all stems from her childhood. She was the daughter of the maid in a rich household, and was friends with the little rich daughter of the house. The rich daughter has a birthday party and gets a beautiful gold locket, which she gives to the maid's daughter as a gift. But the rich girl's mother takes it away, explaining that it's a family heirloom. The maid's daughter had a tremendous sense of loss, and can't get over the fact that she was given something so special and was not allowed to keep it. In the meantime, the locket is missing, and the rich lady of the house accuses the maid's daughter of stealing it. There is a horrifying scene where she is sort of throttling the girl and screaming at her for lying, but then it's found by the maid. The rich lady doesn't believe it, and thinks the maid is covering up for her daughter. They are discharged from the household.

Years later, the maid's daughter grows into a charming young lady, and gets married. But it's subsequently revealed that she is a kleptomaniac with serious mental problems, and she proceeds to bring death and destruction to everyone around her because of her problem. The flashback to her childhood comes about halfway through the movie, when we are starting to realize that she is not normal. All of her problems stem from this one incident with the locket. There's more and it gets worse, but I don't want to give away the whole plot.

Another great woman's picture is Aventurera, a Mexican melodrama from the 40's about a girl who is led into a life of prostitution, because of being kidnapped by an evil woman who sells her into slavery. I also enjoyed The Revolt of Mamie Stover with Jane Russell, about a woman who is a drink hostess and entertainer at a Honolulu nightclub, where she works for a hard-as-nails Agnes Moorhead, who keeps her stable of girls in line like prisoners.

And there is Waterloo Bridge, where Vivienne Leigh is a dancer who is abused by a sadistic ballet mistress and is discharged for meeting with her lover. Then, because it's the war and there are no jobs, she and her girlfriend are forced into prostitution. She thinks her lover Robert Taylor is dead, but then it turns out he is alive, and her life is ruined now and they can never be together. And there is Madame X, where Lana Turner, a girl of humble origins, weds a wealthy politician, John Forsythe, who is always away on business. In her loneliness she has an affair with Ricardo Montalban, and when she tries to end it there is an accident and he falls down the stairs to his death. To avoid scandal her mother in law forces her to disappear forever and leave her little boy, which breaks her heart. She becomes a worthless alcoholic, her life ruined, her only wish to see her little boy again.

Great films. Modern fairy tales. For some reason there were no more fairy tales after about the 60's. There was a resurgence of fairy tales and fables in the 60's and early 70's, and then nothing. I recently saw The Pied Piper, starring Donovan. Wonderful fairy tale, very magical. It was the 60's, so it was also very cynical. But interesting and great. It's time to bring these types of movies back.

Cinema on LSD

Up until now I've always made "comedies," and I'm thinking of venturing next into drama. But the lure of the comic form still looms large. I had some thoughts about what a comedy is that I wanted to jot down before I move totally into drama and forget what I was thinking.

When I first became interested in comedy as a form is when I was reading about "modes" in Northrop Frye's brilliant book Anatomy of Criticism. He states simply that in a comedy the hero is integrated into his society, and that in a tragedy he is isolated from his society. The classic integration is often through marriage, but it could be a misfit that gets accepted, or any number of kinds of integration. Having it put this way really excited me, because I could see all sorts of ways to enact this fantasy of integration, which is basically a wish-fulfillment fantasy, and at the same time tap into levels of irony and complexity that would make my stories completely unique.

This has worked for me up until now, but I am starting to fear that if I have to make a movie in a conventional way-- that is, delegating tasks to others, and within a reasonable time limit-- I can't afford to make a comedy. The reason comedy is more expensive is that if you want to keep people laughing, you have to surprise and delight them at regular intervals. This is difficult if not impossible to do with dialogue alone, no matter how funny the writing or how good the actors. You have to surprise them by any possible means--by changing the locations, the sets, the colors, the characters, keeping things moving visually as well as in the storyline.

The key in comedy is movement. The silent film geniuses Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin knew this. Elaborate sight gags and stunts are one way to achieve movement, action scenes are another, and changing the locations often is another. So I've been thinking: the best way to keep things moving, and therefore comic, is to combine all types of movement together. Have the camera moving, the actors moving--on motorboats, trains, airplanes, running, waterskiing, racing, on horseback, etc.--have the story moving, the sets changing, the story shifting, new surprises all the time. It's like those fairy tales where there's one room that opens into another, and another, and another, to infinity. Then when there's a locked room and you can't enter, that's tragedy. That's Pandora's Box, Bluebeard's Castle, sin, death, destruction. That's why low-budget movies almost always feel so abject. You are locked in these little rooms, these little spaces, and you can't get out. That's not comedy. That's horror. You need lots of sets for comedy.

The other thing that works in comedy is recognition. If you recognize someone's plight as something you've experienced yourself, then you laugh. If it doesn't seem real to you, you don't laugh. So comedy has to be very psychologically real. The actors have to be very good to pull it off, and it takes a lot of rehearsals. Also, incongruity works. And traditional gags seem to work, if the audience recognizes them as such. A classic example of this is, a man in a gorilla suit mugging for the camera. Everyone knows he's a man in a gorilla suit, but we've become accustomed to the gag, so we laugh.

My idea of comedy is to make every single thing in the frame create recognition, without distracting from the story. That's why I like to do period stuff. The next time I do a comedy I want to collect all of these movie clichés, things that we experience only in movies, and stick them together. So we have the gorilla suit...the Victorian beauty galloping across the English moors...the long sea journey...the couple on the motorboat falling in love as the shore recedes behind them...the trapeze act without a net...a film within in a film...etc. So, anyone who's seen classic movies will recognize everything that happens. A patchwork of different movies thrown together, in a mad kaleidoscope of movie history. Cinema on LSD.

Formula for Making Low-Budget Movies

Last night I promised to reveal the secrets of making a successful low-budget movie. The movies I have based it on are all from the 1930's through the 1960's, because those are primarily the movies I watch. But this formula would work for movies made at any time.

Basically, there is a main character who is either a psychopathic murderer, a nymphomaniac, or a witch. The victim has a certain sympathy and even psychic connection to the killer, who is often a young good-looking person who appears to be normal. The attractiveness of the psychotic character draws all suspicion away from them until it is too late and there have been some grisly deaths. If the victim is a female, usually there is some older woman who is oppressing her, and who is her enemy. She has to deal with this tribulation as well as with the menace of the killer. She is hated because of her innocence, but in the end it is her innocence that saves her.

The audience has a sense of the dread of the situation far in advance of the characters, which creates a great deal of terror and suspense. The sense of impending doom is often enhanced with fog, deep shadows, stark interiors. There are few sets, but the sets that exist are very atmospheric. Usually these films can get by with 2 or 3 interiors and 2 exteriors, as long as they are very good ones. Typical settings include a castle interior, a motel interior, a nightclub or bar, a store or other place of business, a diner or restaurant, a manor, a library or study, an underground coven, an apartment building, a churchyard, the lonely highway, the main street of a town, the moors, the deserted beach, or the forest.

Good examples of the form include Psycho, Repulsion, Night Must Fall, Peeping Tom, Phantom Lady (psycho killers), and Horror Hotel, The Virgin Witch, Day of Wrath (witches).

When the character is a nymphomaniac or an otherwise sexually aggressive woman, havoc and destruction are wreaked from the moment she makes contact with a forbidden male who is either above her station, or not her husband. Examples include The Birds, Vertigo, Butterfield 8, Suburban Roulette, Niagara, In This Our Life, Gone to Earth, Strange Woman, Beyond the Forest, and countless other noir films. Although some of these were made with large studio budgets, the story elements are simple and don't require the fancy trappings you would need for, say, a comedy.

The reason you can get by with very low budgets, especially with the killer/witch types, is because the sense of horror and doom distract the audience away from the visuals, and keep them focusing on the psychology. The limited number of sets actually works for these films, because it increases the feeling of being trapped and not being able to escape. Also, you can get away with a lot of symbolic camera work, in which a close-up is often more effective than showing a whole set.

A variation on the witch theme is the wicked stepmother theme, as in Snow White and Cinderella, and many other fairy tales. Snow White is actually a classic example of the witch story. A variation on the psycho killer theme is the young man so tortured by ambition that he destroys himself and everything he touches, as in Nightmare Alley, The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, or Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

The psycho killer/witch may be replaced with a vampire or other monster, but this is much harder to pull off without resorting to clichés, and tends to be more expensive, mainly because more spectacular visuals are needed in order to keep it interesting. But with a little ingenuity it can work very well too. And a really good combination is the insatiably ambitious man combined with the monster, as in Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I really love making comedies, but if I am to continue in film and not kill myself with the design and brutal budgets, I have to go with this thriller/ horror formula. It actually sounds very exciting. But already I'm jumping ahead of myself, and imagining horses on the moors before thinking of my plot. While coming up with the thriller formula I got some more ideas about the comedy/ action form as well. More on that next time.

Carnival Honey

The greatest source of inspiration so far for my next film has been the novel CARNIVAL HONEY. It's a pulp novel from 1961 written by Orrie Hitt. I've gone on to read other pulp novels from the time, but this is the one that really does it for me. For one thing, it takes place in a carnival. And it's very cinematic, very film noir. But there's this incredible restraint in the writing. Because you never see the carnival itself. You are taken into the trailers, a diner, a house in the country, but not not the carnival itself. It's almost as if this was a movie script and they didn't have the money to show you the carnival. That's how it feels-- like a budget contraint. It's that cinematic. You can see and feel all the sets, you can see the actors, the set dressing. You feel like you are watching a movie, and you enjoy being in the cramped, claustrophobic trailers with their stark lighting and umade beds with satin sheets.

And the sex is very interesting, because they had to make it spiritual in order to pass the censors. So it almost becomes feminized. It's about the total experience, man and woman, union, desire, sensuality. It's not about a male point of view. Also, because so many of these books were churned out so quickly, and the writers had to vary the plots and characters, you have a lot of it told from a woman's point of view. It switches back and forth, but in this book stays longer on the women, on their thoughts and fantasies. A lot of what everyone talks about is women and their options. There's this argument that goes back and forth: should the carnival girls strip all the way, or not? On the one hand it's illegal and they could be shut down, on the other the carnival needs the extra cash it brings in. And everyone in the carnival is concerned for the good of the whole, because if the carnival doesn't make money, they could all be out of jobs. Then there are the girls themselves, their futures, whether or not they should do it from a personal point of view. Everyone seems concerned about this, the reputations and well-being of the girls.

The men are big and brutal and handsome, and a little scary. I thought of Robert Ryan, Jack Palance. The women are like Gloria Graham, Virginia Mayo, Diana Dors, Marie Windsor. Everyone is struggling along, eveyone is in the same racket. You work for a living. You do what you can to get by. Sure, you can go wrong along the way. A lot of the girls go wrong by getting raped or otherwise deflowered as teenagers. The men have no college education, never got a break. It's all very gritty and realistic.

Everyone loves sex. A woman who loves sex is not threatening, is not masculinized or judged. The more she enjoys sex, the more she is a total woman. She gives the gift of her body, and this gift is sacred. There are homosexuals in these books too, and they are equally human, equally dimensional. Their desire is fleshed out the same as everyone else's, from the inside.

It's so different than anything today. It's so basic. It's about human beings, with their desires, faults, and weaknesses. It's stunningly unspectacular. Nothing is embellished. It's a world of realities, of hard facts. Nowadays stories are all trying to be so wacky. But this is so plain. It's about plain men and women. But somehow you know they are a little more handsome, more virile, more busty, with riper thighs, moister lips, a squarer jaw, more sexual, than you and me. And that's why it's so cinematic. You are seduced by seeing the stars in their more intimate moments. And the brilliance of it is, the author paints the stars so you feel you know them, so you feel almost as if you are watching a great noir film. And the restraint in the writing is a lot of what makes it possible to visualize it so clearly.

CARNIVAL HONEY also seems cinematic for me because it fits within a formula I've come up with for creating great cinema with limited time and a limited budget. I analyzed all the really effective low-budget films, and I found they all have the same story elements and production details. More on that next time.

42nd Street Smut Theaters and Today

I'm in a really weird mood from reading this Andy Milligan book (The Ghastly One). For one thing, the author describes the sexploitation movie racket on 42nd Street in New York in the 60's and 70's. All those smutty theaters, all of that sex product being ground out for pennies. Andy Milligan would make these films for like $10,000, and do everything himself, the way I do. He would use a horrible actor just to get to use his house for free, and cast him as a deaf-mute. Or he would set people on fire because presumably he didn't have the budget to fake it. And they'd be screaming, burning, and he'd keep on filming. Then after torturing the actors and doing everything for nothing, ingenioously, he'd get screwed by the distributors, who would pay him off, maybe $3,000 for a picture, and then they'd be too cheap to give him a pass to his own screening.

The point of all this is, reading this made me realize that basically nothing in the low-budget film world has changed. People are scrambling for a buck however they can get it, and they're turning out product as cheaply as they can so they can make a dollar. It's not about art-- never was. I don't know why I never thought of that before. But it all makes sense: the terrible dreadful movies they turn out. And why? They've got a market for "youth" movies, the way they used to have one for sex movies. So they make these stupid road movies, movies about dopey guys, music about kids doing whatever, with no production values and rotten acting, but they have a niche audience so they SELL.

So I finally see after all these years that spending so much effort trying to make a great movie doesn't necessarily make it easier to sell. But maybe my film is SO WEIRD that it will sell anyway.

I was looking at these vintage pressbooks on ebay last night, and I bought a few. They are so amazing. I bought a Pete Walker one, a Hammer one with Horror of Dracula and Curse of Frankenstein, Cleopatra, a lot of sexploitation pressbooks including Metzger's Little Mother. Priceless! I'm going to use them to inspire my own pressbook. Nobody will have as cool a pressbook as mine if I use these as a model! And a friend sent me this amazing book cover from the '50's, MADBALL, to inspire me for the carnival movie. I must buy it and read it at once!

Thoughts on the Viva Premiere

My film VIVA premiered the other night, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This was a gala Hollywood affair, with the grand sweeping staircase leading up to the stage flanked by giant Oscars. Tosh Berman gave a genius introduction, totally impromptu, which floored the audience, as he made up stories about my S & M director's practices, and how I seduced him with a martini, a negligée, and five strange girls. He told them that everything in VIVA was real, and that it would change their lives forever.

The audience was vocal, and eruptions of laughter came from all sides, in stereo, throughout the entire film. Afterwards, I couldn't get to the food table or the bar, as I was assaulted by people telling me how talented I am, how the color was perfect, how the acting was impeccable, how great my sets are, etc. As the shining faces of strangers loomed into mine, emphatically pouring out the compliments, I kept thinking: I know the costumes and sets are good...I know the acting is good...I know the film is funny...but what else?

In the next couple of days, I tried to figure out why I was feeling disappointed. I'd been influenced lately by a book I've been reading on Andy Milligan (The Ghastly One by Jimmy McDonough), trashy gay horror exploitation director from the 60's and 70's, and the strange insane world he inhabited. He would shock and torment his audiences, make them sick. It's not that I actually wanted to shock people with VIVA, just that I wanted to affect them with the story, and not just the obvious humor and visuals. I wanted them to respond to the nudity, the orgy, the demonic laughter, the rapes, the sublime sex and race car scenes, the nightmarish world of self-absorbed men with their lion pendants, the overall excessiveness.

A couple of responses, it's true, were different. One person at the screening said they were really glad for actor Jared Sanford's raucous laughter, because it relieved the tension. Then when I got home there were a few emails. One guy couldn't sleep, and woke up at 4:45 AM to write about his fevered responses. Another guy said he was laughing madly throughout, but also admitted that it was nervous laughter, in response to the tension and the uncomfortable situations. One more person said he always thought I should make a real horror movie, and now I have. Another person said that if she didn't know me, she would think it was made by someone in and out of insane asylums.

I never know what my next picture is going to be until I get a general audience response from the one I've just finished, and now lots of ideas are swirling around in my brain. I think I'm going to move into straight drama next time, less stylized, tighter story, more direct about the themes. Audiences are masochists and they're brutal, nothing is too strong for them. I see that now. I have a carnival story sort of sketched out, and I have some ideas about its structure, characters and plot that can't fail. More on that next time.

Some comments after the screening:

I thought it was marvelous. It had "that Biller touch"--a wonderful blend of the sumptuous and the preposterous.  I especially envy anyone who stumbles across it by accident.  As with all my favorite films, VIVA offers and alternate reality that I would gladly inhabit--the complete antithesis of pretty much everything else on the marketplace these days. --Marshall

I really enjoyed Viva. The take off of the 70's style acting came across so amusingly. Your attention to all the details of the film is what made it really work. The music and your animation were terrific. I haven't laughed so much at a film for some time. --Robert

Wow, that was... AMAZING!  EPIC! not since POLYESTER have I seen a director transform THAT much from project to project! --Dave

The movie is extremely well done--interesting as well as enlightening!--I guess I missed something in the 70's ha! --Betty

It's a hell of an achievement and one that will force people to take you very seriously as a filmmaker. Obviously, lots of feedback. I'd say THE universal theme was "I have never seen a film like that. Ever!" --John

"Viva" to me is fantasy. But it is a fantasy of someone who lives like those characters in the movie. The social group that I was raised in, were dealing with another sort of crisis... hard drugs, death, etc. The first time I ever saw 'Playboy' was in my Grandfather's house. I have seen hardcore porn in my family's household - but the Playboy thing is really for a particular type of 'man' and that 'man'' wasn't part of my teenage or child world. Saying that I think 'Viva' is a really great film. What makes it great is...basically you! It is your point of view or your attitude that makes that social history interesting. The Orgy scene is incredible. The pacing and shots are awesome. It's really intense. --Tosh

I had to write to tell you how much I enjoyed Viva!  I brought two of my girlfriends out with me and we all were so excited and amazed.  I love the look and feel, I love all of the authentic touches, the wigs, the clothes, the sets-my god! the sets!! One of my favorite scenes is when Rick drops the pack of cigarettes in front of the race car so that there can be a sweet beauty shot of him as he kneels to pick them up.  I am so excited and invigorated by this movie! Absolutely spot on. --Sonya

I had no expectations except that you'd amuse and provoke me at the same time.  In that regard, this is clearly your best work ever.  It not only entertains but also subverts from within, which is my definition of high art. The audience reaction was never universal but always consistently "into" it.  you know? Your work produces (at least in me) a strange, uneasy tension.  I actually laughed so much I hope I didn't embarrass you.  My friend mentioned it to me afterwards. "You sure did laugh."  I said, "It's to lessen the tension."  And I went on to espouse how without the laughter, the painful truths of your work make it hard for me to watch. It's too painful and difficult and soul-challenging not to work on what you want, imho.  in other words, since the process of making films is so difficult, why challenge yourself to only be mediocre? --Dave

The shots of the hors d'oeuvres were so funny! I was married to a professor at the time, and we had parties EXACTLY like that...except, we weren't nude! And it was VERY funny. I was laughing the whole time. And there was a guy behind me that was laughing his head off! --Joyce

I think the fellow that introduced the movie was right, my life won't be the same after seeing VIVA! --Gary