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Home , Anita Pallenberg, Christopher Gibbs, Donald Cammell, Memo from Turner, One More Shot, Performance (soundtrack)

October 21, 2014 (Series 29:9) and , (1970, 105 min)

Directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg Written by Donald Cammell and Produced by David Cammell and Sanford Lieberson Music by Cinematography by Nicolas Roeg Film Editing byAntony Gibbs and Brian Smedley-Aston Art Direction by John Clark Art Department Christopher Gibbs Music Department , , Amiya Dasgupta, Lowell George, Milt Holland, Bernard Krause, , , Nasser Rastigar-Nejad, Buffy Sainte-Marie, , and Bobby West

James Fox ... Chas ... Turner Anita Pallenberg ... Pherber Michèle Breton ... Lucy Ann Sidney ... Dana John Bindon ... Moody Stanley Meadows ... Rosebloom Allan Cuthbertson ... The Lawyer Anthony Morton ... Dennis Nicolas Roeg (director, conematographer) (b. Nicolas Jack Johnny Shannon ... Harry Flowers Roeg, August 15, 1928 in London, , UK) directed 23 Anthony Valentine ... Joey Maddocks films and television shows: 2007 The Adventures of Young Kenneth Colley ... Tony Farrell Indiana Jones: Demons of Deception (Video), 2007 Puffball: John Sterland ... The Chauffeur The Devil's Eyeball, 2000 The Sound of Claudia Schiffer (Short), Laraine Wickens ... Lorraine 1996 “Samson and Delilah” (TV Movie), 1995 Hotel Paradise (Short), 1995 “Full Body Massage” (TV Movie), 1995 Two Donald Cammell (director, writer, producer) (b. Donald Seton Deaths, 1993 “Heart of Darkness” (TV Movie), 1993 “The Cammell, January 17, 1934 in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK—d. Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” (TV Series), 1991 Cold April 24, 1996 (age 62) in Hollywood, California) directed 8 Heaven, 1990 The Witches, 1989 “Sweet Bird of Youth” (TV films and video shorts, which are 2002 : The Best of 1980- Movie), 1988 Track 29, 1987 Aria, 1986 Castaway, 1985 1990 (Video documentary), 1999 The Argument (Short), 1995 Insignificance, 1983 Eureka, 1980 : A Sensual Wild Side, 1993 U2: Love Is Blindness (Video documentary Obsession, 1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1973 Don't Look short), 1987 , 1984 U2: Unforgettable Fire Now, 1972 Glastonbury Fayre (Documentary), 1971 Walkabout, (Documentary short), 1977 , and 1970 Performance. and 1970 Performance. In addition, he was the cinematographer He also wrote 8 films and shorts: 1999 The Argument (Short), for 20 films and television shows, which are 1972 Glastonbury 1998 RPM, 1995 Wild Side, 1987 White of the Eye, 1979 Tilt, Fayre (Documentary), 1971 Walkabout, 1970 Performance, 1970 Performance, 1968 The Touchables (script), and 1968 1968 , 1967 Far from the Madding Crowd, 1966 A Funny Duffy (story). Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, 1966 Fahrenheit 451, 1966 Breakthrough (Short), 1965 Seaside Swingers, 1964 The Girl-Getters, 1964 Code 7, Victim 5, 1964 The Masque of the Roeg and Cammell—PERFORMANCE—2

Red Death, 1964 Nothing But the Best, 1963 Band of Thieves, Michèle Breton ... Lucy (b. 1952) has appeared in 3 films and 1963 Dr. Crippen, 1963 The Guest, 1963 Just for Fun, 1961 television shows: 1970 Performance, 1968 “Odissea” (TV Mini- “Ghost Squad” (TV Series), 1961 Information Received, and Series), and 1967 Weekend. 1960 Jazz Boat. Johnny Shannon ... Harry Flowers (b. John Shannon, July 29, James Fox ... Chas (B. William Fox, May 19, 1939 in London, 1932 in Lambeth, South London, England, UK) has appeared in England, UK) appeared in 115 films and television shows, 64 films and television shows, including 2005 Stoned, 1991 among them 2014 Effie Gray, 2013 “Downton Abbey” (TV “EastEnders” (TV Series), 1989 Scandal, 1988 “Tickets for the Series), 2013 “The Great Train Robbery” (TV Mini-Series), 2013 Titanic” (TV Series), 1987 Running Out of Luck, 1986 Absolute The Double, 2013 “Utopia” (TV Series, 6 episodes), 2011 “Law Beginners, 1978-1983 “The Professionals” (TV Series), 1980 & Order: UK” (TV Series), 2009 Sherlock Holmes, 2009 “Red The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, 1980 “Tales of the Unexpected” Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980” (TV Movie), 2007 (TV Series), 1979 “Fawlty Towers” (TV Series), 1973-1977 “Waking the Dead” (TV Series), 2005 “Colditz” (TV Movie), “Beryl's Lot” (TV Series, 44 episodes), 1973 “Scotch on the 2003 “Hans Christian Andersen: My as a Fairy Tale” (TV Rocks” (TV Series), 1972 Hide and Seek, 1972 Something to Movie), 2003 “Doctor Who: Shada” (TV Mini-Series, 6 Hide, 1971 Villain, 1970 Performance, and 1969 “The Gold episodes), 2000 Sexy Beast, 2000 The Golden Bowl, 1999 Mickey Robbers” (TV Series). ROEG Blue Eyes, 1997 Anna Karenina, 1993 The Remains of the Day, 1993 “Heart of Darkness” (TV Movie), 1992 As You Like It, 1992 Patriot Games, 1992 Hostage, 1991 Afraid of the Dark, 1991 “A Perfect Hero” (TV Mini-Series, 6 episodes), 1990 The Russia House, 1989 The Mighty Quinn, 1989 Farewell to the King, 1986 The Whistle Blower, 1984 A Passage to India, 1984 “The Road to 1984” (TV Movie), 1984 Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, 1983 Pavlova: A Woman for All Time, 1970 Performance, 1968 Isadora, 1967 Thoroughly Modern Millie, 1966 The Chase, 1965 King Rat, 1965 Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes, 1963 The Servant, 1962 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 1951 One Wild Oat, 1950 The Magnet, and 1950 The Miniver Story.

Mick Jagger ... Turner (b. Michael Phillip Jagger, July 26, 1943 in Dartford, Kent, England, UK) has contributed music to 380 film and television soundtracks. He has appeared in 16 films, TV shows, and video shorts: 2012 “Rolling Stones: One More Shot” (TV Movie), 2008 The Bank Job, 2002 “The Simpsons” (TV Series), 2001 The Man from Elysian Fields, 2001 Enigma, 1997 Bent, 1992 Freejack, 1987 Running Out of Luck, 1986 Laughter in the Dark, 1983 “Faerie Tale Theatre” (TV Series), 1978 Wings of Ash: Pilot for a Dramatization of the Life of Antonin Artaud (Short), 1978 “All You Need Is Cash” (TV Movie), 1977 “The War Between the Tates” (TV Movie), 1970 Performance, and 1970 Ned Kelly. In addition, he composed music for 7 films and video shorts: 2009 Fidelity (Documentary), 2004 Alfie, 2003 : Don't Stop (Video short), 1991 Out of Time (Documentary short), 1987 Running Out of Luck, 1972 Umano non umano (Documentary), and 1969 Invocation of My Demon Brother (Short). from World Film Directors V. II. Ed. John Wakeman, H.H. Anita Pallenberg ... Pherber (b. January 25, 1944 in , Wilson Company, NY, 1988 Lazio, Italy) has appeared in 17 films and TV shows, which are British director and cinematographer, born in London, son of 2011 4:44 Last Day on Earth, 2009 Napoli, Napoli, Napoli, 2009 Jack Roeg and the former Gertrude Silk. He “always wanted to Chéri, 2007 Go Go Tales, 2007 Mister Lonely, 2002 Hideous make films” and tried to launch a film society at the Mercers Man (Short), 2001 “” (TV Series), 1998 School in London, where he was educated. He entered the army Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, 1976 Le at the very end of the war and served as his unit’s projectionist, a berceau de cristal, 1970 Performance, 1969 Michael Kohlhaas - position that allowed him to see “masses of movies.” Der Rebell, 1969 Dillinger Is Dead, 1969 Heads (Short), 1968 In 1947 Roeg went to work at Marylebone Studio in Candy, 1968 Barbarella, 1968 Wonderwall, and 1967 Degree of central London, making the tea, helping to dub French films, and Murder. learning the rudiments of editing. In 1950 he moved on to MGM’s London studios at Boreham wood, where he worked as a Roeg and Cammell—PERFORMANCE—3 clapper boy and as an assistant on Joe Ruttenburg’s camera crew. In an interview with Tom Milner, Roeg says that He also “used to take stills and do a lot of work on my own at Performance “was a curious film in that we went on the floor and night, just because I was interested in learning about the construction came after. That’s why Donald and I never photography.” Roeg spent the 1950s in this way, slowly working separate our contributions. It became like our lives. W went on his way up through the hierarchy of the camera crew. In 1960 he the floor with an outline, and idea, and about the first three did some second-unit location work in Australia for Fred scenes; there wasn’t a script; and then two of us were doing all Zinnemann’s The Sundowners and in the Middle East for David the jobs of writer, director, cameraman; it was perfect, we got Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. together in a mysterious way, just worked night and day, day and Roeg received his first credits as director of night, and it began to live.” photography for two undistinguished films by Robert Lynn, On Performance is the story of Chas (James Fox), a macho Information Received (1961) and Dr. Crippen (1962). Two more and sadistic young thug who works for a London protection interesting assignments with Clive Donner followed—The racketeer named Harry Flowers. Chas’ enjoyment of his brutal Caretaker (1963) and Nothing But the Best—and then Roger work is obvious, but he is basically a loner, not the sort of Corman’s memorable horror film The Masque of the Red Death organization man best suited to modern business (Harry Flowers (1963). Roeg says that Corman “created a feeling that made you likes to talk in terms of “mergers”). Flowers is upset when Chas want to really astonish him with good stuff….He says what he murders another mobster in a purely personal vendetta. To wants and it’s got to be done, and he makes you somehow want escape retribution Chas takes refuge in a house where Turner to improve on it.” John Cutts recalled the result “boldly (Mick Jagger), a former rock star, lives with two women. At first cinematic and full of wonderfully realized effects; I can’t disgusted by the amorality of this stoned ménage à trois, Chas is remember when I’ve seen (outside a Minnelli or Cukor film) gradually turned on to drugs, , and sex. Turner and his such a stylized use of color before. Blues, yellows, whites, mistress Pherber (Anita von Pallenburg) teach him to recognize a greens, blacks (notice how red is withheld until the climax)—the female element in his nature. He begins to dress as a woman and film is literally awash in colors. Visually the film is stunning.” to acknowledge that he is sexually attracted to the androgynous After three routine assignments (of which the most Turner. Indirectly (but perhaps deliberately), Turner then betrays notable was Richard Lester’s A Funny Thin Happened on the Chas to Flowers. When the mob arrives to collect him, Chas Way to the Forum) came shoots Turner dead before being François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit led off to Flowers’ car. As the 451 (1966)—not among the car moves away, we see the director’s most successful films face of the prisoner in the back: but an exciting project for it is Turner. Roeg, who greatly admired The film’s Truffaut and thinks that the speculations about identity, picture is underestimated. He roleplaying, and “performance” had similar feelings about his are expressed or adumbrated in next project, John Schlesinger’s strikingly cinematic terms—in Far From the Madding Crowd, visual puns and echoes, color which in fact was praised more motifs, and the ubiquitous for Roeg’s “brilliant color presence of mirrors. Mirrors are illustrations of the lovely the stock-in-trade of the countryside” than for its direction. Petulia (1968), another Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose story “The Old Richard Lester movie, and one that acquired a certain cult Man and the Mountain” (which Turner reads) is one of the reputation, was Roeg’s last film as a director of photography for sources of the film’s plot. When Chas shoots Turner, we follow others (though he retained this function in the first two films he the path of the bullet into his brain and find there a photograph of directed himself). Borges. Such allusions to literature, art, and the cinema abound Although he had become one of the most admired in Roeg’s work. cinematographers in Britain, Roeg had entered that profession Sanford Lieberson, the producer of Performance, says only as a step on the road towards making films of his own. After that the film had “a tremendous emotional effect on people Petulia he decided to wait no longer. He found a story that he intimately concerned with it which couldn’t be countered or wanted to do, James Vance Marshall’s Australian novel contained by rational argument.” On Warner Brothers, when they Walkabout, and persuaded the British dramatist Edward Bond to eventually saw it, the effect was rather different: they owned a write the adaptation, then went off to Australia for eight weeks, film that—as far as it was comprehensible at all—seemed to be scouting locations. Roeg coud find no one to back the project, recommending the use of hallucinogenic drugs and several however, and it was temporarily shelved. At this point he was varieties of unorthodox sex. Nevertheless, it starred Mick Jagger, approached by Donald Cammell, an old friend, who had an idea and probably for that reason alone, they finally released the for “a film about a gangster in London’s underworld, and the movie, though halfheartedly and with many cuts. Its reception relation of that specific kind of violence to the violence in human was, to say the least, mixed. Many thought it a corrupt and nature.” Warner Brothers agreed to finance Performance largely decadent work; others found it “deeply moral”—a serious because the Rolling Stones’ superstar singer Mick Jagger (a exploration of the correlation between sex, violence, and power. friend of Cammell’s) accepted a major role in it. Some thought it meretricious—a clever piece of juggling with half-grasped and fashionable ideas—while others, praising the Roeg and Cammell—PERFORMANCE—4 brilliance of its camerawork and editing, complained that its ...Allusions to literature, art, and the cinema abound in charged images came so fast (especially in the first half-hour) as Roeg’s work….In don’t Look Now (1973) Pauline Kael wrote to be totally confusing. Only moderately successful at the box that in this film Roeg “employs fast, almost subliminal imagery. . office on release, it has since become a cult classic, endlessly . . The unnerving cold ominousness that he imparts to the discussed and analyzed. environment says that things are not what they seem, and one Roeg’s next film—and his first as sole director—could may come out of the theater still seeing shock cuts and feeling scarcely have been more remote from this claustrophobic essay, slightly disassociated.” She goes on to call the picture “a at least in its settings. Walkabout (20th Century-Fox, 1971) masterwork” but “also trash,” saying that “Roeg’s vision is as begins with a restless fragmented montage expressing the impersonal and noncommittal as Warhol’s, but with the gloss and sterility and alienation of life in a great Australian city. A product craftsmanship of Losey.”… One critic called Don’t Look Now of this society drives his small son (Lucien John) and a teenage the most subtle and sophisticated horror film ever made,” and daughter (Jenny Agutter) into the desert for a picnic, and tries to there were comparisons with Hitchcock. David Robinson wrote kill them. Failing, he kills himself instead in his burning car. The that the movie established Roeg “as the outstanding talent to children in their school uniforms, carrying a portable radio, set have emerged in British cinema in at least the past decade.” off into the wilderness, the girl bravely attempting to hide the Among the claims to distinction of his next film is the truth from her little brother. fact that it was filmed in the United States with British money. It is soon clear that they cannot survive. They have The Man who Fell to Earth (British Lion, 1976), centers on given up the struggle when a young Aboriginal appears (David “Thomas Newton” (), who comes to earth in search Gumpilil). He is undergoing a walkabout, a solitary sojourn in of succor for his drought-stricken planet….The relatively the wilderness during which he must rely on tribal lore for straightforward story is given a far from straightforward telling. survival. Well able to cope with the desert, he befriends the two It goes forward, as Roeg says, “in fits and starts,” and we are children, showing them how to find water and supplying them presented not with a coherent narrative but with something closer with lizards and other creatures to a series of isolated scenes to eat. Together the three set off whose significance we have to on a long trek back to interpret as best we may…. civilization. The little boy is In Bad Timing Roeg fascinated by the Aboriginal and chose for the third time as his experiments with his language, star a hero of popular music. customs, and skills. The girl, Dr. Alex Linden (Art however, is older and more fully Garfunkel) is an American a product of her society: aware psychoanalyst teaching at the of her role as his racial superior University of Vienna, in the and aware also of her own shadow of his master Freud. coming-of-age, she remains He has a love affair with aloof and (as Pauline Kael said) another expatriate, Milena “intoxicatingly prim.” Only (), whose rarely, as in one beautiful lyrical scene when she swims naked in marriage has failed….Bad Timing is a bleak commentary on the a mountain pool, does she seem at one with the magnificent nature of love and a difficult, often dizzying film, but most critics natural world around her. At length, in an abandoned hut close to found it visually and intellectually exhilarating as well. “Like all civilization, the youth performs a tribal courting which so great movies,” wrote Nigel Andrews, “Bad Timing combines the terrifies her that she slams the door in his face. Rejected, he has particular and the general; bruising one with the closeness of its no honorable alternative but death, and hangs himself. The final own reality but also setting echoes sounding in the brain of larger scenes show the girl years later, a bourgeois wife in a glittering truths.” It stole the show at the Berlin film festival, where it was suburban kitchen, haunted by her glimpse of Eden, forever lost. screened out of competition, and a few months later had “already Critics were unanimous in their praise for the beauty of started to become a legend.”...with Eureka (1983) Roeg turned to Roeg’s wilderness photography but not in their comments on his a historical incident as the basis for a cosmic thriller….After use of such devices as superimposition (in a gorgeous montage of Eureka, Roeg decided he wanted to “go in the diametrically desert sunsets used to indicate the passage of time) and freeze opposite direction,” and this he did, to a certain extent, with frames. The latter are employed to draw attention to the Insignificance (1985), an adaptation of a Terry Johnson play. naturalness of the Aboriginal’s spearing of a kangaroo for food Where Eureka was cast in the epic mode of Greek tragedy, and then to underscore the mindless brutality of a white man who Insignificance (as the title suggests) takes an anecdotal is shown gunning down wild animals from a jeep. Effective as approach….According to Roeg, he was drawn to Johnson’s play these scenes are, some thought that Roeg had allowed his by underlying themes—identity, time, relationships, fame, even technique to become too intrusive, and that this, coupled with an the future of the world. “We must have a sense of something almost total lack of character development and some special greater than ourselves. We must have another kind of belief, not pleading in the nature-versus-civilization argument, left the a belief in out own practicality and what we know. That’s what I viewer uncommitted. The picture was not much noticed when it like about the title of the piece: the idea that the world, society, first appeared but like its predecessor has since become a cult has very little sense of a mystical movement of things. What it movie. means is not that ‘it’s all insignificant,’ but that nothing has more significance than anything else.” Roeg and Cammell—PERFORMANCE—5

Charles Champlin writes that, as a director, Roeg more favorably at a later date. Roeg’s editing and battles with “remains an extraordinary creator of images, an impressionist censorship are the direct result of his fascination with French filmmaker whose work can generate hypnotic powers. Like Ken films, particularly those of Alain Resnais…. Russell, he has occasionally seemed entranced by his own visual He has held to the belief that film is not just a energy,” but he appears to be moving towards a more disciplined commercial medium, but also an art form. He says, “I believe matching of form and content, without sacrificing anything of the film is an art. I believe it. I truly believe that. Thought can be provocative and personal signature which is earning him an transferred by the juxtaposition of images, and you mustn’t be auteur’s following.” afraid of an audience not understanding. You can say things Roeg seldom provides us with protagonists that we can visually, immediately, and that’s where film, I believe, is going. comfortably identify with. He deliberately “plays with film It’s not a pictorial example of a published work. It’s a grammar” and denies us “the crutch of time” in movies that go transference of thought.” “in fits and starts.” His work is full of “perceptual assaults” and ...Roeg. . .often remains as inaccessible as many find his his elliptical editing suppresses transitions and withholds films. He does not make the traditional rounds of the media when narrative information and value judgments, forcing us to ponder, a film is released because he believes a film should stand on its speculate and reassess what we are taking for granted. “Of course own. An intensely private man, he has given few details of his I could make a film in the realist tradition,” he told Brian Baxter, personal life and, with the exception of a handful of interviews, but, Roeg explains, “it would not be me and I could only do it has told little of his early life. One can often see Roeg, however, once. People would see through it.” in the characters in his films, and he has described this Like Alex Linden, Roeg is said to be unnervingly relationship between his own life and his directing: percipient about the people around him, so that “actors and With film, certainly the way I approach it, one has to delve into others feel naked in front of his observations.” He himself is one’s life to put “truth” onto the screen. One delves into one’s elusive, and puts up “a constant smokescreen of manners, humor emotions and tries to translate that to the story one wants to tell. and outrage for anyone who tried to put a finger on his own All our imagination is bound by experience. And when all that is personality.” Asked to contribute a statement to this volume, he ultimately portrayed in the characters of the film, it becomes a responded: “I feel very strongly that every thought about the melancholic affair…. past, even in documentary detail, destroys the imagined or real facts about the present and certainly about the future of any human being. It has always been my opinion that, in order to know something about an artist (or indeed anybody) it is better to build up one’s own picture from other people and odd snippets of biography and then come to some personal conclusion. I think the artist can’t help but use his own imagination and dreams of the things he might wish to have been or probably become. I am sure everyone’s sense of self-invention becomes so real to them that they must believe in it, and that this applies both to very straightforward historical detail and also to the hopes and desires, rethought, of the past.” Roeg’s feature films have not made him rich, and he supplements his income by making television commercials. from Nicholas Roeg Film By Film Scott Salwolke. McFarland I don’t believe my films are inaccessible. If they were, I & Co, Jefferson N.C. & London, 1993 would be inaccessible myself. What I am trying to do, like Nicholas Roeg has taken risks with his films that few other anyone who works in any form of art, is to express an emotion. directors have taken and he has paid a price for this decision. The film audience is so curiously demanding in conservatism. Although he has directed some of the most innovative films of People never say of dance or theater, “I don’t understand what is the past quarter century, he remains an anonymous figure, happening.” Yet film is the newest and should be the freest of seldom mentioned in most histories of film. He has yet to have a all…. major commercial success, and critics have always been divided about his work. . . . I am concerned with breaking barriers, challenging On the basis of a dozen films Roeg’s place in history assumptions, and moving the possibilities of film on a bit. Part of should be assured. he combines the British film industry’s past my job is to show that the cinema is the art of our time and can with the innovations brought forth by the French New Wave. His break through previous terms of reference. That doesn’t mean work often echoes the films of Britain’s most famous directors; ignoring them so much as expanding them as far as possible. scenes from his films borrow directly from the works of Alfred Usually producers read scripts, and they want something rooted Hitchcock, Carol Reed, and Richard Lester. In their color scheme in the reality they know. I’m more anxious to look for what we and in their presentation of themes, his films most recall the don’t know. works of and like Powell’s films, Roeg’s films were often neglected on release only to be reexamined Roeg and Cammell—PERFORMANCE—6

Roeg remains disappointed that his films have not deals with a man who has left a sanitarium, but finds himself received the acceptance that they deserve or that he desires. “As confronted by a gaucho who offers him a knife in anticipation of I’ve said before, all I hope from my work is that someone out a duel. Before he can complete the story, a fly strikes Turner in there will say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a sort of curious, twisted mind like the face, causing the book to fall to the floor. The fly is shown in yours, so I know what you’re talking about.’ That’s all we’re close-up (a la David Lynch), as the life leaves its body. Although doing with our work anyhow is saying, ‘Hey, is anybody out the short story is left uncompleted, it does prefigure the film’s there?’ That’s all we’re doing ending, in which a man is allowed with our lives, really. ‘Is to have a heroic death of his there anybody out there who choosing, instead of facing death understands me?’” while locked away in isolation….

Performance One of the obvious Nicholas Roeg was cinematic influences of the film in forty when he directed his Ingemar Bergman’s Persona, first film, but he had already released just a year earlier. This been working in the film film not only anticipated the industry for nearly half his transference of identities but also life. He had first found work the use of nontraditional cinematic in a London studio, techniques which often distance translating French films into English. If the job seemed hardly the viewer by removing them from the story…. rewarding, it did give Roeg his first lesson in film. “What first Performance is a stunning debut, which uses the theme really hooked me into thinking that this was a job I would like to Roeg will continue to use in his other films: a protagonist lost in become deeply involved in was as a young man sitting at ‘Lingua an unknown environment from which he or she can emerge only Synchrome,’ where they dubbed French films into English. through self-knowledge…. Running the films backwards and forwards to get the words At the time, the supporters of Performance were often right, I realized that film was a time machine.” … writers for smaller, less mainstream publications. They saw in it Roeg’s films often break down the dimension of time, a document of the sixties, one of the few films from this period as if the past, present, and future coexist, something Borges has which still adequately presents the drug culture, as critic Stephen long conjectured. The first instance of this temporal distortion Farber has noted: “Performance is the first film to render the occurs when Flowers is shown greeting Chas in his office, but a drug experience imaginatively and compellingly; more than that, cut to the automobile garage shows Chas still involved in his it is the definitive statement of the drug experience as mystical destructive activities, When Chas does enter Flowers’s office, he conversion, a radical assault on conventional values, and the key is asked about the trial and the plaintive, Fraser. There is a quick to the transformation of life. insert of Fraser, but it is actually a flashforward to his meeting with Chas. Chas confidently tells Flowers the matter is being Performance (from Wikipedia) taken care of, and Flowers calls him “:a nutcase like all artists.” Production If Roeg is experimenting temporally in this case, in the next Performance was initially conceived by Donald Cammell as sequence he experiments spatially. Farrell speaks of protecting "The Performers" and was to be a lighthearted swinging 60's the smaller businessman while the image of the jury changes romp. At one stage, Cammell's friend Marlon Brando (with color and size. Inexplicably, members of the jury have become whom he later collaborated on the posthumously published novel the audience at a pornographic cinema, further proof of society’s Fan Tan) was to play the gangster role which became "Chas". At moral decline. Chas is attempting to get money from the that stage the story involved an American gangster hiding out in cinema’s owner, while on the screen woman is getting whipped London. James Fox, previously cast in rather upper crust roles, on the buttocks…. eventually took the place of Brando, and spent several months in South London among the criminal underworld researching his Even before they have met, the two men [Chas and role. Turner] seem to have come together. The first shot of Turner As the project evolved the story became significantly occurs when Maddock’s men are vandalizing Chas’s apartment. darker. Cammell was heavily influenced by the Argentinian Most baffling is the scene then Chas murders Maddocks. He is writer Jorge Luis Borges (a portrait of Borges on a book cover photographed from behind, but it is Turner’s head that is shown. can be seen at a crucial moment in the film) as he redrafted the The crosscutting between a pair of men continues in Roeg’s films script to create an intense, intellectual film dealing with issues of until such a pair finally merge with even greater emphasis in The identity crisis. Artaud's theories on the links between performing Man who Fell to Earth…. and madness also influenced Cammell. Cammell and co-director To understand Performance is to realize the importance Nicolas Roeg (mainly responsible for the 'look' of the film) also of the works of Borges to the film and to Roeg’s career. The first benefited from a lack of interference from Warner Bros. studio reference to his work occurs when Chas terrorizes the owner of executives, who believed they were getting a Rolling Stones the pornography theater. Waiting in the car outside, Rosebloom equivalent of ' A Hard Day's Night (1964). Instead, is reading a copy of A Personal Anthology by Borges, but the Cammell and Roeg delivered a dark, experimental film which most direct reference comes when Turner reads to Lucy and included graphic depictions of violence, sex and drug use. Pherber the end of Borges’s short story “The South.” The excerpt Roeg and Cammell—PERFORMANCE—7

It was intended that the Rolling Stones would write the number 30 in a Time Out magazine "all-time greats" poll of soundtrack but due to the complicated nature of the various critics and directors.[4] After Cammell's death in 1996 the film's relationships both on and off-screen, this never happened. It was reputation grew still further. It is now frequently cited as a classic widely rumoured that Anita Pallenberg, then in a relationship of British cinema. with , and Mick Jagger played out sexual scenes In the September/October 2009 issue of Film Comment, in the film 'for real' (out-takes of these scenes apparently won a Mick Jagger's Turner was voted the best performance by a prize at an Amsterdam adult musician in a film. film festival). When Keith In his 15-hour Richards heard the rumours, he documentary The Story of Film: apparently took to sitting in his An Odyssey, Mark Cousins says: car outside the house where the "Performance was not only the film was being shot. Needless greatest seventies film about to say, this didn't do much for identity, if any movie in the whole the Jagger-Richards musical Story of Film should be chemistry and the soundtrack compulsory viewing for film came together from a number of makers, maybe this is it." sources. Influence The film has gained Several aspects of the film were notoriety due to the difficulties novel and historically it it faced in getting on screen. foreshadows MTV type music The film's content was a videos (particularly the 'Memo surprise to the studio. It has from Turner' sequence in which been reported that during a test screening, one Warner Jagger sings) and many popular films of the 1990s and 2000s. executive's wife vomited in shock. James Fox notes in Richard The gangster aspect of Performance has been imitated Lester's TV series “British Cinema of the Sixties” that a Warner by many popular directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Guy exec said of the scene depicting Jagger in a bath with Pallenberg Ritchie and Jonathan Glazer. and Breton, "Even the bath water was dirty." The response from Performance pushed boundaries by featuring explicit the studio was to deny the film a cinematic release. It has been sex scenes and drugs, which have been rumoured to be real claimed that at one stage Warner Bros. wanted the negative to be instead of simulated. Although 's (and other destroyed…. underground filmmakers') films had featured such behaviour A commemorative before Performance, it was event was held at London's ICA unprecedented that they appeared in a on 18 October 1997, studio production…. incorporating a talk by film In keeping with the theorists (including Colin intellectual bent of Jagger's character, MacCabe, who went on to write legendary Argentine writer Jorge Luis a guide to the film), a screening Borges is quoted numerous times of the uncut UK edition and during the film. His photograph finally a question and answer appears in the brief montage which session. Those in attendance follows Turner's shooting. included James Fox (and Beat the Devil, the BMW family), Pallenberg, set designer promo film directed by Tony Scott and Christopher Gibbs and starring James Brown, , Cammell's brother who and Clive Owen contains at least two introduced part of a video references to Performance. At one interview with Donald Cammell point Owen's character says "I know a shot just before his death. Mick thing or two about performing" – a Jagger was originally to appear quote from Chas. The Devil, played by but was committed to the Oldman, dances with a fluorescent Rolling Stones' Bridges to tube, just as Turner does in Babylon Tour. Performance. In addition, in the earlier Tony Scott film True Critical reputation Romance Gary Oldman (as Drexl) is seen swinging a lampshade On its release the film received mixed reviews. Most reviewers back and forth in front of someone, as Turner does during the focused on the graphic sexual elements. One reviewer (Richard "" sequence. Schickel) described it as "the most completely worthless film I Cult film director was possibly have seen since I began reviewing." inspired directly by Performance in casting James Fox and Anita Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Performance Pallenberg as an impersonating couple (the Pope and the Queen) gradually acquired a cult following on the late night and in his film Mister Lonely. repertory cinema circuits. By the 1990s the film had undergone a The video for The Charlatans single "Just When You're complete critical reappraisal. In 1995 Performance appeared at Thinking Things Over" was inspired by the film with singer Tim Roeg and Cammell—PERFORMANCE—8

Burgess adopting the Mick Jagger slick-backed hair look. Also, Street and was already enjoying a hectic party-lifestyle which in in the video for "Jesus Hairdo" we see him dancing with a neon effect continued for two or three more decades. strip light lifted from the film. In 1954 he had married the Greek actress Maria Andipa Writer-director Paul Schrader has often cited and in 1959 they had a son Amadis. A few months previously he Performance as one of his favourite films. In a 2007 article for and Maria had moved from Chelsea to Hampstead, apparently to Film Comment, he describes the film's influence. be close to the actress Jill Ireland who was living there at the Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of time and with whom Cammell was having an affair. One day Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century, makes several soon after the move Maria returned from the doctor with what references to Performance in its second issue, "", she thought was happy news that she was having a baby. prominently featuring Mick Jagger's Cammell completely crushed Maria by Turner character. The plot of the issue saying “I love you, and want to share my revolves around an actual Rolling life with you, but I don’t want to share it Stones concert that took place after the with a child.” True to his word he left death of , and shows just almost immediately for New York and how Turner "lost his demon." cruelly would only see his son twice during the rest of his life. Donald Cammell’s Performance at It was in New York where Powis Square (Another Nickel in the Cammell met and lived with the model Machine) Deborah Dixon – he was to be with her for ten years and their relationship finished “Kick-starting the day with a five- just before the filming of Performance, skinner and a bath with two naked girls although she was a costume designer on has never seemed so domestically the film. He had by now rejected painting routine.” – Mick Brown society portraits and was now concentrating on work that had a Donald Cammell’s film Balthusian Lolita-inspired influence (ie Performance, shot in the summer of lots of young naked girls). While this 1968, was largely set in a large house in helped him sate his notable sexual appetite Notting Hill’s Powis Square. This was (for much of his life he was irresistible to a a part of Notting Hill, featuring large run-down peeling terraces good deal of the female sex and Dixon was seemingly happy and squares that, a decade earlier, Colin MacInnes in his London with this and often shared his conquests) his artistic desires, at novel Absolute Beginners had called ‘Napoli’. It was also, at that least in the form of painting, were waning. time, that is the mid to late fifties, the main stomping ground of He moved to Paris with Deborah where she continued to the notorious and disreputable landlord Peter Rachman. model and where he began to try his hand at writing screenplays. The original white working class neighbourhood was She was now a very successful international model and having to uneasily mix with a burgeoning West Indian immigrant essentially Cammell lived off her money for some years. During community which was increasing in size not least because this time he collaborated on a script which was eventually made Rachman was willing to house West Indians – albeit at his into a bad thriller called The Touchables and subsequently infamous price. Powis square was where Rachman bought his another script which was turned into a very sixties caper movie first major London property – a huge Victorian building – which in 1968 called Duffy (originally called Avec Avec) which starred he had subdivided to such a degree that approximately 1200 Susannah York, James Fox and . Although Duffy tenants eventually lived there. was a better film than The Touchables it was still very flawed By 1968 the down-at-heel ambience of the area had also and again unsuccessful at the box office and this encouraged attracted a further wave of inhabitants – hippies, who hung Cammell to try and direct the next film himself. around the Portobello Road market and the nearby ‘head’ shops. Filming started on Performance in July 1968, a few In other words it was the perfect bohemian part of London in weeks after the death of Cammell’s father, and the production which Performance’s fictitious rock star Turner lived. Turner, of was later called by Marianne Faithful a ‘psycho-sexual lab’ and course, was played by Mick Jagger and the film, along with ‘a seething cauldron of diabolical ingredients: drugs, incestuous Nicholas Roeg, was directed by the rather dissolute and louche sexual relationships, role reversals, art and life all whipped friend of the Rolling Stones Donald Cammell. together into a bitch’s brew’. Cammell was born on 17th January 1934 in the Outlook The old Harrovian and ex-Coldstream Guard officer Tower by the side of Edinburgh Castle to rather bohemian James Fox was chosen to play Chas – a professional criminal on parents – his father, after losing the family fortune in the thirties the run from his gangland boss Harry Flowers. Fox had recently (his family was part of the Cammell-Laird shipbuilding firm), grown his hair and become a bit of a hippy and had also become was an editor of art magazines. They must have encouraged the a close friend of Mick Jagger’s (for a short while Fox, Jagger, artistic side of his nature because by the age of 8 he was Faithfull and Fox’s partner Andee Cohen were essentially living exhibiting at the Royal Drawing Society and won a scholarship a menage a quatre and Cammell later even hinted that Fox and to the Royal Academy at the age of 16. Good looking, gifted and Jagger had been lovers). Looking for a hiding place Chas finds self-assured, Cammell became a sought after society portrait himself at the dilapidated Powis Square house of the fading rock painter before he was 20. He owned a studio in Chelsea’s Flood star Turner (played by Jagger). Chas announces soon after his Roeg and Cammell—PERFORMANCE—9 arrival – “What a freak show! Druggies, beatniks, free love… a Cocaine, yet to be the rock star’s drug of choice, wasn’t right piss-hole.” Living in the house with Turner were his two mentioned within the film but the characters all smoked hashish, girlfriends Pherber, played by Anita Pallenberg then Keith took mushrooms (when Chas first arrives at Powis Square there Richards’ girlfriend, and Lucy, played by the 16 year old French is a shot of the mushrooms growing in a tray by the front door waif Michele Breton. along with a couple of Mars bars wittily referring to the After some sexually-ambiguous explorations with Redlands’ drug bust the year before) and we also see heroin Turner, Pherber and Lucy in addition to a particularly huge being injected, as a ‘vitamin shot’, by Anita Pallenberg. mushroom trip Fox/Chas starts to feel more comfortable with Turner tells Chas at one point in the film “The only staying at the rambling Powis Square house eventually performance that makes it… that makes it all the way, is the one undergoing a personality change and a metamorphosis into the that achieves madness.” And the drugs and the psychotic Jagger/Turner character. At the beginning of the film Chas says atmosphere on the set seemingly took its toll on the main ‘I know who I am!’ performers. A year after by the end of the the completion of filming movie it’s certain James Fox, while that he doesn’t. performing in “Doctor in Cammell the House” in Blackpool managed within the was persuaded to join a film, and to the religious movement chagrin of called the Navigators and Pallenberg who left acting for ten years to realised what he was become a Christian doing, to recreate a evangelist. menage a trois that Anita Pallenberg had existed between started taking heroin himself, Deborah Dixon and Michele Breton the preceding year. seriously during the filming and subsequently became heavily The trio were often seen together in Paris in 1967 but Cammell addicted to the drug. She said ‘I think Performance was the end and Dixon had initially met Breton on the beach in St Tropez in of the beautiful sixties – love and all that. That film marked the 1966 when she must have been 14 or just 15. Sandy Lieberson, end for me.’ She continued to be a heavy user of heroin for ten the producer of Performance, described Breton as ‘someone who years and eventually split from Richards at the end of the didn’t care who she slept with. A strange little creature, totally seventies. androgynous-looking – the way Donald liked them.’ ‘Everybody Not a lot was known about Michele Breton especially was sleeping with everybody’, Breton later remembered, ‘it was after the film had finished. Cammell later said that she had those times’. smoked too much hash and was frequently under the influence of Indeed the production became infamous for its sex on psychedelics. Breton herself said in 1995 ‘I was taking and off the camera – one person working on the production everything that was going. I was in a very bad shape, all fucked described it as ‘the most sexually charged film ever. Everyone up.’ Soon after the completion of the movie Cammell eventually was fucking everyone. And Donald was a class-A voyeur.’ To drove her to Paris letting her stay at his flat for a couple of days; confuse everything Pallenberg had also been a former lover of he then told her that he didn’t want to see her again. Cammell’s and during the filming of Performance she admitted Mick Jagger, perhaps alone amongst the main that she, Jagger and Breton had actually consummated the protagonists, came out of the experience mentally intact. threesome sex scene in the film. The more graphic footage of According to Marianne Faithful, who helped him gain enough which found its way to an erotic film festival in Amsterdam a courage to act in the film, ‘Mick came out of it splendidly…he few years later apparently winning a prize. Keith Richards who didn’t have a drug problem and he didn’t have a nervous never appeared on set but through mutual acquaintances knew breakdown.’ It could be said that the Turner became the something was going on between his girlfriend and his best character that Jagger used to present himself to the world – friend and was often seen during the production fuming in his androgynous, decadent and sinister. Rolls-Royce outside or the in the pub down the road. Donald Cammell’s subsequent directing career after Overlooking all this one imagines a joyous Donald Cammell Performance never really took off. The major film studios rubbing his hands in glee. avoided him from the first screening of the film which couldn’t Cammell was not particularly partial to drugs, although have gone more badly. One Warner studio executive wife he smoked hash occasionally and had tried the odd LSD trip, but literally vomited on her husband’s shoes while another executive perhaps Performance was the first film that portrayed drug- after watching the film said ‘Even the bathwater’s dirty.’ The taking that was also made by people who took drugs as a normal film was only released, almost two years after its completion, in lifestyle choice. The drug-taking that went on during the filming 1970. of Performance was legendary. The art director John Clark said Cammell completed just three films in the next 25 years, ‘you took one breath and you were stoned’ and a crew member Demon Seed with in 1975, White of the Eye in 1987 on the production said ‘you want to get a fucking joint, they’re and Wild Side in 1995. The studio behind his last film refused to coming out of your earholes. You want a cup of tea, you’ve got release Cammell’s version and released an exploitative cut to no fuckin’ chance!’ Cable TV. Roeg and Cammell—PERFORMANCE—10

A year later Cammell, after a life time suffering from Performance and Borges (THIS GIVES AWAY THE ENDING SO bouts of depression, committed suicide by shooting himself in DON’T READ IT UNTIL AFTER YOU’VE SEEN THE FILM). (in the head. The myth is that Cammell aimed his bullet in such a Joseph Lanza. Fragile Geometry: The Films, Philosophy And way that he would be able to experience for several minutes what Misadventures Of Nicolas Roeg. Paj Publications, 1989. Pg. it was like to die. However according to the coroner he died 96) pretty well instantly. The story’s complexity is congenial to Turner’s Keith Richards, who never forgave Cammell for letting universe which is much like those described in the Borges stories Pallenberg and Jagger fuck on camera, once said of Performance to which the film periodically refers as tales within a tale. Tlön, ‘The best work Cammell ever did, except for shooting himself’. Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is the name given to a world with inverted natural laws, whose objects have no clear definition and whose nouns exist as endless strings of adjectives. Preparing for his own imminent murder-suicide while Chas lurks in the basement like a waiting assassin, reads aloud from The South, which is about a convalescent who leaves his sanatorium for a train journey to an obscure province, engaging in a fatal knife fight pre-ordained the day he opens a volume of The Thousand and One Nights. But perhaps the most important story is Death and the Compass, which is never directly mentioned. Here, the police inspector tries to decipher an oracular series of homicides whose locations describe a geometric puzzle, the final piece completed only when the inspector himself enters the murderer’s carefully assembled lair. This is an understated allusion to Performance’s own geometric murder when Chas aims his gun precisely at the section of Turner’s head that corresponds to the patch of hair Chas mysteriously leaves on the chauffeur’s scalp. The connection becomes more obvious when Borges’s photograph flashes in a shattered looking glass as the camera takes us on a visceral tracking shot down Turner’s punctured skull.

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2014 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS Oct 28 Víctor Erice, THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, 1973 Nov 4 Roman Polanski, TESS, 1979 Nov 11 Sydney Pollack, TOOTSIE, 1982 Nov 18 Joel and Ethan Coen, FARGO, 1996 Nov 25 Erik Skjoldbjaerg, INSOMNIA, 1997 Dec 2 Mike Nichols, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR, 2007

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