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Joseph Lanza has just written his eighth book in a prosperous line of
non-fiction, a critical biography called Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His
Films, published here by Aurum Press on Monday. It's about... well, that
intrepid Times columnist Ken Russell, who has been known to stir up trouble
and, I would have said, some measure of delight and catharsis, by directing
films over the past six decades - for television, cinema and smuggling
across borders (during the Cold War, so my Russian friend tells me.)
If you don't know all my work - and why should you? - you can peruse the list
that takes up some 19 pages of index in Phallic Frenzy. Films such as Amelia
and the Angel, Tommy, Women in Love, Altered States, Music Lovers, Savage
Messiah, Crimes of Passion, Mahler, The Boyfriend, Gothic, The Mystery of
Mata Hari, Trapped Ashes, Boudica Bites Back, etc... 30 in all, 87 if you
count TV. Then there are operas such as The Rake's Progress and Faust, etc.
And books such as A Moment with Venus and Brahms Gets Laid.
I must say, Lanza has done his homework. He knows more about my life than I
do. It's a little unsettling to read such intimate details about yourself by
someone you've never met.
Phallic Frenzy reads like an overblown, outrageous biographical film script by
Ken Russell, full of myth masquerading as fact. And as usual the finished
product is bright, irreverent, camp and cacophonous. Lanza has managed to
disguise his masterful research as a near-neo-novel with gothic and surreal
overtones. I have to applaud the man, having done the same with my own
biographies on composers. It makes for a thrilling read - it vibrates,
shimmies, pounds down the pavement of every page. And it's full of admirable
detail, insightful conclusions and what, for me, are painful remonstrances -
a celebration and something of a telling-off at the same time.
Not that he intended it that way, I'm sure. He means to explore my film
history, with a heartwarming enthusiasm, and the best bits are his
retellings of the plots, as well as the arcane information about the ones
that got away. As for the correspondence between Barbra Streisand and myself
regarding Sarah Bernhardt - well, I have to take his word for it, as
apparently a letter exists somewhere. The rest is true - I wanted Liza
Minnelli as Evita, I wanted Anthony Hopkins as Beethoven, I wanted very much
to see those and many other films completed. The sheer organisational powers
of Lanza in sculpting a linear narrative out of such a pell-mell career are
nothing short of stupendous. And the quotes are fun, even if exaggeration
and hyperbole rule the moment.
However, the chapter revealing stories behind the scenes on Altered States is
nothing short of revelatory - I appreciate the eye-opening account, now that
the other side has had its say. It was with the stocky New Yorker and
respected novelist Paddy Chayefsky that I had my heavyweight bout. He was
the impossible-to-please writer-producer of the sci-fi epic about the effect
of mind-bending drugs on a Harvard scientist, Dr Jessup. We sparred from the
start, over the high-falutin' hi-sci dialogue, the colour of the set, the
luncheon script sessions, the meetings over Sanka (a brand of decaffeinated
coffee) and pressed turkey sandwiches, camera angles, tracking shots and
over Paddy taking the actors aside for private chats on how to play the
scene.
We slugged it out round after round, as Lanza details with quotes from all
sides. And it all came to a head when I lost it on the phone and gave Paddy
a final tongue-lashing. “Why don't you take your turkey sandwiches and your
Sanka and stuff it up your ass and let me get on with the f***ing film!”
Now, that's literature.
Why Phallic Frenzy? It's a good title. I have been attributed far worse. But
because Lanza feels compelled to reprint the worst of every bad review my
films have received as a coda to each chapter, I can only surmise that I'm
damned on every page. It has taken some nerve for me just to keep reading.
More than once the temptation to retire to bed with the covers over my head
reared up like a phantom holiday in the park. Did I do that? Did I say that?
And more to the point, did they say that?
After seeing Women in Love, Pauline Kael said: “The experience of it is rather
like Lawrence's accounts of bad sex. Russell's idea of art is purple
pastiche.” John Coleman wrote: “He goes straight to the meat of the pathos.
He should stop this.” Alexander Walker called The Devils “the masturbatory
fantasies of a Catholic boyhood”. Judith Crist said: “We can't recall in our
relatively broad experience a fouler film.” Vincent Canby called me “a
hobbyist determined to reproduce The Last Supper in bottle tops.” Very
enlightening!
The very thing that makes Phallic Frenzy such a fascinating, readable
tour-de-force - the gossip and sniping - is the very thing that makes it
hard for me to accept it as the total of a man's merit. I suspect that Lanza
means to show the critics in an unfavourable light, as petty and
short-sighted, but the sheer dint of numbers and repetition of their
virulence will have a mesmerising effect, I fear, on the less discriminating
reader.
For myself, I can only safely touch the surface of that pain, where every day
you felt that the critics couldn't wait to see your next work in order to
put the boot in, conceivably having written the review before they'd seen
the film. Although I've read all the critics' best shots in their time, I
must reiterate, with all the fervour of a novice's vow, that not one word of
criticism written has ever altered in any way my scripts or my next project.
I believe in what I'm doing wholeheartedly, passionately, and what's more, I
simply go about my business. I suppose such a thing can be annoying to some
people.
And I suspect the same conviction is what I've inspired in Joe Lanza. God
bless him, no matter how it makes me cringe.
Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and his Films by Joseph Lanza is published by
Aurum Press on Monday at £16.99
