Influence, Courtesy of Russ Meyer

I was on a massive Russ Meyer kick during Covid. B-Movie auteur, the kinda guy who made a film called “Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill!” His lifelong buddy was my all-time favorite American writer, Roger Ebert (who just-so-happened to be the screenwriter for “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”

I like Russ. I like the idea of Russ. Like all great eroticists, he put his money where his mouth was, and more importantly, wasn’t weird about it. His movies were pure: woman meets man; man wrongs woman; woman EXACTS REVENGE! It’s a pretty progressive formula, if you think about it.

He also enjoyed featuring curvy gals. Throw in a “plot,” and the Pizza Delivery zeitgeist gets turned on its head — now, you’ve got a story.

I’ve long-fancied how a movie poster might look if I were featured in a Meyer film. Hopefully, something like this, courtesy of Twitter’s @hungtomyknees (Uh-huh!). A talented designer (and tagline specialist extraordinaire)! This is the first of a series of late-century callbacks… to a distant age when movies found unique cleverness in circumventing restrictive Hayes Codes, and when particularly savvy filmmakers took their resources to double-resource and holiday in a much-more lax Italy… all under the guise of making a “movie.”

I only put that word in quotes, because here I am, talking about it right now, when loads of other films of the era are scarcely worth remembering. WhO’s LaUgHiNg NoW!

Camp, camp, camp, for the win.

“Doesn’ shee lewk juss lykee Larua Paulmre?”

Maybr. Burt hre bewbrs wre owt for RERVENGRE.

BTW… Future posters will be accompanied by some tawdry-enough plot rundowns, complete with dialogue excerpts, and posted in the Fiction Tier.

And if one of you happens to be Spielberg (or preferably Rob Zombie)… have your people call my people. We’ll do lunch at the Derby. Love ya’ babe. 😘