Of Alex Cox, Robby Müller, Repo Man, and much more, apropos of a triple bill at the VIFF Centre

This Friday, there is a very exciting triple bill at the VIFF Centre. Film scholar and cinematographer Devan Scott will be presenting Fluorescent Desert: Robby Müller's America, starting at 4:40 PM, followed by two films shot by Müller (and both starring Harry Dean Stanton), Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas and Alex Cox's Repo Man. It's as rich a cinematic triple-bill as you could hope for (of course, you have to pay separately for all of them, but there are still deals if you buy a ten-pack of tickets for films in the series; ask at the box office). 

The following article will be in three parts.

1. Of Alex Cox, Timothy Carey, and Harry Dean Stanton (...and farting and LSD)

Timothy Carey in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Timothy Carey was, by all accounts, obsessed with farting (I will get to Repo Man presently, but believe it or not, this is at least somewhat relevant). 

Farting doesn't come up that often in interviews, though come to think of it, Alex Cox's dog took a dump at the end of my interview with him about Straight to Hell Returns; the last words in our conversation were something like, "I've got to go, the dog is shitting on the floor!"

But Timothy Carey -- an actor whose filmography spans multiple roles for Kubrick and Cassavetes (the only directors, I believe, who cast him more than once) but also Marlon Brando and the Monkees -- apparently would have been the man to talk flatulence with. Consider this paragraph from X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, Alex Cox's career-spanning memoir, at least up to Searchers 2.0, (a film which I reviewed here, with a blog comment from Del Zamora, one of the Rodriguez brothers from Repo Man; Cox has made four features since). Cox is talking about his attempts to cast Timothy Carey in his pre-Repo Man short Edge City, aka Sleep is for Sissies, for a role that he had also tried to cast Harry Dean Stanton in (note, I believe I may have erroneously said elsewhere that Cox tried to cast Carey as Bud in Repo Man; it was in fact Edge City for which both Carey and Harry Dean Stanton were considered). From page 17 of the softcover edition: 

Unlike some actors, Carey was more imposing in person than on film. He looked about six foot six, and had a powerful voice, black-and-white hair, and staring eyes. He talked constantly, a little bit about the script, but mostly about farting, about the importance of not suppressing the breaking of wind, about how Western society was doomed, due to its suppression of the fart. On and on like this he went, in the same way as Harry Dean was apt to get into a longish diatribe about the Jews, not that Harry was anti-Semitic -- he thought the Christian culture every bit as bad and stupid as the Jewish one -- but he did tend, given a trapped interlocutor, to go on about the Jews. Timothy's obsession, expressed in public, in a much louder voice, was the beauty and importance of the fart. 

Carey would prove to want more money for his role than the entire budget of Cox's short, so they went their own ways, Carey never actually working with Cox. But -- I believe around the period when Cox was making Repo Man for Universal -- the two men did cross paths briefly one more time. Also from X Films:

I was going to a screening at the Hitchcock Theatre on the Universal lot. And there was Timothy, sitting in the guard's booth with the guard, singing and playing a guitar. He fixed me with an intense gaze, and serenaded me as I passed. 

We can conclude a few things from these stories, but the most obvious of them is that X Films is a very entertaining read, if you like Cox's films or a smart, funny film-related memoir; there are marvelous stories throughout, like the time he walked through a riot outside a Los Angeles punk club without being beaten by cops. He was tripping on LSD at the time. After the Carey anecdote, it's my second favourite story in the book, and I type it out with Alex's blessing (from page 92, the chapter on Sid and Nancy): 

I was out on the street, surrounded by raging cops, whacking punks with nightsticks. I was in no state to ride my motorcycle home; I couldn't remember where it was. I sat down on a bus bench and watched the riot. 

Why didn't LA's finest beat the shit out of me? I can only conclude it was the drugs: I read somewhere in my hippy studies of LSD's effect on humans in the proximity of bees: apparently people tripping on acid are less likely to be noticed or attacked by bees than non-stoned humans. I think the same thing happened with the cops. The acid trip gave me a non-threatening, non-invasive demeanour as far as the cops were concerned, like the undercover narco's 'scanner suit' in Philip K. Dick's novel A Scanner Darkly. They were all primed for a frenzy, yet, like those bees, they let me wander through the hive unstung. 

I do not want to bother Mr. Cox more than necessary, but, able to briefly interact with him to promote the upcoming screening of Repo Man, opening at the VIFF Centre on Friday, I have to ask him if Timothy Carey ever farted in his presence. Many people, we gather, got to hear Carey talk about farting, but getting to hear him ACTUALLY FART... would be a rarer privilege. (Bear in mind that my obituary for Doug Bennett emphasizes the likelihood that I used a toilet seat just after he did; my mind just works this way). 

Mr. Cox indulges me: 

No, he didn't fart as I recalled, though he discussed farting and its importance during our meeting. I'm sure he was right. Seeing him playing his guitar in the guard's booth that night at Universal was the weirdest thing. Was it a coincidence? Only a medium can tell us now.

,,,And what about Harry Dean Stanton? Did he "go on about the Jews" the way some political types might focus on the plight of the Palestinians, or was it something weirder (conspiracies, Rothschilds, blood slanders, or...?). 

You would have to ask Harry what he meant, probably via that medium. I wonder what the answer would be. Like a lot of American actors, he tended to think of himself as a Tibetan Buddhist but the details of it all were quite confused.

None of that has a direct bearing on Repo Man, of course. But somehow the connection between Harry Dean Stanton and his focus on Jews and Timothy Carey and his focus on farts somehow seems to bring us closer to the film in a way I cannot quite explain -- enough so that I mis-remembered Carey being almost cast as Bud. 

That would have been a very different movie.

2. Alex Cox on Robby Müller

Cinematographer Robby Müller shot Repo Man and three other films in the VIFF Centre's 80's series, including Paris, Texas, To Live and Die in LA, and Down by Law. He passed in 2018, after an amazing career, which also included films by Barbet Schroeder, Lars von Trier, John Schlesinger, Michael Winterbottom, and others; I have seen 22 of his 80 credits (and I guess saw him act in Peter Bogdanovich's Saint Jack, though I had not realized he was in it). X Films tells of how Cox, on his first feature, got to work with this European cinematographer of considerable prestige (though early in his American adventures); I will let you seek the book out for that story. 

Some questions for Mr. Cox, re: working with Müller: was he difficult? Was Cox, a young man working on his first feature, intimidated by him?

Cox answers, "Not at all. He was most charming. The cast and crew loved him."

Does he have any stories about Müller not in the book?

"As I recall, Robby had at that time a collection of Polaroid photos of every motel room he had stayed in. In LA he stayed at the Kensington Hotel in Santa Monica, and added that to his list." (Any readers with a direct line to Jim Jarmusch should ask him if this bit of information inspired the hotel room photography in the "Far From Yokohama" sequence in Mystery Train, which Müller shot.)

Sadly, after Repo Man, Cox "proposed several projects to him thereafter, but we didn't work together again. I think he was annoyed that when the time came to shoot additional Repo Man footage, we hired the young Robert Richardson, and not him. But Robby was already working on other films, including Paris Texas, and unavailable." 

Paris, Texas is gorgeously shot, but Cox's favourite Wenders film is The American Friend ("Bruno Ganz was a magnificent actor"); he mentions (in X Films) that the car scenes in that film were one of the reasons he was excited to get Müller for Repo Man ("his abilities were unquestionable," p. 46). He also mentions in writing to me that Kings of the Road is a favourite Wenders, which is a favourite of mine, too, though I also love Alice in the Cities, which he does not mention, whose main character also takes Polaroids of unusual locations, and which was also was shot (in 1974) by, yep, Robby Müller. Did Müller inspire Wenders in this regard, or did Wenders' main character, named "Winter," which sounds quite like "Wenders" and is presumably quite autobiographical, spark the habit in Müller? Perhaps carrying around Polaroid cameras and documenting the American landscape was a shared obsession of both men? (Anyone got a line to Wim Wenders?)

3. Devan Scott and Tom Charity

Devan Scott on set

The blurb for Devan Scott's presentation this Friday reads:

Nobody has more evocatively documented the red deserts, fluorescent green dive bars, and gray urban landscapes of America than Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller. In this presentation, cinematographer and professor Devan Scott will delve into the ways in which Müller, in collaboration with directors such as Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas), William Friedkin (To Live and Die in L.A.), and Jim Jarmusch (Down by Law), spent the 1980s rendering visual poetry out of the dark, forgotten corners of the American experiment.

With the help of series programmer Tom Charity, I was able to reach out to Devan for a few questions about his plans for Friday. Will his presentation anchor Muller's work in his European aesthetic? (Will there be clips of The American Friend, for instance?)

Devan Scott: "Yes to both counts: his experiences in New German Cinema in particular and his beginnings with Wenders are central. I'm including at least one American Friend clip."

The remainder of the interview will be in Q&A style...

Allan: Do Devan or Tom have favourite moments in Muller's filmography?

Devan: It's got to be Paris Texas, and in particular that film's magic hour and nighttime sequences: the sequence where Stockwell and Stanton are in the diner, lit by car headlights, is incredible. I greatly enjoy his later digital work, as well: his pioneering in Dancer in the Dark is significant, but 24 Hour Party People is an unbelievably effective bit of anti-aesthetic.

Tom: Like Devan, my favourite example of his work would be Paris, Texas. The night sequences, for sure, also the great dialogue sequence between Travis and Jane through the glass. I used to have a bookmark that was a strip of half a dozen 35mm frames of Nastassja Kinski from that scene, and I can't believe I lost it (maybe it will show up in one of my film reference books one day).

Allan: Do I gather that Muller's first American work was Honeysuckle Rose? I've never seen it, but am stunned at trying to put the cinema of Jerry Schatzberg of Scarecrow and The Panic in Needle Park in the same room with what appears to be a romantic comedy starring Willie Nelson. Is it an interesting film? Will there be clips?

Devan: This is, I believe, correct. I'll be using one clip of it paired with an anecdote about how the crew doubted his magic hour lighting abilities.

Tom: I've never seen Honeysuckle Rose. I don't have anything to add, except that, I suppose, his first American work was technically The American Friend, which has some NYC sequences [Tom's got me on this - I don't recall New York in the film, though the Criterion page on the film mentions it, too, so I guess I'm just forgetting something!] and I guess Bogdanovich deserves credit for bringing him on to Saint Jack and to They All Laughed.  

Allan: Does Muller's "eye" change once he starts looking at America? (I think it's fair to say he brought a European visual sensibility to his American work, but I wonder if that changes as he worked here more?)

Devan: I'd say what's especially remarkable is how little it changed: his obvious tics (practical lighting, hard sources, careful color direction, rough-and-tumble compositions and textures) emerged largely intact. Rare among European DPs, who often found themselves gradually flattened by Hollywood.

Nothing at the VIFF Centre this Friday has been flattened by Hollywood. Learn more about the Centre's "Film Studies" series here. See the complete list in the 80s retrospective here (a 10-ticket pass is a mere $99). Thanks to Alex Cox, Devan Scott, and Tom Charity. For more information, see the VIFF website (or buy X Films!). Links to individual screenings in the article. Be there, or risk being an ordinary fuckin' person, if you know what I mean!