Tonight, Kier-La Janisse will be introducing Greaser's Palace at the VIFF Centre, and bringing with her books from her publishing imprint, Spectacular Optical; the screening is the release party for her newest, Truth & Soul: A Robert Downey Sr. Reader, co-edited with Clint Enns (that's the Spectacular Optical link; see also the VIFF website, here). I wrote a piece on the film screening for the Straight, which was directed at getting people who might not know Downey's work interested in the film (which is weird and remarkable; Downey himself comments in an interview with Rudy Wurlitzer on the blu-ray that it would make a hell of a double bill with El Topo, which it would!).
Since then, I have revisited the film, and would change a few things about the article. The credits for the film and the subtitles give "Jesse" as "Jessy," for example, and even though this is not followed elsewhere (and may well not have been deliberate), I would probably follow suit. Also, the subtitles render Jessy's invocation as "If you feel you heal," which is different from how I've always heard it ("if you feel, you're healed"; it's actually really hard to hear the difference between the two). The business about the Resurrection is a bit more complicated than I'd remembered, and to be honest, I no longer find the donkey scene quite as funny as I once did (I had remembered it being quite a bit longer, in fact!). Now the funniest scene for me was when "the woman", played by Elsie Downey -- Robert Downey Jr.'s mother -- is shot by arrows (but I don't want to spoil the laugh by telling you what about that is funny).
The other glaring omission in the article is talking about the book, which, it turns out, is a stunning accomplishment. The art is gorgeous and the writing feels like a throwback to the glory days of the early 1970s, when film criticism was actually a respectable calling. Kier-La, it turned out, was available for a supplementary interview focused on the book, which she will have with her at the VIFF Centre, and provided a couple of collages of art from the film to illustrate.
Oh, by the way, the girl in the bottom left corner of this image is Toni Basil! (Whom I also neglected in the Straight piece, along with Hervé Villechaize and Don Calfa). But what we really need is more about Truth & Soul, however, so... here!
AM: Do you see Spectacular Optical as being a bit anachronistic? Are there periods or modes of film scholarship that particularly appeal to you? There is a feeling of the book, somewhat like the films of Robert Downey Sr., coming from a lost time in flm history... (maybe I'm just out of the loop...). Do you see yourself, your project, as anachronistic? Is there a year or decade that you attach more meaning to than others?
KLJ: I’m more interested in older things because context and patterns make more sense to me after a lot of time has passed and I can see the network of how so many things are connected. That interconnectivity helps me to feel more connected to the material. My sweet spot is probably 1967-1974. Part of that may be that I’m stuck in my childhood and what was in the air around the time of my birth, but also it’s such a contained moment in history where you saw a massive amount of change all happening at once, and all these utopian dreams reflected in music, politics, art, spirituality - and then the fallout of that as everything broke apart and the 70s became very dark and dystopian. I feel like between those two places is everything I like.
Downey’s films just don’t really fit neatly anywhere, with the exception of PUTNEY SWOPE where I feel like he made the right film at the right time. Even when he makes a film that’s clearly tapping into trends – like CHAFED ELBOWS or GREASER’S PALACE -- the films are inevitably making fun of that trend, and so they always remain outside of it.
AM: Was there a film or a moment in a film of Robert Downey Sr.'s that planted the seed of doing a book on him?
AM: Did you ever cross paths with Jonas Mekas? I think he would have liked what you're doing. I see his name coming up a couple of times in people's articles, and he was alive during the period of the book's preparation, though I don't know what his health was like... Did he contribute in any way, even indirectly?
KLJ: Clint may have, as he travels more in experimental film circles, but I never met Mekas. His Anthology Film Archives was instrumental in restoring many of Downey’s films but they were not a help with our book.
AM: Do you have essays in the book you are particularly pleased with the inclusion of?
KLJ: The pieces in the book all take wildly different approaches to the films, because all the contributors come from different research areas and we basically asked them to apply those research areas to the work of Robert Downey, Sr. My favourite may be Stephen Bissette’s piece on STICKS AND BONES because it’s very detailed and it connects to his larger research into Vietnam veterans on film, but also has this great conspiracy at its heart related to Nixon and Ozzie & Harriett. I also love Christine Lucy Latimer’s chapter because she breaks down the Marx Brothers influence in specifics - the Marx brothers are often brought up as a reference with Downey films but she’s the first person I know to actually break it down with scenes and dialogue side by side. Andy Votel’s chapter on composer Charley Cuva is a great deep dive into this mysterious character, told in Andy’s manic style. And lastly, the chapter on HUGO POOL. It’s not the most polished essay in the book, but it was by our youngest writer, and I got to see firsthand how the film won him over with each draft of the chapter. The author Jeff Siegrist died very young before the book came out – it is dedicated in part to him. HUGO POOL was a film we all initially underestimated as being part of Downey’s California sell-out period, but if you watch it a bunch, it will break your heart. Downey was grieving when he made this film and as silly as it is, it’s also his most poignant film.
AM: Tell me about the difficulty of seeing the films? I assume you and Clint saw everything you wrote about, but some of these must have been challenging to source. Are there films you could not source? (Have you seen Downey's hemmorhoid commercial? Is it in any way interesting? Is it weird that I perked up when I read about that?).
KLJ: Many of his films haven’t been officially released since their first release – POUND has never come out on home video (we actually hired someone to track down the chain of title and it belongs to Amazon/MGM now, and they’ve made an exclusive deal for physical media with Alliance Entertainment who are very unlikely to prioritize a release of this film). This is no fault of Downey’s, the films he retained rights on are those that Criterion released and you can see them streaming on the Criterion channel even though the DVDs are out of print.
KLJ, continued: But the other films he doesn’t own comes down to the companies that own them and their interest in exploiting those rights. PUTNEY and GREASER’S are both available to book easily enough, and RENTED LIPS is available for licensing through Studio Canal if anyone wants to release it, but that, along with AMERICA and TOO MUCH SUN remain unreleased on disc. AMERICA is actually great – up until the last 5 minutes when Richard Belzer gives a racist monologue (which he wrote himself – Downey did not write it) and while it’s satirical – showing the degeneration of the news – it’s very hard to watch. Many of the films we watched from Nth-generation VHS dupes uploaded to torrents. STICKS AND BONES I originally had to fly to New York and watch it at the Performing Arts Library, that was the only way to see it for a long time. But then a couple years ago a copy popped up on Youtube. A bunch of his other films are on Youtube too. So it’s really fans keeping the stuff circulating.
I haven’t seen any commercials Downey worked on but I have seen at least one of his industrial films, which is funny when you think about his later film RENTED LIPS whose protagonist (Martin Mull) plays an industrial filmmaker who makes a film called “Aluminum, Our Shiny Friend” - which is the kind of film Downey would have made in the 60s as a work for hire. I mean that’s one of the things that’s interesting about examining a filmography is you can see all these tendrils back to other parts of their filmography – even AMERICA, the film I wrote about, is set at a cable news station in the early 80s but is referencing changes from the past 15 years of news history, while also being prescient about the news situation American finds itself in now.
AM: Can I ask about the economics of what you do? The graphic design, the fonts, the archival resources you've tracked down, the many contributors, and the number of hours put into the writing and editing suggest a luxury of resources -- it's a luxuriant book -- but I do not sense a great luxury of resources at your disposal. Will the book actually pay for the cost of its making? How do you manage to afford what you do? (How important was the Indiegogo campaign? Were there notable sponsors or donors?).
KLJ: The indiegogo campaign paid for the basic printing of the book. It did not cover the slipcase, the design fees, the archival fees, nor the contributor royalties. But the book has to exist before it has a chance of earning revenue to cover those other things, so getting enough money to print it is step one. Generally over time the books (mostly?) pay for themselves and I pay royalties to all the contributors no matter what, even if out of pocket. But I get paid nothing for my time working on it, so that’s what I’m working on improving. I’m trying to get wider distribution for the books, and the extras units we can sell with a distributor will help me get paid.
AM: Did you and Clint have any prerequisites for your contributors, in terms of their knowledge of Downey's work? Robert Dayton, whose essay is one of the ones I've been able to skim, seems to have seen films beyond the one he is writing about, like No More Excuses, which is at least seeable on the Eclipse box. Did you have a list of films that people had to have seen before submitting an essay? (Did you have to ever give editorial feedback like, "No, you're off the mark here, you need to reconsider this comment in light of ______?" (where ______ is a film by Robert Downey Sr.?).
KLJ: When we first started looking for contributors we were looking for people who had already written about Downey or had some documented relationship with his work. But it became apparent there weren’t many of these people. Part of why the book took 10 years to do is that many scholars and film critics we approached weren’t confident they knew how to read Downey’s films. The main thing was I wanted a thesis. I was less concerned with whether they were already a fan than that thy could say something interesting about the films. So we asked people who we knew would bring their own backgrounds and research areas to the films to dig out a specific aspect of it. For example Eivind Rossak we specifically asked to write about CHAFED ELBOWS because he had written in the past about stasis in film, and that film is mostly shot in still images. We would guide people where needed with additional films or texts.
AM: Did you have to pay for the use of the archival materials? The Life article was quite something. Why the hell was Downey harrassing people in the lobby of a theatre, condemning his own film?! (Kier-La doesn't answer that question but it's an eye-opening stunt -- he's standing in the lobby of a theatre playing Putney Swope telling people how vile it is, challenging them to explain why they saw it; one woman he accosts complains to the manager about his behaviour, but the manager explains he's helpless to intervene, since the man is in fact the filmmaker himself).
KLJ: We paid a shitload for that LIFE article. We also paid handsomely for Skip Gates’ piece on PUTNEY SWOPE. Others were a bit more reasonable. There are 2 images licensed from Getty that cost an arm and a leg. A lot of images I licensed from Alamy which is waaaay more affordable. Technically I can get fair use on most of this stuff, because of the editorial scope of the book, and so a lot of lobby cards and 8 x 10s I bought and used, but ultimately if the same image is on Alamy it’s worth it to license a high res image for download and save the cost of shipping.
AM: The fonts are great. Who is responsible for them? Where does the "main font" (the Truth & Soul font) come from? Does it have a name? It has almost a "Japanese calligraphy" feel.
AM: Did you and Clint have much of a hands-on role in determining elements used in the collages? Who is Luke Insect?
KLJ: Clint was co-editor of the text but the design and layout was my responsibility as the publisher. I’ve worked work with Luke Insect on other projects - he’s a Manchester-based artist and did the design for my folk horror and Emanuelle box sets for Severin, among other things. I made folders for each chapter, procured and chose all the images, and told him I wanted a collage style, so he would send me pages and I would approve or ask for changes – it was a process of several months.
AM: You mention two other Vancouverites. One is Robert Dayton, obviously, but who is the other? (Any stories there of your history with either are welcome -- I was first made aware of Robert at the Phantom of the Paradise screening you mounted as part of -- was that a Cinemuerte or Big Smash? Do you have any regional bias here, a desire to support people who are doing interesting work locally?).
AM: My biggest hurdle in buying the book is that I have not seen many of the films in it, just Putney Swope, Greaser's Palace, and... I think I saw The Gong Show Movie? What films should people track down?
KLJ: People shouldn’t have to have seen all his film to buy the book – I buy film books constantly about people I’ve never heard of if their work sounds interesting. Most people who buy my book HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN haven’t seen all 300 films discussed in it. I don’t think anyone has to “justify” buying a book put out by me. I’ve done my time and if my name’s on something, it’s worth owning!
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