By Wil Forbis
08/16/02
By all rights, the independent
film should be a dying breed. Indie movies have to compete with studio
films made at 10-20 times their budget. They have to rely on no-name
actors. They often deal with subject matter with, at best, niche appeal.
(“Hedwig and the Angry Inch” anyone?) The cards are stacked against
them. But the fact is, now is a golden age for indie films. Movies like
“Kissing Jessica Stein” or “Memento” have had breakout status, causing
the public (and studios) to take notice. The emergence of the digital
camera has slashed the cost of entry for independent filmmakers. The
Internet has popped up as a successful promotional tool (Hey, it duped
you into seeing “Blair Witch.”) and has the potential to be a low cost
means of mass distribution. Now is a great time to be an independent
film maker.
As such, it’s that much sadder
that cult movie director/producer/screenwriter Doris Wishman died August
10th, 2002. This could’ve been a great time for her as well. Doris spent
more than forty years in the business making the types of films that
had no choice but to be independent. Movies that the wealthy studios
and big name actors never would have touched. Think you’ll ever see
Dreamworks releasing titles like “Bad Girls Go to Hell” or “A Night
to Dismember”? What are the odds of Tom Hanks playing a man driven to
serial rape because he has the penis of a sex maniac attached to him?
How about Meg Ryan fighting crime with a pair of 73 inch breasts? (God,
I’d chew off my own arm to see that one.)
But those were exactly the
sort of crazy ideas that found home in Doris Wishman's films. Doris
started out shooting “Nudie” films in the early sixties – extra soft
core films that usually featured a bunch of topless chicks chasing a
beach ball around for 90 minutes. Then she moved into the “Roughies”
- black and white morality tales in which suburban housewives were chewed
up by a cold, cold city and spat out as prostitutes with cigarettes
burns on their back. In the seventies, Doris avoided going into straight
hardcore and did a couple adventure films with the elephant bosomed
actress Chesty Morgon. The rest of her movies, be they 1980’s Samatha
Fox showpiece, “A Night to Dismember” or the recently released “Satan
Was a Lady” (starring my good pal, Honey
Lauren) followed the same formula. Don’t be afraid to be outrageous.
Don’t be afraid to be absurd. Don’t be afraid to push past the boundries
of good taste, cohesive storytelling and conventional human logic.
When we eulogize an artist,
it's common to try and make them sound better than they were. (Like
all those clowns who said Kurt Cobain could actually play the guitar.)
I’m not going to do that here. To call some of Doris’s work “terrible”
would be putting it kindly. Her filmmaking was crude at best, with long
stretches that border on unwatchable. But that’s what makes it all the
more curious that her work remains in the public eye. After all, there’ve
been plenty of unwatchable filmmakers throughout the years and 99% of
them have faded away into deserved obscurity. Why not Doris?
The answer I think, is in
her stories, her ideas, her concepts. Watching a lousy film about two
people falling in love, or yet another predictable slasher film is one
thing. Watching a lousy film documenting the creation of a transexual
("Let Me Die a Woman") or the life of a woman who suffocates
people with her boobs ("Deadly Weapons") is quite another.
It was in the breadth of her imagination that Doris shone. Nothing was
out of her reach. Few people would have the balls to make a film about
a man driven to crime by his transplanted penis ("The Amazing Transplant")
or a tale of a secret agent with a camera in her breast ("Double
Agent 73"). Fewer still could make a movie about a nudist colony
of aliens ("Nude on the Moon"), or a housewife driven into
prostitution ("Another Day, Another Man.") But how many people
would have the balls to make ALL these films (and a whole lot more?)
Only one. Only Doris.
What do you think America?
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Wil Forbis is a well known international playboy who lives a fast paced
life attending chic parties, performing feats of derring-do and making
love to the world's most beautiful women. Together with his partner,
Scrotum-Boy, he is making the world safe for democracy. Email - acidlogic@hotmail.com
