CAMMELL, perhaps one of the most underrated filmmakers ever..

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....eh? i don't hear ENOUGH about this guy. i have been a huge fan for ages and i never anyone sing any praises about his movies. except maybe his half and half with roeg on performance which is the least of his talents. the best is WHITE OF THE EYE if you ask me. that is quinessential cammell. and does criterion care about this? well, probably not.. there's no subtitles, they didn't get any payola (see 'the rock' and 'chasing amy'), college professors probably think of it as the antithesis of great cinema, and quentin tarantino hasn't ripped him off. so that makes him about NIL in the book of great film apparently. but i love demonseed and wild side and any piece of film he put his hands on including the U2 video which is perhaps the only time i'd sit through 3 minutes of their pussdangling.

― corey c (shock of daylight), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 07:01 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah, cammell is so beat down, no-one ever gives him sole credit for 'performance', nooooo.

― N_RQ, Tuesday, 18 October 2005 07:44 (seventeen years ago) link

there's no subtitles, they didn't get any payola (see 'the rock' and 'chasing amy'), college professors probably think of it as the antithesis of great cinema, and quentin tarantino hasn't ripped him off. so that makes him about NIL in the book of great film apparently.

well the difficulty is knowing what to make of him at all, no one knows what he was and wasn't responsible for on Performance so it's hard to know where that fim's greatness stems from. "Wildside", The only other film i've seen of his, is certianly loopy and has some great scenes (and some very funny ones) but it's not a great film.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 15:58 (seventeen years ago) link

and since Roeg's films (post Performance) certainly have a similar look and feel to Performance the bulk of the credit can't really go to cammell though various people have, as N_rq suggested, tried to suggest that in the past few years.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 16:02 (seventeen years ago) link

I saw an interesting Cammell documentary on TV a few years ago. I've never seen anything other than Performance but his obsession over lack of credit for Performance makes me less sympathetic to his side. It's kind of like a Tony Conrad scenario. His death was pretty crazy though.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 16:13 (seventeen years ago) link

i think roeg makes everything instantly boring. but that's just me!

― corey c (shock of daylight), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 16:48 (seventeen years ago) link

I didn't think much of Wild Side at all - but I'm not sure I saw the director's cut.

Cammell's stock is pretty high among the film fanatics I know.

― Bob Six (bobbysix), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 18:00 (seventeen years ago) link

'performance' is a ruined masterpiece and imo it was ruined by cammell, even if he did originate a lot of it, and made it happen, by mixing with the whole sick crew of art dealers, crims, and pop stars that it captures. roeg was setting up 'walkabout' when cammell did the edit you see now, and he really wasn't happy with it. the first half of the film was cut to ribbons, and i think i'd prefer a less clever, less frenetic version than what we have.

― N_RQ, Wednesday, 19 October 2005 07:37 (seventeen years ago) link

seven years pass...

So White of the Eye is on Youtube, for those of us in countries where it's otherwise unavailable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTLTrO5Z_-k

JESUS CHRIST WHAT DID I JUST WATCH

― CAROUSEL! CAROUSEL! (Telephone thing), Monday, 23 September 2013 02:11 (ten years ago) link

four years pass...

Skipped Demon Seed as a teenager; even then, it looked like pretty junky drive-in fare. It's not anymore; it's part of a Nicholas Roeg/Donald Cammell series at the Lightbox.

Pretty good for the first half, actually--prescient, credible performances, kind of sequel to Rosemary's Baby (right down to Julie Christie's bound ankles--in case of convulsions, according to one of the old witches). Then it loses its way and gets sillier and sillier. I spent the whole film thinking Gerrit Graham was William Finley.

― clemenza, Saturday, 4 August 2018 04:50 (five years ago) link

Yeah that film reaaaaally unravels

― Οὖτις, Saturday, 4 August 2018 15:21 (five years ago) link

five years pass...

Missed this from earlier this week, but the "Erotic '90s" season of You Must Remember This has resumed with an episode about Wild Side, Anne Heche & 'Lesbian Chic'.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, 16 September 2023 14:14 (one week ago) link

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