This Saturday, July 21st, at midnight, Dominic Mayer will present
"Myra Breckenridge and the Delirious, Gender-Bending Sexual Revolution of 1970 (Well, Kind Of)" in the third session of the summer-long
Facets Night School series. The following is my interview with Dominic about the show:
Can you tell us about Myra Breckenridge and why you chose to lecture on it?
Myra Breckinridge comes from one of my favorite periods in American film history, namely the late 60s/early 70s, before the whole "renegade revolution" of the 70s auteurs got going. It was an uncertain time, when things like Dr. Doolittle were no longer marketable, but the next "big thing" had yet to emerge, and out of that came some of the most audacious filmmaking that the U.S. has ever seen at the mainstream level. Studios were flinging anything they could find at the wall to see what would stick (let's remember that Beyond the Valley of the Dolls came out at the national level), and some genuinely exciting, great stuff came out of that.
In particular, 20th Century Fox was verging on bankruptcy, and really letting a lot go through. Eventually that'd work out with films like M*A*S*H and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but in the meantime, they greenlit Myra Breckinridge because of Gore Vidal's source novel becoming a huge, surprise counterculture hit. Everything after that preamble, really, is why I chose to lecture on it. Unlike a lot of the shocking, divisive movies from that time (Dolls, Midnight Cowboy), that have found more acceptance with time, Myra is still considered a disaster even by modern standards. And I'm attracted to films like that, films that came to be out of sheer happenstance and make you wonder who sat down in a room and greenlit them. I also think there's genuine merit to it on some pretty gonzo levels, despite the fact that as a film I'll readily concede that it's more than a little bit of a disaster. It's also the kind of thing that, upon the rolling of the credits, you immediately want to share with others.