Joe Marzano, Lew Waldeck, Lou Campa, George Weiss and…

By Nathan Schiff

    A cinephile from the bygone era of 40’s film noir and RKO melodrama, Joe Marzano (at left holding the camera) could be considered a conceptual and physical fusion of Orson Welles and Hugo Haas. After making 16mm shorts throughout the 50’s (notably an excellent adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Erostratus), Joe worked his way up to the self-financed, two-hour Man Outside (1965). Struggling along with friends and acquaintances such as Paul Morrissey and Brian DePalma, Joe hoped the picture would pull him out of obscurity and into the mainstream, but the most recognition it received was a rave review by Judith Crist. Afterwards, he found work as an editor for an outfit producing industrial films. (One of these pictures, To Face Life Again, was an unusual document about disfigured accident victims readjusting to life.) There he met Lew Waldeck, the editor of the ‘Olga’s Girls’ series of low-budget soft-core. Soon enough, Waldeck introduced Joe to the wild world of sexploitation.
    As crumbling cultural barriers were allowing more and more on-screen nudity, something of a l’age d’or of titillation was developing. From the relatively high-profile Russ Meyer to the lesser-known Doris Wishman, Joe Sarno and Joseph P. Mawra, each filmed their private fetishes, desires and hang-ups for a pittance, normally backed by clueless financiers who were willing to bankroll titles that often had little or nothing to do with the finished picture. Without script or concept, a producer would assemble a crew of inexpensive, hungry talent and tell them, “I want a sex film called Cool It, Baby.” It was their job to make it happen.
    Most of what they ended up making, however, was substandard and generally dismissed as trash. But some of the people worked from true creative expression — people like Marzano. Through Lew Waldeck, Joe met Lou Campa and George Weiss, who were ready to embark on a new project. Campa had just finished the tawdry Artist’s Studio Secrets, and Weiss’s reputation dated back to producing Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda?. (Waldeck recalled that Weiss wrote the sensational wording for all four Olga’s Girls trailers and took it as a goof, while Campa accepted his exaggerated prose as serious ad copy.) They gave Waldeck $12,000 to make a picture, and said whatever he didn’t spend would be his salary. Given that enticing stipulation, he brought in Cool It, Baby (1967) for seven grand.

.

Above: Joe Marzano (holding camera), Barbara Ellen and
Beverly Baum in Cool it, Baby; click to enlarge.

.

    Contrary to what’s listed in the opening credits, the picture was not directed by Campa. (On the posters and publicity, the nonexistent ‘Louis Champion’ is credited.) Marzano was asked if he’d like to do it, but declined when told that the camera (for whatever reason) needed to remain stationary on the tripod. The film ultimately had no director, and screenwriter Lou Palisano delivered an unfinished script which was fleshed out by Marzano. Joe stayed on as an actor and directed some sequences, Waldeck directed others, and Campa reportedly lounged on a sofa throughout. Few of them cared about who got credit for what, Joe later recalled, because they simply had fun doing it, feeling as if they were making a Monogram or PRC picture back in the 40’s.
    Cool It Baby opens as a no-frills blackmail melodrama, with static introductory footage (the camera’s nailed to the floor) accompanied by a droning narration. But it develops into a Rashomon courtroom drama, as characters relate their testimony through flashback. With each story comes a new character, and consequently the scenario ingeniously dovetails sadism, white slavery, vice, Satanic rituals, suicide and murder, while the dialog gradually amplifies to a crazed state of delirium. (Joe claimed that George Weiss acted as a kind of technical advisor during the S&M scenes, by coaching an actress how to beat someone realistically.) Against all odds, the picture’s a success.
    Other than help write and direct it, Marzano brought most of the cast onboard himself. All of which impressed Campa, who entrusted Joe with $10,000 for another picture; and Joe, given his proclivity for the classics, thought Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novel, Venus in Furs, would make ideal sexploitation. At first glance, the film is a professional and artistic advance over Cool It, Baby. Now able to control the lighting, Joe was also free to experiment with the photography, and had two cameras at his disposal. With Lew Waldeck off shooting another picture, George Cirello stepped in as cinematographer, but Marzano did a lot of the photography himself. He brought back several of his friends from the earlier cast, and completed the post-production work, editing and sound mix on his own — taking a tremendous burden off producer Campa.
    Given that money and a five-day shooting schedule, Joe got together with his friend Barbara Ellen to write the screenplay. The first dialogue sequence follows the novel verbatim, but after that the only connection between the book and the film is the title. Hired to make sexploitation, Joe instead seized the opportunity to put his personal demons and desires, pent-up disillusionments, failed relationships and fetishes all on 35mm for worldwide distribution, using Venus in Furs (1967) to create an art film that sacrifices boobs for Bergman.
    For an idea of how pretentious and self-indulgent it gets, Joe, playing a supporting character, wrote more dialogue for himself than the two leads, and keeps the camera fixed on himself during a very awkward dinner table recitation of Oscar Wilde. (The scene may have been intended as an homage to Welles’s “Marx wasn’t a German, Marx was a Jew” diatribe in The Stranger, but here it’s a digression without purpose.) Add to this an interminable part with a woman taking a milk bath, plus the unexpected obstacle Joe faced when trying to wheedle his ‘Venus’ out of her clothes. Barbara Ellen was having problems with her husband at the time, and felt that doing nude scenes would stir up trouble at home. Incidentally, Joe’s first choice to play Venus was the young Warhol actress Mary Woronov, who appeared in Chelsea Girls a year earlier. Although she’d expressed interest in doing it, Joe decided against hiring Mary because the Warhol crew had a reputation for being unreliable. In retrospect, casting her as Venus would’ve been inspired.

.

Above: Is Venus in Furs sexploitation? The woman with her head cropped off on the extreme left is Janet Banzet, who had minor roles in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Lillith prior to a run of soft-core movies for Lou Campa. She appeared in Is There Sex After Death? before committing suicide in 1971. To her right: unknown woman; Shep Wild in back with barbells; Bob James in drag in foreground; unknown actress behind him; and Susan James (Bob’s wife) at far right. Click to enlarge.

.

    Perhaps puzzled by what Joe was filming or jealous of the attention he’d been getting, Campa began interfering and economizing. He wanted to change the title from Venus in Furs to the senseless “Cherished Women.” For a scene set on the grand stairway outside the New York Public Library, Joe had a Fellini-esque vision of dozens of girls running toward the camera. Campa agreed and lined up the talent, but on the day of the shoot he arrived with just three women. (After making a few phone calls, Joe rounded up two more for a total of five.) As Cool It Baby had lap dissolves and fades, Joe wanted to use these effects but Campa refused to pay for them. He also wouldn’t allow Joe to shoot some necessary expository scenes, and instead had him pad a rambling, un-erotic orgy sequence. And when the film was completed, Joe, realizing Campa would try to shaft him, threatened to destroy the picture unless he got paid.
    Despite its shortcomings, Venus in Furs is a fascinating example of an artist at odds with exploitation, commerce, and mainstream values. If placed alongside some of his best work of the 50’s and 60’s — Erostratus, When They Sleep, You Or I, Hang Up, Man Outside — a portrait emerges of creative genius depressed by stifling business and financial concerns. Given the opportunity and freedom, Joe could have easily been a respected, major American filmmaker.
    Eventually released on DVD, Cool It, Baby and Venus in Furs were joined on a single disc by a picture which was written, produced and directed by Lou Campa, Miniskirt Love (1967). Its thin plot concerned with an aunt seducing her thirteen-year-old nephew (played by a guy in his thirties), it’s sloppy, inept and artless. The DVD distributor would have done better by instead digging up C. Davis Smith’s surprisingly morose To Turn a Trick (1967), in which Joe Marzano acted and worked on the sound. (While it’s Smith’s best film, he’s said he has no recollection of making it!)
    Campa made a few more of these (with titles like Sock It to Me, Baby) before his descent into mob-financed hardcore. Joe, on the other hand, never directed in 35mm again. Making the rounds, he met with the sexploitation distributors Sam Lake and Joseph Brenner, and used Man Outside as an audition to no avail. He photographed Lloyd Michael Williams’s experimental Line of Apogee (1968), and worked as an assistant director on Jack Glenn’s unreleased House of the Seven Gables (1967). He even went back to Campa and sold him a script called The Leather Girls, about an all-girl biker gang that may have been sparked by Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (and predated Herschell Gordon Lewis’s She Devils on Wheels by a year). Campa never shot it, but Joe made an abbreviated version in the late 70’s in super-8mm. He continued in super-8 with Pounds Of Love (1980), a Hugo Haas-style feature about an overweight, insecure man driven mad by a young, attractive girl. But even super-8 became unaffordable, and Joe went on to make a proliferation of short films on videotape up until his untimely death in the summer of 2000. Just weeks before, he’d finished another short. Passionate and dedicated to the end, Joe could never stop filming.

.

Above: Trailers for Venus In Furs and Cool It, Baby, both narrated by Joe Marzano.

.

Links:

Cool It, Baby at IMDb

Venus in Furs at IMDb

Text copyright © Nathan Schiff

Mommy Apocalypse, or: No Country for Gay Men

SKYFALL (Sam Mendes, 2012) When we last saw him, James Bond (Daniel Craig) was saving the world from men of color: Mr. White in Casino Royale and Mr. Green of Quantum of Solace. They were part of a rainbow coalition of terrorists called Quantum, if I’m not mistaken, the first worldwide enemy organization to hit the series since 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, when Ernst Blofeld’s SPECTRE — Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion (whew!) — threatened to blow holes in the planet from a super laser in space. Some may argue that Blofeld popped up again years later in the opening of For Your Eyes Only, but that faceless bald guy who offers 007 “a delicatessen in stainless steel” was less a nemesis than a painful reminder of how far the franchise fell during the Roger Moore years. To use a wobbly political analogy, Moore was to Bond what G.W. Bush was to the White House.
    In Skyfall, Bond is up against the nefarious Mr. Silver (Javier Bardem), but all ties to the Quantum organization and the previous two movies end there. This is a Bond film of alleged substance, it reminds us every so often, of the glories of tradition. Not the traditions of the James Bond series, all that wisecracking and gratuitous sex and outlandish action, but rather the traditions of Great Britain’s conservative core. Under the staid direction of Sam Mendes, who’s still known for being the guy who made American Beauty, there are blunt references to Churchill in the hideous bulldog figure gracing M’s desk, of Savile Row in Ralph Fiennes’s stiff upper Brit tailored suits, and let’s say nothing (please) of the Scottish castle on the moors and Albert Finney. There are arguments against the gun toting ‘Double O’ section lobbied by a pack of shortsighted liberals in a hearing wherein Judi Dench goes full bore Dame and recites Tennyson through quivering lips, preceding a rash of gunplay when the conservative right bears arms to protect their whiny detractors. All this in a film released just days after the Presidential election in North America witnessed the left schooling the right and sent them packing.
    Gleefully flamboyant, Bardem’s Mr. Silver strives for gay iconography but stumbles rather quickly into caricature. (Imagine Paul Lynde playing Goldfinger.) In its political cartooning, Skyfall lumps him in with the tragic errors of a progressive world gone to hell; rather than give Silver an outrageous plan for global domination à la Blofeld, he’s stuck with suffocating mommy issues out of Psychology 101, the kind of pap Orson Welles used to wave off as ‘dollar book Freud.’ Blaming Dench’s M (get it? ‘M’ for mommy!) for wronging him, Silver plots her demise in a series of convoluted schemes we try to muster enthusiasm for as they’re overturned by Bond, often in some of the cheesier examples of CGI I’ve seen lately. (They totally blew it with the Komodo dragons.) Given her ample screen time, the seventy-one-year-old Dench becomes the ‘Bond girl’ here as the scenario’s two younger women are relegated to thankless supporting roles. Bérénice Marlohe is given relatively little to do in thick black makeup reminiscent of Caligari, Naomie Harris (as Eve Moneypenny) appears ready to kick off her own weekly series.
    Not long ago there were rumors or wishful thinking of a Bond film directed by Quentin Tarantino; there was also the time Angelina Jolie was approached to appear in one but said she would only if she played 007 herself. All of which surely had franchise bigwigs Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson rolling their eyes. A series immersed in such high finance as this will never tip its cash cow into the dung heap of experimentation. But Jolie as 007 in a Tarantino Bond movie would be incredibly cool, and a lot livelier than this.

Text copyright © Ray Young

Shirley Stoler and ‘The Honeymoon Killers’

    Attempting to describe the 55-year-old, 225-lb. Anita Ekberg in Intervista, Fellini called her simply ‘epic.’ I felt the same way when I met Shirley Stoler, who may not have possessed Ekberg’s elegant Amazonian features, but cut an equally imposing figure.
    Best known for portraying a real-life serial killer in The Honeymoon Killers (1970) as well as the Nazi commandant in Seven Beauties (1976), Stoler began her career in the theatre, where she continued to work until her death at the age of seventy in 1999. Because of her unique appearance, film work was limited to small parts as prison guards (Desperately Seeking Susan), nasty homeroom teachers (Three O’Clock High), and beefy bartenders (Frankenhooker). But she also flexed her comedic skills on the surreal Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, and camped it up for one season on the daytime soap, As the World Turns.
    We met for one evening in 1986, an interview session which, in hindsight, Shirley may have been hoping for years to happen. Her killer and Nazi images from the screen evaporated in a rush of exciting, colorful life stories.
    When she read the first draft of our conversation, Shirley was displeased with the way it read. Like someone hearing their voice for the first time on a recording, Shirley didn’t think it sounded ‘like her.’ I’d attempted a rewrite, but nothing seemed to work. It’s been sitting in my file cabinet ever since. The following, therefore, is an unauthorized presentation of Shirley’s words on her most famous role, as Martha Beck in The Honeymoon Killers:

    One night I received a call from these people who wanted to know if I’d like to read for the part of Martha Beck. Apparently Marilyn Chris, who I had worked with years ago at the Living Theatre, had tried for the role of Beck but she wasn’t the right type. She did something very few actresses would do: she told them, ‘If I’m not the right type, I know someone who is!’
    I remembered the Martha Beck case very well because I was an adult when it happened. The court case lasted for months, the newspapers were full of it. Martha was a very verbose witness. I was fascinated by her as a personality, and I guess I had done a kind of subconscious preparation in my sleep overnight. When I went in to read for the part, they said I was her. They said if I didn’t know how to act, they would teach me. I read for it, got it, and did the film.
    Very few people know it, but Martin Scorsese was the first director on The Honeymoon Killers. He was just out of school. He did the first scene where Martha comes in on a nurse and an intern fooling around on a bed, with was shot in a real hospital. Even though Martin wasn’t really experienced, he had a strong sense of direction. He also shot the scenes of me in the lake. My screams were real in that scene — I was terrified.
    Scorsese was taken out because of a personality clash. The producer, Warren Steibel, and the writer, Leonard Kastle, were very argumentative people. Kastle really wanted to direct it, but didn’t have the courage to put himself in the position. After Scorsese left, they had a sort-of ex-editor in who was totally incompetent. After a couple of weeks Kastle took over, although he really had no knowledge of directing. Somehow the picture managed to direct itself, not really needing a director. Scorsese did have a certain amount of creativity, but nobody else did. Either way, the picture still worked.

Above: Martha Beck and Ray Fernandez
Below: Tony LoBianco and Shirley Stoler

    If any one person were to take responsibility for the quality of The Honeymoon Killers, it would have to be the cinematographer, Oliver Wood. He loved very long takes and, with lighting, liked that ‘diffused’ look. He didn’t do anything to cover the lamps or dim the light, preferring whatever was naturally there. There’s one scene where the two women are in bed, Martha slapping the other woman, and suddenly the screen went black. Everyone thought the film broke. But then a lamp turns on, as Toni LoBianco sits in a dark room. That was just one of Oliver’s ideas. I thought he was brilliant — he created that film, especially the look of it, which tried for that pulpish True Detective quality.
    Also, the chemistry of casting was very good. The actors seemed to be reacting to the situations in the film as they would in real life. Tony LoBianco, playing Martha Beck’s lover, Ray Fernandez, was especially good. I would say that the filmmakers used Tony’s ego, although he didn’t know it, to arrive at the character. You can tell by the way he walks through scenes. Mary Jane Higbee, who played Janet Fay, was fabulous. She used to be in soap operas in radio. She knew exactly what she was doing, an absolute master.
    I was glad to interject even the slightest bit of humor into some scenes, as there was so little in the whole film. The cafeteria scene was a chance for that, and worked rather well. I also like the ending of the picture very much, a scene certainly attributable to Leonard Kastle.
    The critical reaction was interesting. Some people loved it, others were quite hostile. In The New Yorker, Pauline Kael blasted it for several pages, yet ended her review with ‘but you can't altogether dismiss it.’ That was a strange thing to say — like the operation wasn’t a success but the patient’s still alive. Most, if not all, the New York papers gave it good reviews.
    I was sent on a publicity tour for two months and 25,000 miles, as far north as Toronto, as far south as Atlanta. We also went to England. I adored the tours with the many interviews, going to fine hotels with three-room suites, limousines. My favorite words were ‘Miss Stoler requires…’
    When I was in England, they gave me $280 in pocket money, so I decided to go to Paris for a week. When I arrived there, the picture wasn’t due to open for a while, but I contacted Cinerama, the distributor there. They were very courteous and said, ‘If there's anything we can possibly do for you…’ So I said, ‘Take me to Maxim’s!’ So three of us — the head of the office, his assistant and myself — went to Maxim’s. It was a delicious experience. The best champagne I ever tasted was the house brand. The three of us drank five bottles. I swore I wasn’t drunk, but by the time I got back to my hotel room and tried to take off my clothes, the room was spinning! I also had one of the best dinners at Maxim’s: smoked eel, beef stroganoff, a Grand Marnier souffle, and strawberries which were huge and sweet.

Above: Shirley in Seven Beauties

    Later I went back to New York City and lived on 17th Street. For a while I did nothing. I received a call to meet Alan J. Pakula, and ended up doing a five-minute scene in Klute as a result of The Honeymoon Killers. I play one of the madams in the film, Jane White was the other. I had roughly a paragraph of dialogue. I worked with Donald Sutherland, who remembered me when we did Lolita on stage many years later.
    In 1972 and ‘73, I did a few plays, and I was receiving many, many scripts for films about ‘the fat girl and the faggot’ patterned after The Honeymoon Killers. I even got a script from Cass Elliot from a story by a friend of hers about The Mamas & The Papas. Cass wanted me to play her part, and she wanted to direct. I refused the role.
    By 1974 I was really in a decline. I got a job in an answering service, putting calls through to these people I should have been talking to myself, on a professional level. It was demoralizing and I became very sad and despondent.
    I kept talking about getting back to Europe to prove I could be mobile again. A few friends voluntarily sent me money, and I ended up with $1000 beside my fare. I toured for six weeks, four in France, two in England. I really didn’t have a good time, the weather was bad, I felt sick, and I took too much baggage. I must’ve packed for a year.
    When I returned to New York I almost lost a job by being back a few days later than I thought I would be. It was a wrestling film called To Smithereens, based on Rosalyn Drexler’s autobiography. I remember one time we nearly froze to death. It was winter and ice cubes were put in our mouths so the steam wouldn’t issue forth. We were shooting under bleachers at Randle’s Island, wearing bathing suits. They had to have wood stoves, brandy and blankets — it was about ten degrees.
    The director, Robert Fowler, re-shot half the film five years later after the star, Regina Baff, had a nose-job and looked totally different. Eventually it was released as Below the Belt. I really didn’t have much of a part. I hung around, and talked out of the side of my mouth.

Above: Ray Young, Shirley Stoler and filmmaker Joe Marzano in 1986
Photo courtesy Nathan Schiff

Links:

Shirley Stoler at Wikipedia

Shirley at IMDb

Text copyright © Ray Young