Kenneth Anger Begins His Afterlife
"Scorpio Rising" Filmmaker and Occult Master Was 96
Note to readers: I am excited to be part of the World of Bob Dylan conference in Tulsa, Okla., June 1-June 4. My panel, will be part of the first round of panels at 1:00-2:30 CDT on June 1.
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Kenneth Anger, the influential filmmaker, raconteur, and serious student of the dark arts of magick, has been cruelly cut down in the prime of his eternal life, at age 96.
Some years ago I spent an afternoon interviewing Anger. I didn't have a tape recorder; I found the handwritten notes as the only entries in an undated steno pad, so I had no way of comparing them to whatever contemporaneous subjects I might have been writing about. I had to triangulate the answers to determine that the year of the interview was most likely 1976 or 1977. They were never published.
Anger came to fame as a child actor and experimental filmmaker as early as the 1940s. He was the author of Hollywood Babylon, a book of shocking insider stories and photographs from the dawn of the movie business, first published in 1959, banned in 1965, and republished in 1975. Some of the material has been contested; Anger himself admitted to being an unreliable narrator, even in the interviews he gave.
Anger was best known as an experimental filmmaker known for short, intense films like the 1963 Scorpio Rising. Watching the 26-minute film was de rigeur for any students attending a liberal arts college in the 1960s. I saw it on movie night at Bard and remembered thinking, "that was weird."
What seemed so shocking then now seems so tame, and the uproar it caused, so disproportionate. Its greatest innovation, aside from alternating old clips of a Bible movie with Jesus and his Apostles with shots of hunky gay guys getting dressed up in leather for motorcycle rides, was it's soundtrack of a dozen rock songs of the era, almost certainly not cleared: Who could have afforded the rights to the original recordings of Elvis Presley"Devil in Disguise," Martha and the Vandellas' "Heatwave," or the Crystals "He's a Rebel"? Rock and roll from beginning to end, no dialogue, no voices, just the music, ending with the Surfaris "Wipe Out." There are vintage shots of James Dean, and Brando snarling in "The Wild One." There's no sex, the only nudity a quick shot of someone "mooning," and an awkward ritual in a church that is certainly much less desecratory than any of the 1970s hit movies like "The Exorcist" or "Rosemary's Baby."
I came across the notes to my Anger interview a few months ago and told my L.A. movie expert, author, novelist, and current striking writer's guild poobah Howard Rodman about it. Howard told me that he had a friend, Greer Sinclair, who was working on a book about someone in old Hollywood who might be interested in the notes. He introduced us via email, and Greer and I have been in touch intermittently, mostly on Instagram, because this polymath is going through a burst of activity that she too modestly only hints about abstractly on IG. In response to her posts, I practice my caption writing.
It is my understanding that a screenplay she wrote recently wrapped (pre-strike) in Marfa, Texas; that she is an actress who played the starring role in a 2018 adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll; a current M.F.A. candidate as a screenwriting fellow at the American Film Institute; a part of a traveling Noir City Film festival in 2017; and a singer-songwriter whose song and video "I'd Kill to be Her Man" leave no doubt about her ability to channel the femme fatale she so elastically portrays. She also has a Substack called Cyber Seance, which I'm not sure is locked and fully loaded.
I transcribed my Kenneth Anger notes as well as I could, with commentary. Ms. Sinclair has kindly agreed to let me share the notes I gathered for her about Anger, may he be restless or resting in peace, whatever way he chooses. At the time, Anger was frustrated with Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, who Anger believed to be a poseur, a rich dilettante in the dark arts of, for example, Aleister Crowley, which Anger believed took years of discipline and study to comprehend.
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Kenneth is wearing a hockey shirt with the name ANGER as we begin to talk, somewhere dark in New York City.
KA: "I fired Jimmy Page because he went back on heroin. It [the music] was quite good. Just not enough of it. I waited for three years. He produced 28 minutes. Ahmet Ertegun [CEO of Atlantic Records] said Page had also left him waiting for three years.
"They've had an enormous amount of bad luck. Plant's ankle [from car accident in Greece: see https://ultimateclassicrock.com/robert-plant-car-accident/]
"Two members are getting divorced. The group is in distress. But "the man supposed to be their 'creative dynamo' is on smack," Anger said.
"Page has all that money and bought a lot of occult [material] that he's kept locked in a vault. That's too uptight, too paranoid. That's ridiculous. Crowley would have been scornful...He never let me look at it."
Anger met Jimmy Page at the auction house Sotheby's, where "he was able to outbid me. He's the one person responsible for driving up the price of Crowleyanna. He paid $800-$1,000 for manuscripts appraised at $75-$80."
Page had bought Boleskine House, formerly Aleister Crowley's home, on Loch Ness in Scotland.
"I stayed in the house," Anger said.
WR: DID YOU SEE THE LOCH NESS MONSTER?
Anger: "Whatever it is, I hope they never find it. I'm more or less on its side. People want it to make it King Kong. I suspect there's something there--a big eel, perhaps. It's one of the few remaining mysteries in the world. A game of hide and seek it's been playing."
I GUESS IT'S LIKE UFOS, OR THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE...
Anger: Mysteries. People love mysteries. The unexplained. UFOs? I've spotted them myself, in San Francisco, England, the Swiss Alps. Close enough to draw a picture. Alas, it didn't offer me a ride. I don't know if you've got to submit to a medical exam. I would've accepted even if it was my last ride."
WR: ME TOO! I AM LIKE THE RICHARD DREYFUSS DAD IN 'CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. SO YOU BELIEVE IN UFOS?
ANGER: I'm interested. Film on how people who've seen UFOs have had their minds changed. . ."
"The remake (1976) of King Kong is heresy. They forced the classic version into retirement. Imagine 'Les Miserables' ripped off the library shelf." [Obviously this was pre-Broadway "Les Miz"]
(Here is a link to Far Out magazine's story about Anger putting a curse on Page and his wife after Anger was living in their basement in Loch Ness:
ANGER: "I've had a 20-year fascination with Crowley. I knew John Parsons, his appointed successor, who was also a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Labs."
Crowley material makes great demands. It makes no pie-in-the-sky promises. Most cults are just big business , like the Maharaj Ji, or Rev. Moon.
You've got to have a very good background in literature, mythology, kabbalah, math, and have the knack. It's like learning how to ice skate. It's about Magick [with a "k"]. Magick is understanding the dynamics behind the reality laws of physics, electricity, and the other forces behind these, which are Magick.
It's not just delusion. If I found it was a dry creek...[I wouldn't bother?] It gets more difficult, more of a challenge, if you can handle it.
WR: WHAT'S YOUR LIFE LIKE?
KA: My own personality, I spend more time alone. I don't have enough available to be very sociable, go to parties. I have my friends, I have my work, I have my Magick. Magick is behind everything I do.
No one has bothered to make it more understood. It's strictly something to freak people out. "The devil makes little girls pee in their pants, and puke pea soup..." [no doubt a reference to The Exorcist (1973)]...It's a cheap thrill. A trite view of evil. Serious interest in the occult can be thankful for small favors. At other times, they were burnt at the stake.
WR: WHAT IS YOUR VIEW OF 'EVIL'?
KA: " 'Lucifer Rising' [the film Anger was trying to finish with Page's music] will be an attempt to show Lucifer, a sympathetic view of the fallen angel, the original rebel, the spirit of rebellion, who shows up in all of the rebels on Earth. The title implies that Lucifer is not forever condemned to be an outcast.
The rising talks about his return to his gracious state. [He suffered from] Pride. He saw himself as a god, the God. The literature is fragmentary, very sparesely referenced. Satan is mixed up with Lucifer. They're two different things. "
Anger said he was negotiating with Radio City Music Hall for a midnight New York premiere for Lucifer Rising.
HOW DID YOU GET IT MADE?
KA: Outside financial help came from the National Film Finance Corp. It was all lab bills. Also, the English film bank [?]. One of the few American films they've agreed to back. Also, backing from German television: It will be shown on the "cultural channel," they'll show it in German." I also had royalties from Hollywood Babylon, which freed me from immediate worry. There's a sequel (of HB) in the works, called "Hollywood Babylon II." I saved some of the best stories for last.
WR: CAN YOU TELL ME SOME?
KA: Lionel Atwill, the mad doctor from "Son of Frankenstein" had orgies. He was host to incredible parties in the 1940s, showing porn movies to guests, wealthy people.
There's a chapter on Brando: Photos taken at a wild party. Jann Wenner turned it down. A personally autographed Marilyn Monroe photo. Brando was the wildest." [Here I am not at all clear about whether the photo or photos involved Brando and Monroe at the same time, or whether he is suggesting he has some Marilyn porn stills.]
WHAT WAS THE IMPACT OF "SCORPIO RISING"?
"It was legally freeing for what came after. There was a landmark case in California. It was being shown in 1964, and mid-screening at The Cinema in L.A., the theater was busted on a complaint from the American Nazi Party. They claimed I was making fun of their flag. The cops took every print, arrested the theater manager. It went to the California Supreme Court. The theater owner paid all the legal bills. The attorney was Stanley Fleishman, a civil liberties lawyer. (We won) and it ran for six months. The theater owner recouped his costs."
AND WHAT WAS THE IMPACT OF THAT?
KA: "Things are much looser, not so much uptightness and hypocrisy. It's a more healthy situation. We're in an age of MH, MH [? More healthy?] . Deliberate bad taste, and still funny. I don't like to see sex commercially exploited in a hard-sell way, and it turns me off personally. It's up to the artist if they want to include specific material. [But MPAA] Ratings are a new form of censorship.
ABOUT THE ACTORS: MARIANNE FAITHFULL?
She plays Lilith [in Lucifer Rising], the Jewish demon of destruction. Mentioned fleetingly in the Bible as Adams first wife, before Eve. Similar to Pandora. She's just 29, [which would make this 1975] and has a new single out, "The Wrong Road Again," which is popular in Ireland. [Correct; but didn't come out in US til 1978, I think. A cover of a Crystal Gayle song] Osiris, the Egyptian god of death and rebirth, is played by Donald Cammell (director of the movie Performance).
HOW ABOUT BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL?
(ed. note: some stories described Beausoleil as Anger’s young ward, like Robin to his Batman. Beausloleil supposedly had a room in Anger's home in LA circa 1966, before BB met Charles Manson. Anger told me BB broke into his studio, took footage about himself to the desert. "It must have turned into Frito's by now," Anger said.]
Beausoleil plays Lucifer. I'm going back to London to finish Lucifer Rising. I think it will go in the Guinness Book of World Records...it will be 10 years next spring. It began in San Francisco in 1967. [so that would make this interview 1976?]. Anger said he used some footage of Beausoleil in Invocations of My Demon Brother. [A 1969 short film of the Rolling Stones, with Mick Jagger playing a Moog synthesizer]
"Bobby has divorced himself from Manson. Whatever happened, they are no longer in contact. Whatever freak-out Bobby had was one, which is one too many. I've been exchanging letters with Bobby for the last three years."