Porn to be wild

>> Trailblazing filmmaker Radley Metzger rides a renaissance of his erotic work

by MATTHEW HAYS

Though the name Radley Metzger may not have attained household status, the filmmaker's work is credited with a great deal of influence. Cultural types as diverse as Andy Warhol, Vincent Canby and Susie Bright have all suggested there was something life-changing and brilliant about Metzger's oeuvre, and looking at the films now, one can see why.

After a dramatic effort that failed to find an audience, and a stint editing trailers for European auteur films, Metzger began making erotic films in the early '60s. With titles like Therese and Isabelle, Camille 2000, The Alley Cats, Score and The Lickerish Quartet, Metzger established himself as one of the auteurs of the erotic. His adult films stood head and shoulders above most erotic films of the period, combining full-frontal nudity (both male and female), lesbianism, bisexuality, literary references and a hilarious camp self-consciousness. While clearly taking the erotic seriously, Metzger often toyed with the conventions of adult films, poking fun at their idiosyncracies. In The Lickerish Quartet, an aristocratic family are seduced by a carnival stunt woman they think is the star of a stag film they've seen. Score is a highly unusual swingers' version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which an older couple place bets on who can bed one of a younger, repressed married couple.

Not only did this '72 film represent a breakthrough in terms of its representation of a switch-hitting couple, also of note is its frank depiction of the drug culture of the time (characters frequently snort amyl nitrate, otherwise known as poppers). In the late '70s and '80s, Metzger also made outright hardcore films under the pseudonym Henry Paris, among them The Opening of Misty Beethoven ('76).

Now, at 70 years of age, Metzger finds himself riding a renaissance of his erotic work. His main titles have all been rereleased on video and are being distributed by New York's First Run Features, while a number of his films are screening at repertory houses across North America and Europe (The Lickerish Quartet and Score screen at Cinéma du Parc beginning this week). Metzger spoke with the Mirror from his Manhattan apartment.



Mirror: I've read a number of articles and interviews with you, but I must say, it doesn't really say anywhere what actually led you to make erotic films. What did?

Radley Metzger: A couple of things. I did a movie that was unerotic as you could possibly get--two people didn't even shake hands. It was called Dark Odyssey. It has kind of come into its own now. Someone recently called it an early Scorsese with Greeks instead of Italians, and some have compared it to Cassavetes's Shadows. At the time, it didn't really fit in with what the filmgoing public was into. It was the ultimate of rejections that any filmmaker could experience. Based on that, I bought a film from France, which at that point was considered very daring. I think there was about three minutes in the film that contained a bare breast. That was very daring in 1960. And so, based on that, then doors opened. I decided to do something in which there was a built-in acceptance.

M: So the audience was there for erotic films the way they weren't for other types and genres of movies?

RM: That acceptance works in two ways: the erotic and horror. They did a retrospective in Boston recently, and I said if I were to do it over again, and if I wanted a built-in audience, I'd probably choose horror. It has many more avenues of exposure. There are more magazines, more books written about horror than about erotic films. But because of the reception of the first couple of films we bought for Audobon Films [Metzger's distribution and production company], we saw that it was a genre that worked. I think having grown up in the '50s really affected me too. Richard Pryor refers to the '50s as "the great pussy drought."

Bisexual chic

M: So did you feel a little bit like an activist, to an extent, in trying to break down some taboos?

RM: The initial thrust, to be really candid, was to make enough money so that you could make your next movie. When you start out you just want to survive. After that, though, there is a counterculture quality that you've got to have. Most people who go into movies have that. It's a kind of anger. You do want to tweak the nose of society. Even within the erotic context, when we did Therese and Isabelle [a trailblazing '68 film about lesbian relations in a Catholic all-girl school], there really hadn't been much lesbian content in films. That was a breakthrough. You want to put that content on the front burner, so that people out in the audience who have those feelings aren't going to feel badly about having them.

In Score, one of the things that attracted me was that it was about bisexuality, which then was pretty uncharted. You had the gay thing, you had the lesbian thing, but at that point I don't think you had films that dealt with both.

M: That's something that's very striking about your work. It's not uncommon to see two women getting it on in mainstream porn, but the idea of two men doing so, outside of the realm of porn aimed at gay men specifically, is still rare.

RM: I owed a lot to the play on which it was based [by Jerry Douglas]. It was done so good-naturedly. I hope what we tried to get was an unsordid quality. That allowed straight audiences to accept it. It was basically comedic.

M: I do feel Score is very impressive, especially in terms of the depiction of sex between the two men. The flirting that they do is funny, sexy and charming.

RM: But I don't think what you just said is gender based. In the same way that the attractions in Therese were gender-based, I don't think they are here either. If people are affected by it, then I think I'm accurate.

Sex acts

M: Doing so many erotic films, did you ever have actors who couldn't handle it and wanted to back out?

RM: Yes, while making Carmen, Baby, the girl who played the lead changed relationships during the shooting. You usually don't have problems with the actors themselves, it's outside pressure which is brought upon them. Sometimes actors just think it'll suddenly inhibit their career. But mainly I enjoyed real enthusiasm from my actors. They wanted to make the films the best that they could be.

M: Your films are terrifically erotic, but they also have literary allusions, and there's often lots of build-up to the sex act itself...

RM: I felt that as long as I was able to deliver the steak I wanted to, I didn't mind surrounding it with the sizzle.

M: Both of the lead male actors in Score developed AIDS and passed away. How do you think the epidemic has most affected the industry?

RM: Well, in the depletion of talent, though it seems to have come to a peak. At the Academy Awards there wasn't one red ribbon on anyone. They're marketing those AIDS medications in a way that's criminal. They show two guys who look like the guys do in Score, and the ad says "We're positive." The medications have side effects. It can be very misleading for young people, those ads.

M: Something I find funny is that you often cite Hollywood films as a major influence. You've said Breakfast at Tiffany's is a breakthrough film...

RM: If you see it today, I don't know what it would look like. But you know that film's been playing for the past five years in New York. That was the first Hollywood film that said if you didn't follow the conventional social rules, it was okay. You could still be a kept man and still be socially desirable, not be a villain. Cecil B. DeMille made a career out of dividing the leading man into two men, so he could have the heroic part and the shadow side of the heroic character, and he could kill off the shadowy side by the end of the film. In Breakfast at Tiffany's it was suddenly the same guy. I don't think, at that time, you had seen people so contrary to the social norm. I mean, essentially, you had a hooker and a kept man who are held up to be people that you'd want to imitate.

X marks the spot

M: What do you think about certain video chains that have censored their own video tapes, cutting out certain scenes that they've deemed problematic?

RM: I think the human body carries all kinds of germs. We carry around the TB germ, some people think we carry a cancer germ. Sometimes we develop a resistance to these germs, that sometimes you can withstand these germs. If the resistance gets low enough, the germs take over. I think society is the same. You've got forces that are at work all the time, that are attempting to create a theocratic society, one that's based on biblical law rather than constitutional law. It's a constant struggle. There are forces in society who think that R- and X-rated films are germs. And they're always applying pressure.

M: You've discussed the fact that sometimes you felt your actors looked sexier with their clothes on than with them off. Do you think things have become too explicit today and thus less erotic?

RM: It's not that they're sexier with their clothes on, though that's often true. In my first film, there was an actress sitting around, completely naked, waiting for the shot to be set up. The script girl crossed her legs, and her skirt went up to her knees, and the entire crew stopped and looked. It's not a question of the nudity, it's a question of what you're stimulating in the audience. I think that probably people rely on nudity to do the whole job. What that means is a kind of laziness, a lack of knowledge or technique. Nudity is simply one of the tools you use to communicate with the audience. I think one of the sexiest movies ever made is Gilda, and there they don't even kiss.

Score and The Lickerish Quartet screen at Cinéma du Parc from Friday, April 20-May 3. See repertory listings for details. Both films, as well as numerous other Metzger titles, are available on video from First Run Features