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Savage Messiah: Ken Russell => Savage Messiah: Ken Russell => Topic started by: Iain Fisher on June 03, 2008, 11:35:33 AM

Title: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday 2008
Post by: Iain Fisher on June 03, 2008, 11:35:33 AM
Ken's articles in The Times are now on Tuesdays instead of Thursdays.
Title: Can it really be me who lived that life?
Post by: Iain Fisher on June 03, 2008, 11:44:24 AM
In today's Times Ken writes about Phallic Frenzy, the biography by Joseph Lanza which has its official British release on Monday.

Ken writes "…I must say, Lanza has done his homework. He knows more about my life than I do. It's a little unsettling to read such intimate details about yourself by someone you've never met.

Phallic Frenzy reads like an overblown, outrageous biographical film script by Ken Russell, full of myth masquerading as fact. And as usual the finished product is bright, irreverent, camp and cacophonous. Lanza has managed to disguise his masterful research as a near-neo-novel with gothic and surreal overtones. I have to applaud the man, having done the same with my own biographies on composers. It makes for a thrilling read - it vibrates, shimmies, pounds down the pavement of every page. And it's full of admirable detail, insightful conclusions and what, for me, are painful remonstrances - a celebration and something of a telling-off at the same time."

Ken gives some anecdotes about his films (Liza Minelli his choice for Evita) and concludes

"… I believe in what I'm doing wholeheartedly, passionately, and what's more, I simply go about my business. I suppose such a thing can be annoying to some people.".

Iain


Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: BoyScoutKevin on June 13, 2008, 01:23:47 AM
There again I have not read the book, but I have seen the author's website ,and the interview he has given about writing the book.  Both of which I have found interesting.

If one of Ken Hanke's favorite films is "Lisztomania," then one of Lanza's favorite films is "Valentino." Which would then, like Hanke, put him opposite most of Ken's other fans. And one of Lanza's favorite scenes im the film, is the jailhouse "rape" of Valentino. As for myself, if any scene in any of Ken's films can be described as superfluous, I would describe it as being that scene.

Lanza also points out that one of the defining momsnets in Russell's life, which influenced his films, was Ken, at 12, sitting in the cinema, watching "Pinocchio" and being sexually molested by the man sitting next to him.

There again, I think Lanza makes both too much and too little of this incident. Too much, and Lanza may make this point, as I think there are more defining moments in Russell's life, which influenced his films, such as Ken's conversion to Catholicism.

Too little, because while Lanza relates the story of Ken's sexual molestation, he does not, as Ken did, point out, that the man who molested him, was a scout leader. The knobby knees and the shorts, you know. Which has always made me wonder, whether Ken's making the character of Kevin, played by Chris Pitt, in "Lair of the White Worm," a scout or boy scout, was a way to get back at the man who sexually molested him so long ago.
Title: a lifetime's obsessive record collection
Post by: Iain Fisher on June 18, 2008, 01:08:58 AM
Last week Ken wrote in The Times (10 June 2008) about "a lifetime's obsessive record collection died in a fiery blaze, but who needed it anyway".

A sad article, Ken writes of his record collection, 5000 LPs, which were destroyed when Ken's house went up in flames.  But I think even sadder is that Ken writes "I have not bought a single record since that terrible couple of hours when a collection lovingly built up over half a century went up in smoke".
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Iain Fisher on June 18, 2008, 01:24:00 AM
... I think there are more defining moments in Russell's life, which influenced his films, such as Ken's conversion to Catholicism...

I agree, Catholicism comes back in most of his work.  Sometimes Ken attacks religion and sometimes he idealises it.  When he attacks religion (the Monroe cult in Tommy) it is good fun and visually superb but superficial.  When he brings in religion seriously it can be very sincere such as Oliver Reed in The Devils.
Title: Unlocking treasured memories from the car boot
Post by: Iain Fisher on July 03, 2008, 06:29:34 PM
In The Times of 17 June 2008 Ken writes about car boot sales:

"you know how one thing leads to another. And nowhere does one thing lead to another with such random zeal as at a car boot sale"

It is a good excuse for Ken to talk about his past "the civic centre (very Grecian Art Deco), where in my teens I was employed as an usher, paid in free passes for the Symphony concerts"

and Ken as always never takes himself too seriously

"Oh, dear, there's a video copy of my old film Mindbenders - a collector's item going for a paltry £1".

Iain
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: BoyScoutKevin on July 04, 2008, 12:49:14 AM
And even at one pound British sterling, "Mindbenders" is probably overpriced.
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Iain Fisher on July 16, 2008, 12:52:36 AM
Nothing in The Times today 15 July 2008.
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Nick Jones on August 04, 2008, 09:21:21 PM
Are Ken's articles no longer being archived? I went looking for an article where (our?) Ken Russell wrote favorably about some Wiccans he had met, according to a blog I came across, but found nothing.
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Iain Fisher on August 05, 2008, 09:38:47 PM
Sorry I am running behind but I hope to have caught up by the end of the week.

The articles are really good, I hope at some time they will be issued as a book.  When Ken started writing he was mainly writing about his own films, now he is moving beyond it and remains interesting.

Iain
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Iain Fisher on August 14, 2008, 12:08:57 PM
Nothing from Ken on Tuesday 12 Aug.
Title: It's shocking why they reward my work
Post by: Iain Fisher on August 20, 2008, 01:14:08 PM
In The Times of 19 Aug 2008 Ken writes about receiving the Motovun Maverick Award.

Some nice self deprecating humour “A photo shoot was followed by a question-and-answer session, which went swimmingly as I stuck rigidly to my usual tried and trusted jokes” and hints of his next short film “Brave Tart v the Loch Ness Monster”

But the best part is the discussion on whether he is a maverick director, where he says “...what do I think about this mindless notoriety? Are these cruel jibes really justified, do I really set out to shock? Definitely, if the subjects are by their nature shocking. But I must remind myself that for every Devils, Dance of the Seven Veils, Mahler, Listermania and Whore, there is an Elgar, a Delius, an Isadora Duncan, a Douanier Rousseau and several dozen more singing the praises of artistic geniuses the world over. But for some strange reason they never hit the headlines.
Title: My adventures in cyberspace, where it's all about me
Post by: Iain Fisher on September 01, 2008, 01:11:40 PM
Ken in The Times 26 Aug 26, 2008

Ken has found out how to use Google and was playing with names, such as

“…Tony Perkins, whom I worked with on Crimes of Passion. Click and there he is, marrying Ken and wife No2 on the Queen Mary during a break in filming. He was all for the idea but was not ordained. I informed him that he could become a fully paid-up minister of the California Life Church for $5. Bogus? I'm afraid not. As I found out when I tried to divorce my wife sometime later, it was totally legal and binding.”

Also “… the excellent blog by Mark Kermode on bbc.co.uk/blog called Devils Across the Deep Blue Sea, exhorting the DVD release of my film The Devils as a British masterpiece"
Title: Let my life flash before you, in paperback
Post by: Iain Fisher on September 02, 2008, 07:06:10 PM
In today's Times (2 Sept 2008) Ken talks about the reissue of his autobiography A British Picture (the original  American title was Altered States).

"let my life flash before you, in paperbackrose is pretty much how I talk over a glass of wine, so you can expect it to be full of embarrassing confidences"

The book was issued 20 years ago so the period between is now covered by Ken, his wife Elise and Melvyn Bragg.  Other titles he considered using were In Search of a Soulmate; Four Wives and Eight or Nine Children; Braveheart the Unbankable and The Bio-King.

Ken writes "Have you noticed a certain reticence creeping in? It's not that I'm ashamed of my doings in the past couple of decades. It's just that there are certain episodes that I'd rather forget- episodes that I'm naive enough to believe never happened if they do not appear in print. (Such as the real story of my obsessive American colleague and fan, whom I fictionalised in the book as the curator of my fantasy museum of pornographic exhibits- for which he has never forgiven me. Or the real story of my third marriage, for which I have never forgiven myself.)
...When you write an autobiography, what do you decide to tell? I follow where my magic pen leads me. I'm not given to self-reflection, and it shows. Being a film-maker, I've made most of the book about my movies; not from a critical standpoint, but from what was happening to many of the players behind the camera"

And getting a bit more personal "...I explore my father's thoughtless treatment of my mother, my encounter with a paedophile, my nervous breakdown at sea, my life in tights, my working tête-à-têtes with certain headstrong and difficult artists, my camaraderie with certain brilliant, loving and great souls; my lawsuits, my unfortunate fires, Big Brother; my secret passions, my disappointments, my terrors, my hopes for true love inspired, shattered and revived again; the broken crockery and the infidelities- they are all there. Enter at your peril and delight"
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Iain Fisher on September 09, 2008, 11:44:48 PM
Nothing by Ken today 9 Sept 2008 (but he was on breakfast TV- see other post).
Title: How the mighty Maus fuelled my flights of fancy
Post by: Iain Fisher on September 16, 2008, 11:38:41 AM
Ken writes about comics in The Times today, 16 Sept 2008.  And he reveals a new Ken Russell graphic novel.

Ken talks of a number of comic novels
- Maus by Art Spiegelman.  A story of the holocaust where mice and cats represent Jews and Nazis
- Kafka's Metamorphosis turned into a comic by Peter Kuper "who moulds Kafka's vivid imagination into a succession of expressionist images that mirror the minimalist horror of Kafka's haunting prose"
- WildC.A.T.S. featuring Maxine Manchester who has an operation (a bit like bionic woman) then breaks out of the prison infirmary by ripping the gates off their hinges
- God Save the Queen by Mike Carey "its realms of the supernatural and Shakespeare updated to a hip, postmodern take on the travails of adolescence - all rendered with mind-blowing colour paintings by John Bolton".
- Ambush Bug who "knows that he's stuck in a 2-D comic but can't get sympathy from his artists or editors, who take turns playing tricks on him - such as maliciously popping him into a baby's body and placing him on the front lines in the Second World War"

Interestingly Ken says "Comics are censored less than other forms of entertainment and make a creed of free expression. Which medium other than comics could feature such a complex, challenging and literate tragic hero as Neil Gaimon's Morpheus in Sandman, Lord of Dreams. Norman Mailer called the series 'a comic book for intellectuals' ”.

And Ken announces his own graphic novel "Go to the 2008 London International Comica Festival from November 13 to 26 at the ICA to find films, comics, graphic novels, guest authors and artists, rarities for your collection. You might run into me. I'm peddling my own graphic novel, Boudica Bites Back (based on my forthcoming movie), with drawings by Elise Russell. Pity you can't hear the stirring music while you read it - for that, there's the DVD."
Title: Ah, happy days, when I wallowed in Soho's iniquity
Post by: Iain Fisher on September 23, 2008, 11:45:27 PM
Ken in The Times today, 23 Sept 2008.

Ken has been to an exhibition of photos at the Photographer's Gallery, London.  There are photos of Soho, part of London- Ken's explanation of how Soho got its name is very similar to that in Peter Ackroyd's excellent book London: The Biography.

Ken writes "In [the photo] Soho Model, a romantic and voluptuous figure takes her well-earned rest sprawled in her underwear in a leather chair, an unread newspaper against her thigh, a hand unconsciously protecting her collarbone in sleep, among the flotsam of a life lived on the dark edges of night, hope and hunger."

(http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00402/soho_385x185_402839a.jpg) [note by Iain: this photo "Soho Model" by David Hurn is cropped, the full photo in The Times conveys the atmosphere much better.  Incidentally I tried googling for a better photo but soon realised googling "Soho Model" is not recommended if you are at work and want to keep your job].

Ken continues "The artist who captured Soho Model among others... is himself captured on film in one of the photos that features a BBC documentary unit filming. It's my talented friend David Hurn... Seated in the director's chair, you may notice another habitué of Soho at the time - yes, it's Ken Russell making a biopic called Watch the Birdie, about Hurn and his photography, for the BBC arts programme Monitor. My cinematic portrait of Hurn in his flash car zooming between photojournalism shoots and fashion-shoots in his flat preceded the David Hemmings character in Antonioni's film Blow Up by three years."

Ken manages to bring in "naked men wrestling on the silver screen, as when Oliver Reed and Alan Bates locked horns in Women in Love"- Ken you mention this in every third article!!!

Title: Fancy a roast this Sunday? First watch The Animals Film
Post by: Iain Fisher on September 30, 2008, 12:45:29 PM
Ken in The Times today (30 Sept 2008) writes about The Animals Film by Victor Schonfeld and Myriam Alaux, just released on DVD.  And Ken writes passionately about animal rights.

On The Animals Film ken says "This documentary turned several hundred thousand meat-munching viewers into staunch vegetarians overnight...According to the film-makers... animals are a pathetic biological category that we have learnt to torture and treat to a violent death. First seen by a mass public on Channel 4 during its first week of programming, their famous documentary The Animals Film (1981) is now released on DVD 26 years after the groundbreaking event that turned several hundred thousand meat-munching viewers into staunch vegetarians overnight...

...Then jumpcut to footage of Edwardian schoolchildren with baseball bats, merrily clubbing a pen of captive rabbits to death, accompanied by manic laughter, as the pile of bloody, twitching fur grows higher and higher."

Ken talks about animal cruelly generally "Today we take care of our dogs, don't we? Giving them to our children as presents for Christmas, until the novelty wears off and they are cast out on the streets: 200,000 a year...

...so what sort of incidents would be against the law and regularly banned? The most obvious examples are to be found in westerns, where galloping horses are brought down by trip wires to simulate death by gunfire."

Ken finishes "...Unfortunately, the horrors filmed 27 years ago are still happening today. Personally, I feel that this courageous masterpiece is essential viewing for every caring, humane being on the planet.
And remember, nobody needs a mink coat except a mink".


Title: New York City is playing Mindgames with me
Post by: Iain Fisher on October 07, 2008, 12:59:21 PM
Ken writes in The Times today (7 Oct 2008) about Mindgames, the play he is directing in New York.

Strangely Ken says "The cast of the off-Broadway play Mindgames are appalled to find that Ken Russell has never directed a play in his life".  Strange because he previously directed Weill and Lenya in London (I saw it).  "The first thing I mention to the assembled cast and crew at our initial “meet and greet” is that I have never directed a play in my life. A shocked silence follows, until I confide that I've directed a dozen or so grand operas, from Madame Butterfly to Gounod's Faust - which mollifies them somewhat. Until I go on to mention that I changed Puccini's tender geisha girl into a Tokyo tart and Gounod's gentle heroine Marguerite into a mother drowning her baby in the washing machine"

He describes the play Mindgame as "A play in which nothing is as it seems. Strains of violence, intrigue, questionable identity, serial killers and sexually loaded psychodrama stretch the imagination to breaking point or breakthrough point: your choice and your ride... Alone in my room, reading the script... ,by the end of Act I I was ready for a large scotch. By the last page, I had finished the bottle. Yes, it was honestly the scariest script I had ever read."

And how he came to do the play "Some time ago I was approached by the talented American actor Lee Godart to direct the play, by the British author Anthony Horowitz, whose TV series Foyle's War and whose Alex Rider books are international hits."

The play stars Keith Carradine, Lee Godart and Kathleen McNenny.  Beowulf Boritt is the production designer, Ken's wife Elise is assistant director and the producers are Monica Tidwell and Michael Butler.  It is on at the SoHo Theatre, 15 Vandam Street, New York, from 29 Oct 2008 and opens on 9 Nov 2008 www.sohoplayhouse.com (http://www.sohoplayhouse.com))

Interestingly Ken says "...the main advantage I've found in directing a play as opposed to a film is that in the former you can go from start to finish every time in rehearsals. This allows the characters to develop naturally and in the moment, as one dramatic incident following another pushes them to grow organically. Films, for logistical reasons, are generally shot completely out of sequence - very tough on the actors"
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Iain Fisher on October 15, 2008, 12:17:45 AM
Nothing by Ken today.
Title: New York never sleeps and neither do I
Post by: Iain Fisher on October 21, 2008, 07:33:30 PM
Ken in The Times today (21 Oct 2008) writing about New York, where he is directing his play.

There is some good writing by Ken who attracts attention in New York:

"Back in New York to direct an off-Broadway play, I am reminded of the Big Apple's dynamism - even when I'm trying to get some rest.  On my 15-minute walk to rehearsal down Sullivan Street, I pass florists full of flowers that never fade, fruit that never rots, international newsstands and more open-air cafés than you would find in Montparnasse. Rounding the bend at Prince Street into “Fagin's Park”, I encounter happy nomads on park benches breakfasting on waxpapered sandwich rolls, shouting cheerfully at one another. One hobo glued to a stoop accosts me to admire my sartorial style: “I appreciate those suspenders, man. Thank you for brightening the city.”

and

"A bevy of nannies swap trade secrets about screaming children as they take over the sidewalk, pushing their charges in strollers before them. Traffic rules are approximate, not carved in stone. I'm learning to cross the street like a New Yorker, heart-in-mouth, dodging against the light through gaps in the stream of cars."

and

"Outside on Bleecker Street the road is alive with yellow cabs. No need to hail one; you simply have to fend them off"

Ken and Elise his wife go to the cinema for a break and see Appaloosa which Ken seems to hate.

And more good writing:

"Return to Bleecker Street, where it's “go, man, go!” Jazz clubs, bars, eateries, rock venues, drugstores, sidewalk vintage-jewellery-that-only-looks-good-at-night shops - past midnight and still vying for customers. The absinthe-drinking contest at the local danceteria sounds promising, but we opt instead for a table half in and out of an Italian restaurant, where I have the best lasagna bolognese ever and Elise has a peach “fuzzy-wuzzy” cocktail. The balmy night air is alive with the sound of a city celebrating. Celebrating what? Celebrating that they're New Yorkers, I guess. Kerb-dwellers, bums, punks, tattooed bohemians, extravagant outfits, fur collars indistinguishable from matted hair, people whose guitars knock your kneecaps as you pass them on pavements, people who talk to themselves if no one else is responding, a T-shirt reading “I just killed a clown” and another, “I'm American - Entertain me”.

Ken finishes with a quote by Thomas Wolfe “One belongs to New York instantly - as much in five minutes as in five years.”

Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: BoyScoutKevin on October 27, 2008, 06:42:18 PM
As a pedesterian here in the U.S. you'd think Ken's biggest problem is to remember we drive on the right.
Title: I love the rampant, repressed heroes of Tennessee Williams
Post by: Iain Fisher on October 28, 2008, 09:49:59 PM
Ken in The Times today (28 Oct 2008) writes about one of my favourite playwrights, Tennessee Williams.  The reason is a season of films of his plays at the BFI in November.

"He wrote into being some of the most power-mad, sexually rampant or repressed, emotionally fragile and downright desperate characters yet seen. Chekhov, D. H. Lawrence and Hart Crane were his inspirations, he said, but it was well known that his own life was his material.  His sexy scripts launched or improved the careers of Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Elizabeth Taylor, Maureen Stapleton, Katharine Hepburn, Anna Magnani, Warren Beatty and other actors of the 1950s and 1960s...

...His plots circle evasively around lust and homosexuality in a style that seems coy today. The film studios of his time, however, coerced his scripts into happier endings and censored homosexual references. Part of the intrigue of watching a Williams movie is deciphering the allusive code that remains"

The films in the season:

Suddenly, Last Summer

“...The brilliant acting of the cast makes this twaddle watchable, even riveting."

A Streetcar Named Desire

"The most memorable thing about this film, directed by Elia Kazan, is Brando’s charisma and the title. Leigh (as the wounded slut-with-airs from the South) is too prim, but Brando, as usual, is nigh on faultless as the sexy rapist."

Baby Doll

“...Caroll Baker must be the oldest child-bride in screen history. The agreement with her husband (a boorish Karl Malden) that he will not take her virginity until her 18th birthday is also a tough nut to swallow... Once again, a trite situation is saved by immaculate acting.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

"...Clearly a story about a sex-starved woman (Taylor) in love with a homosexual (Newman), the plot undergoes a series of convoluted twists and turns to disguise a sexuality that was taboo in Movieland at the time"

The Fugitive Kind

“...The lingering close-ups of Brando have never been surpassed, nor have the legs of Joanne Woodward straddling a gear stick. But Brando as a small-town shoe salesman stretches the imagination.

The Night of the Iguana

“...If you can imagine the aristocratic Kerr as a penniless artist and the sexually available Gardner as an astute business woman, you will find much to enjoy in this rumble in the jungle, capably directed by the maverick John Huston."

Sweet Bird of Youth

“...Newman tears up the screen as a beautiful, seedy hustler... The play ends with Newman’s castration by Heavenly’s jealous brother, but the film-makers thought a smash across the face would be better for the box office.

The Tennessee Williams screenplays run at the BFI Southbank, London from 1-30 Nov www.bfi.org.uk  (http://www.bfi.org.uk)

More good writing from Ken.
Title: The curtain goes up on Ken Russell's Mindgame
Post by: Iain Fisher on November 04, 2008, 11:53:28 AM
Ken in today's Times (4 Nov 2008) writes of Mindgame, about to open.

"The long process of rehearsing and reshaping my off-Broadway production is over - now bring in the audience... all is going well, even tricky bits - from the brutal stabbing of Nurse Plimpton (Kathleen McNenney) with three types of fake blood, permanent, washable and edible, to the ever-shrinking psychiatrist's study designed by the crafty genius of Beowulf Boritt.  This shrinking scenery, linked to an intricate series of wires and gears offstage, is masterminded by Eric Parillo, the understudy. There is a giant wheel in the wings, which he turns slowly every eight minutes throughout the show. We have all heard of Chinese water torture. Well, this must be the Mindgame torture.

Added - a baby skeleton in the fireplace, incidental music from Delius and Stravinsky, vents in the straitjacket (thick as rhinoceros hide) to keep Lee from suffocating under the lights. A resounding slap is rehearsed over and over."

Ken talks about directing films and plays
"… To tell the truth, both stage directing and film directing have their pluses and minuses.
For the stage, you have the bonus of rehearsing the story as it happens, from revelation to reversals to conclusion, whereas in movies you have to make an inspired guess as to how your characters would behave in any given moment. This is because, for reasons of finance, films are generally shot out of sequence. If all the scenes were shot in order, a film unit of 60 technicians would be dashing off to a different location every day at great expense, whereas if the entire unit stays put until like scenes are completed, it certainly helps the budget.

With a stage play, you can change your mind right up to the first night. But at least with films you don't have to suffer the boredom of endless run-throughs. On the stage a director sits through every last word every livelong day for a month, by which time you can be close to script schizophrenia. I can only imagine what the actors go through, permeating themselves with the language and actions till their original self is erased for the run of the play.…"

Title: my ten formative influences
Post by: Iain Fisher on November 11, 2008, 04:44:44 PM
Ken writes in The Times today, 11 Nov 2008 about his 10 influences.  Usually when Ken does something like this it seems arbitrary, but this time it is well thought out and sincere, especially the last one.  The influences are

The Movies

“…Mum was a real film fan, taking me along with her to the cinema at least three times a week till it was time to start school…”

The Conker Tree
“…the big conker (horse chestnut) tree at the end of the garden, which became a galleon if I'd just seen The Black Pirate, Sherwood Forest after Robin Hood, or a cathedral after a screening of The Hunchback of Notre Dame…"

Busby Berkeley

“…I was mesmerised by the magnificent movies of Busby Berkeley: 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, et al. Art deco in dance of a high order, unashamedly inspiring several numbers in my screen version of The Boyfriend. ..”

Jean Cocteau

“La Belle et la Bête, which had my daughter Molly, then 6, and myself in tears the last time I saw it”.  Ken includes a quote from  Cocteau  “An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.”

Amelia and the Angel

Ken mentions La Belle et la Bête which inspired his early home movie Amelia and the Angel.

Sir Huw Wheldon

As always Ken mentions Huw of the BBC Monitor films as a major influence in his career.

(http://www.iainfisher.com/russell/huw-wheldon-2.jpg)

Classical music
 
“…The day I heard Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto on the radio, while vegetating at home after being invalided out of the Merchant Navy, was the day that led me to the discovery of classical music, which changed my life...”  This is the piece that Richard Chamberlaine plays in the concert scene of The Music Lovers.
 
The Roman Catholic Church
“…one of my greatest influences of all - the Catholic Church… I went for instruction from the Poor Clares in Portobello Road and after six months' Bible-bashing, I was sent to a local priest for baptism. “Have you anything to say before you take this enormous step?” he asked as I faced him across the font. “Well, to tell you the truth, Father,” I stammered, “there are times when I just don't believe.” “Join the club,” he replied. I did, and I never looked back…”

Skiddaw mountain

“…Skiddaw, Coleridge's “God made manifest”, as he called his favourite mountain in the Lake District. Perched above Keswick like a mighty bird of prey with a five-mile wingspread, it seems poised, ready at any moment to take wing, fly down Derwentwater, up the Borrowdale Valley, over Castle Crag and into infinity, drawing the whole world up into its wake…”

(http://www.lakedistrict-stay.co.uk/tourist/images/listing_photos/50_skiddaw.jpg)

The Other

And finally he mentions Elise his wife “…who pervades my every thought and deed. Everything I do, to quote Ludwig van Beethoven, is “für Elise”. If love is a tree, I live in its shade"

(http://www.iainfisher.com/russell/ken-russell-lisi-tribble.jpg)
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Iain Fisher on November 19, 2008, 01:46:06 PM
Nothing by Ken in The Times yesterday 18 Nov 2008.
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: BoyScoutKevin on November 22, 2008, 10:49:16 PM
I'm not surprised that Busby Berkeley was one of Russell's influences. What did surprise me was that when Russell mentioned Berkeley, he did not mention "Lisztomania." When I see one of Ken's films, that's the one that I associate with Berkeley.

As for the differences between stage and film . . .

In film, the director--seemingly--seems be able to direct where the viewer looks through the use of the camera. In stage, while the director can somewhat direct where the viewer looks, the viewer can look here and there, and not necessarily where the director wants the viewer to look.
Title: Love, hate, envy, esteem- it’s all in the game
Post by: Iain Fisher on November 25, 2008, 07:29:09 PM
Ken in The Times today, 25 Nov 2008.

Interestingly the paper version of the article is titled Love, hate, envy, esteem- it's all in the game while the on line version has a different title, using a quote from the text Most directors get into bed with their actors, metaphorically speaking

Ken talks of Valentino, then shifts to writers.  On Valentino, with star Rudolf Nureyev "…Rudolf … much worse was the massive backhander that nearly knocked the lovely Michelle Phillips off her feet when she attempted to offer him some advice. That was the moment when he lost the respect of the entire crew."

Then on the writer of Altered States: "…Chayefsky had a finger in every pie from sets to script, which I simply had to tolerate. But when he walked on to the set of what was meant to be a boozy party in an Italian restaurant on our first day of shooting and told the cast to stop acting so drunk... I'm very patient until I'm not at all. Not only did he alienate the actors but also the production company, which sent him 3,000 miles back to New York."

On long time collaborator Melvyn Bragg: "But Chayefsky is the exception that proves the rule. Generally speaking, I get on well with writers and have from the early 1960s to the present day. I'm thinking of Melvyn Bragg…. I last saw him a few nights ago at a preview of my present off-Broadway play, Mindgame, when I told him I'd give my eyeteeth to direct his masterpiece new novel Remember Me.  …But enough of the past, what of the future? Well, someone I've never met but would certainly like to meet and who I actually envy is Danny Boyle. I loved the baby crawling on the ceiling in Trainspotting, join his children in wondering how on earth he made London a deserted ghost city in 28 Days Later, plunged into the sun in Sunshine and was blown away by his new powerhouse Slumdog Millionaire. He's a rebel after my own heart! "
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Iain Fisher on December 03, 2008, 12:57:52 AM
Nothing by Ken today (well it is yesterday now) in The Times
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Iain Fisher on December 09, 2008, 09:46:25 PM
My Times went missing today.  I checked the on-line Times but there doesn't seem to be a new Ken article, though the on-line version is not always reliable.
Title: The lifelong reading spree that inspires my world
Post by: Iain Fisher on December 20, 2008, 02:23:02 AM
Ken in The Times 16 Dec 2008.  He is covering old ground, looking at books and films

"l I keep a huge pile of books ready to hand for diving into as I rock, feet up, in my living room chair... Right now I've got in the pile The Quest for God by Paul Johnson; Remember Me... by Melvyn Bragg; The C.S. Lewis Chronicles by Colin Duriez; Hell-Raisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed by Robert Sellers; and 1,000 Tattoos, ed. Hen Schiffmacher. Next week it will be another diverse pile."

He goes on "Literature has played a big part in my life from the days when I followed Laurel and Hardy in the weekly comic Film Fun to my latest good read, Boudica's Last Stand: Britain's Revolt against Rome AD 60-61 by John Waite. Strange bedfellows? Not a bit of it. Most of my reading habits have a common link - the movies. For instance, I've just finished making a green-screen epic called Boudica Bites Back."

Other books Ken wants to make into films:
- For Want of a Nail by Melvyn Bragg
- Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley
- The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

On Billion Dolllar Brain "Harry Salzmann asked me to launch my feature film career with a wide-screen epic featuring Michael Caine... I particularly liked Billion Dollar Brain, which I made, because with the Cold War shown as a battle between the US and the USSR, it's the Yankees who get blown away by the Commies. Bizarrely, it was financed by an American company"

Title: Ken Russell on his new film Bravetart
Post by: Iain Fisher on December 24, 2008, 12:44:25 PM
Ken in The Times, 23 Dec 2008

Ken talks of his new film "…my latest biographical romp, Bravetart vs the Loch Ness Monster, began filming last Sunday at the stately Walhampton School, a couple of miles up the road from my home in Lymington.”

Ken then talks of his early days in television, “…drama-documentaries on the lives of famous dancers such as Isadora Duncan, painters such as John Everett Millais, poets such as Wordsworth and composers such as Debussy. I made almost 50 biographies in all — mostly for the BBC arts programme Monitor, with a film crew of half a dozen or so. There were also a handful of feature films on arty biographical subjects, with crews of about 50.”  An interesting choice Ken selected rather than the more obvious Elgar and Delius.

And talking of his Gorsewood films says “…I like to stretch the parameters of expectations — and flirt a little with the edges of bad taste. All in all, I aim for “dangerous beauty”, and I know it when I see it. “

On Bravetart she is “a sassy Scottish prostitute who is played by my (Jill-of-all-trades) wife Elise and is pure invention, with a nod to Mel Gibson. The monsters — both the man (played by myself) and his amphibious ally or “familiar” — are based on real-life characters. The world-famous denizen of the deep is in actuality Nessie, that serpentine creature of myth and legend come to life. For the extravagant claim that she actually exists, I have the word of my one-time cameraman Dick Bush, who saw the monster from a hilltop overlooking the famous loch. Before he had time to reload his camera, the enormous beast had dived beneath the billows. Still, I believe him— Bush was, as they say, a “God-fearing man”.

It turns out the Loch Ness Monster of the title is "that evil master of black magic, Aleister Crowley— who at one time lived in a sinister castle on the very shores of Loch Ness itself"

Filming is at Hatchet Pond in the New Forest, and the medieval walls of Southampton stand in for Edinburgh Castle. Ken says Bravetart will be ready by Easter 2009.
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday
Post by: Iain Fisher on December 30, 2008, 05:13:36 PM
Nothing by Ken today
Title: Re: Ken Russell in The Times on Tuesday 2008
Post by: Iain Fisher on January 06, 2009, 12:29:29 PM
I've started a new thread with articles from 2009.