An Interview with Kenneth Anger and Pip Chodorov
This article refers to the P.S.1 exhibition Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger
Still from Scorpio Rising
1963
Courtesy the artist
Kenneth Anger’s exhibition at P.S.1 is the filmmaker’s
first major survey at an American
museum in over a decade. In an excerpt from
the May 2006 issue of The Brooklyn Rail, Anger
speaks with fellow filmmaker Pip Chodorov
about the inspirations and processes behind
some of Anger’s renowned works.
Pip Chodorov: Fireworks, made in 1947, is
chronologically the first film in the exhibition at
P.S.1. In fact, it was this film that enabled you to
travel to France.
Kenneth Anger: Fireworks was inspired by
a dream I had, much like Jean Cocteau’s Blood of
a Poet. The dream was inspired by the Zoot Suit
riots that took place in the last years of World War
II. The fire images are a reference to the Fourth
of July, and the Christmas tree is a reference to
Christmas. It’s all about holidays, really.
In 1949 I sent Fireworks to a festival in Biarritz,
France. Jean Cocteau was on the jury and he gave
it the prize for poetic film. In fact, he wrote me a
very nice letter and luckily, I had studied French in
high school! In the spring of 1950, I decided to go to
France to meet Cocteau and I not only met him, but
Jean Genet and Colette. I also met Henri Langlois,
the founder of the Cinémathèque Française. He had
a screening for some of my films, after which he
offered me a job as his assistant. It was sort of an
informal job—I wasn’t getting paid but I did move in
with Langlois and his partner, Mary Meerson.
I worked at the Cinémathèque Française for
twelve years, from 1950 to 1962 and afterwards I
traveled to Italy to make Eaux d’artifice in the gardens
of the Villa d’Este in Tivoli. My mother died
soon after and I needed to go back to America to
deal with legal matters. She left me some bonds
and stock in Disney which I sold to make the film,
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. I’ve been a
traveling filmmaker ever since.
PC: You grew up in Hollywood. What is your
relationship to this place?
KA: My hobby in high school was collecting
gossip, newspaper clippings, magazine write-ups,
etc. about Hollywood scandals and tragedies.
When I arrived in Paris I used to recount some of
these stories to people like François Truffaut. He’d
never heard of many of them. In the early days,
Truffaut and I were getting published in Cahiers
du Cinéma, and he would tell me to write them
up for the magazine. They’re all very picturesque,
lurid stories, sort of Fellini-type material before
Fellini. The articles came to the attention of an
independent publisher who was doing a series on
eroticism in cinema. He suggested that I write a
book that I later entitled Hollywood Babylon. This
book and the second one have been good sources
of income for me. It’s also amusing. They’re basically
picture books with a large collection of both
comic and lurid photographs. It’s black humor.
That’s my specialty.
PC: Tell us about Scorpio Rising, one of your
most well-known films in the exhibition. Where did
the inspiration for this film come from?
KA: After I returned to New York, I went out
to Coney Island one Saturday and saw this group
of motorcycle riders—working class Italians from
the Fulton Fish Market, as I later found out—who
were showing off their hand-customized bikes.
They had added dozens of extras like Surrealist
shark-like tail fins, and lots of lights and chrome.
You couldn’t go to a shop and buy this sort of thing!
I asked if I could film their bikes sometime and little
by little, I worked my way into the group. They
accepted me as a kind of a camera nut and they
loved the attention. Gradually I even got into their
bedrooms—that’s where I filmed Scorpio, a halfcrazy,
Italian-Irish mix named Bruce Byron who’s
since died. I filmed his little apartment, which was
filled with Siamese cats and plastered with pictures
of James Dean, Brando, his heroes like that.
Then there was the Halloween party after the last
outdoor race! I remember furnishing four kegs of
beer and driving to this dirt racetrack in Walden
Pond, N.Y. It was an adventure to say the least.
I took all this material back to Hollywood. I
worked on the film for about two weeks when a
mysterious package appeared on my doorstep.
I thought it was a film being returned to me but
when I looked closely, I realized it wasn’t my address. I thought it was a gift from the gods. It
turned out to be a Lutheran Sunday School film
called The Last Journey to Jerusalem. I said, “Well,
I’m just going to cut this material into my film.” I
called it serendipity.
PC: You’ve made a great deal of wonderful
films but your filmography is full of uncompleted
projects.
KA: The brutal truth is that this is the story
of my life and work. I intended to do more, but
I always ran out of money. I had a quarrel with
Bobby Beausoleil, the composer for Lucifer
Rising, over misappropriating funds I gave him
to buy music equipment. He bought a key of
marijuana instead. I said, “Forget it. Take your
marijuana and leave,” but he put it in my house.
That’s how Bobby got mixed up with the Manson
gang. He stole my van with the marijuana, and
on the drive to Southern California from San
Francisco, the van broke down right in front of the
ranch where Manson was living. There he was
with his broken car, trying to get it working and
the girls came out and said, “Move in with us.”
So he moved in with this murderous, hippy family.
Of course he killed Gary Hinman, a musician, over
some botched drug deal but I didn’t know he was
a murderer at the time I was living with him. If I’d
been busted with marijuana in my house, I suppose
this interview would be in jail. As you can
see my life has been a very complicated story.