RIP Kenneth Anger, Legendary Gay Underground filmmaker and Hollywood Babylon author. (February 3rd 1927 – May 11th 2023)

 

It is sad  to write that the legendary gay underground  experimental filmmaker  and author Kenneth Anger' has  died at the age of 96 on May 11 in Yucca Valley, Southern California from natural causes after living for some time in an assisted living facility. His death was  reported by the Sprüth Magers gallery, which has represented Anger's work since 2009  said “It is with deep sadness that we mourn the passing of visionary filmmaker, artist and author Kenneth Anger,” the gallery tweeted on May 24. “Kenneth was a trailblazer. His cinematic genius and influence will live on and continue to transform all those who encounter his films, words and vision.”

A pioneer in the field of avant-garde film and video art, Anger’s short films were characterized by what his gallery describes as “a mystical-symbolic visual language and phantasmagorical-sensual opulence that underscores the medium’s transgressive potential.” The films are often credited with have a deep impact on the aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s subcultures, particularly queer iconography.

Born in Santa Monica, California, on February 3rd 1923 Anger was the the third child of Wilbur Anglemyer, an electrical engineer, and Lillian Coler. The Presbyterian family had moved to Santa Monica to be closer to Lillian’s mother, Bertha.

Anger created his own first film in 1937, when he was ten. Titled Ferdinand the Bull, the short used 16mm film and features Kenneth dressed as a matador. His second film, Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat, was made several years later, in 1941, and comprised footage of kids playing during the summer.

His family’s Midwestern Presbyterian roots offer no clue as to his later immersion with the occult. His father's job enabled a comfortable life for the family  until the Great Depression joined with Kenneth’s stature as the troubled family member who would spend more time with grandmother, Bertha, who encouraged his artistic interests; she took him to the movies for the first time, a double bill featuring The Singing Fool (1928) and Thunder Over Mexico (1933) and financially supported the Anglemyers during the Great Depression.. 

He claimed to have gotten his start in the film  industry as a child actor in the 1935 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that starred James Cagney and Mickey Rooney.According to official records, he did no such thing. But the story was, among other things, a way for Anger to place himself in the Hollywood firmament that he would make often gorgeous war on via art and prose.

Anger created his own first film in 1937, when he was ten. Titled Ferdinand the Bull, the short used 16mm film and features Kenneth dressed as a matador. His second film, Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat, was made several years later, in 1941, and comprised footage of kids playing during the summer.

In the 1940s, Kenneth shortened his name from Anglemyer to Anger. He  rejected Christianity in childhood, saying he preferred reading comics on a Sunday.  During high school,  Anger was influenced first by fantastic readings such as The Wizard of Oz, then by Rosicrucian philosophy, and by the writings of Eliphas Levi,French esotericist, poet, and writer and James Frazer Scottish social anthroplogist and folklorist and creator of the seminal tome The Golden Bough. His favorite author, however, was the British magician Aleister Crowley, who founded the Thelema religion based on his experiences of 1904 in Egypt, a stay during which he declared that he had been contacted by Aiwass, the mysterious Minister of Hoor-Paar-kraat, or Harpocrates, the Egyptian deity of silence Horus the Son, who had recited the Book of the Law to him. Later, having moved to Los Angeles, he met avant garde film-maker Curtis Harrington, and Anger converted to the Thelema religion. which urges members to “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will,” and for a time he lived in the house of Thelema founder Aleister Crowley.His absorption in the Crowley demi-monde led to various works centered on the mystic’s Thelemite belief system,

In the following decade, Anger became aware of his homosexuality at a time when it was still illegal. In the mid-1940s he was also arrested for this crime. During that time he began studying cinema at the University of Southern California and began using drugs, especially cannabis and peyote.

In 1947, when he was just 20, Anger directed a short gay art film Fireworks – not worlds apart from Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s collaborations Un chien andalou (1929) and L’Age d’or (1930)  filmed at his parents’ house in Beverly Hills .It’s a daring “dream of a dream”, according to Anger. ‘Daring’ because it featured a gay gang-rape fantasy, a Roman candle exploding from a guy’s crotch, and Anger himself being brutally beaten by a group of sailors with chains.

The film  did not go unnoticed by Jean Cocteau, with whom he became friends and this landmark of queer cinema also  inspired the poet Robert Duncan, who  too became friends with Anger and dedicated sections of his poem “The Torso,” whose imagery is akin to that of Fireworks.

Acknowledged as the first American film to openly deal with homosexuality, it also ruffled a few feathers with the military and became an instant favorite of the famous Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who became a frequent correspondent with Anger.  also ruffled a few feathers with the military and became an instant favorite of the famous Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who became a frequent correspondent with Anger. Seen today it's still quite potent, and the image of Anger's abused face drenched in blood and milk can still make viewers gasp.

 

 

Fireworks won the poetic film prize at Cocteau’s 1949 festival Le Film Maudit (“The Cursed Movie”). Quite rightfully sensing that Europe was more accepting of his work than the U.S., he moved to Paris and worked under Henri Langlois at the Cinémathéque Française. 

Anger switched to color with the beautiful, non-narrative "Puce Moment," a six-minute mood piece which begins with a series of vividly colorful shimmering past the camera.Then a baby-faced movie star (Anger's cousin, Yvonne Marquis) emerges and regards herself indulgently, then sprawls around outside in the Southern California hills. The film was originally intended to be much longer, but the only filmed fragments are still a visual treat and feature an effective psychedelic folk-rock piece by Jonathan Halper, added much later.

 

 For his 1950 film Rabbit’s Moon (not completed and released until 1971), Anger used an 18th century magic lantern from the Cinematheque’s collection and 35mm film stock left over from an UNESCO shoot in Paris. He had only four weeks to make the costumes, build the set and film in Pierre Braunberger’s Pantheon Cinema soundstage before the French producer returned from vacation.

Anger created a a visual feast jumping off from the Eastern myth of a magical rabbit in the moon. Here that deity becomes the obsession of Pierrot, a mime alone in a magical forest whose doomed quest is complicated by the arrival of a harlequin, his beautiful princess companion, and a magic lantern which projects various arcane symbols. Sort of like Children of Paradise on acid

 

 

In 1953 he went to Rome, where he wanted to make a film about the sixteenth-century occultist, Cardinal d’Este. He only managed to shoot the first scene in the Villa d’Este in Tivoli where a woman dressed in eighteenth-century clothes wandering around the gardens accompanied by Vivaldi’s music.

Shortly thereafter Kenneth returned to the States following the death of his mother. During this period he entered the circle of Californian artists. Times were changing and California was fast becoming a leading art breeding ground and refuge for experimental and extreme artists who found no place in the rest of the country.

1954’s Inauguration  of the Pleasure Dome  made with the artist Marjorie Cameron and  writer Anaïs Nin.  is a 40 minutes of layered images, in which footage of the hell sequence from the 1911 Italian silent film L'inferno is intercut with characters with giant eyelashes, who appear as if plucked from a classical painting. It builds and builds. Suddenly there’s a volcanic explosion of distorted images accompanied by a thunderously operatic soundtrack. It’s beautiful, mind-melting stuff, and probably Anger’s most demanding work.

In his own words: “The film is derived from one of Aleister Crowley’s dramatic rituals where people in the cult assume the identity of a god or a goddess. I wanted to create a feeling of being carried into a world of wonder.”

 “Scorpio Rising,a 28-minute production from 1963 was heavily influenced by the influence of the Sixties’ atmosphere and Aleister Crowley‘s magical occultism.Scorpio Rising,featured footage of motorcyclists is accompanied by such hits as Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” and Elvis Presley’s “(You’re the) Devil in Disguise.” In one especially provocative sequence, the Crystals’ hit “He’s a Rebel” is played to images of Jesus and his disciples from Cecil B. DeMille’s silent epic “King of Kings.””  His work proved that sound and image could be combined to create something powerful. 

Kenneth sensed that the right place to be was San Francisco, the Hippie capital and frequented at the time by a multitude of artists such as Fritz Leiber, Philip Dick, and many others, and more precisely at the Ford Foundation, which gave him 10,000 dollars for the production of an artistic short, Kustom Kar Kommandos. 

Kenneth spent most of the money on daily life and handed over an edit of the previous footage. Psychedelic drugs, initially still legal, made their massive appearance on the market and probably influenced by this fertile cultural fabric, Anger projected a special version of “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome”, entitled “Sacred Mushroom Edition” to an audience of people under the influence of LSD.and the film became a  firm favoirite with 60s acid heads, 

Anger began to play on his growing fame as a cursed author and defined himself as the most abnormal of underground directors. At this point, Anger could not miss another great controversial personage, namely Anton Lavey, founder of the Church of Satan. The two became good friends. At that time Kenneth would also seem to harbor a certain resentment towards Andy Warhol, who managed to be hugely popular both in the underground and in the mainstream.

In 1966 Anger moved to the Russian Embassy, ​​a nineteenth-century mansion in San Francisco. Here he planned his new project Lucifer Rising, a film in search of symbolic lucifer. Kenneth in search of a truly Luciferian actor proposed to each of the candidates to live with him for a certain period. In the end, the choice felt on Bobby Beausoleil. Bobby Beausoleil at that time also formed a musical group, the Magick Powerhouse of Oz, to create the soundtrack for the film.

In 1967 Anger reported that all the material filmed so far had been lost, stolen and blamed Beausoleil for the theft, which instead responded to the accusations in Bill Landis’ unofficial biography, stating that Anger had spent all the money and that he had invented this story to please the producers. Beausoleil ended up joining Charles Manson’s Family and in 1969 he was arrested for the murder of Gary Hinman.

In 1967 Anger published an obituary announcement on an entire page of a newspaper: “In Memoriam. Kenneth Anger. Filmmaker 1947 – 1967”. Shortly thereafter he reappeared claiming to have burned all his previous productions.

In 1968 he went to London where he became friends with J. Paul Getty, the industrialist, founder of the Getty Foundation, and wealthiest man in America who became his patron.

For those who see his short films, which are now collected in the Magick Lantern Cycle. the influences are evident.The themes of his stories range from surrealism to occultism, not excluding experimental, erotic, and psychedelic elements and homosexual culture. His most famous works, such as  Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) partly filmed on Haight Street in San Francisco – ground zero for countercultural experimentation  against the grim backdrop of 1969 – specifically the Manson murders and the Rolling Stones’ infamous Altamont concert it sees Bobby Beausoleil,(who would later join the Manson family and become a convicted murderer). Anton LaVey, Mick Jagger, who also composed the soundtrack and Keith Richards, appear among others. The film was released the following year 

The new version of the film thus became a symbolic representation of the arrival of the Age of Horus, as prophesied from the Book of the Law. The famous actress and singer Marianne Faithfull was involved in the project in the role of Lilith. Anger had asked Mick Jagger to play the role of Lucifer, but the singer of the Rolling Stones refused, rather suggesting his brother. Anger reluctantly accepted. The director shot eight minutes of the film, presented it to the British National Film Finance Corporation, and obtained a £ 15,000 grant to complete it.

Thanks to this funding, however, Anger managed to  shoot some sequences in Germany and Egypt. During this period Kenneth also became friends with Jimmy Page, the guitarist of Led Zeppelin. At the very invitation of Page, who shared an interest in Crowley with the Californian director, Anger went to Boleskine, on the banks of Loch Ness in Scotland where Crowley once lived, to help the musician exorcise the place from a headless ghost.The episode of the exorcism was later recounted at a press conference by Jimmy Page’s ex-wife to ridicule her husband.

 Lucifer Rising, lasting 30 minutes, which  was only finished in 1981, is perhaps Anger’s most ambitious effort to date. Like a Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic put through the blender with a pinch of paganism, it touches on the story of Lucifer, the fallen angel who rebelled against God. It was inspired by Aleister Crowley's poem ‘Hymn to Lucifer’ and, as with all Anger films, it’s not so straightforward. Suffice to say, it ends with a flying saucer hovering over ancient Egypt.

The filmmaker, who shot this mini epic in Egypt, Germany and at Stonehenge,again enlisted famous friends. Along for the ride were Marianne Faithfull again, filmmaker Donald Cammell. Jimmy Page, (who also scored the movie, though it was scrapped by Anger after the pair fell out) and in the  end it was Beausoleil's score, written and recorded from prison,while on death row, (The death penalty was later commuted to life imprisonment) that tied the final film together. Even if one does not quite understand what's going on, it is at least visually fantastic.

 

 

Anger who had a  “Lucifer” tattoo emblazoned across his chest,  made films for much of his life. He  knew everyone from the poet Jean Cocteau to sexologist Alfred Kinsey.and was close enough to Keith Richards that the Rolling Stone would claim that Anger called him his “right hand man.” 

Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page both wrote soundtrack music for Anger, who in turn helped bring about a Rolling Stones classic by lending a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satanic satire “The Master and Margarita” to  Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull passed the novel along to her boyfriend, Jagger, who cited it as the basis for “Sympathy for the Devil.”Asked about Anger, Mick Jagger replied: "Know 'im? Guy threw a book through my window"

Few so boldly and imaginatively mined the forbidden depths of culture and consciousness as Anger, who has since inspired other film makers  such as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, and John Waters. Scorsese would emulate Anger’s style in “Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas” and other movies, and Lynch featured Vinton’s drowsy ballad in the 1986 cult favorite “Blue Velvet.” John Waters would praise Anger as one of the directors who “dirtied” his mind.

And well before the rise of punk and heavy metal, Anger was juxtaposing music with bikers, sadomasochism, occultism and when the Sex Pistols and the Clash appeared on the same bill at a 1976 concert, clips from Anger’s movies were screened behind them.

Since 1982, however Anger's, film s production  slowly decreased. Only in 2000, after almost thirty years of artistic inactivity, Kenneth made a new short film “Don’t Smoke That Cigarette” and the following year “That Man We Want To Hang“which comprised images of Crowley's paintings that had been shown at a temporary exhibition in Bloomsbury, London.

In 2004, he began showing Anger Sees Red, a short surrealistic film starring himself, and the same year also began showing another work, Patriotic Penis. Anger soon followed this with a flurry of other shorts, including Mouse Heaven, which consisted of images of Mickey Mouse memorabilia; Ich Will!; and Uniform Attraction, all of which he showed at various public appearances.

Anger's most recent project was Technicolor Skull, with  musician Brian Butler, described as a "magick ritual of light and sound in the context of a live performance", in which Anger plays the theremin and Butler plays the guitar and other electronic instruments amid a psychedelic backdrop of colors and skulls.

Anger makes an appearance in Nik Sheehan's 2008 feature documentary about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine.  He also appears alongside Vincent Gallo in the 2009 short film Night of Pan, written and directed by Brian Butler In 2009 his work was featured in a retrospective exhibition at the MoMA PS1 in New York City, and the next year a similar exhibition took place in London

Anger  had his greatest commercial success, and notoriety, as the author of Hollywood Babylon  written in 1959. a book that anticipated the highs and lows of celebrity journalism. In it Anger assembled an extraordinary and often apocryphal family album, whether pictures from the fatal car crash of Jayne Mansfield or such widely disputed allegations as actor Clara Bow having sex with the University of Southern California football team.Completed in the late 1950s and originally published in French, “Hollywood Babylon” was banned for years in the U.S. and was still adult fare upon formal release in 1975.

Although much of Hollywood Babylon has been dismissed as fiction, the book still has many admirers.  Anger released a sequel, the less popular “Hollywood Babylon II,” and in 1984.and also  said he was working on a third book in recent years, with a chapter dedicated to Tom Cruise and Scientology.

In  the latter years pf his life Anger lived the part of a respected if underfunded doyen of cinema as art. Speaking to a cineaste site in his latter days, he still carried the mantle of a Hollywood maverick who nonetheless carried a deep love for the town and the medium he so boldly influenced: “I loved the young John Wayne. ..that’s a little slice of history. I love the things that have gone by the wayside.”

Death preoccupied Anger and he was a frequent visitor to Hollywood Forever, the burial site for everyone from Judy Garland to Johnny Ramone. Actor Vincent Gallo, a friend of Anger’s, told the filmmaker that he had purchased a plot for him next to Ramone’s.

“They’re peaceful,” Anger said during a 2014 interview with Esquire when asked about his affinity for cemeteries. “They’d better be…”

RIP Kenneth Anger,iconic extraordinary filmmaker, Thelemite, who doubtless takes fascinating secrets to the grave although he liked to tell all. He was one of the first st and was openly and unapologetically  gay filmmakers, a  remarkable achievement considering the hostile environment in which he rose to prominence. He was also one of the few to understand cinema as ceremony. a true alchemist of media arts whose work offered a distinctively radical mix of paganism and homoeroticism.

Ever controversial and confoundingly brilliant. Few so boldly and imaginatively mined the forbidden depths of culture and consciousness as Anger did.While many will no doubt mourn  his recent passing and detractors will continue to mock, he  has I believe left an  undoubtable legacy that will live on. All my heroes are dying but every man and every woman is a star. 

“Although, of course, my definition of evil is not everybody else's. Evil is being involved in the glamour and charm of material existence, glamour in its old Gaelic sense meaning enchantment with the look of things, rather than the soul of things.”

 "Making a movie is casting a spell." 

 Time is all we have and every second that ticks away is one less second we’re alive,”

- Kenneth Anger