pornography wasn't sex but fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world 12377 Posts 9/07
Posted - Jun 23 2020 : 6:30PM
So Glenn Kenny, the NYT film critic, once worked as crew on Henri Pachard's A Girl's Best Friend (81') when he was 21 and writes about it here.
Great stories about Juliet Anderson (reading Joan Didion!), Bobby Astyr, Ron Jeremy, Veronica Hart, Samantha Fox, R. Bolla and Pachard himself. As well as a good portrait of what it was like to shoot a feature then.
Excellent article on one of the first films of its kind I remember seeing and still one of my favourites. They took such care to get it right. And what a great cast. A fascinating read.
He is one of my favourite directors. I am rewatching Taboo: American Style and it's so good. Add in She's So Fine and Sexcapades/Great Sexpectations and that's enough to make him one of the all time greats.
He'd got such a great twisted sense of humour. Taboo American Style works not only as a porno parody of family soap sagas of the time like Dynasty but sort of mocks the disintegration of a Waspish wealthy family of the era. Then there were his celebrated 'bathroom' scenes that became almost a trademark.
pornography wasn't sex but fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world 12377 Posts 9/07
Posted - Aug 14 2020 : 6:15PM
I loved Sexcapades and Great Sexpectations. I know GGG is a big Taboo: American Style fan, I need to check it out. Is the DVD release in decent shape then? I find his films have looked pretty good even on the early DVD releases.
It is in decent shape. It was released by Fat Dog, and appears to have been mastered off of the original 3/4" Beta masters from the 80s. Don't expect a recent film transfer.
I'm not sure. Looking around I found a VCX release, but it looks like many retailers still list it as Fat Dog (X-Rent for instance). The cover is now different and X-Rent, at least, now lists it as a DVD-R.
Edited to add, I think VCX and Fat Dog are the same exact release, the barcodes on the back are the same.
A great description. The performances and dialogue are pitch perfect. The shocking scenarios play out in a really believable way and it's quite funny too. Raven is incredible of course, but for me Taija Rae shines. Her performance is so natural and convincing.
^^ Taija Rae is certainly very natural, and the stunning Raven just incredible.. Such scenes as where Raven gets Taija to go down on Gloria Leonard and the one where she humiliates the Robert Kerman character, totally unable to resist her sexuality, en route to humiliating her mother again, are immensely powerful and quite unlike anything produced in the modern era. I just like the lack of compromise as Raven proceeds relentlessly on destroying everyone who gets in her way.