#009 - The Indecent Desires of Doris Wishman

This week on the podcast, Outskirts team peeps through the keyhole into the unabashedly salacious cinema of sexploitation queen Doris Wishman. A late-bloomer as a filmmaker, Wishman first became famous with her nudie-cuties in the early sixties. Parallel to the shifting morals in American entertainment industry, her cinema got rougher, tougher and politically dubious than ever. As Doris herself probably watches us Wishmaniacs with utter disinterest and disbelief from above, in dildo heaven, we enjoy talking about her masterpieces with pleasure and no guilt whatsoever.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to the Outskirts Film Podcast. I am Christopher Small, and today I'm joined by my co-hosts. Hi, I'm Uku. Hi, I'm Ann Sogalette. It's Exploitation Queen, independent cinema icon, titan of garish interior decoration, and longtime Florida resident Doris Bushman spent more than 40 years making films that zigzag across the margins of taste, sometimes legality, and genre. Following roots that she stumbled into almost by accident after a sudden widowhood pushed this Bronxborn former film distribution worker into directing her first nudist films in her mid to late 40s, and leveraged that knowledge into one of the most prolific filmographies by a woman in the sound era. She was, among other distinctions, also responsible for some of the greatest film titles of all time, notably Nude on the Moon, Dildo Heaven, Let Me Die a Woman, A Night to Dismember, Satan Was a Lady, and, of course, Bad Girls Go to Hell. As Wishman once quipped on an appearance on the Conan O'Brien show, everyone makes exploitation films. The only real difference is how willing you are to admit it. I'm not sure yet, Alonzo and Oiku, if I can stretch as far as to refer to you both as Wishmaniacs. However, I do want to start by asking you both a question that has beguiled even diehard Wishman fans over the years. And maybe that can start a discussion. And that is, is Doris Wishman a good filmmaker?

SPEAKER_10 1:44

Say she's a great filmmaker. Incredibly idiosyncratic. Like I don't think there's like any other filmmaker like her. And even at her most like barren and like financially bankrupt, you can really tell like a Doris Wishman film, just in the way it flows, even with different technologies as like later in her career. There's always like this kind of like tonal element, I'll say. Despite like her tone like varying from film to film, I think there's like very idiosyncratic element of how she deals with the topics and the kind of like uh exploitation elements she always deals with, and also kept bringing maintain herself all the time. And also dealt with different technologies in creative and innovative ways. So I'll say to me she's like a great filmmaker.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

People, artists or crafts uh people who defy the cata exit pre-existing categories like good, bad, or even uh theoretical or aesthetic categories like uh feminist filmmaking or sexploitation films, those are the people who are the real artists, I think. Because you can't just put them in boxes and like we'll probably try, even though we want to avoid these categories. In today, even the uh during discussion the this discussion, we'll probably try to engage with our films through these lenses, but in vain. So I think that impossibility it is what makes her great.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah, I think I agree with you both. Maybe I would formulate it this way is that Doris Wishman is not a good filmmaker, but she is a great filmmaker. And I think oh over there there are exceptions in her body of work, as as I've discovered in the past week watching these films. There are some films that have more let's say conventionally conventionally good scenes and conventionally good style. Uh but for the most part, what's really absorbing about her films is exactly uh the extent to which she's willing to dive into so-called badness. So mismatched edits, mismatched insert shots in some cases, uh really abrupt tonal changes, um nonsensical dialogue scenes, etc. etc. And I think you know uh if you if you do want to look at her films through an autourist lens, I actually think in many ways there's maybe no better filmmaker because when I see these films, almost any every frame is uh a Doris Wishman frame. I personally don't like to look at films that much that way so much, but I think, you know, even more than other great filmmakers we love, I think it's probably the watching her films takes the shortest amount of time to realize that you're watching a Wishman film. You know, and I also think that truly, just like David Lynch, she's one of those filmmakers who can have an esque attached to her name. The Wishman-esque style is very, very much a thing, I think. And also has like also has resonances beyond these films because although these films I think are UFOs in and of their own right and don't really have cousins even. I'm also curious, like, you know, what did you what was your experience of Doris Wishman before we started this little project?

SPEAKER_10 5:02

In my case, I also knew her kind of like this queen of exploitation. And actually, I think the first one I saw is the well, we'll talk about it uh in depth later, but like the very not that representative and I do to dismember. That naturally didn't give me like a clear picture of like who Doris Wishman was as a filmmaker, but then I saw some of her other films, the better known like Bad Girls Go to Hell, Indecent Desires, Noot on the Moon, which I think, despite those three particularly showing like different strands of her career, I think gave me like a better idea of who she was. I was initially approached by like these like four very different films, which I couldn't make sense of like how they fit into the same career. So actually uh doing this show and seeing all the true lines that kind of like articulate her work, or or this articulate her work as well, uh kind of make it perhaps a more endeavoring experience. So I'll say I didn't have a clear picture until until now that I've seen like the uh Deadly Weapons, for example. I think that's like it's like the brings it all together in a way.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Like I think sh she was quite uh elusive at the time because I know about her films, you know of their name, you know of what they do, but not necessarily their style. So I think it was around 2022 or 21 when Criterion did a selection of films, and I think that was the moment when she kind of hmm, who's this person kind of experience.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

I I think it was around that time. So maybe we can just start at the beginning. As I mentioned in the introduction, Doris Wishman she was uh working as a film booker for many years in association with family, so with her cousin and with her husband. The way she tells it is that she her husband died, and as a bereaved widow, she started to make films based on knowledge that she had from working as a distributor. This has been a little bit contested by people digging into that history, but that's the story. And around that time when Doris Wishman was already quite old, she was in her mid-40s, mid to late 40s at this point. The United States Supreme Court uh ruled thanks to a documentary called The Garden of Eden. There was nothing dirty about depicting nudity in the context of nudist camps. Of course, allowed a lot of enterprising filmmakers to start making films uh set in nudist camps that could be defended on those terms, but which of course would allow breasts and buttocks to be showed on camera and to be sold on those terms. That was the birth of Doris Bushman's.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

I think nude on the moon is the uh comparatively the most narrative of them all, or like narratively coherent. There's a storyline involving two astronauts, one of them inherits uh a large sum of money from his uncle that allows them to build this spacecraft to go to the moon. Like these parts are obviously quite um simplified, childish. We don't see their laboratories, like they their laboratories just like a chemical. You see chemical substances, nothing related to space technology. And when they go to the moon, they discover these alien species colony uh who look like uh who looks like human beings, but they have anti antennas and they communicate through them. And basically, the whole the almost entire film consists of their uh observations on the moon, watching these alien species bathing and playing games, uh, walking around, and uh obviously it looks like a Playboy or whatever, like sex magazine um publicity shot uh throughout the whole film, which I find it interesting because there's this um intemporal feeling as if the time doesn't pass while during these things are happening, but at the same time, our astronauts are time on the moon is limited, so they have to go back uh after documenting this life. So they try to um make images like photographing them, filming them during these during the expedition. But I found that this intemporal feeling of just people doing nothing, this idleness is interesting because I think there's this there's a connection between idleness or doing nothing or just like time stretching uh in our other films as well, just people doing nothing, engaging in nothing, and uh which translates into this pure pleasure of showing and yeah, and not necessarily voyeurism because I think that comes later, but just this pleasure of showing and Jen being generous about your body, which I found quite interesting.

SPEAKER_10 9:46

I mean, I I didn't enjoy this film as much as I think I should have, considering what the description of it is in terms of it's kind of like a kids space age, golden age is space age, kind of like can fill with a lot with a lot of like uh Doris Wishman nudity. But at the same time, I think what kind of like brings it down for me is how committed, I don't know if you had the experience as well, I could how committed it is to kind of like uh provide the audience with this facade of being like a serious film, of establishing some sort of lore, some sort of like a lot of like scientific words are being thrown. I'm like, what I mean, why isn't this just like uh set designs and like new people like because I feel it feels kind of like half-assed in that way, and those elements of the being like a serious film, like kind of like being put forward by by the production, I think is what really like sidetracked the whole experience. Because I think while it's just like it isn't particularly like engagingly constructed as uh some of her other films, but it's still just like the reaction shots that are kind of funny when they see like the new people, like the girls like play playing on the moon and everything. So it feels kind of like like a transition period. Like I don't know if the other new DQ films are like this, but this one in particular, like like the poster and everything, like how people like talk about what the content of the film is, and then the actual experience of sitting through the film. I think there's like a like a tension there, which I think could be fertile, but I don't think the film really commits to that in any way. It feels kind of like as we were talking with um some of the hardcore inserts in in in other films, which feel they feel like they come from other like production. In this case, uh kind of to me, like the new sequences seem to be like coming from a more like playful environment, while the rest of the film is kind of like a non-descript kind of like half-ass attempt but like creating a framework to show these like nudity scenes.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Yeah, I think that probably introduces an element that we will come back to again and again, which is a lot of these films are very incoherent and also are incoherent most obviously because of her the methods of production that she employed, which I think were pretty unscrupulous at times. So she just I mean, she was someone who really wanted to make films, who managed to make many films. I mean, she was a female filmmaker in the 1960s. I think she was the most prolific female filmmaker of the 1960s, and she really wanted to get these films done, so was doing anything to to finish them, and that would be something that would come back again and again through her whole career, often in kind of hilarious ways, like in uh one of her last films, Dildo Heaven, which we'll certainly talk about later. There's a scene where a character looks through a bush, and the thing that he's looking at is footage that was shot 30 years before on a completely different film stock. So, yeah, I think like this it's also interesting for the the practice of Wishmanology to look at those like early films as like this first sort of really just kind of unscrupulous experiment in in like quish quick cash grabs. And also it's kind of a I guess a joke of film history that now like us who are interested in Wishman maybe have to sit through all eight films one after another when they were designed to basically be watched by people secretly masturbating in the cinema.

SPEAKER_10 12:58

Yeah, but but even then, uh uh uh particularly with the nudie cuties, like I think the cutie element is even more present than the the nudie one in terms of like they don't feel like this like luring like and like uh like Burby films at all. This very like almost like rainbow-colored like free-flowing experience of just in like naked bodies, but they aren't really like sexualized in any way, uh, which kind of I don't know if that there's some like some subvertive element in there from Bushman, which I don't think is the case. Uh but if you were, I mean, if you were going to these films with the like uh idea of just like masturbating, I don't think they really work that well even then.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Don't talk for from their perspective, Alonso. Maybe they did.

SPEAKER_10 13:35

Well, I think people could find find find a way. Yeah, sorry. Perhaps, yeah. I just say like the filmmaking itself doesn't seem to be like uh guiding that per per se.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Well, but I think I think that was kind of the mandate of the nudist movement, no? Like, in order to be a nudist film, you had to portray nudity as something kind of sacred and non-sexualized. Um, but I think people would masturbate to anything.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

Looks like little boys. Notice the vapor rising from a bath. I wonder what causes it. Get a picture.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

I think for Doris Wishman's career, the the nudicutties lasted for only three or four years, at which point I think it was quite well known that the kind of cycle of nudist films has sort of run its course and people were no longer interested in going to see, you know, people playing volleyball uh topless on a beach. There was this kind of I think particularly New York genre of the Ruff, the cheap independent Ruff, which I became fit familiar with from the films of Michael Findlay, Roberta Findlay's husband, which I think are particularly disgraceful and immoral ruffies. Um in comparison to those, I think Wishmans are pretty relatively tame. Although they do have their horrors in them. Um and I think you know we can start by discussing it. I mean, the most famous film from this period, and also my my favourite Wishman, I think Alonzo's favourite Wishman, um, is Bad Girls Go to Hell. Um, which I think still remains this kind of crystallization of not only her body work in some way, but also that moment, like this particular weird cycle of you know, cheap, nasty, exploitative sex films made in a kind of five-year window in the mid-mid-1960s.

SPEAKER_10 15:47

My first experience with Wishman wasn't necessarily like uh finding a way to approach her work in like a representative ear for her whole career. So this film really stood out, particularly of because of that, like a rougher element element, proto-punk aesthetic in in a way. To think about this film, particularly like how little who was with sexuality in comparison to her the rest of her career, it's very interesting. Again, because in this film, at least, but it is like very like an abject subject in the film, like every like sexual experience is framed within like the most like horrible situation, and it keeps happening to the same character. The psychology of the character is something that is very palpable in the film. So to me, this film feels like a horror film, perhaps not necessarily like in in form itself, but just like in the structure and and the bad vibes overall. And that like level of bad vibes, as uh what Chris was mentioning with the Michael Finley films, is something that I don't take for granted, particularly uh again with when this element of subver subversion as well, when you think about like uh titles such as uh Bad Girls Go to Hell, and then the experience of being like the same level of detachment uh towards like the sexual uh activity in the film and how it's framed almost as abrasive towards the audience is something that really stuck with me like uh throughout throughout the years, and just as recently as I saw it again.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Yeah, the psychosexual element is quite potent in this film and especially really condensed in some sequences, but also paradoxically uh accompanied by these very, as I said, idle and uh eventless long sequences. So as you said, like this is such a like 75 minutes of film, and you have this very um different and this like discrepancy uh inducing uh experiences. Like at some point, I think uh in the sequences where we see our main character just like undressing in her panties, like dancing. I feel like am I watching Chantal Ackerman film? It's just such a this very uh tedious uh experience of the daily life because nothing happens at those moments. It's just like this very uninteresting uh way of performing because it was also accompanied by this very uh um emotionally or psychologically dense moments that are quite short but i i equally effective uh in terms of in terms of um nar storytelling. Because I mean we said, oh yeah, she's incoherent incoherent, but I think this clash of uh emotional tones creates a very fascinating experience for uh for us.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah, it gets to an interesting idea, I think, that in a way, like this yeah, I almost want to retire the word incoherence having said it, but like this this like madness of her films that you can never quite totally place what what it is that she's going for, in a way, like that trash quality allows her to access things within this subject matter that a much more tasteful film would never manage to get near. I was thinking of In Bad Girls Go to Hell, um towards the end, uh Gigi Darlene, which is like one of the great names of from all these films, like in a in a filmography of amazing names, you know, after she's gone through this like amazing cycle of like rape and abuse and just like horrible, horrible things happening to her, and she wakes up, it was all a dream, as as uh this this common wishman uh cheap device. Uh she just immediately starts becoming a housewife again and like tidying the house. And there's like a con and and right after she's done tidying, she goes into the other room and she's in this like see-through slip, and she pulls on um her underwear and kind of sticks her ass in the camera, and the camera kind of get gets close with a wide angle, and it's like, you know, after all we've seen, are you really gonna go for like the exploitative angle, like shot of her ass? You know, like no filmmaker with like good sense or like a sense of narrative rhythm would do that. But in Wishman, like she she's going for both like the she's going for every angle that you can possibly go for. She's going for the angle of like these women's lives, this woman's life being just horrible and this like repetition of abuse. She's going for some kind of like, as you said, Jean Dilman like uh house household chores, and then she's going for like an exploitative shot of this woman's ass that she's putting on her underwear. It's all in the same breath in Wishman, and I think like that's that's what makes her like a very, very strange filmmaker, you know? Like she's like a filmmaker. A lot of people say that like when they first see her films, it's like seeing an alien trying to make a film who has like no understanding of film grammar, no understanding of human emotion. And yet, and I do think that's true on some level, and yet, like, she's able to access things, particularly in this film, but also in other films, through that, like almost like a kind of a passport to those other that other area that other people can't get to. And also, I I think I was watching it again today, um, and I was just amazed by the the cinematography in this film by uh C. Davis Smith, who shot a lot of Doris's films, and like, you know, some some better shot than others, I would say. But this one, I mean, this one, I don't know what was going on during the shoot, but oh my god, it's so beautiful. Like just you know, repeatedly going for these kind of like super kind of dense kinds of images, like there's the scene where she's being attacked, and there's this she's reaching her hand and she's touching these beads, and the beads are making this kind of pattern across her face in shadow. Uh, or when the when she does uh handstand on this armchair and the camera does like an angle to catch her entire body as she's standing upside down, and it's like it's such a film, it's it's it's it's an image book, as Godard would have said, you know.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Yeah, there there are some evocative images, like the uh when she moves in with the the other woman, I don't remember her name, but when they were on the

SPEAKER_10 22:00

uh laying on bed they we we we have the this detailed shot of their feet like that's that image is also like quite a what cut of and like there are some interesting details that you wouldn't have in uh other films of our I think yeah there's also like this sense of space which uh again like in other films mine might seem almost like accidental or people frame it as again like being incompetence but yeah in this film I get again they g they I think they really give like a sense of like geography particularly to this like claustrophobic element of this all these like horrible New York apartments like uh serious was saying according to this like random objects on the room um not nearly as reaction shots but I took it again like as like setting kind of like a uh an spatial element to the films which I perhaps kind of get diluted over time and uh again like uh I don't take for granted that like the sense of malaise that this film kind of like manages to put forward this ass shot at the end that that Chris was mentioning I think is particularly like um uh abrasive in the sense that it comes after what you've seen like you've basically seen like uh the most horrible acts of like sexual violence like constantly committed to the film and the film still wants you to like feel self-flagellation for like being aroused like trying to make you aroused after all you've experienced is kind of like uh I think a very commendable thing because it basically puts this inner conflict with the audience itself and I think that's perhaps like the best embodiment of what this kind of film was kind of able to achieve you know that I love you why are you leaving I love you too that's where I must go if you want to see a film that dares to tell all that is truly a body and soul chakra then you must see bad girls go to hell in this in the size is kind of like a transitional film and it kind of makes sense when you look at it because it it does have like the aesthetics and the vibe of like a Ruffy in sense it's kind of like a noirish kind of like narrative of a guy that finds a doll in a trash can and then like projects his fantasies on real people. But again it kind of like seems to be like engaging the kind of like sex field premise that will like guide like the rest of her like career in the 70s perhaps like it feels more like like openly and like uh celebratory in the way it addresses sexuality which I think kind of like seems to be like kind of like a I don't know if like specifically this film is like a turning stone in that sense but like in comparison to Badgirl's gone to hell only two years prior three years prior this film does feel like it kind of engages with sexuality in a way that's perhaps more uh free-loving uh despite having the the the forms and the mannerisms of like a again like a more like a a rough in that sense but yeah it's kind of an interesting interesting film totally because feels uh sometimes I was thinking like uh from my recall it's kind of like a Jack Sturnoff film and others it's kind of like a fully like a 70s exploitation film so by itself perhaps isn't it isn't that interesting but see like looking at it back in in in the context of her filmography I think that that's where it really shines.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

And do you consider it the the the elements of like psychosexual elements less uh present than than bad girls go to hell?

SPEAKER_10 25:28

No there's definitely there's that also that element is perhaps the more more uh the only the main comparison I can think with bad girls don't to hell it also seems kind of like a like a De Palma kind of like premise in the sense like uh again uh its frame as well as it's a kind of unhinged and delirious kind of like narrative uh premise that eventually it becomes a this like uh conflict between like the it and the mind and like the body and how like an unfiltered desire kind of manifests. So in that way I can see that that through line that you're kind of suggesting.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

I saw Love Toy I didn't see in this indecent desires but Love Toy when you read the um summary it's feels like oh this is gonna be like juicy or like very interesting because it's about this uh man who because of uh who because of his debts decide to trade her daughter uh with the man who's indebted to for a one night and he just like she he engages with her devious sexual activities uh bordering on BDSM and even like BDSM or yeah sadomessistic uh sexual fantasies involving uh milk drinking from uh from uh from the floor uh like acting that as as if she's her kitty her daughter then inviting her father to have intercourse with them like all of these happen in the film but she uh is uh uh using such a um funny and gimmicky approach to these acts that you don't feel any transgressive aspect to that at all like even while she drinks milk from the floor in a small plate you're like this is this this doesn't really like challenge me as a viewer because like it actually it should have been challenging to watch these like transgressive sexual acts but I think that the tone of the film is quite different than the roughness of Bad Girls Go to Hell so my hypothesis was that I wonder if Bad Girls Go to Hell was the like the top of the psychosexual roughies and then that then the ones that she shot later were less uh impactful in those terms.

SPEAKER_10 27:53

No that's very interesting uh because I I was just thinking about that that element of like submission uh um because again in these and desires you can really argue argue that what's happening is not not really like consent like consensual sex because again the the the doll he finds basically works like a voodoo doll so he's like imposing his own like will and desire on this woman. So yeah it feels is that that thing that you that we were talking about with girls to go to hell like despite these scenes like of steamy sex being particularly in this like rough is like a framed like very like um expressively you have this like ick while you're watching it of like how what what it represents within the universe of the film and within the narrative that always makes you kind of like double double double check yourself like am I supposed to be aroused by this or what is exactly going on by the way Love Toy also uses the same premise of oh it was all just a dream and then and then it happens again which is like you know the cheapest of narrative devices that like any other filmmaker would just see a clear up clear from but for her it was like you know always an option.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

I mean in a way it fit fits perfect perfectly I think yeah I also I also think like going off from what you said um you know I haven't seen all of those roughies but what I see at that time is that you know particularly in the in the late 60s I don't know whether it was from sort of increasing desperation to sell the films or the fact that she had made so many films by that point but she started to be drawn to these very kind of salacious subject matters. So in you know Bad Girls Go to Hell Um Another Day Another Man which is one I saw which is about a woman whose husband is afflicted by a mysterious illness and decides to prostitute herself to to get money you know those movies have like very simple premises you know where it's it's basically a kind of excuse for some kind of lurid debasement. But by the late 60s I think she had turned to these kind of like eye-catching subject matter also as a way to sell the film. I mean I don't think we saw it any of us saw it but there's also the amazing transplant which which is like film famous the the titular transplant is a penis transplant it turns out to be an evil penis that leads the protagonist to uh I think to rape a bunch of people or somehow you know abuse some people started the 1970s um not only with Love Toy but another film with uh Sammy Petrillo who's a famous Jerry Lewis interpret uh Jerry Lewis impersonator who had fallen on really bad times uh and apparently this was kind of Wishman's idea of a comedy which is called Keyholes of a Peeping this time she also did I think one of the most kind of shameless uh acts in filmmaking history which is that she was on holiday with her husband in Greece and she met somehow met this guy who was making sex films in Greece she bought the films from him brought them back to the United States uh and supposedly was in a taxi and lost the dialogue sheet for the film in Greek so just redubbed a la wood like Woody Allen style just redubbed the the dialogue and recut the film somehow and release them that way so you know at this point I think there's that's also for me also what's interesting to watch films like Ruffies from this period is that you just see like this absolute industrial form of filmmaking, you know like just making things at any cost well not not at any cost actually at very low cost um but just making things you know with whatever resources you can shooting in a few days just turning it out trying to find you know subject matter or poster that will get people to watch the film and then then then your job is over. And it's it's it's fascinating to see how you know during the 1960s her career was in two halves both of which were these kind of like lowest of the low genre films that she was just churning out very kind of opportunistically and and that somehow she produced one of the greatest films of all time Bad Girls Go to Hell is like an unbelievable fluke of film history. I love like reading people's names and credits like it's just a like a stupid pleasure and then I saw this person's name just repeating over and over Don Whitman and I'm like who's this person like if the it's it seems to be like a frequent collaborator and then it turns out to be it's just like a fake name she invented uh and that that there are several of them yeah I made I made a note uh of a name from one of the 70s pornos uh Bill yogurt which you know I suppose in hardcore films I guess people were even more eager to cover up their real names but um Bill Yogurt is a pretty pretty flimsy one. Well perhaps talking about like flimsy uh names uh nice are we ready to talk about um iconic Chesty Morgan yes aka what was her real name what do you mean that's not her real name yeah this is the death of Alonso's innocence she was she was born she was christened Chesty and then just fate fate allowed her to have a 73 inch bosom uh chesty morgan real name was Ilana Weitz aka Liliana Vilskovska yes when she was in the United States and working with Doris Wishman she was known as Chesty Morgan as you might um get from just seeing one of the posters or any of the posters uh her chest was quite uh voluptuous if you will which is kind of like the whole gimmick of her character in these films because again like Deadly Weapons and uh double agent they are quite literally referring to her chest once again uh because I think I first saw the double agent 73 which again the 73 is in reference uh to the measures of her uh bosom once again so you can see as the how many how many how many nouns can we come up with one we were doing quite well with it ground five I think but yeah yeah yeah I I mentioned earlier but like Dor Doris apparently was also shy of saying tits or boobs so she would only ever say bosom apparently so to say she was endowed with a large bosom I I have to admit that I you know I I knew that that was the premise of these films but when the films came on I thought that's a big pharaoh that's big they they weren't lying um she also I just in an interesting aside before we go on has a very weird filmography three film filmography as far as I know which is Deadly Weapons Double Agent 73 and oddly uh Fellini's Casanova how would Fellini like miss or come on like the greatest the greatest titla I want to mention that in both films in Dead Weapons and Double Agent besides being clearly like a showcase just for like a Justin Morgan's like attributes I think they're very inventive in how they they incorporate within the plot which I was wasn't really expecting uh particularly like in Double Agent like the there's like the the whole concept premise of just having her like like some kind of like surgical implant of a camera and then committing to the camera like flash effect throughout the whole film to me I was like wow yeah it's like rain stuff going on here.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

It's it's it it definitely works as a narrative uh plot device definitely better than a nude on the moon and even like on a really plastic figurative level it's interesting idea it's an interesting idea. She's kind of like a superhero in the film. Come on it I I really liked the Double Agent uh 73 I haven't seen Deadly Weapons but I enjoyed it as a watching like a spy film. I don't care what other people say I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_10 36:08

Yeah I think that in that one I guess the tone feels too much like a spoof to me so I kind of w want her to take this material more seriously because I think Deadly Weapons she actually does that like it does feel kind of like this kind of like pole muff film in a way like it really feels like chesting organ is kind of like inhabiting this kind of miluo filmmaking whereas in double agent it feels kind of like a bonus poof which again it it's it's still fun but it kind of like the level of ironic detachment kind of like a sours it a little bit for me.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Dead Deadly weapons I mean I think I think what as I understood it basically the this this uh this collaboration it came about when she was making key holes of a peeping and she was uh obviously collaborating with with Sammy Petrillo and Sammy Petrillo said you know Doris I was at the strip club the other night and I saw this woman with huge knockers and she and Doris was like and so she started to investigate and somehow she thought you know this this could be interesting so uh so she invited Chesty uh who at that time was a stripper and uh burlesque dancer um and kind of made these films like really um at the like at the perfect moment you know because I think at that time like the the Doris Wishman's like style of filmmaking in the 60s had sort of faded and she was kind of you know the wheels were turning in the muck. And Jesse Morgan became really really famous for both from these films and from her act in general so I think it was like a really those were the films that really made a lot of money for Doris Wishman. But um I mean Deadly Weapons like it's it's you know after I think the whole 1960s is in black and white so to suddenly at least the films that I saw so suddenly to go to Deadly Weapons which is just this like eye blasting colour of like he horrendous wallpaper ugly shag carpets uh like horrible outfits and you know that and also that film is it has this sort of um like tossed off quality uh no pun intended like it's it's kind of you know feels like it was put together in a day you know a lot of like indifferent shots stitched together and it's just kind of built around the fact that Chesty Morgan is in it and she's like such a magnetic presence in her own way. And it's true that it is kind of missing that that irony that you describe I mean there is even a moment late in the film where she's um weeping at the death of her mobster boyfriend and her tears are rolling off her cheeks and onto her tits but it's like yeah but it's like you know Wishman is not really being ironic there I think there there is like there is some irony in there but I think it's like mixed with a real sincerity because that moment is basically played as melodrama but you're watching this woman cry on her two giant breasts in like this ugly Florida apartment about a mobster husband that you don't really care about. But it's like this moment of pure melodrama for me. I don't know I Deadly Weapons is a you know a very interesting film.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

It it it also like when you think of how her breasts like cover the whole frame I think visually it's such a uh disorienting experience because like you usually have the the like the the beauty aesthetically pleasing bosom should be like centered in a certain way to like create ex aesthetic pleasure right to see them to like contemplate them but when they cover the whole frame it becomes like something amorphous like a like a dark matter I I'm just yapping here but like I I personally uh visually think that it's borders on experimentation even though I don't think that's her in intention uh to do that while watching I think for me it was really wow what's happening in the within the frame here those scenes are quite interesting.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

Yeah I think it kind of in a way it goes back to what we were saying about bad girls go to hell in the sense that it's like she's able to access something with this film by being so trash that like a more tasteful filmmaker would never be able to get to you know um if I was feeling more pretentious I would call it like cinema of the body or something but like you know you you are like you are watching a body and you can never escape that fact and almost it's almost like her like the kind of both like beautiful and grotesque quality of her body is like it it never allows you to just like what to be absorbed by by it as a film you know like every act that she does like whether it's even just sobbing at her mobster boyfriend like will all will will always be framed through the fact that she's this like completely unique body I guess. I don't know.

SPEAKER_10 41:20

Yeah and then again like the whole film the film universe as we experience it is also very aware of that just like the sound effects like the boing sound effects and the roaring sound effects were when her dits like hit someone and then like the which again well and and then in double legend like the the whole like use of the camera sound effect when she just like moves around this this kind of like sonic quality to these films it makes them feel almost like a like a Looney Tunes cartoon. Versatility I think isn't really talked about that often I think in terms of like managing to adapt to the material in this case like just like well I need to like bank on Jesse Morgan as a figure. And I'm understanding that perhaps she would work bet best in these kind of like films which aren't really spoofs at least well that Deadly Weapons isn't really and would still kind of like play up some like genre elements and still have some sort of like signifiers identify identifiable and isn't full I mean it's clearly like a some sort of exploitation film. What aren't only there like she makes she makes her do stuff I mean like all the less um engaged filmmakers would just like like have her be naked the whole time and do like some kind of like softcore like film.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Which was actually like unbelievably Roger Ebert's complaint about the film when he when he was sitting next to Doris Wishman on the couch on on Conan his criticism was that you know that she's that she's not naked for the entire film which is I I don't know how you can watch these films and make that make that complaint this is the story of Crystal who danced her way to murder what's the matter Nick talk that lion son of a bitch she avenged her lover's death with the only weapon she had and they would deadly weapons she was his tool to be loved and then cast aside until he met his fate by the deadly weapons I mean I know that her and Chesty unfortunately fell out because originally it was supposed to be a trilogy of sorts that they collaborated on and the next film was what became uh The Immoral 3 which is the next film which I haven't seen which was originally supposed to be a Chesty Morgan uh picture but they had some personal differences that meant that they didn't continue. In a way also you know you can also think about this film, like the exploitative elements of this film As sort of making a path towards the hardcore pornography that Doris Bushman would make uh in the middle of the decade, because in a way the function of having someone like Chestie Morgan in your film is like pornographic, because what you're you are kind of ogling at an act, in a way, you know, like you can you can beat around the bush, you can make a story, you can whatever, but at the end of the day, people are there to see uh giant breasts in the same way that people are there in hardcore to see people having sex. Um so it's like fat both fascinating to see her like finding ways around that and also almost like tease up the series of hardcore films that she would make. Satan Was a Lady and uh Come With Me My Love, which is the one I've seen. It's it's very weird watching Come With Me My Love because I would say she's quite a good director for hardcore pornography, such that it is. One of my other fame favourites from this time, as you know, friend of outskirts, is Roberta Findlay. Roberta Findlay also has a kind of powerful sensibility as an artist, in a way. But whenever there was sex involved in Findlay's films, it was shot absolutely indifferently, unlike the rest of the film, because she was like repulsed by the fact that she had to do it. Um, and the the legend goes, or like well-known legend was that Doris would leave the room when the sex would happen in these films. But I find that very hard to believe because this film is pretty much only sex. Come with me, my love. Yeah, it I would say the ratio is about 92% sexual intercourse, uh, or orgies or blowjobs or whatever, and then 8% story. I mean, what what story there is is interesting and actually almost is kind of a prelude to uh A Night to Dismember, weirdly, because A Night to Dismember, which was made a few years later, which I guess we'll talk about soon, um, uh was kind of pitched as this like transition to horror that she made. Some something the Roberta Findlay also did, you know, like when porn sort of ran its course, exploitation ran its course, you turned to horror because it's the next cheapest thing to make. But actually, in this film, uh Come With Me, My Love, she it is a kind of like supernatural horror film in a way, albeit as I said, only 8% of the story is that but it's uh it's um set in a kind of haunted apartment in New York, um which there's a prologue in the 1920s, hardcore prologue set in the 1920s, and thereafter, this this after almost every sex scene, this vengeful ghost uh kills the man who has been having sex with the woman. Uh, in one scene, I almost like fell out of my seat. In one scene, uh the ghost kills a man by when he when the man is taking a post-coital uh bath, the ghost pushes the radio in and kills electricutes the man in the water, and it's the very same bath that Chestie Morgan uh bathes in in deadly weapons. So I which tells you where these films were being shot. I I like recognize that the tiles in that bathroom anywhere. But when when he goes in and he starts taking a bath, I was like the Leonardo DiCaprio meme, you know, like that's like the pleasure of these films, I guess, is that it's the same the same three apartments uh that are used in all of them. Um and I actually, I mean, like we're sort of going chronologically, but I I I found out that I guess the next film we're gonna talk about actually was made earlier in the 1970s, but the version that we all know was released in 1977, which is Let Me Die a Woman, which uh as Alonso teased, but when we're off mic, is a complicated film to discuss. But I guess we can give it our best.

SPEAKER_02 48:01

I mean, we can say that it's a sort of documentary, like it engages with the documentary genre about um trans identity, transsexuality. Um, but very early on you understand that that's not the serious tone, that's that's not the serious tone that she's aiming for. Even though the very key elements of this educational film genre is present, um a narrator who's a doctor that guides us through the experience of transsexual people engages with a lot of sex as well, very violent scenes of horror involving uh do we say mutilation, suicide, uh interesting imagery, uh very body horror bordering on body horror images and a lot of politically incorrect discourse about essentialist gender binary and sexuality. I mean, it's it's the easiest argument to say that the to to take the context in consideration, but I think that's what we should do. But also we should take uh into account that it's the tone itself is very gimmicky in a way. Even though for some at some scenes you can't like think that this is a gimmick, this is because it's some at s to some extent it feels like it's taking itself seriously. So it's it's difficult to realize no, it's actually making fun of these educational films that people used to watch the jerk off.

SPEAKER_10 49:33

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's like making fun of those, but I think it's clearly like dialoguing and like playing along with the sensationalist aspect that was basically her whole career. Just the fact that the film is called like Let Me Die a Woman, and like how it's kind of positioned in I find it even more like kind of like um sensationalist journalism than percent like documentary itself. Again, like just like this again, going back to the sound effects, the sound effects that it this it uses like very jarring because again it's like shows like this the trans woman, and then like when her genitals are like disclosed, immediately it's like a crash zoom close-up and like a horror sound effect, and it's like okay, yeah, this kind of like a visual representation I can well naturally ages pretty badly. How it treats also like a mental health uh in very uh low taste, reenacting like suicides and all those kind of things as a cultural art, but it it has that kind of morbid curiosity as a knowing it's kind of like a problematic object, but having these mo moments of like Doris Wishman just going for it and like uh playing with the most like frowned-upon ways of framing things, I think it makes it kind of like I wouldn't say in Darien because that kind of implies uh perhaps a more positive reaction, but it has a place, I think.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

I mean, obviously, I would love to to read a trans writer grappling with this film because I think it's very much uh yeah, it's it's it's a fascinating film. Like to call it problematic is like kind of a understatement of the century because I think almost every scene has something wildly offensive in it. And uh also, I mean it's quite obviously exploitative in the way that you're you're discussing. Like it's it's it's leering, it's cheap. I agree with you. At the same time, it's this like incredible artifact, also like an artifact of of faces and bodies in a weird way, you know. Like it's I I wouldn't want to to say that anyone should kind of push away the like horrible things that are said in this film or shown. But I mean, you know, the movie is this like really beautiful document of like trans faces, like this this this group of group of trans people in a room with like a doctor is kind of lecturing them about about their lives. Nonetheless, like you do get to see them speak a little bit about their lives. You know, I what I know about the production of this film was that in an early 1970s, a connection, this is this is all thanks to Michael Bowen, so I really do want to shout him out for this like amazing research that he's done on Bushman's career. But start of the 70s, um, actually, a woman who used to run a nudisk camp uh who helped Doris shoot at her nudis camp in those early films, uh, at that at that point became this kind of like director of this institute that was that was established to help so-called transsexual people. Um and basically, as as seemed to happen a lot of this time, she called Doris up and said, Hey, this this maybe would be an interesting subject for a film. Um, and they had raised some money and they wanted to make something, so it came about as a product of that. And I think this first version of the film, which didn't have the same title, um, and is completely unavailable now, uh apparently was like much more of a kind of stage documentary with these kind of like salacious elements, so it was much more kind of consciously exploitative. Um but Wishman like fell in with this community. She liked these people because, like her, they were all kind of outsiders and like cast aside by society, and they also didn't have any money, and so in a way, I think she saw a parallel with herself, like you know, they were scraping together all the money they could to get a sex change operation, and she was scraping money together to make these films, so she became friends with people, and I think that's where this main interview with Leslie that makes up the the bulk of the film, I think that was made in the set second iteration of the film. And that that creates also an interesting tension within the film because yeah, you see these like scripted, weird, sort of hectoring didactical scenes, which of course like are so flimsy that nobody can buy them as that. And then that's mixed with this interview where you see this this woman who also herself has many problematic opinions, identifies as a uh transgender homophobe, which is interesting, but she's allowed to speak, and like when she speaks, like she says crazy stuff, but like it's it's her speaking. So there's that tension in the film that I guess was only the product of this like revised version, you know. So you you just like from one minute to the other in this film, you're you're swinging between something totally exploitative and then totally human. Um like also, you know, famously you see a sex change operation, you see medical footage of a sex change operation, which is itself an amazing document, you know, like as as well as this kind of leering exploitative uh side.

SPEAKER_10 54:44

In that sense, uh, that dichotomy between like the like exploitative and like luring nature and uh kind of like underlying humanity kind of made me think as well of as another like dated and much discussed like document of like uh trans cinema, perhaps, so trans adjacent cinema, which is like uh Ed Wood's uh Glen Glenn or Glen or Glenda, but just like the fact that it exists as some sort of like historical document and it kind of like offers some kind of like perspective that for how a dated it is, is kind of and also coming from a figure that's as Ed Wood in this case in George Wishman, kind of makes them beyond just like the kind of like info PSA or like uh informational like films, like there's some kind of like artistic dialogue and attempting there, I I guess.

SPEAKER_02 55:24

Yeah, I I I'm not I think uh among the films I've seen, I think that this is one of the least favorite ones uh for me. But like when you think of these shots where uh she's in the medical ex she goes to medical medical examination, one of the subjects, and uh in the beginning you see her face and they talk with the doctor, and at some point there's this uh extensive sequence where he points uh out how the reconstructed vagina functions, and it's it's a quite long part, like anatomic uh he explains how the arousal works, like how it's it's quite detailed, and then I realized that I forgot that there that actually belongs to a human body because it's objectified in such a way that you forget that a hum like a a human being opened the their legs and that's them actually, but it's you think that it's just like a model, and maybe that was what really destabilized me while that sequence was quite like a shock after it ended. But at the same time, you have another sequence where Leslie mentions that um she thought, like when people asked about how it felt like being a man or whatever, she said, she says, like, no, I was actually a woman, and people were thinking I was a man, so it was like a liberating thing. I never understand how people could interpret it in such a way because for her, it was such a crystal clear that she is she was actually a woman. So for her, becoming herself was what was supposed to happen. The beginning, the early version of herself was false, like erroneous. And that's is quite actually that is a good way of like positive way of thinking of the trans uh experience. So you have these like glimpses of hmm, yeah, she's right, and then you have that vagina scene. So it's quite like in the whole different extremes of of of um questions, what which makes this film very hard to like appreciate or hate. You're just like an object, as you said, like a cultural artifact, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 57:46

I am lonely. Yet I feel wonderful because I'm a woman. Last year I was a man.

SPEAKER_00 58:06

The next film comes completely out of nowhere, um, which is A Night to Dismember. I mean, what did you think of this movie?

SPEAKER_10 58:13

Yeah, I think I mentioned this was my first Loris Wishman. Wow, wow. Naturally, I didn't know what I was uh getting into. And actually to this day, uh my experience with it is kind of like trying to see it uh kind of detached from Loris Wishman in a way, which is kind of like uh they constructed deconstructed a slasher, kind of almost kind of like a cuist experiment experiment in how to like frame together kind of create kind of kind of like a collage of like slasher experience. And in that sense, I think it's kind of like amusing to me still in how it takes like the basic elements of recognizable iconography of what a horror movie is in this period in time and just puts them out there. And I know a lot of people like uh criticize it because of that, because it's like functionally, it doesn't really exist as a narrative or as any semblance of like an experience cohesively in a cohesive manner. But yeah, just like as this fragmented, almost kind of like primal experience of like a horror film, that's where I kind of like see value in it. Uh I I know it wasn't like uh attempted as any kind of like experimental, like um, I think some people call it a data experiment in some way, clearly not, but by accident, I think it kind of like showcases some very elemental form of horror that kind of makes me want to think like how would like a fully formed like Doris Wishman's dasher would work because again, I I I think I agree with you that it kind of comes out of nowhere, but when you see some of the elements that the iconography she was playing with in previous series, even in in uh Let Me Die Woman, like particularly like the suicide scenes and like the use of sound effects and like from the Ruffies, there's like some dialogue with like pulp elements that I think kind of makes sense for her to eventually make a horror film, and so it's kind of a shame because again, in this film it clearly shows like she knew what composed the horror film. We just never got to see like the fully formed, like the Jake's of also is kind of like all fucked up, and this is what happened in this film, it's just like almost like framing like different pieces all the spread around, and yeah, you can have to imagine for yourself what that will be.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

I I found it insightful um when I read that Doris Wishman didn't see movies because I mean she loved making movies, I think, and and like that was something that really animated her was like the joy of being on set and creating images, but like she didn't understand movies in and and that's both in a good way and in a bad way. And in this movie, yeah, exactly as you said, it's almost like she's ingesting the the basics of a genre without like any understanding of how things go together. Uh compound compounded by like the well-known history, well, possibly false history of this film, um, that uh the lab technician vengefully burned much of the footage and she had to like reshoot and um make the film out of uh out outtakes. Always interesting to me that um in the like redone version that she did, uh she brought on Samantha Fox, like the the well-known uh porn actress, uh, who supposedly paid Dorish Gushman to be in this film in order to have her like break out. Of course, I mean the film that she what she got for that that money was was was I guess not what she expected. See, I mean it's kind of like this this dream of a movie more than a movie, really. I found it kind of an impossible movie to watch at home because it's like non-narrative in the extreme, and it's almost like seeing like body parts in a in a bog or something, you know, occasionally like an arm or come up, a leg, you can kind of make out that there's a body, but otherwise, you know, you you're just seeing like a succession of images, and I think in a way, a lot of the time when films, exploitation films or horror films can be a little incoherent, people can tend to compare them to experimental films. In this case, I think it's entirely justified. You know, this this movie really is like um like rubber beavers or or something like that, you know, because you're just like seeing really fast successive shots of like faces, hands, elbows, an axe, the edge of a room, a light, you know, like it of course there's not really any rhythm to it. It it it really does feel I mean it it's it's a kind of a fascinating film because it's this like in in a way kind of skeleton key to understanding all of Doris Wishman's films because it's it's Wishman completely um distilled, but also I think like as an object I just can't really find a way into it because it's like so unwatchable in some way.

SPEAKER_10 1:02:55

Yeah, now that you mentioned actually, I thought of uh about like uh Peter Chikarski's uh outer outer space.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:01

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_10 1:03:03

Which is kind of also kind of like I think it's called usually called like uh some kind of like premonition or like uh an approximation to a horror film, and in a way, you could say like Doris Wishman made that like 15 years earlier. Um because they also have this like central figure in the uh Chikarsky film, it's like Barbara Hershey in this case, uh in this case, like uh some of the folks. So I know there's something to that, I think. Also, I think I think the fact that it's almost accidentally experimental film even makes it more enduring to me. Then I think if like an experimental filmmaker would approach the same material, I think they will lose perhaps something uh a little bit more um less primal and effective to me. Like there'll be more double expositions and and those kind of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:42

There is a connection between Doris Richman and experimental cinema. I mean, it's also true of like a lot of amateur filmmakers, but in her case, like the the combination of like yeah, like primitivity or like primitiveness in those films, and like what is often like really bravura technique, like you can't help it. And I think this is the movie that that Chukaski is a perfect, I didn't think of that like a perfect analogy, you know, in the sense that it's like a film that ghosts are coming out of the celluloid, like ghosts of a genre film somehow.

SPEAKER_10 1:04:14

I think back to like the Silica Show episode and how again like Ezgon Sedla and all these filmmakers kind of like put on a pedestal, like um Mohjika Marin is almost kind of like force of filmmaker. I can also see that happening with those witchmen.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:27

This movie will destroy the myths of our films. It will be an experience which will have its audience asking itself what has come along with the dismissal dismember.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:12

Actually, in a in a sort of weird rhyme or echo of last week's episode on Meiko Kaji, uh I'm straining to make connections here. Wishman also kind of you know fell out of the film industry, in her case, I think, um, against her wishes in the late 70s. I think A Night to Dismember was made and undone in 1979, and she like good for her, like she stuck with it and like saw it as some form of completion. But the experience completely destroyed her career. Like a lot of filmmakers from this time, she entered the 1980s, and most of the 1990s is a kind of you know, wasteland that she was struggling to find a place in. Uh, she had no money whatsoever, so she actually sold a lot of the rights to her previous films that she bought as planned. And somehow like she she had a sense that they would be useful again, I guess later to an at home video, but she had a feeling that she could profit from them again, but she was forced to sell them. And she actually took up work in a Florida sex shop where she worked for um 15, more than 15 years, I believe. Um which is also kind of an amazing idea that you know these kind of like perverts who had masturbated to her films in the past would come into the sex shop and be served by the very woman who had made those films is kind of an unbelievable thought. Also, an unbelievable thought, I just want to say it, that you know, whether it's directing hardcore in 1976 or working in a sex shop, like respect to this woman who was in her mid to late 60s and then in her 70s. Uh apparently she was under five foot. Uh this old Jewish lady who was like, you know, on shooting on hardcore sets in a Florida sex shop. Um, and basically she worked there until some kind of retirement, uh, apart which coincided like very happily with a kind of renewed interest in Doris Richman's work, uh, thanks to underground festivals and so on. And she quickly turned that into a way of making films. So like she was famous for like meeting these like people who would interview her about her films, like you know, genre fans, and she would be like, Oh, you can be in my next movie, you can help me with this, you can do this. And so she she turned that into three final films: Satan was a lady. Like, apparently, she reused that title because she liked the title so much and felt it was waste wasted on a hardcore film. Dildo Heaven, which is like maybe the greatest title of all time. And uh Each Time I Kill, which was a film that she also made in 2002. He shot, and when the shooting was over, uh she found out that she had cancer, went to the hospital, and never left. And the film took a long time to be completed, because I think you know what people who worked on the film said was that, you know, they all knew that editing was where a Wishman film was made. So without her, I think it was very difficult to complete that film. But it was completed, and I think all three of those films basically only exist in bootlegs. Let's talk Dildo Heaven. This is one for the late-style heads out there. Because this is boy, boy, is this a late-style film, as pure as they come.

SPEAKER_10 1:08:33

She's 89, and I can just imagine her like carrying around like the shittiest like DV camera possible in the early 2000s. Just like working with this like random range of like Floridians, which I guess like nobody really made a career out of this film. I mean, to me, this film is perhaps more like visually expressive of all her work, including like the film she made in the 70s. Because I mean, just like the way she inter intersects like the material, because there's a lot of like material uh from previous films that she uh shows here, but I was just like it struck by the magic of like this Pippin Tom character. Oh my god, Billy! Every time he appears, it's to like uh segue into one of the sequences from her older films. To me, it's pure cinema when he he goes to like a like a door lock, like a 2000s door lock, which doesn't have necessarily have like the same Yeah, totally not.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:17

You could look through a door lock from 2002.

SPEAKER_10 1:09:20

He looks through it and then the shot is just like a cartoon doorlock, like with the same like frame, and then you see in like one of the uh footage from one of her previous films, I was like, ah yeah. I mean, this is like what when it's always worth thinking about montage, I think they were kind of like thinking of this kind of stuff. Yeah, like the narrative itself is also kind of like a throwback, I guess, like to like the kind of like nudie cutie films in a way. But I also find them totally more in line with like the deadly weapons because I think there's perhaps more like a I wouldn't say like seriousness to it, but I I guess I guess the girl power in this film feels more like palpable to me. Because again, it's like well, basically the flood, uh if people are interested in that it's like this random group of like friends who decided all simultaneously that that their main goal is to have sex with their bosses.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:06

Which is not really explained or kind of fleshed out in any detail, it's just kind of taken taken at face value.

SPEAKER_10 1:10:12

Yeah, it happens almost like independently because I don't really which I I don't really get what I that the whole plot of the film is just like them trying to like uh seduce their bosses, and this Billy character, which to me is like the heart of the film.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:26

Emotional core.

SPEAKER_10 1:10:28

Because he does have like a relationship with the girls at the at the end, and they they tease him and they have like the whole And Billy in this film for like uh like with maniacs and a tourist is the character that has like the dream sequence. So what can one could argue is the real protagonist here? Hmm, interesting analysis, but uh but as you as you see, like it doesn't happen to me, even just like on a plastic level, the fact that it was like recorded and in this like again, like digit, like awful digital like um format, but still like her ways of approaching the camera are not really like geared towards that format, it isn't really exploratory in that sense, so it feels like she's kind of trying to remake kind of like the 60s styles, like kind of like uh free-flowing uh goofy um comedies, just with without uh even acknowledging the fact that it's on a different device. And to me, I don't know, it was quite magical.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:16

I mean, it's like sex and the city in a way, like the girl power, uh like the girl living in the cities working and also like having sex with uh her boss, like that's that's kind of tropes. I think it's Lisa with the curly uh blonde curly hair, the scenes of her having sex with the photography guy clearly kind of um reminded me of this her early works. I think the camera work in these sequences are quite reminiscent of her early work. But um the formal experimentation, I definitely agree with you. And the the the the part the cheerfulness, it is it is also a quite a cheerful film, but you know what is interesting is also at the end they come all come together and we kind of have the account of what happened again a second time. So these kind of really goofy um repetitions is also what makes the film so funny because you see the scene that you just witnessed again. Yes, but it also has this very I mean I I call this like self-referentiality in Doris Richman cinema that's all starts like in the 60s, so she never leaves that, and even in Dildo Heaven, which is like full of these references that you mentioned through the Billy's uh dreamy or fantasy excursions to the Richmond land that take us back to her early works, but also the television itself. In the beginning, the girls are watching the f the TV, and there's love toy playing on the screen, and one of them says, Ah, it's just like a um child, like it's it's just like this is like entries level stuff kind of thing. So she mocks her own BDSM film in a really funny way, and these like this is like an inside joke, obviously, for people who know Wishman cinema. So I think while we watch it, knowing that what she made in the past, you also feel kind of included there. Like, I have right to be there, I have right to enjoy this film. That's probably the most feminist film that we can, like, if if you if you if you're to call this feminist, that's our most feminist film.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:34

I mean, you literally have like the unending where it's like, yeah, men are totally expendable.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:38

Like, yeah, I mean it's you kind of answered my question in a way, Uku, because you know, the every every other Wishman film that we've talked about, like had an audience. Like, audiences were like very much part of the equation of those films. Whereas when I watched Dildo Heaven, and it's of course an experience that a lot of late films of authors that you have watching them, but you know, you're watching this and you're like, who is this for? I mean, is this for like is is this for someone like to like rent in a sex shop or like what is this? And then yeah, as you you're right, like eventually you just have to come to the conclusion that it's like for Wishman heads, for wish maniacs, you know, there's no there's no other possible audio, but also just like a pleasure of like seeing her go through the the the hits. Exactly, because uh as you said, Alonzo, like it it is constructed almost exactly the same as her as her films of the 60s, except the fact that it's not on this like beautiful black and white 16mm, but it's on this like repugnant digital digital video. But there's just like a there's a pleasure in that, and there's also like this there is also kind of a maddening, but also fun centerlessness to the film, like like it never as it's it's like a familiar frustration from from Wishman films, like it it seems to be about a subject, but then it does everything it can to not be about that subject, you know. Like you could really easily characterize this as a film, like as a kind of like feminist female friendship, going around sleeping with their bosses, and at the end they decide that their dildos are better. But actually, when you watch it, the film you know it gives you that experience on some level, but a lot of the time it's just like very diffuse. It's like people being in rooms, people walking down the streets, you know, like it's it's it's like a total sort of like stream of consciousness style of filmmaking that that doesn't isn't necessarily tied to like genre cues, narrative cues, whatever. And this is just the most ultimate example of it because you know that she was 89 years old, she was just doing whatever the fuck she wanted.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:47

The most feminist film that ever can be is the one that defies the feminist readings, feminist c categories. So I think that's way that's what makes it feminist. Like you can't just use like the pre-existing categories or uh theoretical lines of feminist feminism here, which makes it even more feminist by its own existence, by its own. So yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:16:19

It's great. And also has a thrombone leg motif, which is perhaps one of the things like I I didn't notice until I saw this film, which is one of the things I miss the most in cinema. It's like thrombone leg motif.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:33

You know, maybe maybe to conclude in some way, I mean, you know, part of the pleasure of watching someone like this is also just to discover someone who was like a business person first, you know, like it's it's very characteristic to me that she like got this late-in-life fame. She discovered that she had become a cult director, and her first impulse was just to make films, even at a very old age and for no money. You know, I really regret the absence of people like that in cinema today, you know. I mean, she she clearly was an artist. I mean, like, that's that's without a doubt. Maybe to go back to the you know original formulation, uh as I said, I think that she's not necessarily a good filmmaker all the time, but she's a great one overall. And uh you know, she has like a very powerful artistic sensibility, but she's also just someone who like was willing to do basically anything to make movies. I admire that, you know, and looking at this like different stages of career, you can just see a woman who was just like finding any way to get movies made and get them seen by whoever could see them.

SPEAKER_10 1:17:41

Yeah, I mean, and she never clinged to any idea or preconceived notion of like what her cinema was or how it should look. Like she never conceived herself as an author, I think. And to me, that was also very commendable because it let her play with like a lot of erratically, yes, but with a lot of like different expressions, like her career had like three or four different, like totally distinct forms. And then you have like these like late films again, which is just like banking on those and that like uh being recognizable and doing whatever she wanted. And to me, that also like going back to little little heaven, like that film to me such a joy because you can really tell just by saying it, like how she sees her own career in that film, and that like uh almost like never taking it too seriously, but also being like playful, and that playfulness to me is what characterizes like her whole oof.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:28

I dildo's very close to me. I keep it in my drawer. It's HIV negative and has no flaw. Someday I'll find my love divine and I'll be overjoyed. The dilemma, my dildo feeling.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:01

That's it for Doris Wishman. But what have you guys been watching this past week?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:05

Um, I spent a bit of a time at Cinema du Rel uh last week. Uh we had a documentary film festival here in Paris. So I watched a couple of films there. Um The Rib of the Greater Bay Area. It was by a filmmaker that I really admired uh his previous film, Periphery of the Base, Zhu Tao. I hope I pronounce his name correctly. But it's just this this really interesting experience of a film, quite hard to describe because it's shot on a teleobjective. I think that's how we call it. So it starts with this tracking shot through the in the Bay Area, and it just goes and on and on to the right. Uh, but then something happens, like you have this flu or blocking on the screen, and it brings us to a completely different environment and a weather condition, the soundscape changes, and this happens throughout the whole film. So it's just this really dizzying experience of watching by watching those images. I keep myself like concentrating. Okay, I'm gonna focus and notice when the the change happens, but it's just such a fluid and interesting way of image and sound editing. It's just impossible to impossible to find a point of uh reference. You you just just like floating and flowing within the images. It's it's uh it's definitely one of the highlights of cinematic highlights of the year. I also saw a couple of shorts, uh Sharon Lockhart film, Windward, which also I think opened in uh fall festivals last year. And I also catched some uh Jumana Mana films I haven't watched uh before. It was a lovely festival. I think the programming this year was quite lovely, definitely better than last year. There was Lovers by Ryan Vermette, London, um Ben Rivers film, some some good films from Locarno. Shout out to Locarno, and uh yeah, it was a lot it was good from uh programming, and there's also a Luke Fowler retrospective, which I've unfortunately couldn't find time to to follow, and it's a large chunk of filmography, which I always feel like pressure to watch everything. So I then I end up watching not watching it at all, but basically, apart from Wishman uh universe, that's where where I kind of went uh into last week. How about you?

SPEAKER_10 1:21:36

Yeah, I guess in my case, the Wishman universe was kind of my safe haven because uh once again, foolishly, I tried to engage with contemporary film.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:44

How many episodes would it take before you realize this is uh not to be?

SPEAKER_10 1:21:48

Like I'm just like fully like uh around this like uh joyful filmmakers we talk about, and it's like, yeah, perhaps I can do I should give like I wanna want I don't want to be like that reactionary cinophile that just says everything new is wrong is is bad. Then I go and I watch like the newest Oliver Lachce film. Um which is a filmmaker I already knew and like Sidat. Yeah, uh yeah, I'm talking about Siddhart, yeah. So uh uh I saw people hated this film, and the reasons they hated this film made me just intrigue enough of perhaps I like this film. Because I talked about it very like what it's drawing for, and it's like some genre elements, and uh it's kind of like uh in low taste. I'm like, hmm, perhaps that's like I want the film. But uh no, because uh the way to me, at least like uh Lache like embraces his like a lower impulses in this film is totally counterintuitive to what I seek out in like uh genre film, which is it's very detached and still clearly like plain to like some aura of respectability, like uh his like landscape shots, which are going all the way back to Mimosas, which he also recorded in Moroccan like Atlas Mountains. Uh like that element of like transcendental nature and like the natural world being this kind of like place of like enlightenment, kind of like to me permeates the whole experience of the film, and then when it gets to like the more like abrasive parts of just being almost uh exploitation film, uh I'm totally lost because it's all permeated and this venue of alturism and like uh beautiful images. And I just feel like very like I don't know, like uh fake how how he kind of like tries to like give some thrust to his film through these like genre elements. There's some like some exploitation elements uh in there that gonna make me think of like 2000s, like um like severe and solemn like autures, like in Cannes and these festival festivals where you saw like not only Haneke, but like a little Mexican filmmakers like Amar Escalante and like those kind of guys, which they saw violence and this kind of element of like exploitation and some form of art like signaling towards like universalities and like uh some like uh some kind of like gravitas and pathos that they couldn't really achieve through normal dramatic like ways. So just throw away these like shocking moments, and to me that's kind of like wells, which in theory again is something that I like in exploitation films, but when it's kind of framed in this way, to me, it's just like kind of like totally counterproductive. And uh I also mentioned like uh if this film was done with like a with by a less like respectable filmmaker, I think it'll be more interesting to me, just having like ravers in the Moroccan desert, like all like doing drugs and then just like being killed off by their like detachment from the political context kind of makes sounds like uh like a Fulci film in some way. But then uh Lache has all this like uh pondering towards like some some suggestion of a post-post-apocalyptic world that's never really like explained or addressed, and then the way he kind of like frames like the bodies that actually inhabit like the desert is kind of very to me at least felt very exoticizing as well. So I don't know, feels like a kind of like a fraudulent film in many ways.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:45

You know, it's interesting to me that you you often see like respectable like prestige directors wanting to be exploitation directors, and you also see exploitation directors wanting to be prestige directors, like sometimes you'll see an exploitation director, given the right circumstance, will try to make something that they perceive as like prestige, which of course, like of those two options, I prefer the latter one. But it's interesting, like just thinking about it while you were talking about Siddha that like Wishman is like one of the only people who doesn't seem to want to make any other film other than the ones that she's making. Because at the end of her career, she just like is like, okay, what you want to make anything, like you know, all the commercial trappings are gone. Like, what do you want to make? I'll make the same thing. Dildo Heaven. Um, I actually saw the the the like two film I will only speak briefly. Um I was traveling the last week, so I didn't see too much, but interestingly about um about Dildo Heaven, I saw I saw I saw Dildo Heaven in the mix with two like very inappropriate films for that film. And when I log it on Letterboxd, I'm sure it'd be very funny. One was Satan Tango, uh, and the other one was Marketa Lazarova, the famous like Czech historical epic. And I came home from Market Lazarova and I was like, well, I have to watch Dildo Heaven. So so it was like one of the one of the oddest devil bills of of my of my time as a cinophile. It was interesting seeing those two films together because there are like interesting um ways to compare them. Uh I mean, you know, they're both obviously like massive black and white epics, is like the obvious thing to say. But you know, Saturn Tango has all these kind of like amazing mobile racking shots through space, whereas Monkaytela's Orava is like a much more sort of jagged experimental version of the same thing. It also has scenes of like torture to do with drinking milk, which I found interesting. Also, like, you know, thinking about this point about Cirat, I mean, you know, Satintango by this point is very much kind of a canonized film, uh, and also this kind of slow cinema monolith that I guess is a kind of a bible for a lot of filmmakers now. Also, because Bellatar, you know, late in his life engaged in what I would say are kind of like the bad kind of scams, which are these like film schools in Cuba or wherever it was, which, if I'm being totally honest, like degraded my opinion of Bellatar. Even though a lot of my favourite filmmakers ran scams, I don't think these are the ones that I approve of. Um, but watching Satan Tango, I I was like really amazed, obviously, by this like incredible film, and I was also amazed because this kind of like heritage of like so-called slow cinema that like was pilfered from Bellatar, um, never had any of the kind of like moving camera ingenuity of that film. Like, that film is like a constant redesign of its own like visual map, um, in a way that, like, of course, slowness is part of that, like, a slower pace is part of that, but the camera, even in like very confined. Spaces is always moving, it's always trying to find like different angles on a person.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:05

A drunk film, like because people are drinking palinka all the time. And I what I remember is just being dizzy and disoriented all the time watching it, like the people in it.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:15

Yeah, also because like the physical experience of watching it is like so tiring, of course. Um, so you're also in this kind of like semi-drunk state watching it. But yeah, it's true that this is like yeah, tango like movements of the camera and so on. But yeah, that's what I've been watching.

SPEAKER_10 1:28:30

Thanks for listening. You can uh send those letters with your comments, be it like positive or negative, the show at outskirtfilmmagazine at gmail.com. Next week on the show, we'll be talking about Elon Muscarado de Pata, the legend from Arena Mexico, the mystic man from Doctoris, Santo himself, as he battles vampires and mobsters and evil brains and all sorts of like evil foes.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:52

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