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Mega-post full of rare vinyl picture discs from Russ Meyer, Blondie, Divine, AC/DC & more
08.14.2017
09:44 am
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A limited edition picture disc for Blondie’s 1978 record ‘Parallel Lines.’
 
The first thing I learned while pulling this post together is this—there are entirely TOO many Madonna-related picture discs. The flip side of that dated news flash is the fact that an astonishing number of rare, collectible picture discs exist, many of which I’m sure you will want to get your hands on, if you can. The other thing I learned about picture discs today is that there is a shit-ton of pretty looking vinyl that features nudity. For instance, a few soundtracks from the films of titty-titan Russ Meyer such as Mudhoney, Supervixens and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! have all gotten special, topless picture disc pressings.

The vast majority of picture discs in this post contain interviews with the artist or band, though in some cases they do actually play music like a record should. Now before you remind me that music doesn’t sound all that great on a picture disc, I’m already well aware of this. I do however love collecting vinyl of this nature not just for their novelty appeal but because I also view them as a form of art that is still a vital part of vinyl culture today. When I called this a “mega-post,” I was not kidding as there are over 25 images below for you to check out, many of which are NSFW thanks to Russ Meyer of course. You have been warned!
 

Side A of a picture disc featuring music from the Russ Meyer films, ‘Good Morning…And Goodbye!,’ ‘Cherry, Harry & Raquel,’ and ‘Mondo Topless.’
 

Side A of a picture disc featuring music from the Russ Meyer films, ‘Up!’ ‘Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra Vixens,’ and ‘Supervixens.’
 

Side B of the Russ Meyer album above.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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08.14.2017
09:44 am
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Super hot German movie poster & lobby cards for ‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’


A German movie poster for the 1965 film ‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’
 

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence, the word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains… sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn’t only destroy, it creates and molds as well. Let’s examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken, the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don’t drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor’s receptionist… or a dancer in a go-go club!

Russ Meyer’s 1965 Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! features a rogue gang of go-go dancers who decide to set off into the desert in search of mayhem, money and men to mercilessly mess with… and as the title suggests kill. While the best thing about this movie is clearly its karate chopping star Tura Satana, a close runner up would be the German movie posters and lobby cards for the film. The German marketing materials are about as far-out as the film itself.

When I ran the words “Die Satansweiber von Tittfield” through Google Translate it didn’t exactly make sense. And sadly the strange but appropriate sounding word “Tittfield” seems to be there solely for our amusement, like “Boobsville” or something.  I love seeing powerful women beating the crap out any man who gets in the way of them having a good time, don’t you? It’s a sentiment echoed by Meyer himself in an interview from 1998. The then 76-year-old director was touring around the world in support of a re-release of FPKK when he was asked for his opinion regarding the film’s remarkable ability to keep attracting audiences 30-plus years after its initial release:

It’s a little puzzling. Most of my films have women who have large breasts. It’s not that the girls are completely lacking in accouterments there, but… I suppose they like the idea of the women kicking the shit out of the men. More than anything else, I think that’s the reason it’s done very, very well.

It might also have something to do with the snappy and highly quotable dialogue. With lines like “Easy baby! You’re almost a fire hazard!” or “I never try anything, I just do it” or “Women! They let ‘em vote, smoke and drive - even put ‘em in pants! And what happens? A Democrat for president!” how can you go wrong?

Much like the film itself (and everything else in Meyer’s long shapely body of work) some of the images in this post are NSFW. I’ve also included a few U.S. lobby cards for the film that contained images from the movie that were too great not to share.
 

A German lobby card for the 1965 film ‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’
 

 

 
More ‘Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!’ after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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11.02.2016
03:19 pm
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Ass-kicking ‘Faster Pussycat’ heroine Tura Satana during her younger days as a burlesque dancer
10.06.2016
01:09 pm
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Bad girl rule-breaker Tura Satana’s name is pretty much synonymous with the film that propelled her to fame as the ass-kicking, man eating “Varla,” Russ Meyer’s 1965 Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. And if you know anything about Satana’s background you already know that she lived up to one of her famous lines (which I’m riffing on here) in the flick by never trying anything. She just did it.

Born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi in Hokkaido, Japan in 1938 (or 1935 according to some sources) both of Satana’s parents were performers. Her father (who was part Japanese and part Filipino) was an actor who appeared in silent films. Satana’s mother performed in circuses as a contortionist and was of a mix of Native American and Scottish descent which further contributed to Satana’s exotic and unique look.

After moving to the U.S. in 1942 when Tura was only four, she and her father were sent to an internment camp in California for Japanese-Americans where they lived for two years until they reunited with her mother in Chicago. As the feelings of resentment toward the Japanese were still high following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 Tura (as well as other U.S. residents of Japanese descent) was the object of harassment and routinely subjected to bullying at school. At the age of ten Tura was brutally gang-raped by a group of teenagers. Despite her age and the horrific magnitude of the crime the five assailants were never prosecuted for the despicable assault. As a response to help protect his child, Tura’s father apparently tutored her in various martial arts such as Aikido and Karate so that she would always be able to protect herself. According to Satana herself for her portrayal of Varla she drew from the internalized rage from her rape which would further immortalize her face-smashing character in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.
 

Tura Satana as ‘Varla’ in Russ Meyer’s ‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’
 
At thirteen, her parents entered her into an “arranged” marriage with a family friend John Satana that would end only nine months later while Tura was starting her career as an exotic dancer. Not long after her marriage ended Satana found her way to the city of broken dreams, Los Angeles and was quickly discovered while performing her special blend of burlesque dancing mixed with martial arts moves. She got her first acting role in the 1959 ABC television series Hawaiian Eye. This led to many other acting roles one of which was with one of Satana’s rumored love interests, director Billy Wilder in 1963’s Irma La Douce and a role that same year opposite Dean Martin (where she played a stripper) in Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed. And if super-groupie Pamela Des Barres is to be believed (detailed in her 2008 book Let’s Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies), it was Tura herself who taught The King, Elvis Presley (another of Satana’s boy toys) his signature dance moves. 

Satana ditched her dance routines when California changed the laws governing exotic dancing which allowed clubs to require dancers appear topless and instead turned to straight jobs such as nursing, and in her later years even working as security detail for a Hilton casino in Reno, Nevada under the name “Tura Jurman” after marrying former police officer Endel Jurman in 1981. I’ve posted a variety of incredible photos of Satana from when she was known as “Miss Japan Beautiful” (a nickname that would follow her throughout her career) that were taken during her days as a burlesque dancer for you to oogle below. I’ve also included footage from Tura showing off her dance moves in the 1973 film The Doll Squad. Naturally since this is Tura Satana we are talking about, please assume that many of the images that follow are NSFW. Much like the woman herself.
 

Tura Satana in ‘Burlesque Magazine’ when she was only nineteen, 1957.
 

 

 
More Tura! Tura! Tura! after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
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10.06.2016
01:09 pm
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Breast Man: Will Ferrell to play Russ Meyer in film about making of ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls’
08.05.2014
05:54 pm
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According to Deadline Hollywood, comic actor Will Ferrell is rumored to be circling the role of Russ Meyer in Russ & Roger Go Beyond, an indie biopic focusing on the breast-obsessed softcore auteur’s working relationship with film critic Roger Ebert on their 1970 cult classic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

Writing about the film years later in a 1980 issue of Film Comment, Ebert had this to say:

Remembered after 10 years, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” seems more and more like a movie that got made by accident when the lunatics took over the asylum. At the time Russ Meyer and I were working on “BVD” I didn’t really understand how unusual the project was. But in hindsight I can recognize that the conditions of its making were almost miraculous. An independent X-rated filmmaker and an inexperienced screenwriter were brought into a major studio and given carte blanche to turn out a satire of one of the studio’s own hits. And “BVC” was made at a time when the studio’s own fortunes were so low that the movie was seen almost fatalistically, as a gamble that none of the studio executives really wanted to think about, so that there was a minimum of supervision (or even cognizance) from the Front Office.

We wrote the screenplay in six weeks flat, laughing maniacally from time to time, and then the movie was made. Whatever its faults or virtues, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” is an original—a satire of Hollywood conventions, genres, situations, dialogue, characters and success formulas, heavily overlaid with such shocking violence that some critics didn’t know whether the movie “knew” it was a comedy.

Although Meyer had been signed to a three-picture deal by 20th Century-Fox, I wonder whether at some level he didn’t suspect that “BVD” would be his best shot at employing all the resources of a big studio at the service of his own highly personal vision, his world of libidinous, simplistic creatures who inhabit a pop universe. Meyer wanted everything in the screenplay except the kitchen sink. The movie, he theorized, should simultaneously be a satire, a serious melodrama, a rock musical, a comedy, a violent exploitation picture, a skin flick and a moralistic expose (so soon after the Sharon Tate murders) of what the opening crawl called “the oft-times nightmarish world of Show Business.”

Simpsons and SNL writer Chris Cluess wrote the script. Speculation so far is that Edgar Wright wants to direct and that Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen are both being considered for the role of Ebert, who interestingly, got the job in the first place because he’d written positive reviews of Meyer’s previous films for the Chicago Sun Times.

Ebert and Meyer stayed friends throughout their lives. Meyer passed away in 2004 and Ebert, after a long battle with cancer, died in 2013.

Below, the trailer, heavy on behind the scenes, for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls:

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.05.2014
05:54 pm
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Russ Meyer’s ‘Fanny Hill’: Bosomania Gets Fancy


 
The name Russ Meyer has some striking connotations. The first being a comic-book style obsession with large, heaving, fleshy female breasts. But if all you see with the man is pendulous, heaving, busting-out-of-the screen tatas, then you are seeing only part of the picture. Meyer’s signature films boasted top notch editing that never let you finish a breath, plot lines that played out like the weirdest morality tale and characters that were so over the top and wild, that you really wished real life could be just like that.

Out of the 24 feature films he is credited with directing, there is one that has been fairly obscure and in the shadows till now. With 1964’s Fanny Hill, there are some potential reasons for this. That’s not to say it is a bad movie. It’s cute, features some lovely ladies and some fun performances. Fanny Hill stars Italian actress Leticia Roman as the very pretty, sweet natured and brain-damaged/naive titular character. Unlike the sexually precocious character from the classic 1700’s purple prose book, this Fanny Hill is about as glowy-cheeked and innocent as a Disney character.
 
Leticia Roman in Fanny Hill
 
After being orphaned by her rural parents, Fanny is taken to the city by her “friend,” whom we never meet. Abandoned, homeless and hungry, a desperate Fanny ends up at an employment office run by a hirsute woman with salacious looks. Before the living definition of mustache rides can act on any of her barely hidden impulses, Mrs. Maude Brown (legendary classic Hollywood actress Miriam Hopkins) saunters in and is flabbergasted at the eerie resemblance that young Fanny has with her late daughter.

Mrs. Brown immediately takes on the young lamb, not as a maid, but as a surrogate daughter. Madame seems a bit off, but compared to whatever fate beautiful-dim bulb Fanny has with Mustache Rides, she is in better hands with Mrs. Brown. She soon gets to stay at her new benefactress’s lovely home and her coterie of comely “cousins.” At last, the Meyer-ian buxotic factor comes into play, as each woman is gorgeous and colorful, including one acting like a crazed Lolita and another one practicing her whipping techniques on a mannequin. Russ Mayer fans will spot the uber-busty Rena Horten, whom he would go on to use in the incredible sex filled, fire and brimstone fueled Mudhoney, amongst the “cousins.”
 
The
 
After setting her up with one particularly lecherous, bewigged older man that ends up in catastrophe, Mrs. Brown realizes how genuinely virginal her new charge is. Of course, does that dissuade her from wanting to assimilate the young lovely into her roster of sexed-up, tigress-courtesans? Of course not!

However, as if Fanny’s blind allegiance to her own dim-witted naivete was not enough, soon another threat looms to wrench Brown’s plans for making the girl her next soiled dove. A chance meeting with a young sailor, Charles (future director Ulli Lommel), plunges Cupid’s arrow straight down Fanny’s heart. The young lovers announce their plans to wed to Mme. Brown. Not wanting her still untarnished future meal ticket to slip away, Brown engineers a plan to put Charles far away on an island. But you cannot keep a seafaring soul away and hijinks ensue, including one randy aristocrat named Hemingway (Walter Giller) who tries to wed Fanny, solely to get into her pantaloons. Will true love intervene or will our young heroine end up violated by a man whose sexual games involve gropey sleepwalking?
 
Hemingway sleepwalks
 
Fanny Hill is a cheeky film that is about as racy, if not slightly less so, than an episode of Benny Hill. Given that Mayer was THE godfather behind the nudie-cutie film movement, starting with the groundbreaking Immoral Mr. Teas, it is incredibly surprising that there is nary any real nudity in the entire film. There’s a decent amount of cleavage and some of the aforementioned ribaldry, but given that this came out the same year as Meyer’s far heavier and lurid Southern-fueled exploiter, Lorna, it feels unreasonably tame.

That said, Fanny Hillis a charming film with a cast that obviously had a lot of fun and relish with their roles. Hopkins, famous for her work in such Hollywood classics as 1933’s Design for Living, glams it up as the advantageous Mrs. Brown. Giller as the ridiculously lecherous Hemingway is even better, to the extent that you want more of his character. Roman is highly pretty and well suited to the supernaturally naive Fanny. Out of the canon of Meyer heroines, she is the wallflower at a swinging, claws-out-fighting party filled with women like Tura Satana, Erica Gavin, Kitten Natividad and Uschi Digard. But that’s okay because “Fanny Hill” itself is the wallflower of Meyer’s filmography.
 
Fanny & Charles rolling in the hay.
 
That said, even wallflowers have their moments and deserve love too. Thanks to the continually fine work from the folks at Vinegar Syndrome, this long obscure title is now available, spiffed up from its original negative and released on both DVD and Blu Ray. It’s great to have it, especially since the only time I ever remember seeing it beforehand was on a battered Paragon VHS at the second oldest video store in my hometown. On top of this nice release, they have also included an interview with former protege of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and director of the 1980 Richard Hell film Blank Generation, Ulli Lommel. They have also included Albert Zugsmith’s The Phantom Gunslinger as a bonus second feature! (Zugsmith who produced Fanny Hill.) Starring former teen heartthrob Troy Donahue and famed Mexican horror actor German Robles, The Phantom Gunslinger ironically looks visually more like a Meyer film, minus the breasty factor, than Fanny Hill. Splashy colors, Ala Wild Gals of the Wild West, and an over-the-top approach to characters that it feels like Tex Avery did five hits of acid and decided to make a live-action Western film with Troy Donahue. This is praise, by the way.
 
Mustache Kiss
 
Fanny Hill is a cute and interesting cinematic footnote of one of the truly most innovative, talented and wholly unique filmmakers America has produced in the last 100 years. Treat it like your charming Aunt, tipsy at a brunch after her 3rd Mimosa, telling you a PG-13 joke and giggling like she just said the nastiest thing in the world.
VHS release on

Posted by Heather Drain
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01.13.2014
11:37 am
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Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert to feature in a happening that will freak you out?
10.09.2013
06:38 pm
Topics:
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The 1970 release of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls by 20th Century Fox remains something of a miracle. No movie came as close to capturing the insanity of the dark year of 1969, which included both the Manson murders and Altamont, as Russ Meyer’s brilliantly directed freakout melodrama. 

Russ Meyer has always been a cult hero of sorts, and in the last years of his life Ebert became a large-scale version of the same thing, as his refusal to let his diagnosis of papillary thyroid cancer in 2002 reduce his visibility; his occasional outspoken political pronouncements; and his newfound love of cooking (among many other endearing tendencies) won him a whole new generation of Internet fans.

The anomalous detail in Ebert’s career always was that sole screenwriting credit—that of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. (Did any screenwriter with a single credit write a better movie than that?)

How did Meyer and Ebert come into contact with each other? What sort of things did they say to each other? Questions very like these may well be answered when the movie about the making of Beyond is made! Earlier today it was reported that a script about the relationship between Meyer and Ebert written by Simpsons and SCTV veteran Christopher Cluess has been picked up for production by Sobini Films, Permut Presentations, and Chautauqua Entertainment.

It’s still a long way from being cast, shot, edited, and released, but boy, are we keeping our fingers crossed. (Actually, what movie could possibly live up to one’s wildest expectations?)

The pressing question is: Who will play Ebert? Philip Seymour Hoffman? Jonah Hill? It’s an unorthodox choice but I could see Tony Hale pulling it off…..


 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Roger Ebert on Universal Health Care and Sarah Palin’s “Death Squads”
Cher vs. Christina Aguilera in ‘Burlesque’: drag queen training film or C-cup Russ Meyer

Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.09.2013
06:38 pm
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‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’: Watch it here now!

image
 
Here it is in all of its unadulterated glory, Russ Meyer’s riot grrrl masterpiece Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! , the film John Waters called “beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future.”

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence, the word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains… sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn’t only destroy, it creates and molds as well. Let’s examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken, the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don’t drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor’s receptionist… or a dancer in a go-go club!

In stunning black and white.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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01.19.2012
01:11 am
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‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls’ star Cynthia Myers, RIP
12.05.2011
08:37 pm
Topics:
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image
 
Sad to hear that Cynthia Myers, best known for her roll as bass playing Casey Anderson in the fictional all-girl rockers, “The Carrie Nations” in Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and for being Playboy magazine’s Playmate of the Month for the December 1968 issue, died on November 4, 2011.

She was 61. The cause of her death is unknown.
 

 
Thank you Douglas DeMille

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.05.2011
08:37 pm
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Polish rock video of the day
08.10.2010
06:57 am
Topics:
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image
 
Kobiety (Women) are from Poland. The song is Marcello. The film footage is Russ Meyer. I like it. I’m sharing it. I wish I knew more about the band, but everything I’m finding on the Internet is in Polish. Based on this song and video, I’m impressed.

Warning: this video contains large naked breasts and transistor radios.

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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08.10.2010
06:57 am
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Who Killed Bambi?  The Roger Ebert Sex Pistols Screenplay

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After the death of Malcolm McLaren, film critic (and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls scribe), Roger Ebert posted on his always-excellent journal, McLaren & Meyer & Rotten & Vicious & Me, his take on getting a Sex Pistols movie off the ground with Dolls director, Russ Meyer.

At the time, Ebert had no idea who the Sex Pistols were.  The Pistols, though, very much wanted to work with the creative team behind Dolls, a movie Johnny Rotten deemed as being, “true to life.”  It’s a funny, informative account that somehow, along the way, accommodates both P.J. Proby and Scientology

As to why the movie, Who Killed Bambi?, never happened, various reasons have been circulated: Maybe 20th Century Fox pulled the plug after reading the resulting screenplay, or McLaren’s shaky finances would never have covered the film’s budget.  Or perhaps, most intriguingly, (Princess) Grace Kelly, who served on the Fox board of directors, simply didn’t want the studio to back another Russ Meyer X-travaganza (likely profits be damned).

Oh well, we still have Julien Temple’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle and The Filth and The Fury.  But we can now add to that era another document.  Ebert just posted on his journal the complete screenplay for Who Killed Bambi?  Here’s a sample:

Just then the SEX PISTOLS appear on the screen.  They’re dressed in what could be described as Proto-Punk: The look is definitely different from that of the other people on the line, and yet isn’t as well-defined as it will be later on.

They split up to work the line: They’re of it, but not in it.  STEVE carries his guitar, vaguely suggesting they’re into music of some sort.  SID VICIOUS goes into his famous Sun-Glasses dance, his hands inverted and placed in front of his eyes to suggest either binoculars or a Batman-style headdress.  The Pistols seem amused by the notion that people would stand in line in an unemployment queue at all.

Proby watches, fascinated by their wonderfully Downtrodden look, as they approach the others.

SID VICIOUS (to the Miner)
Why stand in line, you silly twit?

JOHNNY ROTTEN
It’s your money - why wait for it?

PAUL COOK
Why don’t they provide seating out here?

The crowd grows silent, uneasy, in the face of the attack.

STEVE JONES
They take it with one hand and give it back with the other.

SID VICIOUS
So smash it and take it!

And while Ebert refuses to comment on his script, “I can’t discuss what I wrote, why I wrote it, or what I should or shouldn’t have written.  Frankly, I have no idea,” here he is in ‘88 with Meyer and McLaren discussing—and venting over—Who Killed Bambi?

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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04.26.2010
05:05 pm
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