The wilder planet of Roland Topor

December 11, 2006 6:05 PM

Topor et moi. Roland Topor was the graphic artist behind the beautiful Planète Sauvage (Cf. a few posts below) but his body of work also included founding the Panic Movement with fellow oddballs Jodorowsky and Arrabal, writing plays and novels (The Tenant, turned into a movie by another Paris-born celebrity of Polish extraction and amateur of bizarre, Roman Polanski), and making strange and popular TV shows for children (YouTube clips from the 80s). Except for the kids shows, most of the links are quite NSFW with abundant sex and/or violence, though in a cartoonish, disturbing, surreal, or even political way: Topor once said (YouTube documentary in French starting with his Phallunculi series) that to renounce sex was to banish oneself from mankind. Topor himself was also a familiar figure of the French cultural landscape, instantly recognisable thanks to his manic cackle (heard at the beginning of this video where he explains how to make art from random pornographic images), that he (over)used to play the madman Renfield in Herzog's Nosferatu.
posted by elgilito (10 comments total)

Thanks to Smoothvirus for his Planète Sauvage post, btw. Originally, I wanted to add this as comment to his link but there was so much fantastic Topor material on the net that I thought it deserved its own post.
posted by elgilito at 6:13 PM on December 11, 2006

I didn't know Topor was in Herzog's Nosferatu. One less hurdle for the six degrees of seperation game.
posted by gcbv at 6:23 PM on December 11, 2006

I suppose I can get behind this kind of one-upsmanship.
posted by GuyZero at 6:56 PM on December 11, 2006

What a wonderful post.
Thank you.
posted by squidfartz at 7:53 PM on December 11, 2006

He co-wrote Marquis, a strange film I saw quite some time ago. The Marquis de Sade writing his memoirs in the Bastille, aided by his talking penis. All the characters are anthropomorphic animals. It's been so long since I've seen it that I can't really remember how good the script was, but it was worth watching for the surreal visuals. (NYTimes review is here.)
posted by Zack_Replica at 10:41 PM on December 11, 2006

This is a great post!
posted by vacapinta at 12:24 AM on December 12, 2006

Thanks for this, elgilito.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:00 AM on December 12, 2006

Fantastic post. Thanks!
posted by maryh at 1:53 AM on December 12, 2006

+1
posted by Wolof at 3:18 AM on December 12, 2006

Roland Topor was a superb draftsman and a fucking weirdo, which makes him aces in my book.
posted by Scoo at 12:03 PM on December 12, 2006