Myra Breckinridge

June 1, 2009 8:30 PM

I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess. Clad only in garter belt and one dress shield, I held off the entire elite of the Trobriand Islanders, a race who possess no words for "why" or "because." Wielding a stone axe, I broke the arms, the limbs, the balls (nsfw) of their finest warriors, my beauty blinding them, as it does all men...

Myra Breckinridge (1970) starred Raquel Welch, John Huston, movie reviewer Rex Reed, and - making her first screen appearance in 27 years - Mae West. Also appearing were then-unknowns Farrah Fawcett and Tom Selleck.

posted by Joe Beese (20 comments total)

But where is Joel and the robots?
posted by iamkimiam at 8:32 PM on June 1, 2009 [2 favorites]

That film is really remarkable for managing to combine all sorts of things that I love -- camp, Mae West, transgressive humor, Raquel Welch, Gore Vidal, Jim Backus, and, believe it or not, a very young Dan Hedaya -- into a film I never, ever want to watch again.
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:35 PM on June 1, 2009 [2 favorites]

A word to the wise, Joe: before linking to a geocities page, on Metafilter, hit it with CoralCache first. Because when its bandwidth allotment gets exceeded, it's too late to do it then.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:39 PM on June 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

George_Spiggott: "A word to the wise, Joe: before linking to a geocities page, on Metafilter, hit it with CoralCache first."

Crap... I meant to put up a "fragile GeoCities link" warning or something.

Here's the Google cache.
posted by Joe Beese at 8:41 PM on June 1, 2009

That "lesbian scene" with Farrah Fawcett seemed really promising, but ended up being about Farrah being upset about a guy. "If only you were a man", she says to Raquel Welch. I've never heard dialog like that in other lesbian scenes, least of all about Raquel Welch.
posted by twoleftfeet at 9:11 PM on June 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

When I was young I was hospitalized for a severe stomach infection. I'm sure it was really painful but I've long since forgotten the pain. It's good to forget things.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:06 PM on June 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

As Gore Vidal notes on the 5-disc Blu-Ray Complete Collector's Edition, some scenes had to be struck from the final print. Pegging Magnum PI was just not the same without his mustache.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:26 PM on June 1, 2009

During filming of Myra Breckinridge, Mae West was almost completely blind. She refused to admit this of course, and had men crawling at her feet to guide her around the set. No, really, a guy was on the floor to guide her around and give her cues. She insisted that they be attractive men.

She also engaged in an epic cat-fight with Raquel Welch.
posted by The Whelk at 6:29 AM on June 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Ms. West and her chorus line "A guy that takes his time."

Please note the bed.

Also, Mae West sings about how much she wants to sleep with Asian guys.
posted by The Whelk at 6:33 AM on June 2, 2009

Also, that NSFW clip, with Raquel yipping like an excited terrier, is some the best worst moments in all cinema. And I speak as someone who owns a copy of Shark Attack 3: Megalodon.

I need to stop talking about bad movies and start getting ready for work. Which neatly sums up my life at this point.
posted by The Whelk at 6:49 AM on June 2, 2009

A word to the wise, Joe: before linking to a geocities page, on Metafilter, hit it with CoralCache first.

I read that as ColdChef first and thought "Holy crap, what DOESN'T he do?"
posted by spec80 at 7:12 AM on June 2, 2009

Mixing Freud with popular culture isn't pretty.
posted by aquafortis at 9:14 AM on June 2, 2009

Gore Vidal: "I was having a meeting with a producer and I said to him, 'Look, I'm tired shitless of your complaints. You don't know what you're talking about. You know marketing, you may know how to make deals, but you don't know how to make movies, and you intrude on other people who are talented and do.' He exploded. 'How can you say that to me?' He was halfway across the room. 'I will hit you!' he said. Then I started toward him and said, 'I am going to throw you out of this window.' And I came at him. We were about three feet apart and he was running toward me and he couldn't stop because of how much he weighed -- he was very heavy. He veered off to the right and ran into a wall. I heard his nose crack against the wall."
posted by blucevalo at 9:34 AM on June 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Gore Vidal: "I was having a meeting with a producer and I said to him, 'Look, I'm tired shitless of your complaints. You don't know what you're talking about. You know marketing, you may know how to make deals, but you don't know how to make movies, and you intrude on other people who are talented and do.' He exploded. 'How can you say that to me?' He was halfway across the room. 'I will hit you!' he said. Then I started toward him and said, 'I am going to throw you out of this window.' And I came at him. We were about three feet apart and he was running toward me and he couldn't stop because of how much he weighed -- he was very heavy. He veered off to the right and ran into a wall. I heard his nose crack against the wall."

This needs some snappy theme music of some sort.
posted by metagnathous at 10:02 AM on June 2, 2009

Vidal broke the balls - and outlasted - tiresomely macho brawlers like Norman Mailer: he compared ‘The Prisoner of Sex’ to ‘three days of menstrual flow”; later, when he was knocked to the ground by Mailer, he retorted, still on the floor: ‘Words fail Norman Mailer yet again’.
posted by The Whelk at 11:43 AM on June 2, 2009

No way she would have held off the Chateaubriand warriors.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:15 PM on June 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Is it reasonable to give Vidal a pass for really ugly prejudice against transexuals on the grounds that it was 40 years ago, and he still is a wonderfully bitter and witty antidote to the stupidity of contemporary political criticism?
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:34 PM on June 2, 2009

Depending on who you ask Welch was either a shy, humble grandmother type deeply traumatized by Welch's indifferent treatment of her or an insane, deluded prima donna who colluded with Sarne in destroying the film.

I believe that should have said: "Depending on who you ask West was either a shy..."
posted by ZenMasterThis at 4:36 PM on June 2, 2009

Astro Zombie: That film is really remarkable for managing to combine all sorts of things that I love -- camp, Mae West, transgressive humor, Raquel Welch, Gore Vidal, Jim Backus, and, believe it or not, a very young Dan Hedaya -- into a film I never, ever want to watch again.

AZ, I would rather choose not to believe that one of the things you love is a very young Dan Hedaya.
posted by koeselitz at 10:44 PM on June 2, 2009

Randomly, thanks to this thread (and following random links from here) I learned that Salvador Dalí designed a couch called Mae West Lips. (I'd just seen it in photos, never noticed the name.) Which is a good thing because watching West's film clips from her final years always makes me a bit sad in that she seems to be working so hard at looking young - and there are no close closeups for a reason - seems like such hard work when she should have felt it was ok to grow older. (She hated the Diane Arbus photos of her - though she looks good for 72.) Not that Hollywood/America has ever wanted any female stars to age, ever. I suppose I shouldn't be too sad for her - she certainly seems to be enjoying herself and by all accounts she was always happiest when she had an audience.

And yes, I can't watch any of that film without thinking MST3K thoughts. I need a YouTube mod that will make those silhouettes appear on the screen...
posted by batgrlHG at 12:31 PM on June 3, 2009 [1 favorite]