Icons Aren’t Forever or ‘Famous Monsters of Filmland’

The Uma Thurman/Quentin Tarantino revelations of last weekend jogged my memory of a rather disturbing article that first ran in Femme Fatales magazine in the 1990s, and concerned Pamela Green’s ill-treatment on the set of Peeping Tom (1960) by its director Michael Powell. (you can read the article online here )

Admittedly Green and Powell are both long dead, and not around to be the recipients of the public sympathy and contempt that are currently being dished out to Thurman and Tarantino respectively. Still Powell, like Tarantino, is one of those filmmakers whose admirers always insist on defending, even when their behaviour is to the average person at least, indefensible. Note the distasteful way in which the article linked to above insists that you should read a more flattering overview of Peeping Tom before you bother to hear her account. In a similar vein I recall mentioning several of Green’s allegations about Powell on a certain message board a few years ago, only to be shouted down by a Powell admirer, who came to their hero’s defence with something to the effect of “Mr. Powell treated his artists with the respect that their talent deserved” as if the fact that Green was a novice actress, and mainly a nude model, somehow entitled Powell to treat her like garbage...and smile while nearly blinding her on the set.

So, forgive me if I don’t tear up when the ol’ sob story that “critics’ initial reaction to Peeping Tom all but killed the career of this great filmmaker” gets trotted out for the umpteenth time. Boo-Hoo. It seems to be beyond the grasp of Powell’s admirers that a person can be both a cinematic genius and a sadistic creep, Mr. Powell it seems was both.

Green’s ill-treatment on the set of Peeping Tom only exists in the form of her own oral recollections, but over the weekend behind-the-scenes footage of the on-set incident during the filming of Kill Bill that left Uma Thurman with permanent damage to her neck, concussion and damage to her knees has come to light. The footage is as appalling as you’d expect, clearly no one but an experienced stunt person should have been behind the wheel of that car, and the fact that Tarantino pressured her into performing that scene (“Quentin came into my trailer and didn’t like to hear no. He was furious because i’d cost them a lot of time”) speaks volumes about his egomania and control freakery. Admittedly Thurman has subsequently back-tracked on a number of her initial claims, and now states that Tarantino helped her acquire this footage that others involved in the production (including, natch, Harvey Weinstein) have attempted to suppress for 15 years. Seemingly a direct contradiction of her claim in the original New York Times article that she and Tarantino “were shouting at each other because he wouldn’t let me see the footage and he told me that was what they had all decided”.

Call me a cynic, but all of this reeks of a reputation saving exercise by a powerful Hollywood figure, i.e. Tarantino, who is perfectly happy to throw former associates under the pussy wagon in order to save his own career. Former associates whose main villainy here seems to have been to conceal evidence of HIS on-set wrongdoing. I seem to recall in ‘Not Quite Hollywood’, the 2008 documentary about the Australian exploitation film genre, Tarantino having a particularly excitable recollection of seeing actor George Lazenby being set on fire at the end of ozzploitation movie The Man From Hong Kong (1975), which in retrospective seems evidence of Tarantino’s preference for seeing actors perform dangerous stunts over experienced stunt persons.

The sycophancy and blind, hero worship that surrounds Tarantino, especially on the internet, has been a particular source of irritation for a number of years. People who like his films, or simply share his taste in films, seem to form an imaginary friendship with him, and believing that he is their ‘buddy’ can always be relied upon to defend him online, or shield him from criticism when those around him come under fire. Remember when the Lianne Spiderbaby story broke and all the Tarantino sycophants were quick to flood the internet with self-assurances that “Quentin couldn’t have known what she was up to” ditto when it came out about Weinstein and it was all “Quentin couldn’t have known what he was up to”. Thurman’s partial retraction of her story has somewhat muted criticism of Tarantino for now, but maybe small cracks are starting to show in his shining armour, maybe people will now think twice about jumping to his defence, maybe they’ll even feel a bit guilty for doing so in the past...maybe. Who knows though, Tarantino’s fanbase often seems as sociopathic as the man himself, what other conclusion can you reach when you see twitter responses to Thurman’s story like “she needs to STFU with these sob stories” and “Quintin (sic) is more than just a man. He’s an artist of great caliber (sic)”. Ditto when people read about a film director causing an actress permanent damage and their only response is to take to an internet message board expressing panicked concern, not of course about her future career but how this might jeopardize HIS involvement in the latest Star Trek film.

People don’t always make fools of themselves when their idols’ behaviour comes under scrutiny though. A thread over at the Classic Horror Film Board site has recently shed light on the exceptionally dark side of the late Forrest J Ackerman, the legendary editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and a massively important figure in the world of Sci-Fi and Horror film fandom in the states. I’ve no particular history with Ackerman myself, he was before my time and his fame largely contained to the USA. Therefore I can’t begin to imagine the disillusionment of waking up, going on the internet and seeing your childhood idol being accused of groping and sexually harassing a female horror genre writer, of writing and faxing her obscene letters detailing his sexual fantasies for nearly two decades, or of sending others unsolicited, and unwanted pornography through the mail, many of which is said of have been of a sickening nature and involve children. It would be easy for Ackerman’s fanbase to go into denial mode, to dismiss it all out of hand, and to lash out at their hero’s detractors. To their credit though the users of the Classic Horror Film board took the allegations seriously, and given the strength of the allegations and the credibility of Ackerman’s accusers, were quick to express revulsion at Ackerman and shower Ackerman’s main accuser, Lucy Chase Williams (author of ‘The Films of Vincent Price’) with praise at her bravery in coming forward with these claims.

It can be difficult to turn against your icons, you have to sever what relationship or connection you felt you had with them, you have to throw away decades of love and respect, you have to accept that these people aren’t worthy of your admiration, hardest of all you have to admit that you were wrong about someone. It can be difficult… embarrassing… painful even, but it is necessary, better that than be yourself remembered as the person who futilely tried to keep the reputation clean of very bad men. The classic horror film board shows the correct way to handle this troubling situation, groupies of Powell and Tarantino would be wise to learn by example.