“Hey Gene, Gene Barry, I’ve got this great idea. Why don’t you sink some of the money you made from starring in that British TV series ‘The Adventurer’ into a movie called The Second Coming of Suzanne. The title might sound like one of those porno chic movies, but don’t worry its all above board, its actually gonna be a visualization of a song by that great misery of our times Leonard Cohen. Its all about a far out filmmaker who is hung up on the idea that Christ is going to return to earth as a woman. This idea blows everyone’s minds, except the man’s. The idea scares the establishment, who won’t finance a movie version of this idea because the filmmaker wants to cast a chick, played by Sondra Locke, as Jesus. Man, this film will reflect what the youth of today are really thinking, because we’ll randomly cut in vox-pops interviews with the youth of today telling us what they’re really thinking….and there is gonna be these secondary characters who for no apparent reason are wearing clown face make-up, you know like in all those Fellini movies…and in one scene the clowns are chasing after the female messiah in a dinghy…but get this…the dinghy is actually on dry land, but the clowns are still trying to row it anyway, because well…clowns are like that, aren’t they?
Of course they’ll be a role for you in this movie too, you’ll play a character who symbolizes the capitalist system, but you become disillusioned after your chauffeur quits his job and drops out, then a black guy knocks you down on the street and asks if he can pick you back up again…man, that is a really heavy bit, then you become obsessed with Sondra Locke’s character because she’s like…Lady Jesus. Of course the only people who’ll ever understand what this film is about are those who have smoked a ton of grass beforehand- man, those people will get it- everyone else will think we've lost our minds and need carting off to a padded cell…but if all else fails we can always falsely market it as a horror film. Oh, and did I mention that you have to wear a ridiculous fat suit for the duration of this movie? So Gene, what do you think to that idea?”
“this kid, Sondra Locke, is she taller than me?”
“No Gene, don’t worry, Sondra’s only 5 foot something”
“GREAT, where do I sign”
3 comments:
Is that definitely a fat suit yer man is wearing? When I watched this, I thought "Crikey, he's let himself go!" but seeing as how nothing in this film makes conventional sense to us squares, I suppose he could have been enveloped in padding, just because.
I’m guessing it was a fat suit on the basis that it looks so unnatural and I don’t recall him looking that grossly overweight in anything else from this period.
For some reason I’ve always just assumed that The Second Coming of Suzanne was just a dreary 1970s TV movie, the title and the cast list do give that impression, so I had little idea of what I was letting myself in for here. Now that I’ve seen it I have to wonder why this film isn’t more well known, especially by connoisseurs of 1970s weird hippie shit cinema, its up there with the most self-indulgent of ‘em.
I think it would be more popular (well, relatively) if it wasn't so po-faced. It is weird, but it's too keen on taking itself VERY SERIOUSLY so that it's not much fun to watch.
Mind you, I feel the same way about Zardoz and some people love that one, so what do I know? Greaser's Palace is the same kind of thing and has more of a following than Suzanne (must be those Toni Basil fans).
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