Big Bosoms and Square Jaws

May 23, 2005


Reviewed by
Legs McNeil
God I love slang, I really do, especially when it's used to write a biography of a man obsessed with only two things in life: WWII and heaving, pendulous breasts."
Subtitled The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film, McDonough's work paints a two-fisted tale of the legendary filmmaker who helped launch the sexual revolution with his scandalous Immoral Mr. Teas
in 1959; caused a rip in the time/space continuum of the psychedelic 1960s with Mondo Topless
and Super Vixens
; and clenched the beatnik and punk ethics with Faster Pussycat
, Kill, Kill!
and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens
.
Meyer was a square who helped define hip in an unhip time—those incredibly boring 1950s.
Way cool, except that books that rely on slang don't usually read too well. Witness Meyer's own three-volume autobiography, A Clean Breast
. It's an unreadable 1,150-page work that pursues the diary of a breast fetishist. Very interesting, but monotonous.
A Clean Breast
leaves you thanking God for McDonough's book, which, like Meyer's, pushes the limits of vernacular use, but, unlike Meyer's, succeeds, because McDonough's slang is so damn funny—as in: "A stiff swirl of cotton-candy blond hair, lips like over-stuffed couches mating, a lethal weapon body—there was something plain wicked about Lorna Maitland. Her terminally unimpressed scowl seemed to suggest that your balls were not long for this world."
Although McDonough (Shakey
) infuses his book with well-researched history, he always comes back to Meyer's obsession with buxom gals: "Meyer likened the process to an affair. After poring over every inch of their bodies with his camera eye, he'd grow bored—and so would they.... Once you've unwrapped them, the thrill is gone."
But what if you really don't care about an incredibly immature man who spent his whole life engaging in "quickies," producing and directing cheap films about stacked women and hanging out drinking with his WWII buddies?
Here McDonough hits on a stroke of genius—he displays Meyer nurturing his macho image and melting down when that image is breached.
Big Bosoms and Square Jaws
is a fun, twisted romp through the life of one of America's most celebrated, sordid—and ultimately sad—filmmakers. Given that Meyer died last year, McDonough has done us all a favor by being serious enough to write the silly and cerebral story of a cad who defined America's lowbrow culture. Photos. Agent, David McCormick. (July)

Legs McNeil is the coauthor of
The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry (Regan Books) and
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (Grove).

June 15, 2005
As he did so beautifully for grind-house guru Andy Millligan in "The Ghastly One" and rock god Neil Young in "Shakey", McDonough here sizes up the undisputed king of the sexploitation flick, Russ Meyer (1922 -2004). Drawing on a wealth of material and interviews with the director's intimates, he chronicles Meyer's twisted childhood, World War II combat photographer experiences, obsessions with large breasts, turbulent relationships and marriages, and 40-year film career that pushed the limits of both mainstream Hollywood and artistic freedom. McDonough's exegesis of the Meyer oeuvre -especially the seminal "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!", "Vixen!", and "The Immoral Mr. Teas" -is wonderfully brisk and dead-on as his text repeatedly demonstrates that Meyer's formula for success, "big bosoms and square jaws," was astute and very, very prophetic. To McDonough's credit, Meyer's personal obsessions and fantasies are placed within a larger societal context that gives greater dimension to the Meyer saga. A killer tits-and-ass winner for all pop culture and film collections. -Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2005
McDonough persuasively argues that Russ Meyer, creator of such epic films as " Super Vixens" and " Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" is the father of the modern porn industry, a pop cultural icon in his own right, and something of an auteur who may be appreciated more by film historians of the future than he is now. Meyer achieved technical excellence in low-to-no-budget productions that reveal his "oddly passionate vision of the world," says McDonough. In so doing, Meyer was "a pioneer who represents what's most seductive " and" what's most repulsive about the USA." McDonough proceeds to compare Meyer to, among others, Elvis (seductive and repulsive, after all) and incorporates vivid, well-referenced anecdotes and observations from Meyer's friends, associates, and stars, including most notably, perhaps, movie critic Roger Ebert (coconspirator for Meyer's crowning achievement," Beyond the Valley of the Dolls") and porn-parodist director John Waters. Four Meyer movies have been among " Variety"" gross" (German for great) for more than boffo BO.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)