{"id":5703,"date":"2014-06-22T12:21:59","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T19:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=5703"},"modified":"2014-07-07T12:23:34","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T19:23:34","slug":"interview-kenneth-anger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2014\/06\/22\/interview-kenneth-anger\/","title":{"rendered":"INTERVIEW: Kenneth Anger"},"content":{"rendered":"

from Interview<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

KENNETH ANGER<\/h2>\n
By\u00a0<\/span>HARMONY KORINE<\/span><\/div>\n
Photography\u00a0<\/span>SEBASTIAN KIM<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/center><\/div>\n

To describe Kenneth Anger as a “cult filmmaker” seems requisite but incomplete. The 87-year-old native Angeleno is indeed the writer and director of the surrealist shorts<\/span>Inauguration of the Pleasure\u00a0<\/em>Dome<\/em>\u00a0(1954-66),\u00a0<\/span>Scorpio Rising<\/em>\u00a0(1963), and\u00a0<\/span>Lucifer Rising\u00a0<\/em>(1970-81)\u2014some of the wildest and most profoundly influential experimental films of the last century. But his salacious narrative history of the industry,\u00a0<\/span>Hollywood Babylon,<\/em>\u00a0originally published in 1960, is also kitsch-famous, a kind of gossip gospel in the land of holy celebrity. His film and video works are in the permanent collections of various museums of modern art. And he is also the most famous living practitioner of Thelema\u2014the ritual-based doctrine dictated to Aleister Crowley by the spiritual messenger Aiwass.<\/span>

Over the course of his multivalent career, Anger has worked with and befriended such artists as Marianne Faithfull (a collaborator on\u00a0<\/span>Lucifer Rising<\/em>), the surrealist Jean Cocteau, guitar god Jimmy Page, sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and Tennessee Williams, as well as fellow Thelemite Marjorie Cameron\u2014star of\u00a0<\/span>Pleasure Dome<\/em>\u00a0and onetime wife of Jet Propulsion Laboratory founder Jack Parsons. Anger is the godfather of homoerotic cinema, having made his pioneering<\/span>Fireworks<\/em>\u00a0in 1947. He has been famously obscene (and charged as such for\u00a0<\/span>Fireworks<\/em>\u00a0in California), happily hallucinogenic (his\u00a0<\/span>Invocation of My Demon Brother<\/em>\u00a0from 1969 was famously evocative of an acid trip), and quite consciously provocative (see all). Inside the industry, he’s never found a place to rest\u2014he has Lucifer tatted on his chest. And he’s seen UFOs\u2014three times.<\/span>

Painter and filmmaker\u2014and something of a hell-raiser himself\u2014Harmony Korine has long appreciated the work and legend of Anger, but the two have never really had the chance to speak. We thought they should, so in April, Korine called Anger from his home in Nashville to discover that his hero is still working outside of the mainstream, still a scabrous critic of Hollywood, and still speculating about that Malaysia Airlines flight.<\/span><\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at Interview<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Interview KENNETH ANGER By\u00a0HARMONY KORINE Photography\u00a0SEBASTIAN KIM To describe Kenneth Anger as a “cult filmmaker” seems requisite but incomplete. The 87-year-old native Angeleno is indeed the writer and director of the surrealist shortsInauguration of the Pleasure\u00a0Dome\u00a0(1954-66),\u00a0Scorpio Rising\u00a0(1963), and\u00a0Lucifer Rising\u00a0(1970-81)\u2014some of the wildest and most profoundly influential experimental films of the last century. But his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}