Loved that.
I love Kenneth Anger, but there is a lot of unintentional humour in Anger's most recent work, 'The Man We Want To Hang'. The film consists of an exhibition of Alaister Crowley's paintings, with dramatic music and slow pans over his artwork. This is all supposed to be very meaningful and dramatic, but the paintings are utterly, utterly dreadful childish junk, to the point that the film almost seems like it is making fun. It is certainly proof that summoning demons is no short cut to artistic talent.
Speaking of Kenneth Anger: here's a very interesting obituary for Curtis Harrington written by friend of The Best Show Lisa Jane Persky. It describes Harrington's funeral, which Anger crashed/interrupted in a theatrical and cultish manner.
http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/obituaries/645/curtis_harrington.htmlAnd to supply my two cents: I really like Anger's films but I think his book
Hollywood Babylon is creepy, exploitative and vindictive, as if Anger, who was a failed Hollywood child-actor, was exercising his resentment demons toward Hollywood-in-general by "exposing" scandals, murders, deaths and failure. It's like he put a curse on the Star Factory-- like he did to Jimmy Page-- and then wanted to show the curse at work. In other words: I don't recommend the book.
