Elegy For A Pervert
By Nathan Rabin
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At some point in every reporter's career, his interview subjects start doing the one thing that is ultimately predictable: they drop dead. For me, that point started recently. First, the strapping, clean-living, epitome of health and moderation known as Rick James met his untimely passing. Then 82-year-old Russell Albion Meyer was cut down in his prime, probably while swimming laps and/or being asphyxiated by a pair of comically over-sized breasts.

Of all the people I've interviewed who've been accused of doing horrible things to women with crack pipes, James was undoubtedly my favorite. (Pat Boone ranks a close second).  But Russ Meyer will always occupy a special place in my heart. Six years after my interview with him, the session remains burned indelibly in my memory.

Meyer possessed the three qualities I value most in an interview subject:

• First, he was utterly devoid of self-consciousness. Other men may worry that their words or actions might embarrass themselves, their progeny, and/or the sum of mankind - but Meyer had no filter for what crazed, sex-addled thoughts popped up in his over-heated mind, and his rambling, grandfatherly tone made what came spewing out of his mouth seem infinitely more perverse.
   

• Second, Meyer had an all-American gift for the crazed vernacular. Years after the interview, my colleagues around the office would lapse intermittently into Meyerisms like "wolfing pussy," and "whacking away with our joints" (his lyrical term for the act of lovemaking).
   

• Third, Meyer appeared to be what psychiatrists clinically define as "Batshit-motherfucking insane."

When I interviewed Meyer for The Onion A.V Club, I was a green 22 year-old. I didn't know a hell of a lot about him beyond the basics: He was a cantankerous cinematic outlaw, and he loved tits. I mean he loved, loved, loved tits. Nobody has ever loved tits the way Meyer loved tits. They were his obsession, his eternal theme, the reason he got out of bed in the morning. Did I mention he loved tits? 'Cause he totally did.

Naively, however, I thought that in our interview Meyer would be tired of talking about breasts, that he would prefer to pontificate archly on the minutiae of film technique, the culture at large, or any of number of more cerebral topics. This proves I had no idea what to expect when I called his hotel somewhere in the murky depths of Ohio.

NR: Russ Meyer? This is Nathan. I'm supposed to interview you.

(I ejaculated this awkwardly, betraying both my nervousness and inexperience. I earned a pause of befuddled non-recognition.)

.I'm from the newspaper.

RM: What newspaper? I don't want a subscription to the newspaper. I already get the newspaper.

After convincing him that I was not, in fact, trying to sell him a subscription, the interview began in earnest. For the first few minutes or so, Meyer did a surprisingly convincing impersonation of a sane human being. If only the interview lasted merely those first few minutes.

NR: How did you get from being a [WWII] combat photographer to making films like The Immoral Mr. Teas?

RM: I ended up buying myself an office where there were women. And I would always come on like a steam engine, telling them that they would all be stars. Lying through my teeth. It also gave me an opportunity to get a lot of pussy. That was really worthwhile.

It was not just the crude, unapologetic horniness in his response I found so irresistible. It was the peculiar formality, the strange interplay between the mundane and the raucously ribald, the old-fashion colloquialisms and the timeless appeals to the basest of instincts. I loved the way Meyer employed the corny tropes a snake oil salesman: "coming on like a steam engine;" "lying through my teeth;" "they would all be stars;" before concluding: "That was really worthwhile."

For Meyer, having an opportunity to get a lot of pussy was in fact the only thing in life that was worthwhile. All other human endeavor was sheer folly. Doctors Without Borders? Not worthwhile. Mother Theresa? Wasted her life. But coming on like a steam engine, lying to buxom would-be starlets and getting a lot of pussy? Now there was an existence rife with meaning.

There was nothing suave about Meyer. If Meyer's buddy and sometimes employer Hugh Hefner represented the cosmopolitan ideal to which every red-blooded heterosexual man aspired, Meyer represented the unhinged id lurking beneath the playboy's suave exterior.

Meyer was never deluded enough to imagine that women slept with him because he was a charming conversationalist, a caring, empathetic human being, or easy on the eyes. No, Meyer realized that buxom women slept with him because it could benefit their careers, that a women with freakishly large breasts had no more valuable friend in this sick, sad world than Russ Meyer. If there was something coldly mercenary in that arrangement, Meyer didn't seem to mind -- which I think explained much of his caveman charm. He had no illusions -- about himself or the world. Everything was a transaction, devoid of sentimentality or pathos.

One of the more fascinating aspects of Meyer's career was his relationship with Roger Ebert, whose screenplay for Meyer's 1970 magnum opus Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls represents the pinnacle of his career. (Fuck that Pulitzer Prize bullshit. What does that have to do with tits anyway?)

When I asked Meyer how his collaboration with Ebert came about, he answered "Tits. Plain and simple, he loves tits". That was the only credential Meyer needed to begin a long and fruitful personal and professional relationship.

Meyer confided in me that he and Ebert's relationship inevitably was strained by Ebert's wife. He explained the awkward new dynamic thusly:

"[Ebert's] wife really doesn't feel all that keen about me. She's afraid that he might get something in his shorts, and so on. Which I think is a good idea. I like the idea of him having a good time there, and cheating on his wife and the whole thing."

I could only imagine the hypothetical exchange between Ebert and his wife whenever Meyer would show up to work on a project or engage in extracurricular activities:

Ebert: Hey Honey, Meyer's here. He wants me to go out and "get something in my shorts." I could be wrong, but I believe that some "pussy wolfing" is in our near future.

Understanding Wife: That's nice dear. What kind of pussy will you be wolfing?

Ebert: Oh the usual, women with huge, cantilevered breasts that cast long shadows. Someone who will let us whack away with our joints and might also possibly sit on our faces as well. Meyer tells me he thinks that would be very worthwhile.

Understanding Wife: Just don't be home too late. And if you can, pick up a gallon of milk while you're out.

Meyer seemed to view everyone he worked with through the narrow prism of sex. When I asked about a botched collaboration with Sex Pistols Svengali Malcolm McLaren, he dismissively sniffed, "I think Malcolm McLaren needed at least one more lay in his life."

Meyer also talked to me about his paramour at the time, a woman with the unlikely moniker of Melissa Mounds -- a serendipitous name for a woman Meyer assured me cast the requisite "huge shadows." I since have heard disturbing rumors, however, that Melissa Mounds was not in fact her Christian name. Dark gossip has spread that she actually was born Chesty McBigtits but changed her name at an early age.

Around this time in our interview I began to realize that Meyer was trying to offend my bourgeois sensibilities with his lascivious banter. Afterward I read an interview between Meyer and super-fan John Waters in which Meyer tried similar shock tactics. Meyer's films relentlessly tweaked the sexual hang-ups and hypocrisy of American society, and he carried on a similar mission in conversation. Nevertheless, Meyer sure as hell wasn't going to offend John Waters, and he similarly wasn't going to offend me, even when he tried his damnedest to give me the impression that he was in the process of mounting Ms. Mounds while carrying on our conversation.

Meyer rhapsodized at great length about Mounds' charms, gushing: "She's very, very good from the standpoint that if you go on a tour with her, she'll be fucking you constantly. Unrelenting. So, that's the kind of lady that you need to have."

(Indeed that was the kind of lady I needed to have. Hell, that's the kind of lady every man needs to have.)

Our interview concluded with a telling, and its own way quite eloquent, anecdote about the filming of Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. Apparently Ebert was working so hard on the script that he was shamefully neglecting his pussy-wolfing duties. To help him focus, Meyer had a nubile starlet spread out naked on a couch -- a couch, Meyer assured me, that was specially designed "so the woman could lay back and accept the dick comfortably" (a line that no doubt appeared prominently in the couch's promotional brochure). Meyer managed to lure Ebert into the room, and upon beholding the splendor Meyer had arranged for him, all the future Pulitzer-Prize winner could say was "Hollywood!"

Hollywood indeed. Russ Meyer was a pervert, a huckster, a soft-core pornographer, a fetishist, a visionary, an iconoclast, and a true independent. Meyer may not have made it into heaven, but he made his own paradise here on Earth, and it's safe to say that his angels had much bigger tits than the harp-playing variety. Russ Meyer managed to transform a personal obsession that bordered on mental illness into boatloads of cash, notoriety and a sexual utopia of voracious ultra-vixens. If that ain't prototypically American I don't know what is.

Nathan Rabin writes for TheOnion.com. But you already knew that.