Rest in peace Russ Meyer. It's not really easy to call his films "good," but they certainly were important, and for influential young boys like me coming-of-age in the 80s, they were better than Porky's. But I'm definitely not a Meyer expert. And The cinetrix, with the help of Roger Ebert (who has a WGA card solely due to writing the Meyer-directed Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), has written a better post than I can.
I will say that it's very sad to see icons (and arguably underappreciated ones at that) from both the 70s film and music worlds pass within a week of each other. I was also quite saddened by the passing of Johnny Ramone. Johnny's passing was timely for me because I had just seen End of the Century days before, so the band, and in some ways Johnny most of all, were forefront in my brain. I've been meaning to write about the film -- which I absolutely loved -- and ... I'm still meaning to do so. Work has once again taken it upon its self to annoyingly actually expect me to ... you know ... work. But suffice it to say, the Metallica doc got all the press, but if you haven't seen End of the Century, you absolutely should, even though it's playing at the worst theater in NYC. Whether you're a huge Ramones fan or you thought their music was catchy but don't know much other than "I Wanna Be Sedated" or "Rock 'N' Roll High School," this is a fascinating and fun exploration into a band of made-up brothers who really exhibited all the tendencies of a dysfunctional family, and that's without even taking into account that they were probably the most important and influential rock band of the late 70s and early 80s.
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