James Fox played a far more important role in your next, Performance.

Indeed! It changed his life, mine… everybody connected with it, actually, Performance is a landmark and a swan song for the era of Swinging London, not a success when it came out. Warner Bros. wanted none of it.

To what extent did Warners want it changed?

When they saw my rough cut, they were appalled that Jagger was not onscreen until maybe an hour into the film. So, in a vain attempt to keep it from being shelved permanently, I tried to rescue the work. I mean, I completely re-edited it three times, compressing it more and more. By then, Nick Roeg was completely absorbed in filming Walkabout, so he blissfully wasn’t involved in any of this.

What did Roeg say when he saw the re-edited cut?

He wanted his name removed, because he felt that too many liberties had been taken with the continuity. You have to realize, it was a collaborative effort, yet it was my screenplay, my concept. I directed the actors and Nick did what Nick does best, which is the director of photography.

Did it bother you that Roeg got the lion’s share of credit for Performance?

I don’t really want to discuss Nick, but I will say this: Nick went on to several features on the strength of Performance, and when you realize that the whole project was based on my friendship with Jagger, and the fact that Jagger trusted me, it does aggravate an already open wound. Enough said.

How did you get the idea to combine the gangster world with that of a faded rock star?

Well, in Britain, the underworld was typified by the Krays. The Krays were very macho, very dangerous and rather glamorous. This I saw as sort of a parallel with the rock world and, particularly, The Rolling Stones. Originally, my script was called The Performers because each of the characters is a performer, in one sense or another.

You seem to have a healthy disrespect for Hollywood storytelling.

I have a very healthy disrespect for Hollywood altogether! One of the reasons I think Warners hated the film so much is because it forces an audience to consider the construction of their own fragmented selves, the various aspects of sexuality, which is something people never question. Nick loves to tell the story of one Warner executive who observed, “Even the bath water is dirty in this film,” referring to the menage a trios in Turner’s bath. Nick could only say, “Well the water looks that way because they just took a bath!”

I’ve always been impressed with the film’s opening shots. They seem unrelated at first, a rocket taking off, an overhead view of a Rolls Royce moving through the countryside, a couple making violent love with mirrors. What was you concept here?

It’s to emphasize the sense of transition, of change, of continual mobility. Some of it is subliminal and Nick loved to intercut. (Laughs)

The cinematography seems to me to be from the school of Psychedelic Expressionism.

(Laughs) Well, perhaps the whole film is Psychedelic Expressionism! Yes, I like that very much. Can I use it?
Seriously…I showed John Clark, our art director, several examples of artists like Aubrey Beardsley and Francis Bacon. We deliberately wanted [to reflect] an artist’s vision. Every film I’ve been allowed to make owes a very heavy debt to art because, after all, I’m basically a painter.

The editing technique, in my opinion, was a cross between someone like Alain Resnais and Aram Avakian.

Are you sure you’re not with Cahiers du cinéma? (Laughs) If you mean that seriously, yes. Quite so. It ha s a precision and formality which could be like a Resnais film, and yet it’s very flashy and glamorous in the manner of Avakian. However, that technique is nowadays referred to as “Nicolas Roeg.”
At one point, Turner says, “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
The line comes from Nietzsche. Performance is about the trans-valuation of all values. Perhaps the film is Nietzschean in the sense that I believe in living one’s life that way. The film brings the Neanderthal gangster and the effete yellow book world of the rock star into one demonic fusion. The gangster is really more bisexual and in touch with his feminine side; once again, the fragmented self. It’s really a provocative love story. The margin between love and hate is exceedingly narrow and I’ve made an effort to show that, where violence exists, it’s as indicative of love as much as hatred.*

What was Mick Jagger like to work with?

Well, Jagger is Jagger. His life is his art. Turner is Jagger-ish is something Mick really didn’t want to deal with, as he was trying very hard to make that transition from rock star to movie star. At the time, Mick and the Stones had been offered A Clockwork Orange, but Jagger wanted something a bit more solo. Something apart from the Rolling Stones. But Mick is not acting in Performance. That is Mick to the teeth. He even wore the Turner makeup on the street. He tried to look like that for years. The relationship between Mick and Anita (Pallenberg) was real. They became lovers, even though she was Keith Richards’ lady. I’ll never forget Keith Richards’ Rolls Royce parked across the street from the location, keeping an eye on his paramour. Jagger simply took Anita under the house for sex. Keith would come on the set looking for hanky-panky, not realizing that he was standing about three feet above the action!

*Cammell is mistaken here. This celebrated line appears in William Burroughs novel Naked Lunch, where it is atributed to Hassan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, leader of the 11th century Ismailli sect known as the Assassins. Turner mentions Hassan in the film and the quote latter served as an epigraph in David Cronenberg’s film adaptation of Naked Lunch.

What has become of Anita Pallenberg? I read that she was involved in witchcraft and was very overweight.

That’s all rubbish. Anita’s doing just fine. I look in on her whenever I’m on the East Coast. She’s dropped a lof of weight and I think she is writing. Anita is a survivor and a great lady. I love her.

What was James Fox like on the film?

Willie, his nickname, was a great observer and was learning his craft. He had already made some films and fell into this one with great gusto. He literally became a gangster in the name of research. He spent eventings in the company of London’s most notorious thugs, to the extent that he actually frightened people. Now imagine this very macho, violent behaviour being shattered, once again, under Jagger’s influence. It was perhaps a tragedy that Willie became so traumatized by Jagger’s sexuality that he succumbed to it and ultimately quit acting altogether and went to India. It took him forever to snap out of it.

Jagger does make a rather late enterance, a rather grand entrance, like Rita Hayworth in Gilda.

Well, perhaps more like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. That’s how I gave Jagger the line, “Why don’t you go to a hotel?” when Fox tries to rent the flat. It’s the sort of remark an aging bitch would say to a lesser mortal.

At the end of the film, after Chas (Fox) shoots Turner (Jagger) in the head, it’s Jagger that we see leaving the house with his old gangster cronies-presumbably to be murdered by them. You meant to indicate that Chas had absorbed Turner’s persona?

In a sense, yes. I was thinking of Jorge Luis Borges and the Sanish bullfighter El Cordobes, who kisses the bull between the eyes before placing his sword therein. Jagger is very much that bullfighter. In terms of painting, if you look at the “Memo from Turner” number, Jagger’s character has already assumed the Harry Flowers persona (in terms of Chas’ perception). So this further absorption seems natural. The “Memo from Turner” sequence, by the way is probably the first rock video. You may not know it, but I’ve directed several rock videos in the last few years. In point of fact, I did a bit of editing on Gimme Shelter for the Maysles Brothers.

Why did it take you so long to make another feature?

If you only knew how many unrealized projects are littered between 1970 and Demon Seed, you wouldn’t ask. One of those projects that caused a bit of a stir on the Riviera was a “caper” screenplay entitled Avec Avec, which was made much later by my old mate James Coburn. This was the kind of luck I had up until Demon Seed.

What was the Demon Seed experience like for you?

Well, it was a very unhappy experience. It was a pretty frustrationg experience. My personality just does not gel with these studuio people. And MGM was no different than Warner Bros.. was with Performance. I was the reason they got Julie Christie, who was red hot at the time, and an Oscar winner to boot. The front office loved everything until they got their hands on my rough cut. It could hve been a great film, but even though it got bloody repectable notices, it wasn’t my vision. As I’ve said before, I am a painter who happens to make films. But enough of that! Would you mind if we go on the film you just saw, which I’m very proud of.

White of the Eye.

Yes, around 1985, after God knows how many unrealized projects (including one reuniting me with Jagger, believe it or not, which was to be calledIshtar, but don’t get me started on that…) I was prepping this film for EMI, which was shelved when the company got taken over by Cannnon. So as a sort of compensation, I was offered this strange little novel by Margaret Tracy called Mrs. White, which my wife and I adapted into White of the Eye. Basically, her novel explored this woman’s feelings as she discovers that her husband is insane and yet she is completely dominated by him. Well, I rethought all that and decided it was more interesting to have her deeply in love, so that when she discovers he’s a serial killer, she has to make that decision to leave him or confront him and continue to love him. Even to the point where he degenerates into bestiality. It really seemed to be an extremely powerful and moving idea. In fact, in the final reel, I tried to create the sound and fury of madness and take you into a world of transcendent horror.

You certainly made Arizona seem very surreal.

Well, I’m European, and Arizona looks very exotic and a little surreal when I’m confronted by it. The Indians have tremendous karma and glamour. I could easily see Picasso on a reservation. The location was a real trip. My main set piece is a run-down mining town called Globe, which is on the edge of an Apache reservation, where a crumbling civilization has this uneasy coexistence with violence-pagan violence. It had been the second largest copper mine in Arizona and then became this relic, this kind of scarred, extraordinary landscape. I vividly remember shooting the final scene in a kind of stepped, zig-zagged structure, like an inverted Assyrian temple.

Once again, your painter’s eye seems to be at work here.

Well yes, I painted it as best I can, and if art is to be involved at all, you hope that some kind of energy or sincerity will result in some kind of revelation.

I see it as a portrait of a schizophrenic who views the suburban sexuality of his victims as a kind of waste.

That’s your opinion. I didn’t try and diagnose or make a judgement on the reasons for serial murder. I suppose I’m really asking if we really know the people we love. Do we really understand their motives? I mean this bedroom community of Globe, Arizona is full of waste and boredom. The killer has a painter’s eye, which I suppose is mine.
My favorite line in the film occurs when the homicide detective says to his assistant, “Did you ever look at a Picasso, Lucas?” referring to the crime scene as resembling a work of art.This serial killer happens to be a psychotic with an aesthetic imagination. I like the concept of murders being arranged as art. But my favorite line is on the poster art. “The only difference between a hunter and a killer is his prey.”

I heard that White of the Eye was going to receive an X rating, but it received an R. What happened?

What happened was Marlon Brando. He sent a letter to the MPAA, a brilliant letter, analyzing sequences in the film in great detail, and praising it for it originality and artistry. I mean, you wouldn’t have believed this letter! Eventually they passed the film with a couple of nominal cuts. About 90% of what I wanted is on the screen.

That was a beautiful thing for Brando to do.

Brando is a phenomenal human being. And I am pleased to say that he’s going to be my partner on my next film, which he has written. At the moment its called Jericho and I have really good feelings this time around. But let’s not jinx it! You’ll be the first to know when I have something concrete to show

Hi Carnaby, from where is this interview?

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Silver Dagger
Hi Carnaby, from where is this interview?

[www.drkrm.com]

WHITE OF THE EYE blu-ray forthcoming:

[www.arrowfilms.co.uk]