Altered States: The Autobiography Of Ken Russell
NEW––BroDart Dust Jacket Cover
Author: Ken Russell
Bantam, November 1991
Bantam Books
©1989, 1991 Sitting Duck, Ltd.
CAB Comment–– I have just recently finished “Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of the Devils”, by Richard Crouse, and found it fascinating and disturbing (Hollywood is ludicrous). I truly enjoyed learning much more about director Ken Russell and his making of one of the most controversial films of all time, “The Devils” (based off of the excellent Aldous Huxley non-fiction history “The Devils Of Loudun”) and which is still banned for release by Warner Bros. Uhggggg. At any rate, Hollywood idiocy aside, I am very excited to learn even more about Ken Russell and read his highly touted autobiography, “Altered States”. in fact, I have a nice vintage hardcover just waiting on my personal bookshelf. I am openly a big fan of Russell’s film “Altered States” and consider it one of my favorite movies. The battles during the filming of “Altered States”, between Russell and writer Paddy Chayefsky are now legendary, and this autobiography is acclaimed for its shining a light on the creative-cinema warring from director Ken Russell’s perspective. Bottom line, this should be a great read. Ken Russell was truly a maverick among filmmakers.
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“Altered States: The Autobiography of Ken Russell”––Kirkus Reviews:
“The former enfant terrible of British cinema, now in his 60s, bares all, pretty much. Russell takes his life episodically, hopping about with flashbacks and flashforwards in no particular chronology. In print, he is a charming, sometimes waspish storyteller with axes to grind only against his American distributors who have taken his pictures and lopped off whole reels (e.g., The Boy Friend). Raised in the working-class, he introduces us to his mother and father as clad prepares senile mom for her last days in a nursing home. He pieces together his days in the RAF and the Merchant Marine and five years as a ballet student and dancer. Russell early fell in love with photography, and his amateur films earned him entrance into TV, where he made exciting shows about composers. That these shows were often viewed as pictorially cuckoo travesties in no way damped his spirits: he didn't see them that way. And he had access to bottled spirits anyway, ever breakfasting on a half-bottle of champagne to get the morning charged up, with an iced bucket of bubbly at his side throughout the day's shooting. Through Russell's eyes, his work seems a lot less appalling than it is famed to be—a fame reinforced by the posing Nazis in Mahler, the TV set that erupts with chocolate sauce and buries Ann-Margaret in Tommy, the shrinkage of Liszt to rock-'n'-roll pop-star satyr in Lisztomania (a degradation Russell feels was forced upon him when he was unbankable). Highlights include duels with Paddy Chayevsky during the making of Altered States and with BoO Guccione for an aborted Moll Flanders, his first wife Shirley's tit-for-tat adultery with their chauffeur, and Oliver Reed's way of puffing himself up behind a screen for the nude wrestling scene in Women in Love. A modest demythologizing from the horse's mouth.”
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