Last time, I vowed to enter Hollywood to sort out the film “Myra
Breckinridge,” which I described as the worst film ever made.
I will admit I don’t take my cache as a film critic, of any description,
that seriously – I am not Mark Kermode trying to rehabilitate “The Exorcist”
here – but there are two ways to create something good from the wreckage of “Myra
Breckinridge”: mount a new adaptation of Gore Vidal’s novel, or go back in time
and change the original film.
As interesting as it could be, a new adaptation, in my opinion,
will not work: the novel is a satire of a particular moment in Hollywood at the
end of the 1960s, its Classical period now over, and the people in charge
having been overturned. You could set a remake in its original time period, but
you would have to drill the historical context into the audience before expecting
them to laugh.
You could try to set it in the present day, with Myra
exclaiming about “star quality” in an era where everyone is an open book, and
how the franchise-driven Hollywood should return to when it made films like “Easy
Rider” and “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”.
Moreover, a plot that uses rape as a corrective will not fly these days, and a
man becoming a woman so they can conquer the sexes won’t make it through the
rewrites – you may as well write a different story altogether.
So yes, going back in time to correct the original “Myra
Breckinridge” may be the more feasible option here, in an attempt to correct
the decisions that made the film turn out the way it did. The simplest choice is
to eliminate the two people that caused the most rancour on set: director and
co-writer Michael Sarne, and star Mae West.
Sarne’s treatment of the story, constant rewrites during the
shoot, and his encouragement of bickering between the cast, produced the film
we have. The original director was to have been Bud Yorkin, best known as a
producer of TV sitcoms like “All in the Family” and “Sanford and Son,” and
later of the two “Blade Runner” films, and was replaced with Sarne, originally
hired only to re-write the script, but after having directed the “swinging
London” film “Joanna,” because it was thought Yorkin would have been too
conservative in his direction – his later career would prove otherwise. Not having
Sarne write the script would give previous drafts by David Giler, and Gore
Vidal, another chance. Thinking about it, if Yorkin turned out not to be
available anymore, George Cukor, another name once attached to the film, would
have been the perfect director – rather than splice in pieces of Classical
Hollywood films to enhance your own film, just get the director of “The
Philadelphia Story,” the original “A Star is Born,” and “My Fair Lady” to
direct the whole thing.
Why have no Mae West? Her contract to appear in the film was
unnecessarily restrictive, requiring her to have two full-scale musical numbers
in a film where she plays a talent agent, and having refusal on not only the
costumes she wore, but also those of Raquel Welch, the actor playing the lead. One
of Welch’s costumes was confiscated by Welch because it was black and white,
reasoning only she could wear monochrome clothes. Welch, who later said she
couldn’t work out if West herself was a man or not, was having none of it, and
stole it back. One costume Welch wore appears as white on camera, but had to be
died very light blue, in order to placate West – they both appear in the same
scene, but Welch is speaking to a body double.
The most major change I would make would appear on screen. Both
Raquel Welch and John Huston wanted to appear in “Myra Breckinridge,” and this
shows in their performances, but Welch actively lobbied for her role, even before
having read the script – there might have not even been a script to read at
that point. She did so in the belief that she would be playing both Myra and
Myron, her original male self. However, the male role was given to the film
critic Rex Reed, who was promised his character was presented through the
conceit of a dream, and would have approval over his sections of the script,
therefore changing how the story will be told.
When “Myra Breckinridge” bombed both in reviews and at the
box office, sales of the novel dwindled very quickly. Ironically, the film
critic Parker Tyler, whose work was appropriated by Myra, including the
memorable assertion that no insignificant film was made in Hollywood between
1935 and 1945, saw his work come back into print as a result. Gore Vidal
restored to his own sequel, “Myron,” published in 1975, where Myra enters a film
that Myron was watching on television, in a plot likened by the poet Thom Gunn,
and used by Vidal in the collected edition of both books I have, as an “Alice
Through the Looking Glass” to the original novel’s “Alice in Wonderland.” This time,
Myra and Myron talk of themselves as different people, each one a parasite for
the other. I’m not a fan of this, but I haven’t properly read it yet either.
I fear I may have Myra Breckinridge on my back for a while,
continuing to make sense of her, but I need to write about something else. Both
the novel and its sequel are set out in a diary format, using a three-hundred-page
ledger, as Myra’s psychiatrist advises her to keep a journal of her thoughts -
in the sequel, this becomes how one person knows what the other is doing.
Meanwhile, I began 2019 with a ledger of similar size, and I must be expecting
something sizeable to happen to me, as I have only reached page 18 so far.
Read the books if you can, and only watch the film for
Raquel Welch and John Huston.
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