Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film - Softcover

McDonough, Jimmy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307338444 ISBN 13: 9780307338440

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2006

Synopsis

Russ Meyer, cult hero, creator of the sexploitation film, and the man the Wall Street Journal called the King Leer of Hollywood, made movies that filled the big screen with "big bosoms and square jaws." In the first candid and fiendishly researched account of the late cinematic instigator's life, Jimmy McDonough shows us how Russ Meyer used that formula to turn his own crazed fantasies into movies that made him a millionaire and changed the face of American film forever.

This former WWII combat photographer immortalized his personal sexual obsession upon the silver screen, creating box-office gold with The Immoral Mr. Teas in 1959. The modest little film pushed all preexisting limits of on-screen nudity, and with its success, the floodgates of what was permitted to be shown on film were thrust open, never to be closed again. Russ Meyer ignited a true revolution in filmmaking, breaking all sex, nudity, and violence taboos. In a career that spanned more than forty years, Meyer created a body of work that has influenced a legion of filmmakers, fashionistas, comic book artists, rock bands, and even the occasional feminist.

Bringing his anecdote- and action-packed biographical style to another renegade of popular culture, New York Times bestselling author of Shakey Jimmy McDonough offers a wild, warts-and-all portrait of Russ Meyer, the director, writer, producer, and commando moviemaking force behind the sexploitation classics Vixen, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and many others. Big Bosoms and Square Jaws blows the lid off the story of Russ Meyer, from the beginning to his recent tragic demise, creating in the process a vivid portrait of a past America.

About this title

Review:

"Ladies and gentleman, welcome to violence, the word and the act . . . While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains sex . . ." --from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

"A fun, twisted romp through the life of one of America's most celebrated, sordid filmmakers." --Leggs McNeil, author of Please Kill Me

About the Author:

Jimmy McDonough is the author of The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan and Shakey: Neil Young's Biography. Visit him at jimmymcdonough.net.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0307338444
• ISBN 13: 9780307338440
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496