MYRA BRECKINRIDGE

US, 1968, 94 minutes, Colour.
Mae West, Raquel Welch, John Huston, Rex Reed, Jim Backus, John Carradine, Andy Devine.
Directed by Mike Sarne.

Myra Breckinridge is an adaptation of Gore Vidal's satirical novel on Hollywood. It was written by Michael Sarne and David Giler. Sarne directed Joanna - but Myra Breckinridge seems to have destroyed his directing career. David Giler wrote a number of screenplays and directed the Maltese Falcon spoof, The Black Bird.

The film is extravagant in its style. Raquel Welch, in retrospect, is better as Myra than was first thought. Mae West, looking embalmed, does her usual thing as the agent Leticia Van Allen - the dialogue seems more Mae West than Gore Vidal. John Huston has a good role which he exaggerates as Buck Loner, the western-style manager of an acting school in Hollywood. Amongst the supporting cast are Farrah Fawcett in an early role as Mary Ann and Tom Selleck as one of Mae West's men. There are some guest roles by old veterans like Andy Devine and Grady Sutton.

The film is quite camp in style, enjoying its bad taste, going over the top. It also indicates some of the permissive style entering Hollywood at the end of the '60s.

Whether the film is Gore Vidal's insight into power, the relationships between men and women, Hollywood and American myths may be in dispute - and Myra Breckinridge finds itself on the list of many people's worst films.

1. The work of Gore Vidal, his novel, satire, themes of power, relationships between men and women, money, sexuality, Hollywood and American myths? Gore Vidal's view? The film version?

2. The cast, the effect of such a mixed cast?

3. The work of Sarne and Giler in adapting the novel? The issues (too many)? Camp style, Hollywood and overdone? The use of the film clips: Shirley Temple, Laurel and Hardy? Dante's Inferno? The photographs of the film stars and their use, film advertisements? Parody? The questions about film-making in the 1960s, permissiveness and pornography? Family films? The whole thing going over the top? Its effect on its audience?

4. The blend of real and surreal? The operation and the surgery, the dancing girls and Myron's fantasies? Tyron and Myra dancing in the Hollywood streets? The two aspects of the personality? Masculine and feminine and interaction? The interchangeability of Myron and Myra? The gaudy statue and its symbolism, American? Buck Loner's studs and rooms? The classes, student behaviour, the film inserts and comments? Mae Wist and her atmosphere of unreality? The fantasy of Rusty's seduction and rape? The final operation? surrealism? The finale? The effect of this blend of realism and the surreal?

5. Panavision photography, lavish style? Use of locations? The musical score and the evocation of the past? Mae West's song and its insertion in the plot? Icons of Hollywood in themselves?

6. The atmosphere of the '60s? What if the film had been made in later decades? Its comment on the 1960s?

7. The focus on Myron: his film background, homosexuality, the woman inside him, his offhand attitude towards the operation, the operation itself, transformed into a woman? Becoming Myra - in the form of Raquel Welch? His comments, dancing with Myra? Their interchanging throughout the film? His relationship with Uncle Buck? Hollywood? His determination to subdue men? Victimising Rusty? Idealising Mary Ann? Myra's accident and his return, castrated? Poetic justice?

8. Raquel Welch as Myra: glamour? The interchange between Myron and Myra? Myra's voice-over: her goals, arriving in Hollywood, the plan? Her command of Uncle Buck? Clothes and style? Buck and his reactions? Irving and the camp tour of the studio? The intercutting of the tour and her classes? her classes, manner of teaching, Hollywood references? The students? Her slapping Buck? Her answers for all his criticisms? The lawyers? Her victimising of Rusty? In her room, exposing him, his being busted, the seduction, the control, the sexuality, the rape? Her despising of Mary Ann? Luring Mary Ann, the bedroom sequences, Mary Ann's refusal? The final confrontation with the lawyers? Revelation of the truth? Leticia, Van Allen? Sending Rusty to her? Her alliance with her? The final accident and her loss?

9. John Huston as Buck: the skit on the Hollywood producer-director, his ineptitude? the western images and his offices, his wife and her friends his card playing friends, the old-timers? Sexuality and the women in attendance? Irving, and the students? The classes? Myra slugging him? Greed, the lawyers? His finally being defeated?

10. Leticia Van Allen: the satire on the casting agent and the casting couch? Mae West and her old style, appearance, innuendo, more permissive '60s jokes? The men at her office? The procession of men in and out? her song? Decision to help Myra? Her hold over Rusty?

11. Rusty as the young American of the '60s, ordinary, trying to study, his relationship with Mary-Ann? His belief in heterosexuality? Tangles with Myra? Her control over him, exposing him? Prison? In Myra's care? the seduction and rape? The break with Mary Ann? With Leticia? His being destroyed? The comparison with the men around Leticia?

12. Mary Ann as the nice all American girl? Farrah Fawcett and her style? Studying, being with Rusty, wanting to be a wife and mother? Victimised by Myra? Myra talking, her not being lesbian? Her being a final vision?

13. The gallery of oddball characters: John Carradine as the smoking surgeon, Irving and his camp style, the actors and actresses, the stunts, the lawyers? The world of Hollywood?

14. To what purpose this spoof and satire of American traditions?