THE KUCHAR BROTHERS
Monday 26 October 1998, at 6:30pm
London Barbican Cinema

Growing up in the Bronx in the 1950s and sharing a love of Hollywood melodrama compelled Mike and George Kuchar to start making their own 8mm costume epics. Early productions often took place on the roof of their apartment building with the two teenage brothers dressed in their parent’s clothes. George remembers: “At the age of 12, I made a transvestite movie on the roof and was brutally beaten by my mother for having disgraced her and also for soiling her nightgown. She didn’t realise how hard it is for a 12-year-old director to get real girls in his movies”. Their earliest surviving film is The Wet Destruction of The Atlantic Empire (1954) and subsequent movies share equally wonderful titles such as A Tub Named Desire (1956), The Naked And The Nude (1957) and I Was A Teenage Rumpot (1960).

PUSSY ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Mike & George Kuchar, USA, 1961, 8mm on video, colour, sound, 9 min

“Some people are disturbed by the rash of violence that tints our films with an acne of horror. All I can say is that violence and sin are brother and sister from the same cradle of hell. I have been scotched by this hell-fire and instead of screaming, I’m going to extinguish the flames by vomiting out the putrid liquids of bitterness that boil in my cauldron of a tummy. The New American Cinema has helped us by opening up new windows that we can jump out of, thereby plummeting into the depths of a new freedom. But if we are to protect ourselves from splashing into the pavement of indecency, we must have something to say. And I have this to say: Strip me naked you immoral world of vice and pleasure and I’ll show you the lily-white flesh of truth !” (from George Kuchar Speaks On Films And Truth in Film Culture #33, 1964)

Working in isolation for many years, and unaware of the developments in personal film-making, they only showed their films at the New York 8mm Motion Picture Club alongside travelogues and home movies by society fuddy-duddies until George’s comic-drama A Woman Distressed (1962) caused an uproar with its portrayal of the effects of Thalidomide. Bob Cowan, star of many Kuchar epics, encouraged them to take their movies along to a screening at Ken Jacobs’ loft and it was here that they became involved in the underground film scene. The brothers continued to collaborate on films into the mid-1960s before developing their own distinctive styles and concentrating on individual projects – Mike prefers colour and spectacle while George likes steamy drama.

LUST FOR ECSTACY
George Kuchar, USA, 1963, 8mm on video, colour, sound, 35 min

“In my new film Lust For Ecstasy, Donna Kerness overflows with passion and flesh in this, her most mature performance since A Tub Named Desire. Bob Cowan plays a part he is best suited for: a twisted and demented fiend wracked between the border of normalcy and moral decay. Also in the film is Cynthia Mailman, and her portrayal of a girl with deep religious yearnings will make you long for the early years when we were pure and good and everything that we did was honest. I started filming Ecstasy during Indian Summer and from then until now I have undergone emotional upheavals. So has the script. The actors didn’t know what was going on. I wrote many of the pungent scenes on the D train, and then when I arrived on the set I ripped them up and let my emotional whims make chop meat out of the performances and story. It’s more fun that way, and then the story advances without any control until you’ve created a Frankenstein that destroys any subconscious barriers you’ve erected to protect yourself and your dimestore integrity. Yes, Lust For Ecstasy is my subconscious, my own naked lusts that sweep across the screen in 8mm and colour with full fidelity sound.” (George Kuchar to Jonas Mekas in the Village Voice Movie Journal, 1964)

The introduction of the Kuchar’s to the whole downtown world of independent filmmakers directly led to production of Lovers Of Eternity (1963), George’s last 8mm production which featured new acquaintances Jack Smith and Dov Lederberg (a filmmaker notorious for his habit of cooking 8mm film). The film, which was originally called The Unclean, was an overblown burlesque of bohemian squalor and artistic torment on the Lower East Side. With Corruption Of The Damned in 1965 George progressed to 16mm and the next year he made Hold Me While I’m Naked, his most famous film which is highly regarded as a classic of the New American Cinema. It’s a parody of the frustration and loneliness of a Bronx movie maker who feels like everyone is having a more exciting, sexier time than he. The leading lady objected to the amount of nude scenes and left the set halfway through shooting, forcing George to adapt the script, which added to the tragedy. George never thought of the film as a comedy (after all it was his life up on the screen) and was initially shocked and hurt by the laughter of the audience.

HOLD ME WHILE I’M NAKED
George Kuchar, USA, 1966, 16mm, colour, sound, 16 min

“A dazzling ruby in Kuchar’s jewlry box of cinema gems and gossamer garbage. Financed with unemployment checks and populated by the semi-nude, Hold Me While I’m Naked goes beyond the erotic into a world that exists behind the film-maker’s shower curtain. Lead may shield delicate tissues from radiation, but a polystyrene shower curtain is no protection from the painful penetration of a Bolex H16. Filmed in the glamour bathrooms of the East Coast, where all the good stuff is happening, this film relentlessly exploits the problems, and bodies of today’s creative youth. Captured in surrealistic opulence on Ektachrome Commercial 7255, is this movie of a movie that couldn’t be filmed and the person who couldn’t film it because his star material failed to feed the Hydrogen furnace with an overabundance of molecular exposure ?” (programme notes by George Kuchar)

Mike Kuchar’s solo career began with The Pervert (1963) and Born Of The Wind (1964). In 1965 he made his classic Sins Of The Fleshapoids, a comic book love story for robots set one million years in the future. This intensely colourful film was a great success on the underground circuit. He continued to make gaudy dramas such as The Secret Of Wendell Samson (1966) starring the artist Red Grooms in a tale of sexual torment, and The Craven Sluck (1967) which features George and a cast of Kuchar regulars including Bob Cowan, Donna Kerness, Floraine Connors and Bocko The Dog. Mike is less prolific than George and his own film production slowed down during the 1970s. He teaches and occasionally works as a camera man on commercial independent feature films.

THE CRAVEN SLUCK
Mike Kuchar, USA, 1967, 16mm, colour, sound, 23 min

“Mike Kuchar plunges into new depths with this pungent story of a woman’s struggle for identity, recognition, sympathy and a good lay. The film features the titan talent from Jersey City, Floraine Connors, in a frightful comeback from obscurity. Supported by a competent cast of Munchkins, The Craven Sluck lays bare the flabby bladders of the domestic Fleshpots, Rumpots, Sexpots and just plain Pots.” (Mike Kuchar, New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative Catalogue #5, 1971)

George continued to chronicle the tragic underbelly of life in the Bronx, and the large belly of Edith Fisher features in Eclipse Of The Sun Virgin (1967). (George remembers “She was a force of nature that no rubber garment could harness and no man could tame. A she-devil of salivating shame wrapped in the folds of flesh so flamboyant it leaves you breathless !”). This film more than any other of this period can be seen as a direct influence on the films John Waters made in the early 1970s.

ECLIPSE OF THE SUN VIRGIN
George Kuchar, USA, 1967, 16mm, colour, sound, 12 min

“I dedicate this film to the behemoths of yesteryear that perished in Siberia along with the horned pachyderms of the pre-glacial epoch. This chilling montage of crimson repression must be seen by the victims of perversity, regardless of sex or age. Painstakingly filmed and edited, it will be painful to watch too.” (George Kuchar, Canyon Cinema Catalogue #7, 1992)

Having established himself as one of the leading directors of the independent movie scene, George Kuchar continued to make an incredible number of inventive films including Pagan Rhapsody (1970), A Reason To Live (1976) and Forever And Always (1978) and he wrote and acted in the infamous Thundercrack (Curt McDowell, 1974). In the 1980s he began to use video and has made over 100 tapes. Since 1971 George has taught film at the San Francisco Art Institute.

PAGAN RHAPSODY
George Kuchar, USA, 1970, 16mm, colour, sound, 23 min

“Donna Kerness was pregnant during her scenes but her stomach was kept pretty much in shadow and it’s not noticeable. My stomach was the same as always except it contained more mocha cake than usual since that type of cake was usually around when I filmed in Brooklyn Heights. Being that the picture was made in the winter, there are no outdoor scenes because it’s too cold and when the characters have to suddenly flee a tense situation, it’s too time consuming to have them put on a coat and gloves. Originally not scheduled as a tragedy, things swiftly changed as the months made me more and more sour as I plummet down that incinerator shaft I call my life.” (George Kuchar, New York Film-Makers Catalogue #6, 1975)

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