Donald Cammell - Biography

Biography

Cammell was born in the Camera Obscura (then known as Outlook Tower) on Castlehill, near the castle in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of the poet and writer Charles Richard Cammell. The older Cammell wrote a biography of Aleister Crowley focusing principally on the occultist's poetry. Crowley, who lived near the Cammells for a time, knew the young Donald. A prodigy, he was a society portrait painter and thanks to family connections, a prominent fixture of the "swinging London" social scene of the 1960s, specifically of what became known as the "Chelsea Set."

He wrote and co-directed Performance with Nicolas Roeg in 1968, though he didn't get another film produced until Demon Seed in 1977. Cammell also made the eccentric horror thriller White of the Eye in 1987. Between infrequent film and TV directing jobs, Cammell directed music videos for the likes of U2.

When Cammell's 1995 film Wild Side was cut by the producer, he committed suicide in Hollywood, California, by shooting himself. His wife claimed the wound was not immediately fatal and that he asked for a mirror so that he could watch himself die; the claim would later be disputed in Cammell's published biography. A posthumous "director's cut," commissioned by FilmFour and edited by his widow and co-screenwriter China Kong and editor Frank Mazzola, was released in 2000 to critical acclaim.

In 2005, Fan-Tan, a novel Cammell conceived with actor Marlon Brando in 1978, was published.