Production
Performance was initially conceived by Donald Cammell as "The Performers" and was to be a lighthearted swinging 60's romp. At one stage, Cammell's friend Marlon Brando (with whom he later collaborated on the posthumously published novel Fan Tan) was to play the gangster role which became "Chas". At that stage the story involved an American gangster hiding out in London. James Fox, previously cast in rather upper crust roles, eventually took the place of Brando, and spent several months in South London among the criminal underworld researching his role.
As the project evolved the story became significantly darker. Cammell was heavily influenced by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (a portrait of Borges on a book cover can be seen at a crucial moment in the film) as he redrafted the script to create an intense, intellectual film dealing with issues of identity crisis. Artaud's theories on the links between performing and madness also influenced Cammell. Cammell and co-director Nicolas Roeg (mainly responsible for the 'look' of the film) also benefited from a lack of interference from Warner Bros. studio executives, who believed they were getting a Rolling Stones equivalent of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964). Instead, Cammell and Roeg delivered a dark, experimental film which included graphic depictions of violence, sex and drug use.
It was intended that the Rolling Stones would write the soundtrack but due to the complicated nature of the various relationships both on and off-screen, this never happened. It was widely rumoured that Anita Pallenberg, then in a relationship with Keith Richards, and Mick Jagger played out sexual scenes in the film 'for real' (out-takes of these scenes apparently won a prize at an Amsterdam adult film festival). When Keith Richards heard the rumours, he apparently took to sitting in his car outside the house where the film was being shot. Needless to say, this didn't do much for the Jagger-Richards musical chemistry and the soundtrack came together from a number of sources.
The film has gained notoriety due to the difficulties it faced in getting on screen. The film's content was a surprise to the studio. It has been reported that during a test screening, one Warner executive's wife vomited in shock. James Fox notes in Richard Lester's TV series British Cinema of the Sixties that a Warner exec said of the scene depicting Jagger in a bath with Pallenberg and Breton, "Even the bath water was dirty." The response from the studio was to deny the film a cinematic release. It has been claimed that at one stage Warner Bros. wanted the negative to be destroyed.
Performance was finally released in 1970 after several recuts, dubbing of Cockney accents and changes in Warner's administration. Different edits were shown around the world. Home video versions of the 1990s used the US edit.
A commemorative event was held at London's ICA on 18 October 1997, incorporating a talk by film theorists (including Colin MacCabe, who went on to write a guide to the film), a screening of the uncut UK edition and finally a question and answer session. Those in attendance included James Fox (and family), Pallenberg, set designer Christopher Gibbs and Cammell's brother who introduced part of a video interview with Donald Cammell shot just before his death. Mick Jagger was originally to appear but was committed to the Rolling Stones' Bridges to Babylon Tour.
The Region 1 DVD was released on 13 February 2007 and elsewhere soon after. Although the film has undergone significant restoration, one famous line of dialogue – Jagger's "Here's to old England!" heard during the Memo from Turner sequence – has been removed. This is because at this crucial stage of the film (the music sequence) one of the stereo channels has been used on both channels. Other music and sound effects are also missing from this scene on the DVD release (some drums, the throbbing sound as Turner plugs a lead into his music generator and the shrieking sound at the climax of his fluorescent light tube dance). These sounds, the dialogue and the music are all audible on other releases of the film. Also, the voices of Harry Flowers and the young maid in Turner's mansion have been restored to the voices of the original actors. When the film was first released in the United States and also on the VHS releases, their voices were dubbed by other actors as the studio had feared that Americans would find their Cockney accents difficult to understand.
Read more about this topic: Performance (film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)