Wild Side

United States, United Kingdom

1995

111 Min

Color

English

Currently 3.4/5 Stars.
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EXEC Danny Dimbort, Avi Lerner, Andrew Pfeffer, Danny Short, Trevor Short

PROD Elie Cohn, Nick Jones, John Langley, Hamish McAlpine, Frank Mazzola

CAST Anne Heche, Christopher Walken, Joan Chen, Steven Bauer, Allen Garfield, Adam Novak, Zion, Richard Palmer, Randy Crowder, Marcus Aurelius, Michael Rose, Lewis Arquette, Rolando De La Maza, Candace Kita, Ian Johnson, Gena Kim, Robert Mazzola

MUSIC Ryûichi Sakamoto

Synopsis

Wild Side is a 1995 film co-written and directed by Donald Cammell starring Anne Heche, Joan Chen, Christopher Walken and Steven Bauer.

There are three different versions of the film. Cammell committed suicide shortly after seeing it drastically re-edited by its producers. A “director’s cut” version by Cammell’s wife and co-screenwriter China Kong, and his editor and sometime producer Frank Mazzola, was released in 2000 to critical acclaim. The film is perhaps best known for its graphic lesbian love scenes between stars Joan Chen and Anne Heche. The scenes proved controversial to the point that after Wild Side’s initial airings on HBO, the network subsequently chose to air a version of the film with those portions deleted. –Wikipedia

From Amazon.com: Before Anne Heche came to prominence as the lover (and then ex-lover) of Ellen DeGeneres, she carved out a career as a sharp, intelligent actress, someone who could save a movie by appearing on the fringes, as in The Juror, for instance. Mixed in with supporting roles were a few indie leads – Wild Side is one of the latter, despite Heche’s third billing. And a very strange item it is. Heche plays a banking go-getter who moonlights as a high-class call girl, with the movie hinting that the two professions may not be all that dissimilar. A liaison with a crooked financier (Christopher Walken in extremis) and later with his wife (Joan Chen) puts our heroine in a very confusing situation, especially when she gets in the way of a chauffeur/undercover cop/predator, played by Steven Bauer in high Eric Roberts mode. If the story is not always coherent, the actors nevertheless shoot off sparks, and the movie pulses with a weird energy all its own.

Wild Side was the last picture directed by Donald Cammell, whose 1970 film Performance (co-directed by Nicolas Roeg) is one of the defining films of its era. This cut of Wild Side is credited to the pseudonymous “Franklin Brauner” because Cammell was unhappy with the radical re-edit performed without his consent. A director’s cut had been prepared, but Cammell did not live to see it. He committed suicide in 1996, leaving behind a very small output of films in his foreshortened career. Wild Side, even in its cut form, carries his signature traits of authentic disorientation and intense, twisted sex. And while it’s a guaranteed perk for prurient viewers, the torrid coupling of Heche and Chen is just one equation in the film’s convoluted sexual arithmetic. –Robert Horton

Director

Donald Cammell

Donald Seaton Cammell (17 January 1934 – 24 April 1996) was a Scottish film director who enjoys a cult reputation thanks to his debut film Performance, which he co-directed with Nicolas Roeg.

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… read more

Donald Seaton Cammell (17 January 1934 – 24 April 1996) was a Scottish film director who enjoys a cult reputation thanks to his debut film Performance, which he co-directed with Nicolas Roeg.

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.

Cammell was a central figure in the making of Performance. In writing the screenplay he drew on his familiarity with the London underworld of the 1960s and association with the pop musicians of the day. In his collaboration with Roeg, Cammell concentrated on working with the actors and did most of the prolonged editing of the film in California; producer Sanford ‘Sandy’ Lieberson and co-director Roeg were busy on other projects. —Wikipedia

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