Holidays, Folks!
Everything slows down. The noise eases. You can hear the birds or, if you live somewhere insane, you can hear the snow and the silence that creates. I like when no one is doing anything. I can relax. Try not to do anything.
I’m looking forward to seeing snow on my tour. Hopefully snow within reason. Doubtful.
I’m a little traumatized in a good way. I did The Benson Interruption with Doug Benson at Dynasty Typewriter on Saturday. It’s a fun show. I haven’t done it in years. It’s a live event where a movie is screened and 3 comics and Doug sit in the front row with mics and comment during the movie. It can be pretty fun and funny.
Doug told the audience to bring movies if they wanted to suggest them for viewing. So, we had no idea what was coming. The movie someone brought that was chosen was Roar.
I have no idea why I have never heard anything about this movie. Like, zero things. Nothing. It was by far the most insane movie I have ever seen for very specific reasons. It's a terrible movie. It’s an amazing movie.
The director/producer, Noel Marshall, was married to Tippi Hedren. The two of them took a trip to Africa and became obsessed with animal conservation. They started buying up large cats like lions and raising them in their home. He had three kids and she had Melanie Griffith.
Marshall became obsessed with making a movie about a researcher in Africa who was trying to save the lions, tigers, panthers, cheetahs, leopards, elephants, etc. from poachers. He was trying to show how people can live among them in peace. So, he wrote a script and built an Africa set in the desert near LA and brought in what seems like 100 huge cats and a couple of elephants.
Marshall plays the researcher and the first part of the movie is establishing him as the alpha among dozens of REAL LIONS. It is nuts. They weren’t trained and it was complete chaos. They are all over the place. In the house. They are fighting and playing and while watching you never get the sense that there was anything safe about it because there wasn't. The family of the researcher is flown in during the movie to hang out with the cats. His real family.
It is insane. The barely veiled panic of all his family trying to act cool around 100 lions. There is menace and cat violence. It was the mid-seventies so there were no real safety rules. Marshall and Hedren were dedicated to keeping the animals safe but almost everyone in the cast and crew got mauled or popped by lions. Eighteen-year-old Melanie got scratched in the face and needed plastic surgery. The DP got half his scalp ripped off. Marshall got dragged by a lion and mauled on the thigh and got gangrene. Tippi got thrown from an elephant and broke her ankle, bad. IT IS CRAZY because it is all in the film.
It’s an amazing visual document of what surely seems like bipolar disorder and family abuse.
You’ll never see anything like it. There’s a doc about the making of it on Prime. It took ten years to complete the film and it didn’t get released here until 2015.
Tippi and Marshal got divorced and she got the cats and the property and opened a refuge outside of LA in the desert where they shot. She dedicated her life to it.
The film had a profound impact on me. You’ll never see anything like it. I’m a cat guy, so I got it.
Today I talk to comedian Tammy Pescatelli about doing the thing, being canceled, the road and doing the work. It’s a great comic episode. On Thursday I talk to Blitz Bazawule about making the new The Color Purple musical film and Ghana and art. Another great talk.
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
