Week 13 (Sept 13 – 19) – Cult Movies: Oh, you thought I meant the other kind of cult movies? Sacrifices to the gods of entertainment must be made, so hop up on the altar!
Man, Timothy Carey.
He started off in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole and became known for his roles in two Stanley Kubrick films, The Killing and Paths of Glory. During the making of the latter, he outkubricked Kubrick during a pre-execution duck dinner scene that took nearly sixty takes because Carey wanted to make his character bigger. As it was, Kubrick had already allowed him — this is beyond a big deal — to ad-lib “I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die!” as his character was led to his death.
Upset that Kirk Douglas and his other Paths of Glory co-stars were getting all the ink for the film, he decided to stage his own kidnapping. The May 8, 1957 New York Times noted that Carey was “found handcuffed and gagged on a desolate road outside Munich” after hitchhiking. Kubrick and producer James B. Harris fired him, but this wasn’t the end of his career.
His official site refers to him as a “Writer, director, actor, attack dog trainer, falconer, gardener, Marine, semi-pro baseball pitcher, father of six, prankster and expert exhibitionist.” He’d go on to make all sorts of films, from high-end independent cinema for Cassavetes like Minnie and Moskowitz and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Andre de Toth’s Crime Wave and Eliz Kazan’s East of Eden to roles in which he embodied “the doomed, the psychotic and the plain crazy,” no matter the budget. Movies like Poor White Trash, Beach Blanket Bingo, the Monkee’s Head, D.C. Cab (as the Angel of Death!), Chesty Anderson U.S. Navy, What’s the Matter with Helen? and tons of bit parts on TV that he imbued with his lunatic zeal.
Francis Ford Coppola wanted to cast him as Luca Brasi in The Godfather, but Carey turned down the part—twice—and claimed he was instead hired for a TV pilot, Tweet’s Ladies of Pasadena. This pilot was his idea: a man named Tweet Twig who brought animals back from the dead and lived among them. Carey said, “John Cassavetes put up most of the money for a TV pilot I did, Tweet’s Ladies of Pasadena. The character Tweet Twig looked like a canary who was run over by a lawnmower – shredded Tweet, a village-idiot guy who always gums up everything. Every episode showed Tweet on a new job because he got fired from the last one. The little old ladies were the kind who knit and garden. Everybody loved the combination except the network people who could help me, and they just walked out. I shot thousands and thousands of feet of film, and I spent all of Cassavetes’s money, all of my own money. I kept working on it up until about 1981 or 1982, and it was like life, you know. We slip, we bleed. Cassavetes taught me that. The truth is, I never really cared about conventional success.”
He also did a video test for one of his ideas, the GodFarter III – Screen Test, an audition for Francis Ford Coppola, who was looking to cast the role of an elderly Mafia don for The Godfather Part III.
Godfarter? Yes. As Quentin Tarantino explained, “He had this thing, this passion going on about farting. It was almost like a religion to him that people killed themselves by holding in their flatulence, like when you have to fart, you don’t fart, so you’re holding it in, and you’re having these toxic gases that are actually killing you. You’re letting methane into your system when you’re supposed to let it out. That’s the way your body is supposed to work, but society has now stopped us from doing that, and we’re making our lives shorter by not, like, letting go; we’re holding onto our poison, to be polite.”
Carey and Tarantino crossed paths when the actor screen-tested for the role of crime boss Joe Cabot for Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino noted, “It was kind of between him and Lawrence Tierney. Oddly enough, I didn’t hire Tim Carey because I heard he was so crazy. Alright, he never would have been as bad as Lawrence Tierney at his craziest.” Instead, he cast Tierney—a story in and of itself—but dedicated the film to Carey.
But anyway, I told you all that to tell you this.
Directed, written, produced by and starring Carey himself, this 1962 marvel remains one of the most delightfully unhinged, punk-rock cinematic artifacts ever captured on celluloid. The story follows Clarence Hilliard, a frustrated middle-class insurance agent leading a drab existence with his wife Edna (Betty Rowland), children and a loyal gardener/friend named Alonzo (Gil Barretto ). Discontented with the rat race and fired after giving his entire team of insurance underwriters the day off for no reason, Clarence experiences an off-screen spiritual awakening after witnessing the hypnotic, frenzied effect of a live rockabilly show.
Determined to be someone, he picks up a guitar, dons a gold-lame suit and transforms into a swaggering, greasy-haired, goatee-sporting demagogue. Proclaiming himself God Hilliard, he starts preaching a radical pre-Anton LaVey doctrine: humans are immortal, ordinary people are superhuman, and everyone is a god.
He tries to tell his wife about it, but she just falls asleep—outside with their horse, no less.
Then he decides to go into politics.
To finance the Eternal Man’s Party, Hilliard seduces wealthy elderly widows out of their life savings and embarks on a chaotic rock ‘n’ roll tour. Complete with wild stage antics like writhing on the floor, stripping and wailing like a voodoo priest, he amasses a deeply devoted, easily manipulated following. Eventually, political operatives — and maybe Satan, but certainly a snake with the voice of Paul Frees — take notice of his crowd-pleasing charisma and steer him away from rockabilly and straight toward a presidential run, leading to fascist overtones, broken family ties in which he slaps around his mother and daughter and an ultimate, audacious showdown with God Almighty Himself in which he repeatedly stabs a communion wafer.
Shot primarily in El Monte and Long Beach, California, on a shoestring budget of roughly $100,000, The World’s Greatest Sinner is wonderfully, gloriously disjointed with wild jump cuts, upside-down camera shots and a jarring mix of studio-set scenes and raw, hand-held outdoor footage. It also has a score by a young Frank Zappa, Ray Dennis Steckler shooting some of the street-corner preaching scenes (Carey paid Steckler to move from Pennsylvania to Hollywood!), fake facial hair, seducing 14-year-olds, Carey slapping numerous people, and so much more.
The World’s Greatest Sinner is raw, crude, explosive and completely ahead of its time. It’s part social satire, part lurid religious tract and entirely a showcase for Carey’s riveting, sweat-soaked, unhinged screen presence. Sure, it’s a mess, but it throbs with an authentic, chaotic heartbeat.
Elvis even asked for a copy of the film, and Carey refused to give it to him. The original cut? Four hours. The premiere at the Vista-Continental Theater in Hollywood? “Carey whipped up the crowd by firing a .38 revolver over their heads, and a riot ensued. This, coupled with the film’s truly controversial content, which some deemed sacrilegious, killed any prospects of Sinner receiving support from the Hollywood establishment. Disappointed but undaunted, Carey took on the additional roles of publicist and distributor, screening the film himself at theaters and colleges over the years. He was even known to sell tickets and show patrons to their seats.”
This movie makes The Astrologer look mainstream. I can’t believe it came out in 1962, though Carey kept working on it for his entire life. It’s not for everyone, but it’s very much for me, taking big risks in every moment and tackling big ideas that other movies would just as soon ignore. At times, it’s high art and other times, it’s an absolute shitshow, and I mean that with the highest of compliments.
The A-Bones covered the theme song for this movie and even got Carey to do an intro!
I’ll close this with a quote from Carey, when asked if he ever did drugs: “No, I’m a teetotaler. I never even smoked. People were always offering me grass or cocaine. I got my own cocaine — my own personality. I am cocaine. What do I need that stuff for?”
SOURCES
Quentin Tarantino on his role models
Criminally Underrated Timothy Carey. Spectrum Culture
Let’s Not Hate Anyone: Timothy Carey and the World’s Greatest Sinner. Cashiers du Cinemart
The World’s Greatest Sinner. Shock Cinema
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