Q. What’s the difference between Traci Lords and a bowling ball?
A. You can only get three fingers in a bowling ball.

In the summer of 1986, Nora Louise Kuzma was a big adult movie star. She’d been in movies such as ‘The Graffenberg Spot’, ‘Talk Dirty to Me, Part III’ and ‘Hollywood Heartbreakers’, raking in over $30,000 a month including the fees from personal appearances. But the roof on this pleasant little enterprise was about to come crashing in, for despite having been in porno flicks for the past three years, Miss Kuzma, or as she is better known, Traci Lords, had only just turned 18 years old.

Describing Traci Lords’ life and career as ‘chequered’ is being polite. Born on May 7th 1968, she grew up in Steubenville, Ohio and hated the place. Her father left home at the age of 12. She got pregnant the first time she had sex. She dismisses her schoolmates at Redondo High as ‘clueless’. She left home at the age of 15, changed her name (the Lords bit is in homage to a character from ‘Hawaii 5-0’) and got a job at a modelling agency in California, where she rapidly gained a reputation for refusing to fake anything…

From here on, she was, shall we say, laughing all the way to the bonk. At this point, logic states there should be a review of a couple of Traci’s films but the problem with them is that because she was under age when she made them, they’re technically child pornography, mere POSSESSION of which is a criminal offence liable to some quite severe penalties. Strikes me as a bit unfair to group a movie as innocuous as ‘Hollywood Heartbreakers’ with the REAL video-nasties; no coercion needed with Traci! She doesn’t look underage – if she did, the appeal of her movies would be severely diminished and, hell, if you’re going to start banning films like that, there goes most of Brooke Shields’ career.

However, I think it’s safe to say that Traci’s movies contain pretty much the sort of things that you’d expect, just not the sort of things you’d expect a teenager to do. At least not on film. Not of course that I’d know anything about that anyway [Sound FX: author desperately trying to extract foot from mouth] but you get the picture. Or rather, you don’t and nor do I, because her films are banned so… [Shall we just draw a veil over all this and move on? Ed.] As an approximation, three days after her eighteenth birthday, she was back in the saddle, as a legal performer this time, for ‘The Trials of Traci’ (cf. TC7 – aka ‘Talk Dirty to Me, Pt. 3′, aka’ Sensual Mermaid’), guaranteed a huge success on advance orders alone, tho’ most of the film doesn’t involve her directly.

But then it all hit the fan. No-one is sure who threw down the penalty flag; theories include Traci’s parents, a disgruntled ex-employee of the production company and even Traci herself. Whoever it was, the end results were severe. The man at the modelling agency got a five-figure fine. The distributor got a year in prison. The authorities swept her movies off the shelves and held her up as a prime example of the depths of depravity to which the pornography industry would sink, etc, etc. Traci escaped scot-free, save the occasional rumour about the Mafia putting out a contract on her, took acting lessons and got herself an agent. Jim Wynorski cast her in ‘Not of This Earth’ as a publicity stunt, only to discover the girl’s acting abilities went further than expected! John Waters, another fellow traveller on the road from sleazedom to stardom, also pounced after his original choice for the role of Wanda in ‘Cry Baby’ proved unavailable (Jessica Rabbit, in case you’re wondering).

So what differentiates Traci from all the other starlets? First up is probably her individuality. While undeniably pretty, she isn’t from the production line mould of blonde bimbos in heat favoured by the industry to such an extent that it’s very easy to start getting confused who’s who in a film because they all look alike, especially when they all ‘act’ in…the…same…manner. No risk of this with Traci, whose absurdly bee-stung, I’ve-been-sucking-lemons pout is uniquely hers and who can actually act – no fake Australian accents or tortured Vietnam vets here perhaps, but there are a lot less competent people out there!

Secondly, all the world loves an anti-establishment figure ( except the establishment, naturally) and Traci is again unique in being a rebel in that most anti-establishment of genres, the porno movie. After her faux pas was revealed, she naturally had the market cornered in Traci Lords movies, and wasted no time in making the most of the opportunity, setting up her own company to distribute future product. Traci had turned the tables and exploited the exploiters.

You also have to admire anyone who regards working in John Waters and Roger Corman productions as a major step UP the ladder of respectability. Some actresses whine about typecasting but it doesn’t take much to imagine a director’s reaction when Traci turns up at an audition: “sorry, dahlink, I don’t think you quite the type we’re looking for”. Not that Traci can be accused of being too serious about herself after ‘Cry Baby’ where Wanda was simply Traci taken to ludicrous extremes (especially the pout!), her nymphomaniac virgin proving a highlight of the movie.

What happens from here on is uncertain. Will it be up and away to mega-stardom? Will Traci become the Meryl Streep of the 90’s? Who can say, but I’ll certainly be keeping a close watch on her for some time to come…


While there is little argument that Walt Disney’s feature length animated movies are the greatest ever produced, there is no agreement over which picture is his best work. Some people think it’s ‘Snow White’, the first cartoon movie ever made, others prefer ‘Fantasia’ and it’s pre-psychedelic atmosphere & unequalled use of classical music but my personal favourite, because of it’s superb handling of emotions, has got to be ‘Bambi’.

The rights to Felix Salten’s book were first picked up by Sidney Franklin of MGM who originally planned it as a live-action movie. After some tests and trial footage, he realised this would be impossible and contacted Walt Disney who was excited by the idea, scheduled it to be his studio’s second animated feature and the rights to the movie were transferred to him in April 1937.

The first task was to convert the book into storyboards and the two men in charge of this were Bernard Garbutt, a specialist in drawing animals and Marc Fraser Davis, who had less formal training but was a genius at bringing life and feeling into his drawings. The job proved more difficult than had been imagined, and gradually ‘Bambi’ slipped down Disney’s schedule as first ‘Pinocchio’ and then ‘Fantasia’ overtook it. This was no bad thing, as the experience gained in giving animals character was vital to ‘Bambi’.

Dave Hurd was brought in as supervising director and he turned the screws on the storyboard team, who’d otherwise probably still be polishing their ideas! He demanded more human elements in the animals, a more caricatured approach and to help the audience identify with Bambi and his friends in the later scenes, the first part became “about a group of children who happened to be animals”.

Of the supporting characters that were added, Thumper rapidly became the most well-loved – this nearly proved fatal to his health when Sidney Franklin, who’d been retained as a consultant, suggested that it might be a good move if Thumper was killed by the hunters, as the audience would feel it more. This idea was eventually dropped, though not without regret!

The section that posed most problems was the death of Bambi’s mother, without doubt the most heart-rending moment in cartoon history (I have a theory that someone’s attitudes to hunting largely depend on whether or not they saw ‘Bambi’ as a child!). In the first treatments, the writers had difficulty establishing her as a character making her death seem just like another occurence in Bambi’s life. Gradually, however, these problems were overcome, though the eventual version was toned DOWN – it was planned to go back to where she’d been shot and show the marks of her having been dragged away, but this was altered after the following conversation between Walt Disney and two story directors:

Walt Disney: He doesn’t know where she is and starts coming back, but you don’t come back to her do you?
Larry Morey: We come back to the image in the snow.
WD: Do you have to do that?
Perce Pearce: It’s powerful.
WD: I was just wondering if we even had to do that?
LM: It sounded pretty good, Walt.
WD: No blood.
LM: No, just the imprint.
WD: You know she’s dead, but the little guy just comes back…and the snow begins to pick up and he’s crying, “Mother!” and it would just tear their hearts out…this little fellow in the blizzard – and right out of the blizzard comes this stag you know. You never come back and show the imprint of the mother. It’s all by suggestion…I just wonder if coming back and seeing her form isn’t just sticking a knife in their hearts.

Despite this display of moderation the agreed sequence, where Bambi’s father tells him “Your mother can’t be with you anymore”, is still capable of reducing most people, 24-year old ‘zine editors included, to tears.

The animation work on ‘Bambi’ is superb, even more so when you realise that the drawings were done freehand, without rotoscoping (tracing live action footage), although the animators had two real live deer, named Bambi and Faline naturally, to draw from. The only exception to this was the antlers on the Great Stag – test drawings all looked fine individually but when animated the horns wobbled as if made of rubber. The solution was to make a model head, take photos of it at the appropriate angle and copy these onto animation film.

The backgrounds in ‘Bambi’ are different from most of Disney’s features, being rendered in a less hyper-realistic way, with expressionist shading to create the atmosphere of the forest. This was thanks to Tyrus Wong, who’d come up from being an in-betweener (artist who ‘fills the blanks’ between master frames), and helped give the forest a ‘magic’ feel, though it’s been argued, with some justification, that this magic was due to the reality – you feel as if you could walk into it.

Despite the wonderful sequences that were being produced, the movie had problems. Animation is expensive work and when ‘Pinocchio’ flopped on release and ‘Fantasia’ was also looking like coming up short, cuts had to be made. Entire sequences went: there was one scene with Bambi and his father finding the corpse of a hunter, killed by the forest fire but test screenings showed people didn’t like this at all! Another scene not included was one that had two leaves contemplating death and the hereafter before being swept off their branch, and overall the length of the film was reduced from over 9,000 feet to 6,259. The finished film opened on August 13th, 1942, more than five years after the project began.

It’s undoubtedly a masterpiece, although it took ten years to recover all it’s costs. Thanks to infinite repetitions on ‘Disney Time’, Bambi on ice has become part of everybody’s subconscious but even beyond that, it still has to be regarded as one of the best cartoon films of all time. The video recently went on sale in the States and when it does the same over here, no prizes for guessing that I’ll be near the front of the queue!

For further information, readers are recommended “Bambi – the story and the film” – Ollie Johnston & Frank Thomas, published by Stewart, Taborin and Chang. It comes complete with an animated flip book!


In adapting Philip K. Dick’s somewhat whimsical novel to the screen, director Ridley Scott and screenwriters Hampton Fancher and David Peoples have crafted a masterful narrative combining elements of 40’s film noir and visionary hardcore futurism. On first viewing, it is the sheer power of Scott’s visuals which impress. Every frame is a delight, an artist’s vision. LA2019 is Metropolis, awash with rain, smog and human detritus, laden with a wealth of detail that almost convinces us that we are seeing the future. On second viewing, it is a different experience, the plot exploding with a sub-textual richness which forces the viewer to examine the very essence of humanity. Love, sex, death and religion are all here; vibrant, excessive and hopeless. There are no heroes in the future, only the hunters and the hunted. Blade Runner is, quite simply, a masterpiece.

The shooting script, page dated Feb 23rd 1981, contains a number of interesting ideas which never made it to into the film. Some dialogue has been removed in favour of those stunning FX sequences (costing 2.5 million in total!), a few midnight rewrites are evident, and of course the ending is not as intended following some post production interference when the film was badly received at previews in the US. The importance of Deckard’s emotions and Gaff’s origami messages are lost in the inane and illogical “open ended” replacement. Here are the diversions in the script and the original ending reproduced in full…

1 Scene 2. Holden interviews Leon using the V-K machine. He asks Leon to describe “only the good things that come into your mind. About your mother” Leon looks shocked, surprised. But the needles in the computer barely move. Holden goes for the inside of his coat. But big Leon is faster. His laser burns a hole the size of a nickel through Holden’s stomach. Holden survives this (we are told in the film). After watching the computer records of Roy, Leon, Pris, Mary and Zora, Deckard visits INT. HOSPITAL – NIGHT and talks at length to Holden in his hospital bed.
HOLDEN “Its all over, it’s a wipe out, they’re almost us, Deck, they’re a disease”.

2 Rick Deckard is ordering sushi from an elderly, and seriously short-sighted japanese counterman when Gaff approaches. Gaff speaks to Deckard in Japanese. Deckard doesn’t understand Japanese, thinks the man
wants a seat. The counterman translates very badly while Gaff refers to Deckard as The Boogeyman and says “After the slaughter at the steel shop they called you Mister Nighttime”. The Voice Over from Ford is a later addition to cover the change in ending. We don’t discover Deckard’s “memories” until Rachael’s Chopin wakes Deckard.

DECKARD “Me and my dad”
RACHAEL “Do you love him?”
DECKARD “He’s dead”.
Rachael indicates the pictures of Deckard’s wife.
RACHAEL “Do you love her?”
DECKARD “She left me. (pause) Went offworld. Wanted the good life”.

3 Deckard (still eating his sushi) sits in the spinner beside Gaff.

GAFF “I told Bryant I could take care of this myself. Just move me up. I’ll do the job, I told him. Five phonies. I just air ’em out. Bow! Bow! Bow! But no, he says. Bryant thinks you’re hot shit, smartest spotter, baddest Blade Runner. You don’t look so hot to me. Don’t even shave. Bad grooming reflects on the whole department. You don’t dress well. That reflects on me… makes the whole department look like shit”…”The skin jobs look better than you do! What’s the point of wiping out skin jobs if they look better than Enforcement? Pretty soon the public will want skin jobs for Enforcement. I guess you’d prefer that, hunh? That why you quit?”

4 In Bryant’s office, Bryant asks for the old Deckard magic. BRYANT “I got six skin jobs walking the streets”. The six has been crossed out and “FIVE” written over it. This is a typo, and the only reference to a sixth replicant. In the film, Bryant says “four” since he knows about the fifth (Mary) being fried. Having got that right, he then says “Six of ’em jumped a ship offworld”. Oops!

5 After Deckard V-K’s Rachael, Tyrell explains why Rachael doesn’t know what she is. The last bit of dialogue –

TYRELL “It’s the dark corners, the little shadowy places that makes you interesting, Deckard….. gusty emotions on a wet road on an autumn night….. the sweet guilt after masturbation”
DECKARD “Jesus Christ, Tyrell!”.

The last thing he says to Tyrell is “I saw an old movie once. The guy had bolts in his head”.

6 Deckard’s hygiene standards are described in the next scene, where he finds Rachael outside his apartment. The kitchen is a disaster area, dirty dishes overflowing from the sink… He rummages among the dirty dishes for a glass that doesn’t actually have fungus growing in it. He finds one that is only greasy, wipes it with a dirty towel (making it greasier) and pours vodka into it.

7 Deckard visits Holden in hospital again and describes Leon’s death.

DECKARD “I thought you’d…”
HOLDEN “You don’t revenge a machine, asshole! Your slicer cuts your finger, whaddya do? Punish it?”.
Then he guesses that Deckard’s emotions are involved
HOLDEN “The tit job, the one with the snake. You stuck it in, didn’t ya?”…”You got the feeling pal, not her. You fucked a washing machine… then you switched it off. So what? You cry when you turn the light out at night?”
Gaff and Bryant are spying on them via a monitor in Bryant’s office, and critiscising them for Metaphysics. To their astonishment, Deckard and Holden are getting somewhere
HOLDEN “Don’t you see what they’re after, who they’re looking for?”
DECKARD “No, who?”
HOLDEN “God!”
BRYANT “God?”.

8 Roy and Deckard fight in INT. TENTH FLOOR HALL – NIGHT. Deckard manages to hit Roy above the eye with a shot.

BATTY “What’s wrong? Don’t you like me? I’m what we’ve made! What’s wrong? Aren’t you a lover of Faster, Bigger and Better?!”.
Batty pulls a ten-penny nail from the wall and throws it to Deckard.
BATTY “That’s for you. Stick it in your ear and push. If that doesn’t work, try the eye. Believe me, it’ll be better for you than what I’m about to do”.

9 After Roy’s moving death on the roof, Gaff commends Deckard – GAFF “You did a man’s work. But are you sure you are man ?” (sic) “It’s hard to be sure who’s who around here”. The tin foil sculpture left at Deckard’s apartment to indicate that Gaff has been there and knows what we don’t counterpoints his advice – “I wouldn’t wait too long. I wouldn’t fool around. I’d get my little panocha and get the hell outta here. It’s too bad, she don’t last, eh!”. All the clues are there. Time for the ending…`

EXT. WOODS – DAY – 139.

Deckard’s car bullets through the woods in a fury of speed and MUSIC.

We BACK OFF IT AND UP. PAST whizzing branches, OVER the treetops, losing the car as we SOAR over what is suddenly a vast forest spreading to infinity.

Enormous MUSIC!

Deckard’s voice over.

DECKARD (V.O.) I knew it on the roof that night. We were brothers. Roy Batty and I! Combat models of the highest order. We had fought in wars not yet dreamed of… in vast nightmares still unnamed. We were the new people… Roy and me and Rachael! We were made for this world. It was ours!

Trees explode PAST US in a rage of branches as we DIP and SWERVE and that’s when the spinner looms INTO VIEW zooming RIGHT AT US, then tilting and yawing off in hot pursuit with Gaff at the controls.

CREDITS ARE ROLLING, God help us all!

FADE OUT.

THE END

What a tumultuous couple of months for our country: in roughly ascending order of importance, Thatcher lost her job, Arsenal got docked two points and TC caught up most of the slippage we’d lost over the past year. Things won’t be the same without Mrs.T, it has to be said (they’ll be a bloody sight better!) – the last time we had any other PM, I’d just turned 13 and politics was the adult equivalent of football, you supported a party in much the same way you did a football team (ask my sister, who still remembers me scrawling ‘SNP’ over her possessions when I was ten or so!). Meanwhile, the Football Association redefined justice to mean making the punishment hit those who are least guilty – the fans, who have fought less off the pitch than the players have on it. Still, it’s a funny old game, innit Saint?

So, about two months after last time, TC8. This assumes everything goes to plan – there is a very precise schedule which means I hand it into the printer and then head off home for two weeks, leaving Per to collect and stuff them into the envelopes I’ll have left behind (you’ll probably see the finished issue before I do!). If there’s any slippage (which is possible – I’m writing this on Saturday 15th December, it’s due to go into the printers on Monday and there are lots of pages I haven’t even seen yet!), things start to get hideously complex. Having four weeks fewer than normal means less time to check spellings, etc so apologies for any typos. Similarly, apologies to all the people who’ve written recently, you’ll get replies once I’ve worked through the huge backlog of movies awaiting my attention. The bag I’m taking home is crammed full of tapes, and that’s discounting all the films on TV over Xmas – highlights for me are C4’s Chinese Ghost season, Jean de Florette/Manon des Source and Daughters of Darkness. I’m taking two weeks off to rest, recuperate and lie slumped in front of the TV eating brandy butter with a spoon. Which is, after all, what the festive season is all about, isn’t it? [16/12/90: Steve’s comics piece has appeared – something of a relief! However, it’s not quite correct to claim there have been no Kinski comics as I’ve got a German photo-comic adaption of ‘Tess’ – such is the lot of the obscurist obsessive…]

No festival reviews this time, and there probably won’t be any in future. Endless repetitions of “We arrived at X and joined the queue…” were getting tedious to write and probably to read. Also, I wouldn’t waste any room on ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ or ‘Never Cry Devil’ in the normal run of things, so I don’t see why I should do just because they were seen as part of a marathon session. The best & most interesting films will still be reported in Film Blitz, so you can work out which fest’s best, and other odd happenings may get reported, but the days of four-page articles are gone.

The Revco concert cancelled from earlier this year (see TC7’s editorial) has been re-arranged for January 4th so a report on it will appear in TC9. My sense of self-preservation is telling me to stand at the back in case they try and drive livestock into the audience again. I think I’ll listen. TC9 should be ready about the end of March or the beginning of April and promises to kick-ass in a number of as yet uncertain ways, but you’ll see what I mean when it appears. About the only thing I can predict is that it will contain a piece on the ten greatest shower scenes in cinema history, apart from the obvious one!

TC7 was available in Forbidden Planet, London and Cardiff, Psychotronic Videos, London and Artware of Germany. Apologies to D.F.Lewis for breaking the habit of TC’s lifetime and not having one of his stories in this issue: next time, Des! Thanks to Spencer “T-shirts” Hickman, Paul “Sexy Dozen” Higson, Damien “No FP, no comment” Drake, Paul “Chained Heat” Mallinson, Anthony “The Face” Cawood, Steve “Zombie ’90” Aquilino, S.C.Dacy (our not-so-secret agent!), Stefan “JCFC” Kwiatkowski, George “Legend” Houston and the highly animated Dave Bevan!


Trash City – Issue 8

Winter 1990.

TC-shirts! Been spending most of my spare time trying to get this ‘zine ready, so they’re not a great deal further on than they were in the last issue. An estimate is currently being prepared, but I’d like to try and get a couple of others, just for the sake of argument and to assuage my perpetual paranoia that’d tell me I was being ripped off even if someone was doing them for free. It’ll definitely be the Nastassja pic and will be in a strictly limited edition of about 50.

Welcome to TC8, the only printed publication in Britain not to give a damn which of the three Conservative leadership candidates won. Or maybe it just seems this way. We will, however, lend our support to anyone in favour of Nastassja Kinski, oriental movies, Indian takeaways, Belgian chocolate, French teenage girls, American comics, Swiss scenery, Norwegian chainsaws, Finnish film directors (but only those with unpronouncable names), Japanese anime, Italian game-shows and Irish Guinness.

CREDITS

• Textofascist: Jim McLennan.
• Layout, graphics and illos: Per Porter, except the back cover which is a Julia set1 , produced by Steve Welburn using a Vax workstation.
• The bits between the pictures: Des Lewis, Andrew McGavin, Jim McLennan, Martin Murray, Per Porter, David Thompson, Steve Welburn.
• Printing, coloured paper suppliers, tidying up round the edges and so on: Copyprint, London.

Sub. rates (min. 2 issues) are 60p/issue UK, $1.50 Europe, $3 elsewhere. A label on the envelope tells you the last one you’ll get + how much is left over after it. This is slitting my own throat and doesn’t even cover production costs let alone postage, but goes back to when I produced TC on the computer at work. Single issues are œ1 ($2,$4), including postage – this just about breaks even. I sell copies to shops for 75p, so a œ1.25 shop price seems fair. Cheques/PO’s to Jim McLennan. Contributions are welcome, and I reserve the right to publish correspondence unless specifically asked not to. Send everything to :
Jim McLennan, 247 Underhill Road, E.Dulwich, LONDON, SE22 0PB
though a change of address is probably due soon, and will probably screw up the scheduling for TC9. No matter, I’ll make sure things get forwarded if I do move. At least, all envelopes without cute little windows in the front…

CONTENTS

1-3	The Usual stuff	24-27	Killer Kung fu Kinski on coke
4-6	Is this testing whether I’m a replicant or a lesbian?	28-30	Autopsies can be fun
7-9	Dear deer!	31-32	Zzzzzzz……
10-11	Porn in the USA	33-35	Criminally insane
12-14	Two no.13’s and a vampire princess	36-37	Music (more or less…)
15-16	The Write Stuff	38-39	A Tom Cruise film worth watching!
17-18	Un-commercial break	40-41	Couldn’t say, to be honest – not yet seen it!
19-20	Exploding hookers and Phoebe Cates	42-43	Visual Aids
21-23	‘L’ for leather	44-47	Hopefully, Steve’s comics piece…
		48	Mathemagics*