Jack Stevenson

ABOUT MY SHOW

"Exploitation Cinema" encompasses a vast amount of territory, reaching back to the earliest days of celluloid. Exploitation covers an incalculably wide range of styles, approaches and subject matter. I do not intend to present a "definitive" history of the genre-—nor do I believe it is even possible. Certainly not within the confines of an 80 to 90 minute presentation. This is not "the" history of American Exari ploitation, but "a" history—-my history, comprised of rare clips, scenes and footage culled from my own archive. I've organized it into a feature length show and I tie it all together with live narration. It delivers.

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Exploitation cinema is today dead.
The relatively few drive-in theaters remaining play mostly second-run Hollywood fare, while the circuits of inner-city action cinemas that flourished during the Blaxploitation seventies have all but disappeared. (Baltimore, for example, lost The Town, The Hippodrome, and The Mayfair in the late 80s, and what was once an active urban action-film scene ceased to exist altogether.) In addition, the Adult XXX cinemas of the 1970s and 1980s—often reconverted opera or Burlesque theaters-have been demolished outright or converted to video-beam projection. "The Block" in Baltimore and "The Combat Zone" in Boston are only two examples of big city red-light districts that no longer have a single "on film" theater. San Francisco's Tenderloin district is littered with decaying little boarded-up theaters that testify to the heyday of Exploitation cinema in all its incantations from Nudism to the Topless Craze to Triple-X.
From the production end, feature-length films have largely gone the straight-to-video route, without even a sought-after "theatrical opening" to generate press. Grindhouse theaters on 42nd Street in New York City often hosted such openings but today there are no more cinemas on 42nd Street. The film experience is increasingly being transformed into a video experience. Exploitation was of course ultimately about making money and today video is where the money is.

MY APPROACH

Due to all this, my show has the overpowering whiff of nostalgia. My show is about filmmovies. It's all about "the big screen," be it a white sheet nailed up in a barn or the silver screen in a beat-up old grindhouse. It's about Burlesque, where live acts and film came to intermingle, and secret studios and apartment flats with shaky camera work. It's a yellowed history of the back rooms and the stages of rotted planking and moldy curtains ... á past of nudists, Hawaiian exotica, overstuffed blondes and violent drug-scare paranoia: The era spanning the 20s through the 50s when the con-artists, the showmen, the shysters, the Elmer Gantry's of cinema swarmed the countryside making heaps of dough feeding America's insatiable appetite for Sex and Shock.
Folk heroes all.
I purposely place a wide fence around the theme of Exploitation and veer into somewhat tangential territory as well. I consider "Manipulation" to be virtually synonymous with "Exploitation" and, while maintaining chronological continuity, cut to clips produced by Listerine, Camel cigarettes and the U.S. Navy.
The material in my show spans from the 20s into the 70s, when exploitation feature-film production reached something of a zenith before video pounded a stake through its heart in the 80s.
Rather than supplying the viewer with a scholarly analysis of this most unscholarly of subjects, I seek to give the viewer only enough background information to present an enjoyable, coherent picture ... a guided tour through the low-budget forbidden, the whiff of a night's cheap paradise before the smell of tomorrow's hair-grease and hangover ... a doorway with a blanket over it and inside a dark room full of cigarette smoke and a projector beam. My show offers a dose of the hysterias and ecstasies of America past: What we thought was exotic, romantic, sexy and scandalous, from the crazed to the cornball, from slightly overweight temptation to shameless manipulation, from action-packed mania to pure dementia. My goal is to entertain first, explain second ... to put the butts in the seats and—in faithful tradition-to make money.

THE TECHNIQUE OF COMBINING LIVE NARRATION WITH FILM

The inherent challenge of a show like this is to tie the program together, via narration, so that it comes across as more than just a stew of clips and fragments, and yet to do so in a style that enhances rather than distracts from the film component ... to weave it all together and give the audience something constructive, informationally, and yet to avoid a dry academic or preachy lecture that could suffocate the spirit of the show. The narration must remain secondary to the film, and yet such narration is essential due to the otherwise inexplicably fragmentary nature of much of the footage.
Written program notes would be sufficient, except (1) many people only give such notes a cursory glance, and (2) once the lights go down and the movie begins, nobody could follow the program through its different phases. I have intercut black slug footage at certain points in the program, which gives the effect of the scene ending as both sound and picture cease, allowing me to deliver a timed narration before the next scene comes on. The film, however, continues to roll through the projector and requires no special "start and stop" of the projector itself. I would ideally deliver these brief spasms of narration from down front, to one side of the screen with a spot light rigged for manual "on-off" perhaps, although I could also theoretically deliver narration from just about anywhere, with a mike in a large venue or without one in a smaller house, possibly even from the projection booth.
Such "live" narration, I believe, can help in holding the attention of a Midnight Movie type audience and add something extra so it isn't just another movie coming along. The live element is also compatible with the kind of Vaudeville or Burlesque spirit of the show. The fact that I'm touring in-person with my film show is in the solid tradition of old movie roadshow exploitationists like Krogar Babb, Dwain Esper, Pappy Golden and others who once criss-crossed the back roads of America with their films in the trunks of their cars.

MY BACKGROUND AND QUALIFICATIONS

I'm 36 years old, I've been a film freak all my life.
In 1985, while living in Boston, I began collecting 16mm film prints, specializing in propaganda, vintage exploitation, and educational films. At this point, I also launched my three-issue Pandemonium book series, which would feature exclusive interviews with Johnny Eck, John Waters, Divine, Mink Stole, Jean Hill, Mary Woronov, Kenneth Anger, George and Mike Kuchar, Frederick Wiseman and others.
From 1985 to 1991, I organized film shows in Boston at bars, galleries, theaters, a bookstore, rooftops, church basements and even in a stairwell. The portable show was my specialty. My main venue from 1985 to 1988 was "Chet's Last Call," a reconverted disco/stripper bar in North Station, upstairs from The Penalty Box Lounge.
In 1989, I did a low-budget tour of Europe with six films in my knapsack, items such as "LSD-25" and "The Last Prom." I did shows in Munich, Berlin, Stockholm (in the hold of a rusty freighter ship to 200 people, Copenhagen (to 600 High School students), Amsterdam, Gothenburg, Gent, and Arnhem. I travelled by train, sleeping on couches, floors and even in a closet once.
In April of 1990, I rented the Longwood Auditorium for three consecutive weekends, doing in-person shows with Richard Kern and Alyce Wittenstein as well as an evening of George Kuchar films and nights dedicated to Propaganda and Biker films, and the 50s.
During the summer of 1990, I did a cross-country tour of America, packing films and projectors into my car. I showed in Detroit, Minneapolis, Seattle (an outdoor "drive-in" show from the roof of a building using my B&H Mark-300 arch projector), San Francisco, Portland, and Eugene.
Back in Boston in the Fall of 1990, I guest-programmed a midnight movie series at the palatial Coolidge Corner movie theater and continued my underground shows at the Primal Plunge Bookstore. I also traveled to do shows in Toronto, Hoboken, Brooklyn, New York and Washington, D.C.
In August of 1991, I moved to San Francisco, driving out and doing shows in Minneapolis and Detroit on the way.
I began doing shows immediately in San Francisco. I curated a sold-out Halloween special at The Cinematheque and began periodic shows at the Roxie Cinema. My main barroom film shows would be once-a-month deals at the Club Chameleon, but I've also done shows at the Club Commotion, The Heinz (Oakland), The Epicenter, Brave New World, The Kennel Club as well as D.N.A. I contributed short films to the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in both 1991 and 1992—films that played at The Castro and Roxie cinemas.
In the meantime, I've had packages of my films (Sex educationals, War Propaganda, LSD films) touring continually in Europe and one-shot tours in Japan and Australia.
In March, 1992, I began my second European tour. Carrying five hours of programming (including a roll of 35mm), I did shows in Nurnberg, Munich, Berlin, Copenhagen, Leipzig, Budapest (three nights), Moscow (showing Jack Webb's "Red Nightmare" to 270 people), Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Osnabruck. I finished up the two-and-a-half month tour as a contributor to the 1992 Copenhagen workshop festival. (From 1990-1991 my associate, Phil Kelly, toured my films extensively through northern Europe.) In addition to my own books and shows, I wrote film related articles published in various 'zines and mags. I've been involved in film in almost every capacity except making films—I've never made a film. I remain dedicated to revivals (Soundies, Scopitones, rare propaganda) and celebrations of obscure masters such as Oklahoman Dwight Swain: pulp crime writer turned educational filmmaker in the 1950s ("Mental Hospital," "Ulcer at Work.")

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This program, "A Short History of American Exploitation Cinema," is the culmination of (1) my desire to personally show films on the big screen—not just collect them, write about them or market them on video, and (2) my love of the vintage exploitation film and the true blue American con-artists and showmen who gave America the sensationalism it hungered for.

WHAT I CAN SUPPLY IF YOU BOOK THE SHOW:

→ A set of stills
→ One-sheet lobby posters (sample enclosed) → My full co-operation with advance press efforts
→ A show that delivers

SPECIAL NOTES ON THE SHOW

My show, "A Short History of American Exploitation" is in 16mm optical sound format with an audio cassette soundtrack intercut at two points during the show. This show requires projectionist vigilance it is a "Projectionist-active" show needing periodic sound and focus adjustment.
The program is not out on video, though transfers might eventually be made for press-screening purposes only.
*** I also have a feature-length compilation show of rare "Scopitones" that would make an excellent and compatible double bill item with the Exploitation program. But please note: the Scopitones are all 16mm magnetic (no light) sound! See press clip pages that follow for information on Scopitones.
I have other features and shorts packages that might fit in for double bill status as well.

Program as pdf:

Poster: