[dir. SARNE, Michael] VIDAL, Gore Myra Breckinridge
Los Angeles: Twentieth Century-Fox, 1969
146 mimeographed pp., light blue oversized stiff paper wrappers, printed in black to front wrapper, secured with three split pins to left edge. Front wrapper sunned, offsetting to rear wrapper, edge wear to both, but contents very well preserved.
REVISED FINAL SHOOTING SCREENPLAY, DATED 22 SEPTEMBER 1969 TO FRONT WRAPPER AND TITLE PAGE.
A commendably early entry in the trans cinema canon but a comprehensive car crash of a film, director Mike Sarne took Gore Vidal’s 1968 novel, a waspish, gleefully transgressive Hollywood satire, and murdered it. Fresh from directing his equally unwatchable debut film Joanna (1968), Sarne was inexplicably hired by 20th Century-Fox to direct Myra Breckinridge, and entrusted with a five million dollar budget. This he spent demonstrating for a second time that directing was not his strong point. A stellar cast led by Raquel Welch and Mae West is left flailing, reviews and box office were both catastrophic, and Myra Breckinridgee is still remembered today as one of Hollywood’s legendary disasters. On the upside, Mike Sarne’s career never recovered.
Although this copy of the screenplay is marked ‘REVISED FINAL’ on both the front wrapper and title page, authorship is still credited here to Gore Vidal. But Vidal’s draft was later shelved in favour of a version by David Giler, and only Giler and Sarne receive screenwriting credits on the finished film — a film Vidal later dismissed as ‘an awful joke’. Vidal’s own draft is rare, and gives us an intriguing glimpse of what the film could and should have been.
[dir. SARNE, Michael] VIDAL, Gore Myra Breckinridge
Los Angeles: Twentieth Century-Fox, 1969
146 mimeographed pp., light blue oversized stiff paper wrappers, printed in black to front wrapper, secured with three split pins to left edge. Front wrapper sunned, offsetting to rear wrapper, edge wear to both, but contents very well preserved.
REVISED FINAL SHOOTING SCREENPLAY, DATED 22 SEPTEMBER 1969 TO FRONT WRAPPER AND TITLE PAGE.
A commendably early entry in the trans cinema canon but a comprehensive car crash of a film, director Mike Sarne took Gore Vidal’s 1968 novel, a waspish, gleefully transgressive Hollywood satire, and murdered it. Fresh from directing his equally unwatchable debut film Joanna (1968), Sarne was inexplicably hired by 20th Century-Fox to direct Myra Breckinridge, and entrusted with a five million dollar budget. This he spent demonstrating for a second time that directing was not his strong point. A stellar cast led by Raquel Welch and Mae West is left flailing, reviews and box office were both catastrophic, and Myra Breckinridgee is still remembered today as one of Hollywood’s legendary disasters. On the upside, Mike Sarne’s career never recovered.
Although this copy of the screenplay is marked ‘REVISED FINAL’ on both the front wrapper and title page, authorship is still credited here to Gore Vidal. But Vidal’s draft was later shelved in favour of a version by David Giler, and only Giler and Sarne receive screenwriting credits on the finished film — a film Vidal later dismissed as ‘an awful joke’. Vidal’s own draft is rare, and gives us an intriguing glimpse of what the film could and should have been.
