Neda Arnerić was a Serbian actress.
In Shaft in Africa (1973) she is Jazar (above):
Jazar : How long is your phallus, Mr. Shaft?
Shaft : My what?
Jazar : Your cock?
Shaft : Baby, by now it shrunk down to 20 inches.
Arnerić was considered a sex symbol of Yugoslav cinema.
Elizabeth Wurtzel was an American writer, best known for her novel Prozac Nation (1994).
The first lines of that novel read:
“I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. Like all the drugs put together-the lithium, the Prozac, the desipramine, and Desyrel that I take to sleep at night-can no longer combat whatever it is that was wrong with me in the first place. I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.
Here is the film.
It’s not very good. But it will take you less time than reading the book and you’ll get it all the same.
John Baldessari was an American artist.
A typical Baldessari work is Painting for Kubler (1967–68) which is a painting of a text paraphrasing five theses from art historian George Kubler’s book The Shape of Time (1962).
The text reads:
“This painting owes its existence to prior paintings. By liking this solution, you should not be blocked in your continued acceptance of prior inventions. To attain this position, ideas of former painting had to be rethought in order to transcend former work. To like this painting, you will have to understand prior work. Ultimately this work will amalgamate with the existing body of knowledge.”
In his own analysis, he said he would be best remembered as “the guy who puts dots over people’s faces.”
Neil Innes was an English comedian (Monty Python), musician (The Rutles, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) and writer.
Sue Lyon was an American actress best-known as the nymphet of Lolita (1962).
My film bible Cult Movie Stars has this:
“Amid much publicity stating she was too young even to see the film, an unknown blonde was cast in the title role in Lolita.”
Lyon’s final film role was in the mildly amusing Alligator (1980).
Alasdair Gray was a Scottish writer and artist.
His magnum opus Lanark (1981) features a skin disease called ‘dragonhide’.
Adjectives applicable to this work are grotesque, fantastique and rabelaisian.
The book has a tendency to depress.
Update: The skin disease ‘dragonhide’ reminds me of Maldoror: “I am filthy. I am riddled with lice. Hogs, when they look at me, vomit. My skin is encrusted with the scabs and scales of leprosy, and covered with yellowish pus.”
Garrett List was an American musician, known as a trombonist, vocalist, and composer.
Other trombonists I admire include Rico Rodriguez, Peter Zummo, Vin Gordon, Don Drummond, Fred Wesley and Willie Colón.
Jerry Herman was an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He was nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles.
By pure coincidence I was watching Paris Is Burning (1990) this afternoon, it features the Jerry Herman-penned gay anthem “I Am What I Am” from La Cage Aux Folles.
Allee Willis was an American eccentric best-known as a songwriter, writing or co-writing “I’ll Be There For You” (1994, Friends theme song); “September” (1978) and “Boogie Wonderland” (1979) by Earth, Wind & Fire; and “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” (1987) by Pet Shop Boys.
There are plenty of short portraits of her on YouTube, most of them filmed in her house which, she says, was the MGM partyhouse built in 1937.
There is also her 1974 album Child Star.
She also recorded the song “Big Adventure” (1985) with Pee-Wee Herman.
Peter Wollen was a British film theorist, filmmaker. and political journalist.
He is best-known for his book Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (1969) as well as his marriage to and collaboration with Laura “visual pleasure” Mulvey.
Above is an enigmatic video from Paper Tiger Television in which Wollen “reads the U.S. Press: ‘People Magazine’ and ‘Scientific American’ in the Same Breath”.