Brigitte Bardot was earmarked for the role of sultry showgirl Belle Starr. Massot wanted Bob Dylan to play the eponymous character and The Band to play the Crackers, the film's literal band of outlaws. Lennon would later be instrumental in catapulting El Topo to cult status by praising it publicly perhaps he could do the same for Zachariah. Massot was in talks with the Beatles' Apple Films to produce the movie. It was to be a deeply psychedelic movie, a western characterised more by its out-there visuals than by any moral message. Massot based his screenplay on Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha (1922), a tale of two friends and their divergent paths towards enlightenment. There, while Harrison and John Lennon were locked in a meditative stand-off to see who had the stronger resolve, Massot was struck by the idea of two friends duelling in the desert for spiritual supremacy. Following its release, Massot found himself in India, engaged in transcendental meditation alongside the Beatles. Zachariah was dreamt up by writer-director Joe Massot, whose debut feature Wonderwall (1968) had been scored by George Harrison. Like Kelly Reichardt's recent First Cow (2019), and Jane Campion's Oscar-tipped The Power of the Dog (2021), Zachariah shot back at the genre's fatalistic masculinity by celebrating peace, pacifism and, most remarkably, intimate male friendship. But it's in the communion between its protagonists Zachariah and Matthew that the film's most meaningful messages are found. Ostensibly set in the late-1800s, it boasted an anachronistic, diegetic soundtrack from 1960s rock acts such as the James Gang, White Lightning and Joe McDonald, and plays out as part dusty Woodstock concert film, part acid western à la El Topo (1970), and part pre- Blazing Saddles (1974) genre parody. Released in 1971 and billed as "the first electric western", Zachariah was chiefly a musical comedy. The legacy of The Good, the Bad and the Uglyīut amid these hard-boiled westerns came a different, and softer, film. Why El Topo is the weirdest western ever made
Though ostensibly designed to convey the death of the Old West, these end-of-the-line westerns also echoed the way the flower-power fantasy wilted in the wake of the Tate-LaBianca murders, the violence at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, and the escalating tensions of the Vietnam War. Many more westerns of the era had similarly shocking, symbolic conclusions.
Released in 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Desperados, and The Wild Bunch all ended in calamity and bloodshed, all their key players slain. But the western had it in its sights too. Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Easy Rider (1969) foretold the death of the hippie dream. Just two days before, gay porn star Armond Rizzo called out a studio for paying its sexually submissive performers less than their dominant scene partners, essentially creating a wage gap between tops and bottoms.As the idealistic 1960s gave way to the cynical 1970s, US cinema began serving up increasingly nihilistic and psychologically complex stories, all with sour endings to match. It was the second time in the same week that the gay porn industry was criticized by its actors for unfair practices. "Now that I am more experienced, I feel like a model should make no less than 1k." "When I started out I was making $500 per scene," said Nic Sahara. "Back when I worked for Boycrush we were only paid 400-500 per scene," one guy replied while another said that as recently as last year, he only received $300 for his first scene. "If you're a performer making less than 1k this isn’t me coming after you in any way," he said, "I just want everyone to realize what your worth instead of letting your studio decide for you."Ī number of models responded to the tweet, sharing just how much (or little) they were paid when they started out in the industry, citing specific studios who underpaid their performers. He clarified that he wasn't criticizing the models taking less money, but rather pointing out how studios might be exploiting their naivety. As performers can we go ahead and say that no one who is preforming for a studio should be getting paid any less than 1k a scene I hear about some of these new models scene rates and how multiple well known studios are knowingly taken advantage of young performers #1Kornothing- Joey Mills January 27, 2020