{"id":4630,"date":"2012-04-11T16:19:22","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T20:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mondomark.com\/wordpress\/?p=3033"},"modified":"2012-04-11T16:19:22","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T20:19:22","slug":"the-erotic-shades-of-zalman-king-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=4630","title":{"rendered":"The Erotic Shades of Zalman King, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ll always contend that somewhere during the run of Red Shoe Diaries<\/strong>, the 1992-1996 erotic series conceived by Zalman King for Showtime, King realized he was a brand name, and spent much of his remaining years exploiting that brand in lesser creative venues.<\/p>\n

Prior to his passing at the age of 69 in February, King seemed to be prepping an extension of his brand via a new website, zalmanking.com<\/a>, which espoused \u201cIt\u2019s not just a website. It\u2019s a lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tagline that\u2019s catchy, cheeky, but also saddening because it represents the final shift for a filmmaker who had creatively downsized from theatrical feature films to an interactive internet venture that\u2019s plainly undistinguished. Whatever the site may have ultimately matured into, at least from the wan promo tease, it\u2019s as indistinct as generic softcore fodder, with cheap reality-based, interactive extras ranging from \u2018never before behind-the-scenes\u2019 materials to \u201cAmateur video submissions from the girls next door hoping to be discovered by Zalman.\u201d<\/p>\n

The promised site is neither interesting nor particularly creative, and it makes you wonder how the former TV actor, who successfully journeyed into writing and directing, lost his mojo as a brand supervisor.<\/p>\n

There are some filmmakers who have a mere handful of stories to tell, but I doubt that fully applied to King, because even if one can see a recurrent story in his work \u2013 often it\u2019s a woman (usually an ing\u00e9nue type) who becomes wiser, stronger, and emancipated after an intense sexual journey \u2013 there were character nuances which distinguished his films from the banal fodder designed to fill cable TV slots during the eighties and nineties.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>King\u2019s writing \u2013 solo, or as collaborative works \u2013 was often unintentionally amusing; it\u2019s not hard to pinpoint specific scenes or dialogue in his breakthrough script, 9 \u00bd Weeks<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (just released on Blu-ray by Warner Home Video) because there\u2019s a pretense for erotic poetry and deep thought. It\u2019s a style that remained constant in most of his work, including In God\u2019s Hands<\/strong> (1998), the surfing film he co-wrote with the film\u2019s co-star, Matt George. The movie is about surfers, but it\u2019s also filled with a pretense of Deep Drama that in the finished film comes off as silly and tin-eared, but what makes the film kind of work is King\u2019s innately sleek visual style, which he arguably gleaned from Weeks<\/strong> director Adrian Lyne but refined into his own commercial style: rich, saturated pastel colours, ever-moving camera, kinetic editing, and the use of music to either propel montages or slow down seductive sequences so characters had a detailed arc towards their points of emotional or sexual high.<\/p>\n

Debauchery may have gotten similarly nuanced treatment, but sexual violence in King\u2019s oeuvre happened fast: his handling of Blue\u2019s indoctrination into a chicken house versus her near-assault by a smooth talking client in Wild Orchid 2: Two Shades of Blue<\/strong> is respectively epic and compact because King\u2019s sensibilities weren\u2019t into violence, but the path of a character\u2019s self-fulfillment, which sounds like an utterly pretentious claim except for the fact there are plenty of examples within King\u2019s film and TV work. Even in Weeks<\/strong>, the film\u2019s strongest scenes deal with the seductive, power-struggling dance between John and Elizabeth; that film has more psychological depth than King\u2019s own efforts – Wild Orchid 2<\/strong> excepted \u2013 but it\u2019s a signal of where King\u2019s keen interest lay.<\/p>\n

I hypothesize that during Red Shoe Diaries<\/strong> he had pair of epiphanies: he realized his fixation on Seduction was unique, and could be re-exploited time and again in familiar variations (hence the show\u2019s 4-year run, cranking out 50+ episodes); and he realized the show signaled an opportunity to brand himself.<\/p>\n

\u2018Zalman King\u2019 became synonymous with sophisticated erotica \u2013 at least that\u2019s what the brand espoused and pretended to sell in spite of some truly nutty film scenarios. During the Red Shoe Diaries<\/strong> period, King produced several TV movies which served as vehicles for some of the production members of his TV series, and they propagated the formula, or at least ensured it remained in line with the commercial qualities inherent to the King brand.<\/p>\n

1998 was the year where King peaked, but the brand had creatively run its course due to the dramatic banality of the TV movie stories, the sameness of the look and sound of each teleplay, and networks that didn\u2019t seem to care anymore about his work.<\/p>\n

This is pure theory, but one need only look at Steven Spielberg for some contrast: after the massive success of E.T.<\/strong> (1982), Spielberg executive produced films designed to exploit his commercial view of fantastical events in middle class suburbia in films \u2013 Poltergeist<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1984), Harry and the Hendersons<\/strong> (1987), *batteries not included<\/strong> (1987) \u2013 and TV \u2013 Amazing Stories<\/strong> (1985-1987) – with very mixed results, but being a greater visionary (and more business savvy), Spielberg alternated between family fantasies and adult-styled dramas to maintain a creative edge while ensuring his brand name still offered variations on suburban misadventures for nuclear families in cinemas and TV.<\/p>\n

Like Spielberg, King also produced films prior to his own directorial efforts, working with directors like Alan Rudolph \u2013 Roadie<\/strong> (1980), Endangered Species<\/strong> (1982) \u2013 but on a much<\/em> smaller scale, and with indie filmmakers sharing similarly rich visual styles. King\u2019s early directorial efforts were significant (and admittedly dramatically goofy, if not slickly trashy) – Two Moon Junction <\/strong>(1988), Wild Orchid<\/strong> (1989), and Wild Orchid 2: Two Shades of Blue<\/strong> (1991) \u2013 because they contained the key stages where his style advanced from rough to refined, and by the time he\u2019d made Wild Orchid 2<\/strong>, King had found the look and sound that defined himself as a filmmaker, and perhaps his creative biggest gamble was the film adaption of Anais Nin\u2019s Delta of Venus<\/strong> (1995), starring Red Shoe Diaries<\/strong> alumnus Audie England.<\/p>\n

In 1998, however, whatever material bore his imprimatur was decidedly less earnest, and it presaged his creative downslide. His NBC TV series Wind on Water<\/strong>, starring Bo Derek, was axed after 2 episodes had aired, and pieces of music from his company\u2019s stock library \u2013 songs and score cuts from Wild Orchid<\/strong> in particular \u2013 were repurposed in episodes of Red Shoe Diaries<\/strong>, and in the films Boca<\/strong> (1994) and In God\u2019s Hands<\/strong>. It sounds trivial, but the re-use of images, tired themes, and music showed a producer trying to stick with a brand instead of venturing into new territory, and showing less interest in testing his creative drive. Most of his TV fodder degenerated into tales of strippers, sultry radio DJs, a repurposed tanker packed with naughty buffed models, or revisiting the Red Shoe Diary<\/strong> brand.<\/p>\n

By the mid-nineties, King was no longer working with name actors or up-and coming talent, the music in his films was banal, and it was rare when a feature film enjoyed a theatrical release. (A colleague who said he\u2019d attended In God\u2019s Hands<\/strong> at TIFF said the screening was peppered with laughter from the fickle audience.)<\/p>\n

Perhaps more grating to fans, there was no interest in exploiting the brand name on home video. Early theatrical films were released on DVD as part of studio commitments, and prior TV movies appeared on VHS during their initial release and the odd Region 2 DVD, but Red Shoe Diaries<\/strong> \u2013 perhaps his perfect cash cow \u2013 was never given a full series release on DVD. Soundtrack albums regurgitated songs he owned and had re-used in other films and TV, and the lush scores by George S. Clinton, who scored 5 films & teleplays for King, were never commercially released.<\/p>\n

There were also no special editions of his best films \u2013 either because the labels didn\u2019t care, or King himself showed no interest. Perhaps he felt the past should stay in the past, or the past reminded him of better days. Perhaps he felt there hadn\u2019t been a project about which he felt sufficiently passionate enough to discuss, or maybe he was a private person who just didn\u2019t like discussing his career. Not everyone can sit through their work and provide a compelling narrative, and King\u2019s passion seemed to be to press on with the next project; home video special editions just weren\u2019t that important.<\/p>\n

In their tribute blog post <\/a>to King by home video label Code Red, they mention an audio commentary he recorded for their planned DVD of the 1975 exploitation film Trip with the Teacher<\/strong>, in which he played a psycho taunting leggy teachers in the desert, and after recording 75 mins. worth of reminiscences, King seemed to realize there was some personal reward in revisiting older works and recording one\u2019s own history for posterity.<\/p>\n

With his passing in February, so disappeared an important pioneer of American erotica, and while his best work was far behind him, fans never doubted there was a passion behind the man \u2013 it just got a little misdirected, or perhaps overwhelmed by the demands of brand management.<\/p>\n

The only significant interview King gave that comes to mind was for Premiere magazine, during the making of Wild Orchid 2<\/strong>, which was likely around 1990, when the film was known as \u201cBlue Movie Blue\u201d before it was slapped with a franchise name and number that bore no relation to the original Wild Orchid<\/strong>. At least, that\u2019s the tone I recall from the piece because Premiere is long gone, and my hardcopy is probably buried in deep storage, far away from my hands.<\/p>\n

I would\u2019ve liked to have added a second and more detailed Q&A from my end, but that never happened \u2013 most likely because the project slipped my mind far too many times, and whenever his name appeared on a new project, it sounded so remote from his best (and more earnest) work that there seemed no point. Maybe he would\u2019ve been surprised and annoyed by the interest and dissection of his themes and peculiar fixations, but the conclusion of the proposed piece would\u2019ve been simple: the man deserved his due. It\u2019s not hard to find his influence, in terms of style, within commercial TV erotica because he figured out a formula that sold well, but it only works if there\u2019s a heart behind the filmmaker, and it\u2019s there in his best work, which I\u2019ll revisit in the coming months, perhaps trying to write the retrospective that never came to fruition.<\/p>\n

Why Zalman King, you ask?<\/p>\n

Why not?<\/em><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com <\/strong>( Main Site<\/a> \/ Mobile Site<\/a> )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American erotic film pioneer Zalman King died in February at the age of 69, and the release in March of his first major screenwriting success – a film version of Elizabeth McNeill’s autobiographical 9 1\/2 Weeks (1986), directed by Adrian Lyne – seems like the perfect opportunity to both review the film and begin a sporadic look at King’s oeuvre as a filmmaker, with a lengthy Editor’s Blog \/ tribute to the marginalized oddball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[1202,1204,405,1203,1201],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1cG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}