Welcome back to Hippie Hotties! I had to skip a week, but I'm back with more movies from the hippie era that showcase hot hippie chicks and free-lovin' hippie ideals! This week we are going to talk about a forgotten X-rated classic: Performance.
Performance is a 1970 film that was not only rated X, but it also stars Mick Jagger in a role that is very close to who he really was in real life. He plays a rockstar who gets held up by a blood-thirsty, East London gangster played by James Fox. Both of those men give great performances, flocked by gorgeous women.
When James goes on the run and meets Mick's character, he hides out from the cops in the rock star's home and uses the threat of violence to make the rockstar let him live there. Luckily, for everyone, Mick Jagger lives in a true hippie haven. He has a hedonistic, bohemian house that is filled with sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Let me tell you right now: there is a heavy emphasis on the sex part.
There is a lot more to it than that, of course. Mick Jagger's character, Turner, used to be a big deal. His fame is fading and he is searching for some inspiration anywhere that he can find it. That might be why he surrounds himself with gorgeous women, like Anita Pallenberg who is the main romantic interest.
Nicolas Roeg co-directed this film with writer Donald Cammell. Nicolas would later go on to make skin classics like Don't Look Now, so you know that we are in good hands with his early work here. Anita Pallenberg, Ann Sidney, and Michele Breton all star, and they all deliver really sexy scenes - especially one where Anita and Michelle bathe together!
The movie plays with the idea that we are all performing roles in everyday life. The gangster is acting how a criminal is "supposed" to act even if it puts his life in danger or he is exhausted by it. The rockstar feels compelled to make more amazing music because it is what he thinks his audience expects and wants from him and the pressure of that begins to fill him with anxiety.
These ideas are honestly really interesting and refreshing for the time! But I'm not so sure that the movie does the best job at delivering those ideas and fully exploring them. A lot of that has to do with the insane way that the film was made.
This film, like some of the other hippie movies we have been talking about, had a lot of loose morals on set. The directors encouraged the cast and crew to have sex and take drugs so that the set could have the feeling that the movie was going for.
At the time, Anita Pallenberg was dating Keith Richards...so Keith was not too happy in real life that his own bandmate was banging his girlfriend on camera. He was so mad that he refused to play the song "Memo from Turner" that Rolling Stones recorded for the movie. They actually found someone else to play guitar instead!
This film, like some of the other hippie movies we have been talking about, had a lot of loose morals on set. The directors encouraged the cast and crew to have sex and take drugs so that the set could have the feel that the movie was going for.
Shockingly, the scene where Anita Pallenberg injects herself with heroin in the ass was REAL heroin. According to Pallenberg herself, she was just starting to get into the drug. It's sort of sad to watch knowing that she would develop a problem.
The film was considered SUPER shocking at the time. Not only were there real heroin injections on set, but legend has it that a Santa Monica screening in 1970 ended with one Warner Brothers' executive's wife vomiting in shock. Multiple customers asked fr their money back. That could be why this movie was vaulted for two years - it was shot and finished in 1968 and released two years later - and why it's a bit forgotten today.
It's one of those movies in which the lore behind it is more fascinating than the actual movie. Allegedly, some of the sex scenes were so graphic that the processing lab that processed the film refused to develop it because they were afraid of obscenity laws. They apparently destroyed some of the footage, so we will never know if the scenes were really that graphic.
People were anticipating a film that would be like The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, but with The Rolling Stones. Well, they definitely did not get that. This movie was graphic, trippy, sexually charged, and pretty dark. It also used some experimental film techniques that were inspired by The French New Wave like jump cuts and montages.
Weirdly enough Rachel Weisz has stated that this is one of her favorite movies and a lot of critical opinion in the film world has changed about this movie, mostly due to the fact that this is one of the first "modern" movies to deal with existential issues of identity and celebrity. In that way, this movie was trailblazing!
For Skin purposes, the movie has some blazing hot pieces of tail in it. Enjoy some more of Pallenberg in the flesh giving one of the best Performances of her life:
