Wishing all you dads out there a wonderful Father’s Day! Among the many virtues of this day is the opportunity I get to post this great pic once again. It’s Timothy, his wife Doris and their six young’uns, from the early 1970s. It accompanied the article “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!” by Harvey F. Chartrand in Filmfax Plus magazine #102 (April/June 2004).
Happy day, dads, fathers and father figures!
Since then, Le Petomane has become the stuff of legend. His story became a comic strip in a 1975 issue of Apple Pie magazine and the better part of a 1976 comic book called The Compleat Fart, both of which featured him farting on the cover. In the 1980s, writer-character actor Timothy Carey, with assistance from painter Salvador Dali, invoked the figure and the “let-it-all-out” consciousness of Le Petomane during a murder trial (a man accidentally killed a woman when he farted) in a bizarre stage play called The Insect Trainer, subtitled Le Pet. While casting the play, Carey told Filmfax magazine, “I’d take a big fart in front of [the actors]. That’s always a big help. I always thought if you really want to be a good actor, you’ve got to be able to fart in public.”
– Jim Dawson, Who Cut the Cheese?: A Cultural History of the Fart; Ten Speed Press, 1998
FAX: Is a cult forming around Timothy Carey?
CAREY: Oh yes, there is no doubt about that. I get e-mail from around the world from people who are just now discovering him. My dad was always pretty famous. As kids, we couldn’t go anywhere with him that he wouldn’t be recognized. He is remembered because he was a great actor who appeared in some landmark films, like Paths of Glory and The Killing. He made his own films, which influenced other independent filmmakers. It all comes down to originality. Someone as iconoclastic as my father resonates down the generations. It’s a mystery why he is becoming more popular since his death, but I think there’s a whole pirated underground of [The World’s Greatest] Sinner tapes out there. There are regular screenings of Sinner in Brooklyn that attract a thousand people per screening. There are Tim Carey film festivals in Chicago, San Francisco, even Australia! For a guy who did what he did in his little way, it’s pretty impressive. It just goes to show, if you put the right kind of energy into something, it doesn’t go away.
– Romeo Carey, “Carrying On in the Family Tradition”, interview by Harvey F. Chartrand; Filmfax Plus #102 (April/June 2004)
Happy Father’s Day!
Carey’s true nature, belying his odious on-screen behavior, came out in the easygoing way he talked about the many leads he’s worked with, actors who’ve routinely – and literally – kicked him around. He was given the cold shoulder by Robert Ryan on Alaska Seas (1954), “cursed and stomped on” by Richard Widmark during The Last Wagon (1956), and kicked in the ribs by Karl Malden during the filming of Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks (1961) – to name only a few instances! When asked to reflect on these incidents, a sad fondness crept into Carey’s voice as he had nothing but praise for the many actors whose resentfulness instilled in him a real martyrdom rather than bitterness: “I’ve been fired from several shows. I’m not proud of it, but I do hold the all-time record.”
– Ara Corbett, “Rebels With a Cause: The Timothy Carey-John Cassavetes Partnership”; Filmfax magazine #56 (May/June 1996)
Karl Malden literally kicks Timothy’s ass in a scene that didn’t make the final cut of One-Eyed Jacks
Wishing all you dads out there a wonderful Father’s Day! Among the many virtues of this day is the opportunity I get to post this great pic once again. It’s Timothy, his wife Doris and their six young’uns, from the early 1970s. It accompanied the article “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!” by Harvey F. Chartrand in Filmfax Plus magazine #102 (April/June 2004).
Have a great day, dads!
“My personal opinion is that [The World’s Greatest] Sinner is very unusual,” [Gil] Barreto observes. “Nobody else but Tim would have dared to make a movie like that. Very controversial, especially when Tim pierces the host (to make God cry out in pain and reveal Himself). Tim’s acting was good, but it was very strange.”
Carey changed during the filming, Barreto reports, truly becoming the character he was portraying. Clarence Hilliard starts out sweet and loving and becomes a wicked man. Barreto recalls, “At first, I only had a few lines, but Tim was so nasty to the bit players that they started quitting the picture. As they disappeared, Tim kept giving me their lines, until I had a big supporting role. Tim became God Hilliard, and we really had God in person on the set. It was very difficult to be with Tim at times.”
Nothing would deflect Carey from bringing his vision to the screen. The result is there for all to see: a crazed B-movie, insane, disturbing, and provocative, fueled by rage and passion.
– Harvey F. Chartrand, “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!”, Filmfax Plus magazine #102 (April/June 2004)
Timmy always seemed to have a project going, but I guess that’s par for the course with creative personalities. I don’t recall the origins of The World’s Greatest Sinner. He wanted to combine religion and politics in a film and do something a little different about a self-made type of person who becomes a big celebrity. He had a production book. I wonder if it’s still around. It explains the plot in quite a lot of detail.
The World’s Greatest Sinner was 20 years ahead of its time. The religious aspect upset the studio heads. People who could have advanced the film were anxious, because they thought the public would condemn it as blasphemous, although I don’t think The World’s Greatest Sinner is irreligious, compared to films today. The character of Clarence Hilliard is redeemed in the end. And Timmy had such a shoestring budget to work with… that didn’t help.
Most of the film was shot in El Monte, California, where Timmy lived. One very amusing scene had Timmy standing on a pile of fertilizer as he was campaigning. He had a big guitar in his hand and he was running for office, talking to the crowds, making a political speech. And the camera pans down and we see that Timmy is standing on a great big pile of cow manure. (laughs) I thought that was a funny touch. That was very good!
I remember that day. Timmy was positioning all the people. They were just local people who were acting in the scene. Timmy had a few professional actors working on the picture with him, like the guy who played his campaign manager (James Farley) and Gil Barreto (who played Clarence’s disciple). I don’t think anybody other than Timmy had any significant credits, though. The World’s Greatest Sinner was all improvised. I don’t remember Timmy ever working from a script.
I went to a few screenings of The World’s Greatest Sinner. I saw the film in Manhattan. Timmy brought it to New York and showed it in several screening rooms, trying to get some film companies interested. But they were all turned off and scared by the religious aspect. But The World’s Greatest Sinner does conclude with a miracle, a church scene where Clarence Hilliard begs forgiveness. He has remorse for the type of person he was and seeks redemption. The problem was with the blasphemous stuff that came before. Not too many people could handle that. It was too ahead of its time.
Carey’s final project as a film director is Godfarter III (1989), an audition piece for Coppola, who was looking to cast the role of an elderly Mafia don for The Godfather: Part III (1990). Coppola considered Carey too young for the part (and may also have been put off by Carey’s earlier eccentricities on The Godfather). Carey tried to convince the director that he could tackle the role of Don Altobello, but it wasn’t meant to be, and Eli Wallach was eventually cast in the part.
Godfarter III consists mostly of scenes taken directly from the original script by Coppola and Mario Puzo. Romeo Carey recalls, “It was basically a screen test, but you also get to see behind-the-scenes of the making of the screen test and how my father worked with actors. I shot the screen test. I got a call from my father. He said, ‘Bring your camera tomorrow morning, I am going to shoot a screen test for Francis.’ I showed up at his studio the next day with my camera and lights. In a single day, he put the project together, complete with the use of the Hilton Hotel, a limo, props, ten bodyguards in suits for his entrance, and his acting friend Robert Miano. My dad’s intention was to prove to Francis that he could play an 80-year-old Don. (Carey was then 60.) We powdered his face white and sprayed his hair white. In the end, my dad was happy with the screen test and felt satisfied. I shot what he told me to shoot and then I edited the footage for him, and he sent it to Francis. Francis liked it a lot and was interested in my father for the part, but Dad suffered another massive stroke a few days after the shoot.”
– Harvey F. Chartrand, “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!”, FilmFax Plus, April/June 2004, No. 102
Godfarter III is available for purchase from Absolute Films
All of Carey’s collected stories to this point are borne of the humility of working class underdogs who dream of artistic expression. There’s Menudo, the 52-year-old Mexican singing cowboy from his teleplay, My Casa Is Yours, who still wants to become a pro soccer player. There’s the title character in Fiore – written with his wife, Doris – a car wash attendant who plays detective in a local murder/necrophilia case to win the reward money for a girl’s art school tuition. In Commercials, another teleplay written with his wife, an ad exec teams up with an anti-establishment, dog-loving street entertainer. Then there’s songwriter Cass Matthews from Greenwood, who finances his 25,000 acres of alligator sanctuary by recording hit pop records in Memphis.
All of these characters constitute a clear autobiography, embarking on impossible schemes, risking public ridicule and physical injury in pursuit of their personal ideals, and none more so than Carey’s alter-ego, The Insect Trainer‘s main character, Guasti Q. Guasti. Guasti represents all of Carey’s loneliness throughout his career, directly tied to the rejection he repeatedly faced amongst those whose art he shared. The booting off of location sets, the months spent developing a character only to be whittled down to a few moments by the time it hit the big screen, doing a screen test and not getting called because someone easier to work with would come in and use Carey’s test as a primer, having idea after idea shot down…these are the elements that went into creating Guasti.
– Ara Corbett, “Rebels With a Cause: The Timothy Carey – John Cassavetes Partnership,” Filmfax magazine #56 (May/June 1996)
In a letter to Carey (dated January 22, 1994), Ray Carney, a professor of film and American studies at Boston University, wrote:
“Re: The Insect Trainer script–What an extraordinary, weird, wonderful, bizarrely unclassifiable work you’ve created. In the Joycean, Swiftian, Salvador Dalian vein, you violate all of the taboos, cross all of the boundaries, break all of the rules, and–ecstatically–take us to places almost never even dreamt of in drama before. The script is a ‘gas’ in the other sense of the word: It’s hilarious–as well as humanly touching and moving. It’s a celebration of eccentric, non-homogenized, non-normalized humanity. An expression of love for the lost and forgotten feelings and impulses of life. A recognition of some of the sadness and loneliness of all originals, pioneers, inventors. In short, you break up the mental and spiritual constipation that afflicts both art and life. You free the spirit. The laughter and thoughtfulness you provoke, if we let ourselves be affected by them, shake us out of our zombie-like trances of conformity. This is an awesome piece of work. Bravo. Bravissimo!”
Prof. Carney’s letter is a fitting epitaph to the amazing talent and spirit of Timothy Carey.
— Harvey F. Chartrand, “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!”, Filmfax Plus magazine #102 (April/June 2004)
The Timothy Carey Experience 