Interview: Kenneth Anger

Mar 12 2010 by David Whetstone, The Journal

SCORSESE and Warhol cited him as an influence. DAVID WHETSTONE meets maverick film-maker Kenneth Anger.

IF Kenneth Anger had been born in the North East, it’s quite possible he would have ended up in the shipyards or down the pits.

But he was born in Santa Monica, California, and went to Beverly Hills High School. The local industry was the moving image and he grew up steeped in it.

At 83, his memories and family associations are almost as old as commercial cinema itself.

In Newcastle for the AV Festival, he says: “My grandmother worked as a costume mistress in silent films. The most notable was The Eagle with Rudolph Valentino, which came out in 1925.”

The young Anger also attended a California dance school with Shirley Temple and Judy Garland.

Names which drop unselfconsciously from his lips include Basil Rathbone – “the best Sherlock Holmes” – and Gale Sondergaad, a Hollywood actress who was married to screenwriter and director Herbert Biberman.

Anger numbered these among his friends and they are among the reasons he spurned the commercial cinema of Hollywood and moved to France.

“When I graduated from Beverly Hills High School, Hollywood was going through the ‘red menace’ scare,” he explains.

“Even though I wasn’t involved in politics I found it repugnant and silly.”