The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Editing Mailer: A Conversation with Jan Welt and Lana Jokel: Difference between revisions

'''Chaiken:''' Did you attend the premiere of ''Maidstone''?

'''Chaiken:''' When ''Maidstone'' didn’t hit, was there a sense of . . .

'''Welt:''' The next project I worked on after ''Maidstone'', oddly enough, was

'''Welt:''' It’s a good story. Sean Cunningham, who would go on to make ''Friday the 13th'' (1979), was directing this film for American International Pictures called ''Together'' (1971). Wes Craven, the ''Nightmare on Elm Street'' (1984) guy, was his assistant editor and they were casting this thing out of ProferesDesmond offices. I’ll never forget the day Chambers, this beautiful eighteen year-old blonde, first came to the studio. Almost immediately she was accosted by Buzz Farber in the elevator. He couldn’t resist and was all over her from the moment she walked in. Turns out Chambers was the daughter of Sean’s next door neighbor, literally the girl next door. He asked her parents’ permission to film her for a nude diving sequence and amazingly, you might say alarmingly, they said ‘yes’ to having their daughter appear in what was essentially a soft-core exploitation film. At the time, her name was still Marilyn Briggs and our friend Roger Murphy, one of the cameramen on ''Monterey Pop'', shot this amazing footage of her repeatedly diving into a pool. It was like Reifenstahl’s Olympia (1936), only better, and I was dying to edit it, which I eventually did on top of narrating the entire film. So, when City Blues started to come together, I introduced Marilyn to Nick Ray. Even after all the notoriety of Behind the Green Door he didn’t know who she was, but he certainly knew Rip having directed him years before in King of Kings (1961).

'''Welt:''' For me, ''Beyond the Law'' is the one that stands best on its own. I also

think ''Beyond the Law (Blue)'' was an improvement on the original; the domfem’s murder providing a more fitting finality. ''Wild 90'' is, well, ''Wild 90'' ...