Mike's Trip To Florida

It all started with an email from my friend David asking me if I wanted to go to Florida with him to meet Doris Wishman. David is helping out with the official Doris Wishman website. That's a story in itself. In addition to the opportunity to meet Doris, there was a Herschell Gordon Lewis retrospective happening at an art house in Miami Beach called the Alliance Cinema (which shut down shortly thereafter) and Herschell was going to show up to speak. Hmmm, so an opportunity to meet Doris and Herschell in the same trip. I was in.

So, we rolled into town and checked in at the motel on a Friday night. The next day, we were supposed to meet Doris in the lobby of our hotel. I wasn't sure what to expect. I was pretty excited, though. I was told that Doris either takes to you right away, or kind of decides that she doesn't like you pretty fast. I was just there as a casual observer and was really just going to keep my mouth shut and observe. Well, Doris showed up with her friend David (not the David I was with). She is a very petite lady. She was dressed very smartly and looked really good. Doris is getting up there in years. She looked much better than I had imagined, and she was very sharp mentally.

Doris took a seat and David introduced us. She had an envelope with her and she was pulling out a lot of memorabilia to show David for possible use on the website. She pulled out an ad mat for my favorite Wishman movie, and I said "Oooooooooh, that's my favorite movie of yours." She said "You've seen my movies?" And I said "Yes." She asked me how many I had seen, and I said "Just about all of them. I'm a big fan." Some of Doris' movies have not turned up yet, so that's why I haven't seen them all. After some business was conducted, we moved to another part of the lobby where we could all sit down and chat. My friend David is extremely quiet. So, instead of silently observing, I started chatting with Doris and we hit it off handsomely. I then asked her if she minded if I had my picture taken with her. She refused until she could find someone to lend her some sunglasses. She refuses to be photographed without sunglasses. I don't understand it, because she has great eyes. Well, we took some pictures with David's digital camera, but his camera was crapping out. A missed photo op!

Doris' biographer, Michael Bowen, showed up. He has been working on, and has nearly completed Doris' biography. The five of us decided to walk to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. So, here I am sitting at a table with Doris and the other guys and we're passing around stuff that Doris pulled out of the archives. Great stuff. Then Doris started telling us ideas that she had for new movies that she wanted to direct. This was utterly fascinating. It was as if she was sitting in a studio's office pitching movie ideas. She pitched four or five movie ideas in detail, although she said she was just giving us the basics and sparing us the details. She had obviously given these movie ideas a huge amount of thought. And after she would pitch each movie idea, she said "So, what do you think?" And at one point, she looked directly at me and said, "Mike, what do you think?" And my answer was that I knew better than to question Doris Wishman's instincts. And she just thought that was ridiculous and pooh pahed the very idea that her ideas should not be critiqued. Well, if she had told me that she had an idea that she would hire the woman with the largest boobs in the world, and the plot was to surgically implant a camera in her boobs so that she could covertly take pictures, and that if she didn't return to headquarters within a certain amount of time that her boobs would explode, what would I say? I'd say that's fucking ludicrous! So, what? Double Agent 73 goes down the tubes? Doris has her own unique vision. If I had the money to produce her movies, I'd just let her go with her instincts and stay out of her way.

You could tell that Doris is passionate with a capital P about making movies. She'd rather be making movies than doing anything else in the world. It's totally obvious. And yet, in countless interviews, she claims that her movies were just commerce; a way to turn a quick buck. Bull. If somebody would finance her movies, she'd be cranking them out whether she needed the money or not.

I have to mention that quite often, she mentioned a project that she has been working on for some time called "Dildo Heaven". It was really quite amusing to hear the word "Dildo" come out of her mouth so frequently. "Dildo Heaven" is a video-shot project Doris has been working on. And incidentally, the Alliance Cinema was where Doris did most of the editing of "Dildo Heaven", so she was no stranger to the place, or vice versa.

After dinner, David and I were going to go to the Alliance Cinema to attend the Herschell Gordon Lewis retrospective. I asked Doris if she'd like to go, but she said that she wasn't interested. Even though she was friends with David Friedman, Herschell's partner for a good many films, she had never met Herschell. I kind of badgered her into going and she kept refusing. Finally, I think curiosity got the best of her and she decided to go.

Her friend David offered to chauffeur us to the Alliance. We had a little time to blow, so David gave us a tour of Miami Beach. Doris had shot many of her nudies in the area, so we got the Wishman tour. We drove by the Variety Theatre. The Variety can be seen in Nude On The Moon. In that movie, two guys are driving by the Variety, and the marquee says that Doris' first movie, Hideout In The Sun, is playing. Doris explained that the movie wasn't really playing there at the time, although it had played there at one time, but that they had put the name of the movie up for her. It was just wonderful, taking the tour with Doris and David explaining the landmarks, and Michael Bowen and I discussing Herschell's work as well along the way.

So, we finally get to the Alliance. It was tough getting Doris there to meet Herschell. But I had also wanted Doris to watch the movies, but she wouldn't do that. They were playing five or six of the gore classics that Herschell did. So Doris just hung out in the lobby as did everyone else in our group. I would have felt weird going into the theatre and watching the movies when everyone else was hanging out in the lobby, so I just hung out, too. This seemed like a good time for a photo opportunity with Doris.

Mike gets up close and personal with the Queen Of Sexploitation

Herschell was supposed to show up at a certain time in the festivities and speak. I walked outside of the theatre to hang out for a few minutes, and up walks Herschell and his wife. I said "Are you Herschell?" And he said something like "Last time I checked." I told him that Doris Wishman was there and asked him if he'd like to meet her. We then went inside. Doris was sitting right inside the door. He came in and introduced himself to her. Well, damn. For exploitation/sexploitation fans like me, this was a historic moment. The Wizard Of Gore meets the Queen Of Sexploitation! I grabbed my camera and started snapping shots!


The Wizard Of Gore meets the Queen Of Sexploitation. That's Herschell's wife in the red jacket. To the right of Doris is David B. Wilson, the webmaster of Doris' website. Boy did I catch hell from Doris for taking a picture of her without her sunglasses!	Whoa, these two got friendly really fast!

Well, even to this day, I think that there's some amount of rivalry between directors of that golden era of exploitation/sexploitation, but Herschell just charmed the pants off of Doris. Herschell is a very gracious person, and he also was happy to talk with me, sign an autograph, and pose for a photo.

The great Herschell Gordon Lewis and me and an unknown fan who snuck into the picture.

When it was time for Herschell to go into the theatre and speak, he persuaded Doris to go into the theatre with him. So, Herschell, his wife, and Doris went into the theatre together. Herschell was introduced to the crowd and Herschell stated that we also had the legendary Doris Wishman in our presence. Doris took a seat in the crowd, and occasionally Herschell and Doris would talk back and forth to each other.

Herschell is a terrific public speaker. He's a former English teacher and after he ended his directing career, he became a highly successful marketing consultant. So, he is extremely articulate. He is funny, entertaining, and informative. After he talked for a while, he fielded questions from the audience. Many audience members asked him his opinions on things. He instantly came back at them with his opinions. No hemming and hawing. He is opinionated, but they are very well thought out opinions and you just find yourself nodding your head in agreement.

And this just drives home a couple of points. One: The notion that all exploitation/sexploitation directors were uneducated sleazebags putting out garbage, ripping off the public, and trying to turn a buck is just plain bogus. Many, many of them were/are extremely smart, educated people. Two: There's certainly something to be said for a director taking a no bullshit approach to movie making and just giving people what they want, completely unpretentiously. Yes, Doris and Herschell both tried to turn a buck, and they both did. And they never claimed to be making art. But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank. Both Doris and Herschell inadvertently created an art form of their own. And not only that, but they almost always delivered the goods. Though both of these icons are not completely anonymous, they certainly deserve to have a higher profile, especially in discussions of the history of American cinema. Whether you're talking about the thousands and thousands of people who lined up at the drive-in to see Blood Feast or the hundreds and hundreds of people who went to some skanky movie theatre on 42nd Street to see Bad Girls Go To Hell, these movies are as much a part of American popular culture as Gone With The Wind is. To try to brush this part of cinema history under the rug is to distort the true history of American cinema.

"Good evening gorehounds!"

When Herschell was finished talking, the theatre had an intermission. Herschell signed autographs and chatted with his fans and then left with his wife. Doris still didn't want to watch any of Herschell's movies, so the group, minus me, went out to find some ice cream and then they headed home. I stayed at the theatre and watched a couple of Herschell's movies. Before Doris left, she asked me if I'd like to be in one of her movies, and I assured her that all she would have to do is give me the word and I'd be on the the first plane to Florida.

This note from David: "While we were eating ice cream, Michael [Bowen, Doris' biographer] regaled us with a story another academic film student had told him about going to interview Roberta Findlay at some point in the early 90's, and ending up in bed with her! Even though Roberta is Doris' arch-enemy (partly because Roberta stole one of her titles, 'A Taste Of Her Flesh') Doris was very offended that we would stoop to gossiping about a director's personal life."

My friend David made his way back to the theatre after ice cream to catch the GOre GOre Girls with me.

As of this writing, Doris is working on a movie called Satan Was A Lady (which is another long story, but we'll save that for another time).

Needless to say, that was one incredible weekend for me. And the next day, I found out for the first time that Miami Beach is filled with topless women. How appropriate.

	Mike's
	Trip
	To
	Florida