Film on Barney Rosset Opens Today
Maverick publisher profiled in 'Obscene'
By Michael Coffey -- Publishers Weekly, 9/25/2008 1:28:00 PM
If you
think the terms "maverick" and "book-banning" were coined just for this political season, then a trip back to the publishing scene in New York City in the 1950s and ’60s might be in order. And that’s just what you get in Obscene, a film about Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset that opens in New York on Sept. 26. Written and directed by former publisher Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor, and featuring commentary from more than two dozen publishing figures and writers, the film is part bio-pic, part case study of various censorship battles and part a study in how literature can serve as a devastating critique of the status quo. It’s also a story of how to have fun and go broke doing it.
Rosset, of course, is the central figure here, and the outlines of his life are winningly told. The only child to a wealthy Chicago banker, Rosset was educated in experimental schools as a child, served in WW II--thanks to his father--in a corps of photographers, serving along side of such artists as Frank Capra and John Huston. Rosset ended up in Paris, married to the painter Joan Mitchell; although for Rosset, it was another in a series of marriages that did not last, it was Mitchell who suggested, after they had moved to New York, that Rosset buy Grove Press, which had been abandoned by its founders after publishing a list of three books.
Rosset, who had seen up close the horrors of WWII—many of his photographs from that time are shown—was enjoying a life of near-debauchery in Greenwich Village, and in those strait-laced post-war years, his rebellious, at times obstreperous spirit found a perfect outlet in the role of publisher. He went on to wage costly court battles for the right to publish Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer
and Naked Lunch, while his magazine, Evergreen Review, rose to wild popularity, selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies every month. The review was salacious enough to prompt Gerald Ford to call for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas for publishing a piece in the magazine, a hilarious episode recounted in the film.
The manner of Obscene’s exposition is a mix of a long interview with Rosset, conducted by porn king Al Goldstein for his late night TV show Midnight Blue, and a succession of talking heads that include publishing figures Jason Epstein, Morgan Entrekin and Peter Mayer, former Grove cohorts Nat Sobel, Richard Seaver, Herman Graf, Ken Jordan and Ira Silverberg, writers Jim Carroll, Amiri Baraka, Michael McClure, Gore Vidal, Erica Jong and Ed Sanders, not to mention prominent 1960s orgiast Betty Dodson, and, rather unaccountably and to little effect, Doors keyboarder Ray Manzarek. Ortenberg and O’Connor, first-time filmmakers, manage to convey the heady, disorienting impact of a Grove Press book by cleverly manipulating the still-fresh abstract designs of legendary Grove art director Roy Kuhlman.
"Barney was the last maverick of publishing," says Silverberg, who once worked for Rosset. Indeed, with the impressive Grove backlist, much of which remains in print, it is hard to argue with Silverberg’s point and the film’s central premise—that Rosset’s taste for controversy and his willingness to fight for it have changed the landscape of what is permissible in print and film. Unfortunately, Rosset’s efforts were badly compromised by his reckless management style, which produced unhappy creditors not to mention angry women employees along the way. Yet Rosset, who comes across as impish, charming and totally fearless, has learned his own lesson. He favorably quotes New York mayor Jimmy Walker’s famous line, "No girl was ever ruined by a book," and adds, "but a publisher can be." Rosset, now 82, eventually lost his company to Ann Getty, who then forced him out. Obscene reminds us of the important battles this half-Irish, half-Jewish semi-scion fought on behalf of the books he believed in. It’s an important reminder at any time, but the more so as Banned Books Week begins and the issue of library censorship becomes part of the presidential debate.
Obscene opens at Cinema Village in New York on September 26.
