Drive-Away Dolls

Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke

The directors on the set

Ethan Coen directing a scene

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS       B-                                                                                                    USA  (84 mi)  2024  d: Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke

Love is a sleigh ride to hell.

Not to be confused with DOWN AND OUT WITH THE DOLLS (2001), the Portland all-girl band movie by Kurt Voss, Joel and Ethan Coen have not made a movie together since The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), each going their own separate way, with the older Joel making the murky, heavily atmospheric Shakespearean drama with Denzel Washington and his wife Francis McDormand, 2022 Top Ten List #5 The Tragedy of Macbeth, while the younger Ethan, in collaboration with his openly lesbian wife Tricia Cooke (which is a story in itself, with clear autobiographical elements that she co-wrote, edited, and produced, both brothers working with their respective wives), made this screwball lesbian comedy that was largely inspired by Cooke’s queer youth in New York City’s dyke bars in the 80’s, which at that time were considered communal safe spaces for lesbian women (see Nan Goldin in the Laura Poitras film, 2023 Top Ten List #2 All the Beauty and the Bloodshed).  While there used to be two hundred lesbian bars in the U.S. during the 1980’s, those numbers have been steadily dwindling (There's 32 Lesbian Bars Left in America. Here's Where ...), so this may be a very deliberate love letter to lesbian bars, while also a satiric response to the current political wave of extreme Republican homophobia, especially in Florida.  Actually written back in the 90’s under the original title DRIVE-AWAY DYKES, which was deemed unsuitable by the studio and Motion Picture Association, concerned about negative connotations, they were unable to get financing at the time for anything that wasn’t deemed serious, so the project sat on the shelf for years.  They thought their West coast friend Allison Anders, who directed her own idiosyncratic road movies Border Radio (1987) and GAS FOOD LODGING (1992), would direct the film in 2007 with Selma Blair, Holly Hunter, Christina Applegate, and Chloë Sevigny on board, which sounds like a blast, actually, but it simply wasn’t to be, as there wasn’t a cultural acceptance of LGBTQ characters at the time.  The Covid pandemic gave them time to revisit the earlier work, where Cooke is actually a co-director, but since she’s not a member of the director’s guild, she is not credited.  Somewhat reminiscent of the zany comedy of the politically subversive spy thriller BURN AFTER READING (2008), made during a time when making fun of the bungling misadventures of the Bush government was commonplace, this retro take on the seemingly simpler times of 1999 offers a raunchy yet nostalgic glimpse of a lesbian subculture tucked away from a more conventionally mainstream America, which also happens to be the beginning of an era of stifling conservatism that still exists today, offering a wild ride of a road movie that none of us ever actually took, but who says it has to make sense, where the absurd nonsense of sex jokes and off-the-wall humor is an entertaining mess that has its moments, but is also hard to appreciate, feeling more like a discarded script by the Farrelly brothers.  Universally panned by critics, perhaps it never lives up to its ambitious stab at making lesbians likeable and easy to identify with.  And that may be the biggest flaw, as the exaggerated caricature is simply not for everyone, making it hard to like any of the characters, who are so over-the-top to the point of being ridiculous, but perhaps that’s the point.  Apparently all this really wants to do is have a few laughs, with some neo-noir crime elements, road trip comedy, raunchiness, and a bit of mystery surrounding this adventure that sounds like a wacky delight, with eclectic musical selections assembled by music supervisor Tiffany Anders, the daughter of Allison Anders, like Le Tigre - Eau D'Bedroom Dancing YouTube (2:55) or Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Fire YouTube (5:15), but it never really comes together, feeling anxiously chaotic and randomly stitched together in the editing.  Fueled by plenty of ideas, this tries to capture the sleazy energy from 60’s and 70’s B-movies, like Russ Meyer’s FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1965), or an homage to the queen of underground sexploitation movies, Doris Wishman, where a clip from one of her films, Deadly Weapons (1974), was featured in the John Waters’ slasher film SERIAL MOM (1994), but it fails to find that excitement level, though this is reportedly the first of a planned “lesbian B-movie trilogy.”  

An LGBTQ film like you’ve never seen, even featuring explicit girl-on-girl sex, this brings queer cinema into the mainstream, where a road movie with a queer storyline may have made waves back when it was initially written, but complex queer characters and queer sex have long since arrived in the mainstream, becoming a differently envisioned ode to freedom and happiness, like THELMA AND LOUISE (1991) as a queer couple on the run with a happier ending, where the bright, visual canvas is provided by Ari Wegner, the visionary force behind the camera of Jane Campion’s 2021 #1 Film of the Year The Power of the Dog.  According to Cooke in a Moviemaker article, “Being married to Ethan and being queer, there’s always a little disconnect sometimes,” yet this film champions female empowerment.  Maybe these aren’t the characters we’ve come to expect in movies, feeling more like the shallow world that we see routinely on television, but these days the line between movies and television is not that distinct, as it’s all blurred together into one hot mess, and this film reflects that amalgamation.  Most films benefit by being shown in theaters, as the screen is bigger and the sound is incredible, but in this film, not so much.  How it really improves, though, is being in a communal audience where you can hear and appreciate the spontaneous outbursts, which opens up new possibilities we may have missed, but honestly, that’s a stretch, as this film needs all the help it can get.  There’s probably a joke that starts with, “A girl walks into a lesbian bar,” which seems to be the premise for the film, then providing any number of multiple scenarios.  While it’s amusing in an oddly flat sort of way, it just never takes off, with a few diversions down memory lane that are less than memorable.  Perhaps the most obvious example is the nearly indecipherable Southern drawl from lead actress Margaret Qualley as the high maintenance yet free-spirited Jamie, who serves as a kind of insatiable alpha-lesbian from Texas, perhaps channeling Holly Hunter in RAISING ARIZONA  (1987).  And if you haven’t seen it, check her out in this wild dance video by Spike Jonze, Kenzo World - Spike Jonze YouTube (3:55), which ostensibly served as her audition, as she’s all over the place, exhibiting astonishing range.  This is the same actress used so effectively by Claire Denis, mired in the intellectually measured, clandestine political intrigue of Stars at Noon (2022), going completely bonkers here in an unhinged example of girl power, where she’s an unrestrained illustration of sexual liberation, unable to confine herself to a single partner, even bragging about it at an open mic lesbian bar.  That proves to be her ultimate undoing, as her partner Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), a local cop with aggression issues, kicks her out for her acknowledged serial cheating, but she quickly finds a comfortable landing spot with the more practical and sexually uptight office worker Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan, an Australian actress of Indian and Swiss descent), who of all things, is planning a road trip to Tallahassee, Florida to go birding with her aunt.  It’s Marian’s level-headedness that grounds the picture, offering intelligence and humor, while the more scatterbrained Jamie can go flying all over the place (in sync apparently with the editing), becoming a lesbian Odd Couple road movie.  Rather than just drive, they decide to utilize the drive-away car service of transporting someone’s car one-way, which lessens the cost considerably, but instead of plotting the quickest and safest route, Jamie decides to take detours to a bunch of lesbian bars along the way, because who knows when they’ll ever come this way again, which pits their diverse, starkly contrasting personalities in motion, with Jamie chasing casual hook-ups, constantly urging Marian to loosen up and get laid, since it’s been years (with a Ralph Nader staffer, nonetheless), but she prefers to read Henry James’ The Europeans, insisting that is fun.  While the film is brazenly proud about being lesbian forward, sending a message of queer female empowerment, the actual storyline is unrelated to the characters’ sexual orientations, which are instead explored through dialogue and heavily circuitous side plots.  The jarringly disconcerting opening sequence in the back alleys of Philadelphia haunts the entire picture, as a devious crime was committed that just happens to plague their jaunt across the country, though the events are seemingly unrelated.  When Jamie decides to pick up her stuff at Sukie’s apartment, there are drawbacks, yet this scene epitomizes the type of ribald humor used throughout, DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS - "That Was A Gift " Official Clip - Only In ... YouTube (56 seconds).  In a lesbian drama, the male penis, apparently, has hilarious ramifications, becoming the core aspect of male patriarchy that must be subverted.    

A group of inept mobsters led by Colman Domingo, along with C.J. Wilson and Joey Slotnick (both cast in Ethan’s off-Broadway theater production of A Play Is A Poem), strongly reminiscent of Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare in Fargo (1996), under orders from an unseen crime boss heard on the phone, are on the lookout for the drive-away car, as it contains something they view as essential.  Yet somehow, someway, there was a mix-up by the car service giving to the girls what was intended to be their car, Drive-Away Dolls Movie Clip - Don’t Call Me Curlie (2024) YouTube (42 seconds), providing them access to a suitcase with questionable contents, becoming a comedy of errors, like some kind of ode to Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), or the on-the-run-from-the-mob zaniness of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959).  So while there’s a breezy, lightweight comedy of lesbian thrill seekers, erupting into something along the lines of spring break, there’s also a band of gunmen trying to track them down, but are stymied by their inexplicable route digressions.  This adds a dark side to the jaunty fun that the girls seem to be having, but the most unexpected detours are recurring flashbacks to the psychedelic era of the 60’s, complete with period artwork that’s neither funny nor insightful, with cameo appearances from two unforeseen stars.  The first is a billboard advertisement for virtuous all-American Senator Gary Channel (Matt Damon) preaching family values, eventually finding himself in an uncompromising position, a clear shot at the current homophobia in Florida, and the other is an uncredited appearance by Miley Cyrus as hippie flower child Tiffany Plastercaster, aka visual artist Cynthia Plaster Caster (the film is dedicated to her), who gained fame from making dildos of the erect penises of various rock musicians and celebrities.  She appears in TV advertisements that resembles turn-of-the-century computer animation for a one-of-a kind “groovy” experience that is enveloped in free love and flower power psychedelics, uttering “Hey handsome, you want to get plastered?” with Eddie Hazel’s high wire guitar solos swirling around in the background, Funkadelic - Maggot Brain [HQ] YouTube (10:34), which may or may not have anything to do with this film.  Once more, the male penis, in this case the Senator’s (a nod apparently to his youthful transgressions in the 60’s), plays a prominent role in this lighthearted comedy, having a little fun at someone’s expense, which becomes the central focus of the drama, secretly meeting our girls in a lesbian bar where they attempt to extort what they have that belongs to him, DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS - "Democrats" Official Clip - Now ... YouTube (49 seconds), but he only ends up finding himself in an even more compromising situation.  But two smaller scenes really stand out for their sheer originality, one is when our protagonists crash a slumber party of teenage girls and end up making out with an entire soccer team to the music of Linda Ronstadt, though there was never a thought that Linda Ronstadt’s music could be considered lesbian music, but hey, it’s all in the mind of the beholder, and they appear to evoke powerful memories, though the two songs heard, "Long Long Time" by Linda Ronstadt from DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS YouTube (4:24) and Linda Ronstadt - Blue Bayou (Official Music Video) YouTube (4:18), are not from the 1976 record album shown on a coffee table, Hasten Down the Wind.  Nonetheless this scene certainly gets Marian’s juices flowing, tempting her in ways she can’t refuse, while the other is one of Marian’s flashbacks.  As a child, she loved jumping on her trampoline, and if she jumped high enough, she could see over the fence at her neighbor next door, discovering a bare-assed Savanna Ziegler (in her first role) sunbathing and swimming in the nude, a welcome sight for repressed sexual desires, which feels like an ultra-personal childhood memory that simply reeks of authenticity, mirroring a similar scene in A Serious Man (2009).  This oddball film stands in stark contrast to the overbloated, overproduced films that seem to dominate the awards season, where fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero movies have become an American cultural affectation.  Setting out to make an “unimportant film,” the knock on this may be the incessant juvenile antics on display, where it’s uneven, at best, exhibiting a heavy underutilization of supporting characters, where many just disappear without a word, feeling more along the lines of the underwhelming Hail, Caesar! (2016) than what we have come to expect from the superlative work of the Coens.

Performance

 

Nicolas Roeg

Roeg with Mick Jagger

James Fox rehearsing a scene

Mick Jagger with Anita Pallenberg

Pallenberg with Donald Cammell

PERFORMANCE                  B+                                                                                              Great Britain  (105 mi)  1970  d: Nicolas Roeg        co-director:  Donald Cammell

The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness.             —Turner (Mick Jagger)

The most confounding film of its time, part of the 60’s psychedelic movie milieu, yet defying expectations of viewers, this rarely seen, small gem of a film is crazily indulgent and equally fascinating, now viewed as a cult film, filled with drug-induced attitudes and pseudo-philosophies of the 60’s that one might expect with Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger in a starring role, the first rock star to work with Roeg before David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and Art Garfunkel in BAD TIMING (1980).  Roeg had previously understudied David Lean and worked exclusively as a cinematographer for François Truffaut in FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966), John Schlesinger in FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1967), and Richard Lester in PETULIA (1968).  Taking viewers completely by surprise are some jaw-droppingly sadistic elements that may leave many scratching their heads in disgust, as the film really uglifies any remnants of a peaceful drug experience and instead shatters all illusions with grisly violence, heavily infiltrated by a toxic crime element, perhaps mirroring the ritualization of violence in the Hell’s Angels crashing the party at Altamant, culminating in a grotesque murder in the crowd while the Rolling Stones were performing onstage, as depicted in the Maysles Brothers Gimme Shelter (1970) released that same year.  Talk about a downer, this film is a glorified head case, an early proclamation announcing the end of the 60’s.  Written by Scottish painter turned screenwriter Donald Cammell, who was part of the London underground scene, and filmed by Nicolas Roeg, who provides the hallucinatory effects, they are indistinguishable collaborators on this film, often blending two or three shots into a single image, continually contrasting sharply defined images with free-form flashbacks, implementing a disjointed editing style while uniquely exploring identities, seen here as the merging and loss of individualism and gender.  Set in the waning days of the Swinging London era of 1968, defined by Twiggy, Carnaby Street, and the British Invasion, represented by films like John Schlesinger’s DARLING (1965), Karel Reisz’s MORGAN! (1966), or Antonioni’s BLOW-UP (1966), this delves into a shadowy, considerably seamier side of London, where the performers are James Fox as Chas Devlin, an ultra-violent and ambitious hired East End thug who is part of the protection racket of London gangsters, using threats and extreme violence to frighten and coerce people (Marlon Brando was initially considered for the role as a brash American), perhaps a precursor to Malcolm McDowell in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) without the cocky humor, while Mick Jagger plays Turner, a fallen rock star living a life of narcissistic seclusion, with the mesmerizing, often naked or semi-clad Anita Pallenberg as Pherber (the girlfriend of Keith Richards, and former girlfriend of Brian Jones, causing extreme jealousy, leading to Richard’s refusal to perform on the soundtrack) and equally mysterious Michèle Breton (who never made another film) as Lucy playing his ménage à trois bed partners.  Their paths cross and there is a struggle and transference of identity, two dissimilar men hiding under the same roof, with lots of explicit sex, drug use, and strange mind games, including a hallucinogenic experience that takes a turn for the worse, with subtle references, mysterious dialogue, and disorienting filming techniques, continually blurring the lines of reality.  In this film, nothing is what it seems, evolving into a psychedelic head-trip, shot with extreme emotional detachment, shown in an elliptical, non-linear style that simply drove studio bosses up the wall.  Completed in 1968, Warner Brothers, hoping to tap into the burgeoning youth market, was shocked by its frank depiction of drug use and what they described as pornographic sex, declaring the film “unreleasable,” so appalled by the results that the film sat on the shelves until 1970, unceremoniously released without a publicity tour, when it was almost universally vilified by critics, described by Richard Schickel for Time magazine as “The most disgusting, the most completely worthless film I have seen since I began reviewing.”  With Jagger signed on to play a lead role, the biggest rock star on the planet at the time, studio heads were drooling at the thought this might resemble Richard Lester’s playful use of the Beatles in A HARD DAYS NIGHT (1964), yet they couldn’t have been pleased with John Simon’s review in The New York Times, The Most Loathsome Film of All? - The New York Times, which reads, in part, “You do not have to be a drug addict, pederast, sadomasochist or nitwit to enjoy Performance, but being one or more of those things would help.”     

Film historian Colin MacCabe calls it the best British film ever made, listed at #7 in the Time Out magazine list of best British films of all time, Best British Movies | 100 Best British Films of All Time - Time Out, while in his 15-hour British documentary on the history of film, THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY (2011), Mark Cousins offers his view, “Performance was not only the greatest seventies film about identity, if any movie in the whole Story of Film should be compulsory viewing for filmmakers, maybe this is it.”  The grotesquely exaggerated, in-your-face style may be off-putting to some, using extreme close-ups, intrusive jump cuts, and repetitive sound bites to undermine any connection to character, with events shown out of sequence, using Moog-like sounds with bits and pieces of discordant melodies in a unique soundtrack designed by Jack Nitzsche, creating an imbalanced and distorted view that continually keeps viewers off-kilter, a jagged style that later became associated with Roeg, plunging viewers into a world of the unknown.  One might say there are two halves to this film, with the first more closely following Cammell’s script, predominately featuring the rollicking adventures of Chas, an enforcer in the protection racket run by Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon), forcibly shaking business owners down, instilling fear with open threats, while a parallel story is taking place in the courts describing how business mergers are profitable legal transactions, where the weaker are joined by stronger interests, which is better for both parties, claiming “Business is business and progress is progress.”  The sadistic nature of his work makes Chas a happy camper, a perfectionist right down to the smallest detail, relishing what he does for a living, a swaggering brute with a taste for rough sex and fancy clothes, specializing in extortion, allowing him to exhibit a supreme arrogance and haughty disregard of others, fast forward to Christian Bale in American Psycho (2000), which ruffles the feathers of Flowers a bit, as he has to constantly remind him who he’s working for, as he’s not in business for himself.  Anyone going into this film expecting to see Mick Jagger will be extremely disappointed in the first 45-minutes, as he’s nowhere to be found, bogged down by this brutally violent depiction of the criminal underworld, where Flowers has a habit of taking over struggling businesses, using muscle to apply pressure, where mocking and humiliating intimidation are his stock and trade, with Chas an exemplary, over-the-top example of one of his lieutenants exerting mafia-style tactics.  Flowers targets the small town betting operations of one of Chas’s childhood friends, Joey Maddox (Anthony Valentine), ordering Chas off the case, due to his close personal connection, but he decides to pay him a visit anyway, with Joey and his friends mocking Chas, convinced he is queer, with BDSM references littered throughout.  After receiving his fair share of abuse, however, he allows his temper to get the best of him and murders Maddox in a crime of passion, causing him to run not only from the police, but from Harry Flowers.  His quest for anonymity before escaping abroad and forging a new identity leads him to seek shelter in a temporary landing spot, the dilapidated basement residence of the Notting Hill home of Turner.  This second half of the film is infinitely more bewildering, turning into a cinematic puzzle piece that can be mind-blowingly cryptic and enigmatic, leading him into a crumbling labyrinth of candles, ornate mirrors, velvet drapes, and a squalid Bohemian vibe that he abhors, describing it over the phone with his proper Cockney accent, “It’s a right pisshole.  Longhairs, beatniks, free-love, foreigners...you name it!”  The pace of the film slows considerably, with no real storyline, becoming more of an underground or experimental film, where it’s mostly the blues guitar of Ry Cooder heard in the background, with no songs from the Rolling Stones, where Jagger’s role is actually to act, though the character he resembles is largely himself.  Nonetheless, he offers acute observations on this intruder that become the focal point near the end, with the two women swirling around him like sharks playing sexual mind games, questioning him on his motives, just who he is, and why he wants to be there, where their alluring beauty and frank sexuality is striking, while Jagger’s hovering presence oversees everything, like an omniscient force, but remains mystifying, creating a daring pathway into an inner sanctum of unexplored psychedelia.

While the 60’s American counterculture was largely influenced by the postwar Beat Generation, British Bohemian culture drew from older and wider literary influences.  Interspersed into the film are two Jorge Luis Borges readings, the Argentine short-story writer, essayist, and poet, and staunch critic of authoritarian rule, where his spirit hovers over the entire production, and his image emerges at a precipitous moment near the conclusion of the film.  Both Chas and Turner are shown reading Personal Anthology, the collection of stories published around the time it was filmed, while Turner mentions Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius during his initial encounter with Chas before reciting some material from it, and later reads a passage from The South out loud, “They would not have allowed such things to happen to me in the sanitarium, he thought” The South Lyrics | Beelyrics.net.  Adding to the myth surrounding this film, Donald Cammell put a gun to his head and shot himself years later in 1996, asking his wife to bring a mirror so he could watch himself die, where his last words reportedly were, “Can you see the picture of Borges?”  Mirrors help create the maze-like illusion in Jagger’s lair, where the layout is deliberately obscure, and the number of rooms uncertain, while Chas and Turner both alter their appearance as they go down the Rabbit hole, growing more curious, each recognizing an alter-ego in the other until eventually you can’t tell them apart, becoming spiritually fused together.  The actor James Fox first gained notoriety in Joseph Losey’s THE SERVANT (1963), another identity-crisis drama about mind games and sexual role reversals, while an androgynous gender fluidity became part of Mick Jagger and David Bowie’s rock star stage personas in the late 60’s.  Secretly fed psychedelic mushrooms by Pherber, a window into his soul is expressed through a shattered reality, as identities are dismantled and merged, becoming an assault on the senses with fractured visuals and a near impenetrable thematic motif, no longer able to discern reality from fantasy, challenging his macho posturing and repressed queer desires, offering nothing in the way of explanation or expository information, with a little esoterica thrown in as well, forcing viewers to find a way in, yet this is exactly what the directors had in mind.  “There is no truth, everything is permitted,” Turner explains to Chas, quoting Vladimir Bartol’s 1938 novel, Alamut, (Vladimir Bartol's “Alamut”), a historical novel that tells an Old Man and the Mountain story of Hassan-i Sabbah and the Hashshashin (Assassins) in Persia, who committed murders in hopes of gaining entrance to his hashish-laced Garden of Delights, full of rare flowers, strange perfumes, and exotic young women, a recurring image in the film and an allegorical story that so fascinated Beat writer William S. Burroughs that he included the reference in his 1959 post-modern novel, Naked Lunch (A Brief Note on Hassan I Sabbah, William S. Burroughs, and ...).  With Jagger riffing on an acoustic guitar, moving from a Robert Johnson blues lament, Robert Johnson - Come on in my Kitchen - YouTube (2:50), to John Lee Hooker, JOHN LEE HOOKER - BAD LIKE JESSE JAMES - YouTube (5:21), Roeg creates a visual kaleidoscope as he begins to get inside his guest’s head, his identity and aggressiveness undermined by drugs, with mirrors everywhere, as Pherber dresses him up in a wig before playing Merry Clayton’s Poor White Hound Dog, Performance (1970) -- (Movie Clip) Poor White Hound Dog YouTube (1:45).  The film juxtaposes two different models of British masculinity, the over aggressive street hoodlum of Chas and Jagger’s ambisexual rock star Turner, who moans that he’s been abandoned by his “inner demon,” leading directly into the centerpiece of the film, Jagger’s sarcastically mocking version of Memo from Turner, Performance (1970) -- (Movie Clip) Memo From Turner ... YouTube (3:42), a fantasy that ultimately ties everything together.  It’s a seismic shift that allows the two worlds to collide, leading to a finale where he’s driven off in a white Rolls Royce loaned by John Lennon, with the film remaining ambiguous to the core.  The peculiar strangeness of the Harry Flowers gang was a radical departure from any other cinematic version of gangsters, with homoerotic implications expressed through a fantasy-like delirium.  It might not surprise anyone that heroin was rampant on the set of the film, along with a cornucopia of drugs, while promiscuous sex was commonplace, with Cammell, whose career was never the same afterwards, allegedly encouraging drug use and sexual experimentation to create the proper mood.  Fox was so shaken by the role that he didn’t act again for an entire decade, instead becoming a born again Christian, while Anita Pallenberg stopped modeling and got further hooked on drugs.  The two halves were filmed so separately that she was completely surprised when she saw the gangster sections in the final cut.  Jagger’s girlfriend at the time was Marianne Faithfull, who remarked in her autobiography, the set was “a psychosexual laboratory…a seething cauldron of diabolical ingredients: drugs, incestuous sexual relationships, role reversals, art and life all whipped together into a bitch’s brew.”  Disturbed by the bad vibes, she quickly departed for Ireland.