Episode 242: Tura! Tribute to an Icon TRT 33:05
(Please note this transcript is autogenerated)
BETH ACCOMANDO In 1965, Russ Meyer unleashed Faster Pussycat Kill Kill on an unsuspecting American audience.
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BETH ACCOMANDO No one was quite ready for the character of Varla or the belted, buckled and booted Tura Satana who played her.
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BETH ACCOMANDO Welcome back to listener supported KPBS Cinema Junkie, I'm Beth Accomando.
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BETH ACCOMANDO Tura Satana was the best role model I could have. Not a traditional one but one that boldly proclaimed you don’t have to obey any rules. When I saw her as Varla in Faster Pussycat Kill Kill I knew she was dangerous. Not just to the characters in the film but to a society that feared strong women it could not control. Cody Jarrett chronicles the iconic actress’ life and legacy in the new documentary, Tura! Jarrett spins a compelling story that rivals any film Tura made. And to discuss the film and Tura herself are director Cody Jarett and Tura’s friend and manager Soiuxzan Perry. (:38)
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BETH ACCOMANDO I need to take one quick break and then I’ll be back to talk about the bad ass Tura Satana..
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BETH ACCOMANDO Welcome back to Cinema Junkie. I’m Beth Accomando. I began my interview by asking Siouxzan to tell us a little about who Tura was off screen.
SIOUXZAN PERRY She had so many different little parts to her that it's hard to boil them all down. I guess her true thing was she was wonderfully sweet, very subtle in some ways. If you didn't know who she was, like I introduced her to many people. One time, I took her to dinner with a friend of mine who had no No clue. And he just thought, Oh, she's a nice lady. I'm like, Yeah, you don't. But she was very giving and very loving and very loyal. I met her in the '90s, and we just clicked. It was one of those things where she said... We did a show together, a three-day show, and I hadn't met her before. I worked with her before. She just called me up the next day and said, I've made up my mind, you're going to be my manager. Okay, sure. Why not? This will be fun. And it was. It was. But she was just really... She had that barl aside to her, definitely. And she didn't take crap from anybody. And it was just the way she lived her life. She was positive about everything. I didn't hear that much negativity ever coming from her. And if it did, it was gone. Very, very strong, powerful woman, stood up to anybody. Everybody should have that, that feeling of, Yeah, I'm a woman, and she wasn't that tall. People thought she was really tall. No, no, not so much, like five, six. But her personality came in, and she was huge. But she was just the most wonderful friend, the most wonderful human being. Give you the shirt off her back, literally. Somebody said, Oh, I love that T-shirt, and she, Here. So Well, that's who she was.
CODY JARRETT When you say that, the immediate vision that comes to mind is, Okay, off goes the shirt, boobs come out.
SIOUXZAN PERRY Yeah, exactly.
BETH ACCOMANDO And, Cody, you have just directed a documentary about Turisutana. Now, Suzanne mentioned she had a Varla side. For people who don't know what that means, Suzanne That introduced us to who she was as a person. What was that screen image that was so iconic that you capture in part in your documentary?
CODY JARRETT Varla was an authentic female badass when that really did not exist. It's like 1966. In Hollywood, for the most part, every role for Asian-American female was either a hooker or a geisha. So then you've got Tura coming along as Varla, who is in Faster Pussy Cat Kill Kill, is the leader of a girl gang, and they murder, they're looking for money, They don't take shit from anybody. She was just a badass. But the thing about Tura that made the character of Varla so indelible... Varla is influence a ton of people. The character of Varla and Tura playing Varla, as you know, has influenced like so many different things. But that came from authenticity. Tura's real life, Tura had a very, very hard life and being able to bring all of her experiences to the camera as Varla, that's what really made the magic. That was like lightning in a bottle. It's like if anybody else would have been cast as Varla, it wouldn't have And it's incredible that the role of Varla even was written. I mean, at the time, you just didn't think of a statuesque Asian-American woman, Bucksum, and able to have no karate and no judo and kick a bunch of ass. So it was almost the most random character you could write. But Jack Moran wrote it. And then here comes Tura, who fit right in perfectly. It is like literally lightning in a bottle. It's just like something that could only happen once. It could never happen again like that.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, I don't remember specifically when I first saw Faster Pussy Cat or first saw an image of Tura Satana, but I know it influenced me. I just remember, it was inspirational. It was this moment of like, Oh, man, you can be a badass. You don't have to take shit from people. She has so many great lines in that film. It's just like, if that's the only film she had ever made, she still would be an iconic figure today. The look of her, too. She had such a striking visual presence in that film with those harsh bangs and the black hair and the plunging neckline that revealed this impressive cleavage. She just cut an image that you could not forget. And Cody, when did the idea of the documentary first arise, and how did you get involved in this?
CODY JARRETT The idea for the documentary came about when Tura was still alive, and Tura and Suzanne were doing shows. They would be doing autograph shows or personal appearances. And women and disenfranchized people of all kinds were constantly approaching Tura, being like, Hey, you've been such a huge inspiration to me. I know what happened in your life, and it's inspired me to be a better person or make changes in my life for my own health or my own self-improvement. And that happened so much that Tura and Suzanne realized that, wow, the limited amount of people that are being positively impacted by Tura's story, if we could find a vehicle that would get this out to more people, to more women, And it could maybe be helpful to more people. It could be even more of an inspiration to more people. So that's where the idea for the film came about. I already knew Suzanne because I had cast Tura in Sugarbox. So we were already pals. So the idea was there. Unfortunately, it didn't come to fruition when Tura was still alive. There was some messiness, and it just didn't quite work out, unfortunately. But after she passed away, it came together so quickly and so powerfully. It's like you could almost feel all the planets aligned. You actually could feel that. It was just like such a surge of energy. And to base the film on, of course, Tura has an a published memoir. There are a few different versions of things, so it was a lot to navigate, but the story is very clear. So that's it.
BETH ACCOMANDO And Siouxzan, did you feel an obligation to get her story out after she passed away?
SIOUXZAN PERRY Yeah. We were working on it when she started to get sick. She had the heart issues, and she was going down a lot. And I said, Oh, my God. And she kept saying, I got to make my movie. And she was trying to do more than she should have been doing. I was getting nervous about it because that was all she talked about towards the end. Who's going to make my movie? How are we going to do this? I talked her into writing her book, her autobiography, because she didn't want to do that, and she finally did that. But when she was getting really sick, and I was out here by myself, we went into a business deal together where that if anything happened to her, I would be the keeper of the jewels, her legacy. She wanted that to continue, and I was doing it already. So thank God for that because I had all the legal rights. She wanted to set me up because it was scary when she was having a lot of problems. She wasn't like, take a pill and go to bed. She wouldn't take her pills. So she did that. We carried on. And then when she passed, it was like, I wear her her ashes around my neck and where's my movie? When's it getting made? I hear it in the ethers. So it was a huge thing. I promised the family, I promised the fans. And yeah, it was something that had to be done. There was no like, No, I'm not going to do that. So it took 20 years. So it's done. Thank God. But yes, huge, huge.
BETH ACCOMANDO And, Cody, you were able to get her daughters involved in this also. What was that like going through some of her history, some of which maybe they weren't completely Are you really familiar with? What was that whole process like?
CODY JARRETT Well, you just touched on something really great because the process was incredible. We did two days of interviews with Lani and Jade, because there's so much material to go through. And they were amazing. They didn't hold back at all. They were just really sincere about their feelings and really honest about things I would ask them or or situations that happened or times in their life, their relationship with their mother as Tura, having Tura as a mother. What is that like? Then in terms of them discovering things they didn't know, that was huge. After they saw the film, there were pieces in there that they did not know before. And then they saw the film, and I'm like, Oh. But I think maybe the I was telling thing, this is slightly off topic, but interviewing Jade and Lonnie, they spoke of their childhood. And Tura wasn't, I don't want to give away too much, but Tura wasn't necessarily available as a mother all the time. So they had to... Lonnie had to parent Jade somewhat. And they told a lot of stories. There was a lot of detail there about their home life. Then at some point after that, I was given the 8 Millimeter Home Movies from the Satana family. And after I them transferred and was watching them, I was blown away because everything that Jade and Lonnie talked about was right there on these home movies, and it was absolutely chilling. It was because it's just like, wow, you just discovered gold, like a gold mine, a planet made of gold. But it was really just so emotionally powerful to be able to to tap into that. So to answer the original question, the daughters were great. Tura really wanted her fans. She loved her fans more than anything, and ultimately, she wanted them to know everything and everyone to be part of her. So them being forthright with everyone about who she was does her justice. That does her legacy proper respect, because that's what she wanted. She wanted to share herself, and they followed through on that.
BETH ACCOMANDO Now, in chronicling her life, you use this memoir, read as a narration through it. Her life was amazing. There's a couple of points where you mentioned that early in her career, she was telling different stories to different reporters, changing facts and things like that. As someone documenting her life, how are you feeling about the information you were sharing? What stuff did you feel was the truth and what was the exaggeration? How are you feeling about the information you were sharing? And what stuff did you feel was the truth? And what was the exaggeration? And how are you going to present some of that when she was fabricating things at certain points in her life.
CODY JARRETT Right. Yeah, that's a very fine line to walk, but we found it, I think. First of all, all the interviews were great. And in terms of material and old newspaper clippings of her and articles, we had enough material to make nine of this film. So you just had to really choose very carefully, not only for what we felt was most accurate, but also what is going to work in a 90 or 100 minutes. It's like you don't have four hours to tell the story. You've got a really short amount of time to cram in all this information. So you've just got to pick something that works cinematically and flows and moves. So I think I answer for both of us on this. I feel good about everything that's in there. We didn't put anything in there that we felt was at least not based in the truth or didn't have some backup. Again, it was also not our job to be Woodward and Bernstein. The whole point of the film was to tell Tura's story from her perspective, because a lot of people could have made this film a different way from the outsider's perspective. Like, Oh, here was Tura. She was a cult actress. She was a pin-up. She did all these things. Let's interview people and talk about how great she was. That was not the point of this at all. We flipped the script completely. This was to be Tura's point of view or for the audience, you sitting in the 356 in the front seat next to her, experiencing this insane life as it's just flying at you. So really, more than anything, we just wanted to stay true to Tura's words, Tura's story, and Tura's more than anything, to his feelings about these experiences, most of which people have no idea until they see the movie.
SIOUXZAN PERRY It was her story. It was her life. And we wanted to be as open and truthful and authentic as we could. And it was always I felt like she was right here, right here, standing here in the chair next to us, looking over us like that. That's not right. That's not right. You could just feel her directing with Cody. But we just knew it's like, oh, no. And it was. We just wanted people to know who she really was. And Nobody really knew. And it was time. And it's a perfect time to see a woman like that. She was most wanted to tell her story. She thought it would help other women get through true. And she wanted to be an inspiration. If telling my story helps one person, she was happy.
CODY JARRETT I have a follow up to that. Tura obviously did love to bend the truth just for her own abuse. You got to take that grain of salt, put that grain of salt on everything that she would put out there. So saying that. But also, I also wouldn't doubt her too much. And I have one specific reason why. There was something I did discover while doing the research for the film. I don't know what year it was. It was this very obscure newspaper article about this horrific train accident. It was a commuter train traveling somewhere in the Midwest. So the train wreck is like a fugitive style train wreck. Derailment. A bunch of people die. A bunch of people are injured. It is this horrible, horrible crash. And Tura is noted in this newspaper article as one of the two women helping to pull people out of the train as survivors. She survived, and her and this other woman were helping other people on the train. Obviously, huge life-changing event, right? Tura's daughters didn't even know that that happened. They did not know until I told them about it. So that just shows you the scope of Tura's life and how many insane things were happening to her that this one event that would have been the defining moment for almost anybody else in their life to Tura wasn't even worth mentioning. That's how much huge stuff she had going on. So I would not doubt Tura too much because there's a lot more there than we're ever going to know, ever.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, I don't want to reveal anything that comes up in the film because this is a documentary, but it really plays out like this intense dramatic narrative with plot turns and surprise rises. It's something where you don't want to just talk about like, Oh, yeah, and this is what happened in her life. Let me just lay this out for you. It's something where I do think people want... I want people to go in and be as surprised as I was by where things went, because I knew a little bit about her. I followed her career a bit. I enjoyed all her movies, but there was so much in this film that I had no clue about, and it was fabulous to see it. When you were putting it together, were you structuring it almost like a drama instead of the way you would conventionally think of a documentary?
CODY JARRETT Absolutely. Freaking lutely. Absolutely. I mean, Tura's life was so big and in your face and poignantly heartbreaking and over the top, kick ass. It's like, the only way to do this was to make it really cinematic. There's no way this could have been a talking heads documentary. There's no way. You just had to get into her skin and freaking put the pedal to the metal and go. That was the only way to do this film.
BETH ACCOMANDO So again, I don't want to spoil of things because it does play out like this mystery or like a movie that she would have been in. But it does start with something that's pretty dramatic. I'm just curious how you found out about this and how you decided to start the movie at this point.
CODY JARRETT So the traumatic incidents that happened to Tura were things that she spoke about her entire life, that her family knew about, her people, her lovers knew about, people that were intimately involved with her, that were all around her. It wasn't an open secret, but everybody knew. And when we did Initially, when we didn't use that as the intro for the film, the jumping off point, some people were like, wow, this is so dark. Are you sure you want to do this? But it's like that sets the tone for Tura's entire life. That event is the thing that enables people to see why she did what she did and why she made the choices that she made and where it landed her. So you had to start there because that was the event that created Barla. So you needed to start right there. Then you could go back and retrace some steps or whatever. But it really did need to start there because that... I mean, horrible event, but powerful awful event in Tura's life, life-altering event in her life, the life-altering event, really. So when we started there, the rest of it flowed much better because it just gave correct perspective, and it gave the through line, again, for why she did the things she did, which we won't talk about because we don't.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, and the thing that I found really interesting, compelling about that is it does start at this traumatic moment at a dark point. But she really refused to be the victim, and she refused to let that... I guess she refused to let that keep her down, and it was the thing that just fired her up, it seemed like, and gave her that like, No, I'm not going to take any more shit like that from anyone. It just seemed to define her in a way that you might not expect it to happen that way, that other people would let it crush much more.
CODY JARRETT Yeah, that's totally true. When we were interviewing Dita, she brought up several other similar stories. She talked about, I forgot the woman's name, but it was like the best ballerina in the world had some very traumatic experience happened earlier in her life. And I think that's true for a lot of people. It's like that's the... And for Tura, especially, right, that was so, so, so dramatic. It's just all All bets are off after this. I don't have to follow your rules. I'm going to write my life story the way I want to write it now. And screw you if you don't like it, because this is what I'm going to do.
BETH ACCOMANDO And you actually had the world premiere of the film here in San Diego with the Asian Film Festival. What was that like?
SIOUXZAN PERRY For us, we were releasing Raising the baby. We were birthing the baby to the world. We had never shown it to an audience before. We would have private screenings and show little things to our friends, but we had never... Oh, my God, there's going to be a lot of people in the audience, and we didn't know what they were going to think, how they were going to react. It was all of this stuff going around. I remember just sitting there going after the first opener, and there was just silence for a lot of it, and we thought, Oh, God, oh, God. Then the laughter and the tears and everything happened, but it was scary. It was wonderful. It was mind-blowing. It was pretty fabulous.
CODY JARRETT Yeah, that was great. That was a great experience. And thank you for all your everything. Oh, yeah. Your participation in that was great. And I think it was the first time Jade and Charlotte, Tura's granddaughter, had seen the film. They trusted us. They trusted me. They trusted us to do the right thing. They didn't see anything before the finished film. So I believe they were crying during the film, at the end of the film. At the end of the film, they were sitting as Suzanne and crying at the end.
SIOUXZAN PERRY They came up, they to me and my wife, and they just looked at us and they had tears, dreaming, and they said, Thank you. That was it. Just, Thank you. And they were like, Oh, my God. So we're trying to control ourselves. It was just this big tear fest. And then we all went on stage, which was wonderful for them to be able to go up and talk about their mom and their grandma. It couldn't have gone better. It couldn't have gone better. But yeah, that was a first for them for seeing all those home movies. I mean, they went through a whole cycle of emotions because sitting next to them was like, Oh, God. Oh, Lord. It was crying and laughing and, Oh, my God. Remember that? Yeah, it was great. Pretty great. Okay.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, she was fortunate in that later in life, she did have a lot of acclaim. She did feel the love of her fans where she was able to screen her film, able to go to conventions and stuff. What was that like for her to be able to capture that towards the end of her life?
SIOUXZAN PERRY I think for me working with her, when I met her, I was handling all the Russ Meyer actors and actresses. I was already doing events. When she came into it, and then it was right at the very beginning, and everything was happening, but she was like, Really? Really? That thing. Then we just started working together and booking shows. The first few shows she went to, she was just like, Holy cow, people remember me? They want my autograph. They want to see me. Then it just took off. We did the merchandising and the statues. It all went nuts after that. She was thrilled. She was always mystified about it, thinking, Oh, well, that'll be good, but that was today, and tomorrow, who knows? They'll forget me. But she was not really coherent of how huge her fan base was and how much love. But wherever we went, it was thrown at her in droves, and it was really good to see her. She was so happy. Those were the happy times for her. She was always happy. She was always laughing and joking and goofing around. She was a very happy person. So she wasn't this dark... She was always that way. So it was just good to see her authentically happy.
CODY JARRETT She didn't walk down the street like, karate-chapping people and kicking over parking meters?
SIOUXZAN PERRY Yeah. Well, a few times. But those were so minor. She was a great friend because she used to stand up for me. Oh, my Lord, if anybody even messed with me in any way, it was like, I mean, I caught her one time. Somebody said something, and she said, Look, you mess with my manager. You mess with my friend. You mess with me. I'll never forget that. I was like,. And that was it. You don't do that. Very loyal.
BETH ACCOMANDO Cody, do you remember the first time you saw Tura Satana in a film or the first time she made an impact on you?
CODY JARRETT Absolutely. I actually discovered Russ Meyer through Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which that film has such a huge impact on everybody who sees it, bar none. So of course, I wanted to see more Russ Meyer films, and I saw Pussy Cat was the next one that I saw. And it was so different, but it was also just so cool. It's like you knew And again, I was new to Russ at the time. This was a long time ago. When I saw Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, it was on VHS. But it was just like there was something about it that was just like, So badass. It transcended so many other films that looked the same, but it had a certain intangible quality that just cut through all of that and really got to you.
BETH ACCOMANDO One of the things I loved about the film is that she's not, by any means, a conventional heroine or or she's not really the good character, the morally upright. And yet we are so riveted to her from beginning to end. I love films like that where it flips what normal expectations are. And she's so iconic, even though she is somebody who kills people. She's not the role model that you'd want your kids to grow up with in one sense, but she is the absolute role model in the sense of, yes, you don't take shit from anyone and you don't follow the rules, and you write your own path, but then you live with the consequences, whatever those are. But yeah, she It's such a striking figure in that film, and that film just holds up. You can show it anytime, and it still captures the audience.
CODY JARRETT It doesn't hurt that Russ was an absolutely amazing filmmaker. I mean, say what you will about things like the immoral Mr. T's or whatever. Forget the plot for a second, okay? Russ Meyer was an expert, expert director and cameraman, going back to World War II, where he filmed a lot of like, Patty coming into a city after the United States had taken it back or somewhere in Europe. And Paton's army came in. A lot of times that was Russ Meyer footage. So Russ was this insane, really good photographer his entire life. He was a still photographer. He shot things in World War II. So film was in his blood. He was an exceptional photographer and editor, just So that level of technical expertise is insane, and that really helps it, too. That really does.
BETH ACCOMANDO Cody, you mentioned that you had cast her in a film. So what was that process like? How did you approach her? And what was it like directing her at that point in her career?
CODY JARRETT This is a great story. Okay, so you see in the background here, this is a one sheet for Sugarbox. That was the film. Sugarbox is a 1970s period women in prison film. I'll be honest, it's not cliché, but you could find every Jack Hill film, every caged heat, every big bird cage, Foxy Brown. You can find every element from all of those films in Sugarbox. It really is an homage. Anyway, I'd written the part of the warden for Erica Gavin, initially, and that didn't work out. But Tura, but Suzanne, as she mentioned, managed all the Russ Meyer women. So Suzanne was like, Listen, I also manage Tura Satana, Kate Natividad. I'm like, Okay, stop right there. Yes, yes. And then Tura, she's just such a real person. She's so authentic. It was very comfortable getting to know her and fun working with her. Fun working with her and Kidn because those are actors from the 1960s and '70s where you just fucking went in and did what needed to be done. You need to kick in the door, you kick in the door. It's just like there's no question about it. There's no It's just like there's no second guessing it. It's like, This is what's scripted. I understand this. I'm going to do this. There's a directness to it that keeps things very authentic and very powerful. It was great working with Tora in that respect and Kitten, because they were just, This is what's scripted. This is what needs to be done. Okay, let's do it. Great. I loved working with both of them.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, I want to thank both of you very much for both talking about Tura Satana and about the documentary. Thank you for making it.
SIOUXZAN PERRY Thank you. Thank you for doing this and for our thing in San Diego and helping us promote this. It's It means a lot when people like it because that's what all we did. We wanted people to see this and love it and experience this and learn something from it.
CODY JARRETT The point was to tell Tura's story in an entertaining, in dynamic way so people would be impactful or whatever. But also with the film, we could have also just preached to the choir, like the people that I don't know who Tura Satana was. We could have gotten stayed really inside with all of these things. But the point was Tura's story was so powerful and so universal that it's like this is really meant for everyone.
BETH ACCOMANDO So one of the things about the documentary, too, is that I had this huge admiration for Tura Satana and saw her as this incredible icon, and your documentary only increased my admiration for her tenfold. Tell people where they can find the film?
CODY JARRETT First of all, thank you. That's exactly the point. So I'm glad it's working. All right. So the film is starting to explode right now. We just had a five-week run. The film had a five-week run at the Lumière Music Hall in Beverly Hills, which was amazing that it got held over for so long. And we have a special event screening at the San Francisco Palermo Draft House on November 19th, one of their weird Wednesdays. This will be hosted by Peaches Christ. Taurus family will be there. This is going to be absolutely an epic kickoff. So The film is just starting to go out everywhere right now.
BETH ACCOMANDO
Well, congratulations.
CODY JARRETT Thank you.
BETH ACCOMANDO That was director Cody Jarrett and Siouxzan Perry talking about actress Tura Satana and the new documentary Tura! And that is fittingly Tura with an exclamation point. The film is still opening in theaters but is now available streaming on platforms such as Apple TV. Go to turamovie-dotcom for more information. That wraps up another edition of KPBS listener supported Cinema Junkie. If you enjoy the podcast, then please share it with a friend because your recommendation is the best way to build an addicted audience. You can also help by leaving a review. Till our next film fix, I’m Beth Accomando your resident Cinema Junkie.
