The Anita Pallenberg You Still Don't Know
The real story behind the film Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg
Alexis Bloom, the co-director of the film Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, reached out to me and very kindly sent me a private link to the documentary before its release date on May 3, 2024. She filmed my testimony two years ago.
Viewing the film and hearing Anita’s words voiced by Scarlett Johansson was quite disturbing to me because the timbre of Anita’s voice was so unique and beyond thrilling. I found it odd that the filmmakers elected to use an actress’s voice (sorry for my lack of political correctness, I cannot get used to the gender neutral use of the term actor to refer to a lady who acts) without insisting that she should attempt to emulate Anita’s voice. I am then led to wonder whether or not Anita’s unpublished autobiographical musings could not have been used to better effect in the third person, which wouldn’t have been so disturbing to those of us who were intimate friends of Anita’s.
Since my initial impression, I’ve had a conversation with Alexis Bloom, who explained that they had tried to impersonate Anita with three different celebrity actresses but it hadn’t worked and they decided to abandon such choices in favor of Scarlett.
On a personal level, I was disappointed in how my own contribution was used. They somehow inferred that our friendship had begun in New York around the Andy Warhol White Rabbit photo shoot in Paris in 1965.
The account of my first encounter with Anita, which occurred on a late spring morning in 1964 at the Montparnasse apartment of the poet and philosopher Alain Jouffroy, ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor.
This encounter set the tone of our relationship. I awoke to behold her dazzling, ironical, carnivorous, barracuda smile while she savored the vision of both Vince Taylor and me naked in the arms of a gorgeous American model who just so happened to be a close friend of hers. Those heady, hedonistic Parisian days when we were casual lovers are of importance to Anita’s story because it was with me that she met Brian Jones for the very first time in 1965, months before her official account of doing so in Munich!
Anita had accompanied me when I played in Vince Taylor’s band, as we were co-topping the bill with The Rolling Stones at the Paris Olympia. After the first of a series of concerts at the Olympia during the Easter weekend, Brian Jones and I became instant friends, and we spent the whole night going to all the great clubs and then on to Donald Cammell’s apartment. (Donald Cammell was a great painter turned filmmaker who went on to direct Anita in Performance.)
Brian was with his then-girlfriend Zouzou, whom Anita had hoped she could somehow supplant. At dawn, Anita and I escorted Brian and Zouzou back to his hotel, and, as we were staggering out of a taxi, we were met by a barrage of Instamatic flashes from young English fan girls camping in front of the hotel, hoping to immortalize a glimpse of their idol, Brian.
This amusing anecdote was left out of the film in order, presumably, to follow Anita's own account of how she met Brian, but its omission deprives the spectator of an important insight into how ruthless and relentless Anita could be when she wanted something or someone.
Alexis Bloom, in a further conversation, told me that she had elected to follow Anita’s own narrative rather than mine as a directorial decision.
That is how history is uncritically rewritten!
The most interesting contribution to the film is given by Anita and Keith's son, Marlon Richards, who describes the tragedy of Anita’s young American lover who lost his life emulating the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter.
Marlon’s account of how he dealt with the aftermath of that appalling event is a great testimony to how resilient a child he had to become with such problematically unconventional parents as Anita and Keith proved to be.
My friend Sandro Sursock testifies eloquently as to how Anita dealt with their Alpine life in Switzerland and gives a moving account of the circumstances that followed the 1976 cradle death of Anita and Keith’s newborn baby boy in Geneva while we were on a tour of Europe.
The supermodel Kate Moss, who only met Anita in the last post-drugs period of her life when she had become a successful fashion designer, testifies movingly as to Anita’s lasting influence on her sense of style.
Nevertheless, this film is definitely a must-watch for all of its extraordinary content!
I watched this as soon as it became available. I have since watched it 4 times. I found Anita fascinating and the home movies that were incorporated into the film brought about a nostalgia within me. I would have loved to have met Anita, I feel as though she and I would have been friends.