Kenneth Anger (born as Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer) is an American underground avant-garde film-maker and author. He gained fame and notoriety from the publication of the French version of Hollywood Babylon in Paris in 1959, a tell-all book of the scandals of Hollywood's rich and famous. A pirated (and incomplete) version was first published in the U.S. in 1965. The official U.S. version was not published until 1974.
Concocted his stage name at age 5.
He was an active esoterist (which some of his films reflect) and a sympathizer of Aleister Crowley s "Thelema" philosophy. He is also a member of a secret society, the Ordo Templi Orientalis.
Is the subject of the songs "A Film By Kenneth Anger" by The Auteurs and "Kenneth Angers Bad Dream" by Comet Gain.
According to some sources (including Jean-Luc Godard in "Cahiers du Cinma"), Anger edited a version of Sergei M. Eisenstein s unfinished Que viva Mexico! (1932) during his time in France in the early 1950s. There are no known extant copies of the project and it is not certain it ever actually existed.
In 1967 Anger published his own eulogy in "The Village Voice" because he was upset that the negative of his latest film, "lucifer Rising," which he was carrying on the back of his motorcycle, had been stolen and destroyed by members of the Hells Angels.
For 12 years he was the personal assistant of Henri Langlois and was friendly with Jean Genet, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Marais.
Attended Beverly Hills High School.
Lucifer is the patron saint of the visual arts. Color, form - all these,are the work of Lucifer.
[on unemployed filmmakers] It seems much easier for these people to rent,my films, look at them and make notes, than to give them a job.
