Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils

It was the kind of email that sends a chill down your spine. On the day an ad appeared in the newspaper touting my live interview with legendary director Ken Russell at a screening of his cult film The Devils, I got a note from Phil Brown, a writer who had just had the “pleasure” of interviewing Russell on the phone. It did not go well. Not well at all. Brown was barely able to coax even “yes” or “no” answers from the cranky eighty-three-year-old.

Here’s a taste:

Q: What did you base The Devils on and what drew you to the material?

Ken Russell: It was so long ago that I can’t remember now.

Q: Do you consider it a horror movie?

Ken Russell: No.

You get the idea. Not promising.

I checked my contract. I’d been hired to interview him for one hour after the movie. Desperation set in. I went online to see if there were any other recent Russell interviews I could read to gauge if he really had nothing to say or was simply having a bad day when he spoke to my colleague.

A quick Google search of the terms “Ken Russell” and “interview” returned some alarming results, several of which referred to the event I was hosting. “Richard Crouse has the unenviable task of interviewing the tight-lipped Russell,” said one search result. Others revealed him to be just as monosyllabic as I feared.

I called the promoter with an idea. Perhaps I should have dinner with Russell before the show to warm him up. Typically I don’t like to meet with my interviewees beforehand — I’d rather get them fresh onstage — but in this case it seemed like a good idea. A day or so later I heard back. He’d love to have dinner.

Things were looking up.

The night of the show we met at Southern Accent, just around the corner from the Bloor Cinema in Toronto where the show was being held. I walked past the theater on my way to dinner. There were a few hundred people already waiting outside. A cold sweat enveloped me, even though it was August and sweltering on the street.

At the restaurant we were seated at a large table with the promoter, several members of his entourage, Russell and his wife, Lisi Tribble. I sat next to Russell and introduced myself. He smiled but said nothing. I told him a story about how, as a twelve-year-old child, I snuck out of the house and hitchhiked 200 miles to see Tommy, his 1975 rock opera. I told him I was grounded for a year afterward, but it was worth it. He smiled a bit more broadly, but still no sound passed his lips. The waiter came by. Russell’s wife ordered him a drink. He smiled.

At least he seemed to be in a good mood.

The waiter came back. More smiles and I thought I detected a nodding of the head but still no words. I was thinking of excusing myself from the table and faking a heart attack to get out of hosting, but I persevered. The silence at the table was deafening so I left early to check out the theater. It was sold out. Even the balcony was jammed. Nine hundred and fifty seats sold to hear my conversation with a mute.

We’d had to move the onstage setup of two chairs and a table to the auditorium floor because Russell wouldn’t have been able to make it up the steep stage stairs. Trouble was, we were plunged into darkness down there. Great, I thought, sitting in the dark talking to myself for an hour. This would be the hardest-earned paycheck ever.

My phone rang. Russell was on the way. He moved very slowly, so I was told to chat up the audience before my intro. I told the Tommy story. I talk about The Devils, how it is one of the most controversial movies ever made and how lucky we were to be seeing it on the big screen. The audience was eating it up. Whooping. Clapping. I still had no idea if Russell was prepared to actually say anything.

I introduced him as he walked down the aisle, supported on one side by his wife, on the other by the promoter who got me into this mess. When the words “Help me welcome Ken Russell” slipped from my mouth, the audience jumped to its feet as though an electric shock was sent through every seat in the place. It was as if I had just said, “Ladies and gentlemen, back from the dead to sing for you tonight, Elvis!”

He nodded his now familiar nod to the audience but said nothing.

I took a deep breath and started with a general question about the film. He answered. Hooray! What he said didn’t seem to make much sense, but at least I knew his vocal cords were working. I could work with that.

From there it was as if he fed off the energy of the audience and grew stronger as the night wore on. He was funny, eccentric and slightly cantankerous. Most of all he was long-winded! In short he was just like the movie he was there to speak about — confounding, unexpected and entertaining.

When I asked what made Oliver Reed’s performance in The Devils so special he said, “It’s a rather unique performance insofar as he really pulled out all the stops. I had a special working relationship with him. It was quite simple but very effective. He called me Jesus.

“I directed him in a very simple fashion. He’d say, ‘What do you want, Jesus?’ and I would say, ‘Give me Moody One.’ Moody One was one of the simplest instructions that I could give him. Moody Two was a little more important and Moody Three was ‘do anything you like.’ And that was what we usually did. [Moody Three] could be extremely dangerous. He was a very moody guy and I would often say, ‘Careful, boy! There are women and children present.’ He would let himself go.”

I followed by asking if Reed’s unpredictability was what made him a great actor.

“Great actor?” he deadpanned. “I never said he was a great actor. No, he was a terrible actor.”

Why did you work with him over and over again?

“’Cause he was cheap. He did the movie thing to perfection and he never let me down, I must say. Once we had worked out Moody One, Moody Two and Moody Three, he was good as gold.”

To wrap things up after a wide-ranging discussion about his life and films, someone in the audience asked who the filmmaker he most admired was. Without hesitation he said, “Ken Russell!” Cue the applause.

When it was over, fifty-five minutes later, his assistant hugged me. “He hasn’t done an interview like that in years,” he said.