Kenneth Anger (February 3, 1927 – May 11, 2023) was an American filmmaker, well-known for his ties to Aleister Crowley, the homoerotic subtext of his work, and his dabbling in the occult and black magic. A pioneer of the Music Video as well as the Dream Sequence. Also famous, or infamous depending on who you ask, as the writer of the Based on a Great Big Lie Hollywood gossip book Hollywood Babylon. Anger occasionally promised/threatened to release a second sequel to Hollywood Babylon (Hollywood Babylon II exists but is generally ill-regarded) but claimed that he held off on the project because he was afraid that the book (which he claimed contains lurid details about Tom Cruise's private life) would mark him as a target for Scientology.
Partial Filmography:
- Fireworks
(1947) - Puce Moment (1949) (Originally imagined to be part of a full-length feature called Puce Women)
- Rabbit's Moon (1971)
- Eaux d'Artifice (1953)
- Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954)
- Scorpio Rising (1963)
- Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) (Featuring Mick Jagger and Anton LaVey)
- Lucifer Rising (1972)
Common tropes appearing in Anger's works include:
- Author Appeal: Anger was gay and his films include a lot of muscular, half-naked men. Also, larger doses of the occult.
- Based on a Great Big Lie: Anger's 1975 book Hollywood Babylon was billed as an exposé of all the hidden scandals in the movie business. In fact, almost the entire book was made up, but some of the fake stories therein — like how Clara Bow supposedly gangbanged the entire USC football team, or how Jayne Mansfield was decapitated in her fatal car accident — have become durable urban legends.
- Horrible Hollywood: Hollywood Babylon
- Nothing but Hits: The soundtrack for Scorpio Rising consists of rock n' roll hits of the fifties and sixties.
- Satanism: Friend of Aleister Crowley and Anton LaVey.
