Good Morning and Goodbye
1967 Directed by Russ Meyer
Production Notes for Good Morning and Goodbye Without compromise, without apology, and without question, Russ Meyer has made an honest motion picture which explores the deepest complexities of contemporary life, as applied to love and marriage in these United States. The characters in Good Morning and Goodbye are identifiable. . . perhaps even familiar. . . because their words and actions reflect the basic emotions of man - love, lust, hate, fear, jealousy, contentment. . . desire. Good Morning and Goodbye is set in a typical farming community; rural, but not isolated. There's dirt under the nails of the men; good, rich, fertile earth. And there's another kind of dirt. . . hidden away in the minds of some of the people waiting to contaminate the unsuspecting. It's the hidden dirt that makes this community just like any other, large or small, in any part of America. It doesn't matter that the men are farmers, or laborers. What they are, or what they do during the day isn't significant to the
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story. It's what they do when the day has ended - in the evening - at night - in the hours before the morning light! An important member of the community - not because she's respected - but because she provides the town with most of its gossip, and most of its action, is ANGEL (Alaina Capri). Her name is a paradox. She swings. And, she's bound for Hell! Angel is a walking message; a living invitation - an exaggerated embodiment of the name, woman. She is the cushion of evil on the throne of immorality. Her life is without a purpose, yet her every movement has a purpose - to fight the fetters that bind her voluptuousness. To reveal. 'To be appreciated. . . to be used! Angel; A rich soil of discontent; unwilling to lie fallow. A fertile field - for everyone but her husband BURT (Stuart Lancaster). Honest, steady going; a nice guy, Burt has made it. A big house, a productive spread, money - enough for twenty men. Yet, Burt is poor. Poor in his relationships with women - destitute, in his life with Angel. Even their occasional caresses quickly turn to castigations. They flay each other's mind while their bodies writhe, unsatisfied. The four-letter words with which they foul the air can't replace the three-letter word . . . sex . . . without which their lives have no meaning. Burt has traveled this road before, eventually losing a wife to another man. He can not lose again; for there to remind him of the past is his daughter LANA (Karen Ciral). Lana is seventeen, with a slim, beautifully curved body carried gracefully on long, intriguing legs. Truly a delicious child.. . with the mind of a mature woman . . . a lovely, yet lonely girl lost in the vapor lock of her father's second marriage. Lana still misses her mother, wishing she could somehow come back to her father. With only a wall separating Lana from her father and new mother, there are no family secrets. And the bedroom bouts she overhears only strengthen her resolve to resist her voracious stepmother and show disrespect for her father, by flinging herself at any available man. RAY (Don Johnson) is available. Just out of his teens, a surfer type and a real bopper, he's been around and seen it; Ray's a good looking, long-haired kid who can make out with most young chicks the first time around. He's not a hustler, just a cat that jumps. Right now, he's moving in Lana's direction, and the only guy that can beat him there is STONE (Pat Wright). Angel's lover, and ramrod of the gravel pits, Stone is a man who symbolizes strength. He takes life by the throat, catching whatever he can and bending it to his satisfaction. Stone has steel agates where other men are merely flesh and blood, and his virility is matched only by the violence and ferocity of his fists beating a tattoo for obedience on the hapless hides of those who oppose him. HERB (Tom Howland), an employee of the pits, has the will to oppose Stone, but lacks the physical strength. So he takes his lumps, unaware that Stone is taking pleasures with his wife. . . LOTTIE (Megan Timothy), while Herb sweats on the job. Lottie enjoyed her first "rape" by Stone, and quickly becomes almost a camp follower. Fearing her thirtieth year, she tries desperately to hold onto the past; and yet, she is a match for women much younger. Black hair bouncing off a blazingly fair complexion, her petite size is almost a disguise for the curves it carries. High horsepower, on a Volkswagen frame. A string of "ladyfingers" that never stop exploding and detonating, with a percussion and snap beyond their size. She is always at Stone's fingertips - available - yet often receiving the back of his hand for her trouble. Do you believe in something beyond your understanding? Something you see, but can't explain. A constant witness. A spectre of a spectator. . . always watching, waiting, controlling. This is THE CATALYST (Haji). Dictionaries describe her: "an agent which causes or speeds up a chemical reaction by its addition without itself being changed." She is sex eerie. Elusive, hauntingly seductive, a sorceress . . . a witch, if you will . . . but beyond everything, a woman. A woman who talks of evil things as she dances and weaves a special spell. A woman who is there before you, and then, like gossamer, disappears. A woman, who finally clutched and held, is like holding air. She is woman of the earth - the woman who gives manhood back to Burt. She is the woman who explodes our story like a roman candle and watches the pieces fall . . . her laughing voice rising to a pitch and sound almost inhuman. She is, at once, all knowing and understanding.. . yet sinister. And though it is she who gives Burt new manliness, who knows when she may return to claim it. . . for herself. RUNNING TIME: 80 minutes
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