LOS ANGELES—In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the notorious film Caligula this month, a collection of photographs taken on the set during the production of the movie by celebrated Italian photographer Mario Tursi will be on display in the Century Guild booth (#1237) this week at the 25th annual LA Art Show.
The collection of images features never-before-seen candid shots of a young Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren. LA Art takes place this Wednesday through Sunday at the LA Convention Center.
Penthouse Pets Lacy Lennon, Addie Andrews and Charlotte Stokely will be representing Penthouse at the Century Guild booth (#1237) on Wednesday for the opening night party.
The legendary ensemble of McDowell, Mirren, Peter O’Toole and Sir John Gielgud starred in Caligula, pushing the boundaries of art and taste past their breaking point with its depictions of unsimulated sex, incest, murder, rape, castration, and necrophilia. Following the unceremonious firings of writer Gore Vidal and director Tinto Brass, late Penthouse founder Bob Guccione re-envisioned the film to his taste, inserting subsequently filmed hardcore sex at the expense of the originally documented narrative.
Mirren kindly called Caligula “an irresistible mix of art and genitals” while promoting the film, but Roger Ebert echoed the general critical consensus, calling the film “utter, worthless trash”—yet noting that the lines to see the film stretched around the block. (The movie would end the year as one of the top 25 grossing films of 1980.) McDowell stood by the performance he delivered, yet called the released version of the film “a betrayal."
The original footage was long thought destroyed, making “what Caligula might have been” one of the greatest chimeras in cinematic mythology, but the recent discovery of the original camera negatives and location audio are empowering a new edit restoring the narrative as originally envisioned by Vidal, Brass, and the cast. Due in late 2020, this 40th anniversary version commissioned by Penthouse is being produced by author and archivist Thomas Negovan with filmmaker E. Elias Merhige under the anniversary stylization Caligula MMXX.
Century Guild was founded in 1999 as an art gallery and archive and publisher of fine art books. In 2011, gallery founder Thomas Negovan gave a TEDx talk on the preservation of archaic technologies titled “By Popular Demand." Artworks previously in the Century Guild collection have been exhibited at notable institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Detroit Institute of Art, The Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
For more information on photographic works, a deluxe book documenting the collection, and the 40th anniversary release of the film, visit caligulammxx.com.
Photos by Mario Tursi, copyright Penthouse World Media.
