 Feted by Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol and described as "the most irresponsible
man on God's earth" after a bear and assorted mental patients escaped from the
set of The Other Side of the Underneath (d. Jane Arden, 1972), Jack Bond has had
a distinctly colourful career. It offers many parallels with that of Ken
Russell, not least because Bond's wildly imaginative feature films grew out of a
background in television arts documentaries.
After a stint as an ITV transmission controller, Bond enrolled with the BBC
in 1962 as a trainee producer/director, but was fired for inventing outraged
viewers' letters in an attempt to liven up Points of View (BBC, 1961-). However,
programme controller Huw Wheldon (who had previously talent-spotted Russell and
John Schlesinger) relented and commissioned The Pity of War (tx. 4/8/1964), a documentary
about World War I seen through the eyes of Wilfrid Owen's poetry. Broadcast on
the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the war, its reception secured Bond a
job on Melvyn Bragg's arts magazine programme New Release (BBC, 1965-67), for which he made
documentaries on, among others, Eduardo Paolozzi, Joan Littlewood, George
Orwell and Salvador Dalí ('Dalí in New York', tx. 1966). The latter project introduced
him to Jane Arden, who he took to interview Dalí in New York. Arden and Bond
became lovers and long-term creative collaborators, starting with the
experimental BBC drama Exit 19 (tx. 8/8/1966), written and directed by Arden's
husband Philip Saville, in which Bond played the lead as a film editor and Arden
a supporting role.
Bond then secured financing for his debut feature film Separation (1967),
written by and starring Arden. A genuinely independent production, festival
acclaim was not followed with commercial success. Bond then produced and
directed Arden's feminist multimedia extravaganza Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven
(1969) for the stage. He then produced its successor, A New Communion for
Freaks, Prophets and Witches (1971), initially on stage and then as Arden's solo
film directorial debut, The Other Side of the Underneath (1972), which Bond
insisted she shoot on 16mm once he realised that her plans to film extended
therapy sessions would jeopardise the budget. To recover from the arduous
filming, Bond and Arden went to Morocco for several months, where they shot the
Super 8 footage that formed the basis of Vibration (1975), their first video
experiment. They then co-directed the feature film Anti-Clock (1979) which
became a cult cause célèbre in the US after being championed by Newsweek
magazine, but a series of low financial offers from distributors led Bond to
veto its release in Britain: until the 2009 revival it was publicly shown just
twice in the UK. After Anti-Clock, Bond returned to the US where he worked as a
Hollywood script doctor.
After three years living a self-described playboy existence (including
sailing his boat, Moonsaga), Bond was reunited with his former boss, Melvyn
Bragg, and was hired to shoot a semi-dramatised South Bank Show (ITV, 1978-2010) portrait of the
suspense novelist Patricia Highsmith. He would spend the next two decades
shooting numerous South Bank Shows, directing Pet Shop Boys pop promos, and
devising the same music duo's memorably weird cult feature film, It Couldn't
Happen Here (1987).
During the 1990s and early 2000s he continued to direct his own brand of
idiosyncratic documentary portraits (of such literary giants as Genet and Camus)
for The South Bank Show. In 2009, he produced and directed an intimate
portrait of the Paris-based English actress Charlotte Rampling, Waiting for
Charlotte. Then, in 2010, he made A Tale of Two Cities, a playful documentary
which revisits Dalí in New York and explores the influence of the great
Surrealist on his own filmmaking practice.
2012 saw the completion of The Blue Black Hussar, a feature-length
documentary which charts the return to the international concert circuit of
1980s pop sensation Adam Ant. Independently financed, the film features guest
appearances by Charlotte Rampling, music producer Mark Ronson and Pop
artist Allen Jones, as well as candid footage of its subject reflecting on a
life in the public eye.
Michael Brooke
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FILM & TV CREDITS
