Bill Landis

Background

Bill Landis was born in 1959 in Landes de Busac, France. He was the son of a career serviceman and a civil servant. His family moved to Louisiana and ultimately to New York.

Education

Bill Landis attended New York University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in 1978 and a Master of Business Administration in 1979.

Career

After education, Bill Landis worked in the corporate world for a while but became dissatisfied with that scene. He, alternatively, opted for a job as a projectionist at various and somewhat sleazy movie houses on Times Square, an area, during the 1970s and 1980s, referred to as the Deuce. The Deuce wrote Library Journal's Barry X. Miller was a "psychosexual Netherland on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues," and it was here that Landis saw a lot of films.

At the age of nine, Bill Landis saw his first ghoulish movie, Guttertrash by Andy Milligan, which proved to become Landis's "first intimation that there might exist a whole netherworld of extraordinarily weird human behavior, a world of strange, brutal beauty. So, as an adult, he has devoted himself to what is often referred to as exploitation films. They caught Landis's imagination, and he decided to write reviews about them.

With only a portable typewriter at his disposal, Bill Landis produced a one-page theatre guide with movie reviews and handed them out for free. From its start in 1980, his newsletter eventually expanded, as did Landis's computer knowledge, and in time he created a Web site. Sleazoid Express caught the eye of a large New York publisher, so Landis sat down with his wife, Michelle Clifford, and wrote his second book about his experiences. His first book was about a producer, Kenneth Anger.

In the beginning, Bill Landis's newsletter had covered the movies showing on Times Square. Later he incorporated more than just movie reviews, adding histories of filmmakers and in-depth stories about the films, expanding the newsletter to a four-page monthly. The majority of the movies Sleazoid covered were those that fit into the horror genre, often referred to as "Blood Horror" or "Europsleaze," like Twitch of the Death Nerve and The Corpse Grinders. In the late 1980s, however, the Deuce was closed down and in its place rose theme shops and family-oriented stores, and Landis stopped publication of his newsletter. That is when he took the time to write his book on Anger.

Co-authored anonymously with Clifford, Anger: The Unauthorized Biography of Kenneth Anger is a biography of seminal independent film director Kenneth Anger. Anger, a pioneer of innovative underground films, is better known by the general public as the author of his best-selling 1960 book, Hollywood Babylon, which is filled with Hollywood gossip and scandal. He, who only made nine films totaling about three hours in length, is often referred to as the granddaddy of underground movies. He created his films mostly in the 1960s, a period Landis gives full focus to in his book. Some of Anger's works include Fireworks, The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Invocation of My Demon Brother, and Scorpio Rising. Although Anger has become a recluse and, Landis was able to develop a "fairly accurate portrait" due to his "meticulous research," which included interviewing members of Anger's family.

After years of collaborations, in 1997, Landis contributed to his wife's magazine, Metasex, which was about the vice aspects of the old Times Square. In 1999 he and Clifford revived Sleazoid Express as a full-length magazine. In 2002 Landis and Clifford were asked to expand the magazine into a book, which was published as, Sleazoid Express: A Mind-twisting Tour through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square. Besides, Landis wrote articles for the periodicals Village Voice, Soho Weekly News, Film Comment, New York Rocker, Worldly Remains, Carbon 14, Hustler, and Screw.

Achievements

• Bill Landis was well known as a writer and publisher. He was a creator of the website Sleazoid Express in 1980. Additionally, in 1999, Landis became a holder of the Grant from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Sleazoid Express

    (Both a travelogue of the infamous grindhouses of yore and...)

    2002
  • Anger

    (A biography of the cult filmmaker and author of the best-...)

    1995

Religion

Bill Landis was an adherent to Thelema.

Politics

Bill Landis was a democrat, with specific affiliations to other political inclinations.

Views

Quotations: "I had been typing up my own [movie] reviews since I was around eleven. At age fourteen, I read Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn, and it opened my eyes in many ways. One was that you could write about anything, no matter how shocking, so long as it was humanly true."

"History needs to be recorded in all its human, cultural and psychological forms, with all three overlappings. And I've never written fiction because the truth was always far more surreal."

Interests

• Chess, mysticism, Masonic and Rosicrucian lore, tarot cards
  
  Filmmaker: Luis Bunuel

• Writers

  Aleister Crowley, Hubert Selby, Fernando Arrabel, Alejandro Jodorwosky

Connections

Bill Landis married Michelle Clifford in 1986. They had a daughter, Victoria.

Wife:

Michelle Clifford

Michelle Clifford is the principal author of Metasex magazine.

Daughter:

Victoria Landis