A great essay by Armond White about Sam Fuller’s “White Dog” playing @MayslesCinema this week. I first met Jim Jarmusch at a Fuller screening of Park Row at Lincoln Center in 2002. Jim spoke afterwards and talked fondly about how much Sam inspired him. He told stories of Sam bringing guns on set and shooting them off in the air to get people’s attention. Fuller was a hard-ass investigative journalist and WW2 Vet before he directed his first film in his late 30’s; a perfect combination of job-training for feature film directing. He brought the storytelling technique of a journalist and the tenacity of a soldier to his films. Jarmusch and Fuller made a documentary together called “Tigrero” directed by Jim’s friend from Finland, Mika Kaurismaki. I saw this bizarre film on a VHS rented from Kim’s Video. Jarmusch and Fuller hang out in the jungle in Brazil with some villagers. Not much else happens. I distinctly remember Jay Rabinowitz - the editor of 2 of my films and nearly all of Jarmusch’s films - talking about how bizarre White Dog is and how it became a blemish on Fuller’s career. The extreme backlash against it was so damaging that he never made a film again. I found this quote from Fuller:

“Shelve the film without letting anyone see it? I was dumbfounded. It’s difficult to express the hurt of having a finished film locked away in a vault, never to be screened for an audience. It’s like someone putting your newborn baby in a goddamned maximum-security prison forever … Moving to France for a while would alleviate some of the pain and doubt that I had to live with because of White Dog.”

He never made a film again.