Angel of Vengeance, Casualty of Obsession: Zoe Tamerlis

The strangest celebrities sometimes show up at genre fan cons. Such was the case when Zoe Tamerlis, aka Zoe Tamerlaine, aka Zoe Lund, showed up at the Chiller Theatre convention back in 1997. Tamerlis will forever be best known as the star of Abel Ferrara’s kinetic and disturbing action-vengeance pic Ms. 45 (1980), which is a fusion of Death Wish and Taxi Driver. She was also a very sad drug casualty, as she died at 37, after what is referred to on several websites as “extended cocaine use, which replaced her prolonged heroin use.” She was an uncommonly beautiful model-actress who made only six features, and scripted one of Abel Ferrara’s finest works, Bad Lieutenant (1992).

When I spoke to her, she was 35 and extremely nervous. Some of this no doubt came from having to sit at a very busy convention trying to hawk rather bleary photographs of herself (she agreed to do the interview in exchange for me buying one — which I planned on doing anyway). She brought up the subject of drugs herself in the context of speaking about Keitel’s “nod” scene in Bad Lieutenant, and I must admit I was too shy to actually probe the issue, as her hands were rather shaky and had bruises on them, she was feverishly chain-smoking, and was wearing a dark mesh top that was see-through, which I didn’t realize until the interview had already begun.

She leaves behind indelible film images in the films of Ferrara (who himself has seemingly left narrative linearity behind in recent years), as well as Larry Cohen’s Special Effects. She did speak about her heroin use in a documentary about the supermodel Gia, which can be seen here. More about her life can be found here and at a very thorough site created by her husband Robert Lund at www.zoelund.com

On the script of Ms. 45:


On her co-scripting credit with Ferrara for Bad Lieutenant


On the heroin-nod and threesome sequences in Bad Lieutenant:

Digital media: pretty as a picture... but it sucks!

I’m a collector by instinct and an archivist by nature, so when I record something, I’m definitely thinking of keeping it for posterity. Thus I’ve got a collection of a few thousand VHS tapes that contain rare material, from interviews I’ve done for the Funhouse cable program, to movies I taped off broadcast TV or cable that have fallen into the “abyss” that consumes all titles that don’t get a prestige DVD release, to talk show appearances, musical performances and music vids, and special moments from the cornucopia of strangeness that was NYC public acess.

The reason I bring this is up is that pretty much all of my VHS tapes are still playable. Yes, the picture fades as the years go by, IF the recording was done at EP/SLP speed (the stuff done at SP looks damned fine, even two decades on) or IF the VCR it was recorded on was a dud. Tapes from the Nineties still play, tapes from the Eighties still play, and even items from the dim, dark Seventies will play, although they are startin’ to wear. On the other hand, mini-DV, the standard on which I've been recording the show for the past four years or so, a medium that has gorgeous visual quality that far surpasses VHS, has a very definite shelf life. I found this out last year when I reran shows made exactly one year before, in 2007. Some of the tapes (all the same brand, all bought brand new from a reputable retailer) dropped sound, while one or two had already started to have that boxy digitization that makes digital matter unwatchable. I also have a show done in 2002 on mini-DV that simply doesn’t play. I’ve been informed by a tech-knowledgeable friend that this could be due to a humidity situation, and that colder storage could restore the tape to playability. Perhaps that is indeed the case, but I’m wary of attempting to freeze the tapes and possibly getting moisture into a tiny bit ’o plastic with tape inside it — plus, damn, did VHS tapes ever need such ridiculously ginger handling and climate-conscious storage? (If you’ve ever lived in a big-city apartment, you know it can get humid inside, but not truly tropical-humid!).

So let’s just throw out some statistics: We were told VHS tapes would have a 15-year lifespan, and they’re still playin’ some two to three decades on. Mini-DV palm-sized little slabs of plastic start to weird out within one year, and seem to go completely wonky after five years. I have no idea how long the material on DVD-rs will last — the timespan quoted to me was 20-30 years (quite a step down from vinyl records which, barring excessive heat or a nasty needle, last forever). Of course, if you take into account how feebly the things are manufactured, and that using a Sharpie to mark them can cut down their playback ability appreciably, I think you get the picture: analog was accused of being temporal, but was made to last. Digital looks abso-fuckin’-lutely gorgeous, and yet our collections of films, TV shows, and clips could be useless in anywhere from a year to five years to two decades. Planned obsolescence at its most insidious. A vigilant archivist would have to re-dub his or her collection each and every five years just to be safe in this ridiculous, pretty-lookin’ digital era. How’s that for improving things?