Saint Jack

Saint Jack (1979)
"People make love for so many crazy reasons-- why shouldn't money be one of them?" - The Gospel According To Saint Jack

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and
Starring Ben Gazzara as Jack Flowers

---

A brief synopsis:
Jack Flowers is a pimp in 1970s Singapore. A savvy expat hoping to make a living through the bustling multiracial, multicultural and deviant sex trades, he is both accepted and rejected by the local communities (and it is especially interesting to see which groups he identifies with).

But even while Jack dreams of running a brothel in a colonial bungalow (with peacocks strutting in the front lawn), the territorial Chinese triads have their eye on him....


Trivia:
Bogdanovich's Saint Jack is a movie adaptation of the 1973 novel of the same name by Paul Theroux. According to Wikipedia (the Matrix of all knowledge), until 2006, the film was the only Hollywood feature to be shot entirely in Singapore.

Interestingly, to get the contentious subject matter past the Singapore censors, the synopsis submitted to the authorities was markedly different from the actual movie produced. When the censors saw the final product they were so horrified that they banned it, allegedly on the basis of excessive nudity and coarse language. It has, however, been re-released in March 2006 as a M18 film.


Guest Speaker:

We are honoured to have Ben Slater speak to us about the film. Slater is the author of Kinda Hot--a book about the making of Saint Jack. (The book is in the Central Library!)
And here's his website:
http://www.kindahot.blogspot.com/

---

And finally a teaser:
"Now what can you expect, a place that got started like that?"