Six Sick Degrees of Separation in Hollywood, Part Three!

TIMOTHY CAREY

He was known for stealing the spotlight from other actors, making up his own dialogue during the shooting of a scene, and being an all-round weirdo. Like John Cassavetes, Timothy Carey started out as an actor, making memorable appearances in the Stanley Kubrick classics, ‘Paths of Glory’ and ‘The Killing’, before eventually turning himself into an offbeat – and that’s putting it mildly - filmmaker. 

In 1962, Carey produced, directed, and starred in his own movie, the incredibly strange low-budget flick, ‘The World's Greatest Sinner’. For some, this is the worst picture ever made; for others, it’s a groundbreaking attempt at a personal statement. One thing for sure: it flopped big time! Too avant-garde for its era and totally misunderstood.

Check out these YouTube clips and judge for yourself.

Cassavetes, to his credit, was a great supporter of Carey’s demented creative mind and always backed his delirious projects, sometimes at his own risk.

A true anecdote: John dropped in on his buddy Timothy who had decided to become a dog trainer!? (Go figure…) Let’s just say that Carey’s Rottweilers liked John a little too much, but Carey managed to put a leash on ‘em in the nick of time. Nobody ever got a leash on Carey, though!

I could go on and on about Carey’s endless and fascinating history of bizarre behavior, but I’ll stop here and suggest that you read all about him this September in my who’s who of mad moviemakers, Sinemania!

And that’s a wrap on my Six Sick Degrees of Separations story.  Or in other words: ‘The Bad, the Good and the Ugly’!  I hope it whetted your appetite for more tales of the life and times of some of my favorite crazed creators of motion picture mayhem. Wait until you read what I’ve got in store for you soon, same Bat Time, same Bat Blog! (So to speak…)