-It is boring.

-Adapted from the controversial novel by Gore Vidal, MYRA was made by 20th Century Fox. According to an executive there at the time, it nearly destroyed the studio.

-In a scene in which a man is castrated by John Carradine, there is a woman in the background, lazily flicking a whip back and forth across the floor for no reason.

-On the documentary included on the new DVD of MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, director Michael Sarne confesses that he did not want to make the film, but was desperately poor and needed the money. At least he is honest about his motives.

-Raquel Welch plays Myra, a transsexual who goes to Hollywood to try to take over her uncle’s acting school. Raquel Welch is by far the hottest transsexual I have ever seen. And you wouldn’t know it from looking at me, but I have seen a hell of a lot of transsexuals in my day.

-It is exceedingly boring.

-Mae West, retired from films for over twenty years (she had never acted in color before), returned to star in MYRA. Though almost 80 years old, she plays a sex-crazed agent who sleeps with all her clients and tosses off one-liners in the classic Mae West fashion. My favorite (the only entertaining moment in the movie, really) comes after she asks prospective client how tall he is and he responds six foot seven inches. She says “Hmmm...forget the six feet and let’s talk about the seven inches.”

-The cast also includes famous director John Huston, a young Tom Selleck, and a young Farrah Fawcett. Selleck and Fawcett could at least chalk the experience up to youthful indiscretion.

-I’d say MYRA BRECKINRIDGE is a trainwreck, but trainwrecks are compelling; you can’t take your eyes off a trainwreck. It’s more like a model trainwreck, interesting only to the people who own the train set.

-There was a lot of drug use on the set. This may explain the fact that the movie has the narrative logic of a psychotic episode.

-Film critic Rex Reed plays the pre-op Myron, who follows Myra around the movie like a ghost. MYRA may be the first movie that makes the a protagonist’s untimely fate - being run over by a car driven by a figment of his/her imagination - more appealing an alternative than watching the movie for another second.

-Here’s a quote about Reed’s performance in MYRA BRECKINRIDGE from a hero of mine, Steve Puchalski, creator of Slimetime and Shock Cinema magazines: “Just when you figured Rex Reed had disappeared from the film for good, he starts popping up as Myra’s ever-present, invisible alter-ego - until you get so sick of his fat, pasty face that you wanna stick his dick into the blades of an electric fan.” Ouch.

-Like many bad movies, it does not end. It merely stops. The ending, though ambiguous, potentially suggests that the proceeding film was all a figment of one character’s imagination. It is my solemn wish that indeed the entire film was a figment of my imagination, that way no one else would ever have to suffer through it. But alas, it is very real, and it is very bad.