Atrocity Exhibited

Posted on Nov 11, 2011

Atrocity Exhibited: Burr Jerger’s Anti-War Film General Massacre

Written By: Bjorn Gabriels
Mondo Film & Video Guide Contributor

General Massacre (1971) tells the hyperbolic, yet gruesomely realistic story of an American general who first comes to Europe as a soldier to liberate ‘the old continent’ from the Nazis during the waning days of World War II, and then – after a notorious career in the military – returns to his megalomaniac mansion in Belgium to defend himself against accusations of war crimes, committed against Vietnamese civilians.

The film explicitly refers to the atrocities of the My Lai Massacre, but also poignantly veers toward an indictment of warfare in general. Although pacific by nature, General Massacre is violent in word and deed. What to fear the most? The general’s ideas on the military, politics and society as a whole – ‘politics are the extension of war’ or ‘the military-industrial complex is, as yet, not complex enough’? Or his virulent actions, killing one cow, two geese and countless innocent civilians, including his wife and his daughter.

The man who embodied General Massacre was Wilbur ‘Burr’ Jerger (1917-1982), a photographer, journalist, writer, teacher, political activist and… one-time film director. Jerger wrote the novel, directed the film, which was entirely paid for from his own money, took up the part of the disturbed general… Yet failed to get General Massacre widely distributed.

So why was General Massacre censored in France? Because it shows the idiocy between brutality and war. Because it reveals the warped mind of a psycho-sexual (American) Warlord, a role I play with some relish. – Burr Jerger

Never shying away from throwing himself into a new project, Jerger’s career is marked by diversity. His light, cheesecake photography appeared on the pages of Hugh Hefner’s unfolding empire of paper stag parties and also in other men’s magazines, which were booming in the fifties. This wouldn’t stop Jerger from continuing to be active as a whistleblower who, armed with words, challenged infringements of individual freedom in various forms and shapes. This humanistically inspired vocation caused him to stand up against the ‘Culture of Concealment’ and the Red Scare, particularly against Senator Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, two political helmsmen drifting on the waves of Cold War paranoia.

In 1971-1972, General Massacre made it to a few Belgian cinemas, to mixed reviews. Over the years, the film has been released on VHS and has had the (very) occasional theatre screening. In France, its distribution was banned for two years. Reason? According to French Minister of Culture Jacques Duhamel, in an official statement dated March 14 1972:

‘[General Massacre…] complacently shows the evolution of its main character from sadism to murder, and matches this demonstration with scenes that are difficult to sustain (the repeated flashbacks of his wife’s murder, the immolation of a cow and multiple volatiles etc.) […]’.

A censored version of the film was released in 1974. In the U.S., the film received an R rating in 1976… and that seems to be it.

Rest assured: General Massacre will be released one day. When Vietnam will no longer hamper anyone. – Jean Rollin (La Rue, early 1973)

Burr Jerger’s daughter Tia was with her father during the entire writing and shooting process of the film, and also had – not entirely to her liking – a small acting part in it. She talks about General Massacre and her father’s intentions with the film.

Where did your father get the inspiration from to make General Massacre?

The film was generally based on his experience as a young man in the army. He was drafted there in World War II, but he hated the military. He hated anything wearing a uniform – my brothers weren’t even allowed to be part of the boy scouts. He also hated doing maneuvers: he didn’t like getting up early in the morning, he didn’t like trudging through the mud and the wee hours. He hated all of that. So, he made his way into working for one of the colonels, who was put in charge of finding, studying and recruiting compulsive killer types. So that they then could put special forces together with these compulsive killers who didn’t care about death, who they send on missions and would just wipe out everybody. If you ever saw The Dirty Dozen, that’s kind of a minor part of that. So, my father worked as this Colonel’s secretary and it was his job to type out all of the psychological evaluations of these soldiers. And he became really upset about that.

One night they were having maneuvers up on a mountain and his gaslight wasn’t shining. He was hungry and tired, so he got up to the telephone and he called down to head quarters and he said: ‘Where is the goddamn food. I’m sick and tired of this. I’m hungry. Get it up here!’ And the voice on the other end said: ‘Do you know who this is, private?’ ‘No, who is it?’ ‘This is general blabla’ and my father replied: ‘Do you know who this is?’ The general said no and my father said: ‘Thank God’ and hung up. That was the kind of guy he was. He was very much a rebel. So, somewhere along the line he got into trouble for some stupid infraction in the military and they threw him in the brig. They were going to give him a dishonorable discharge. So, he contacted his father – both of his parents were surgeons – who contacted their family lawyer. My father told them about the dossiers on these compulsive killers. So, when they were about to go to court, they did an on-the-side discussion and my father said: ‘I’m going to print these, I’m going to make it public, unless you give me an honorable discharge and drop everything.’ So that’s what they did.

So, years later, when he made the film, General Massacre was one of these people who had absolutely no conscience about killing. Obviously. He killed the cow, he killed the daughter, you know, he killed everybody. But besides that – that was the basis from which he wanted to start this movie – but besides that, my father was very driven to stand up for the underdog, to point out whenever a government was taking away the civil liberties, the basic rights of people. He believed one hundred percent and almost to an exception in the first amendment of the constitution and that’s the right of free speech.

You can already see this in his political activity, going back to the forties, running for office in California, and also in his writings.

Right, one of the things that really drove this philosophy was that when he was a young man, there was the Red Baiting, the Red Scare going on in this country, when they were accusing Americans of being communists and asking them to rat out friends. It happened to a lot of people in the film industry, because they were very liberal. The conservatives wanted to just wipe out everybody and eliminate the oppositions. So, there was the scare around that and my father began to politicize against those people, particularly very powerful people like Nixon and McCarthy.

When he found out that McCarthy was going to give some speeches at a particular church in Los Angeles, he went to the head of the Democratic Party in Los Angeles and said: ‘Look, we have to go, we have to speak up against them. We have to do something about this.’ But they got scared and said no because everybody who went against the Republican Party was being accused of being a communist. So he went to the church and next to the church property was a wired fence. He drove his car right up to that fence and started calling out – in those days they had those big bullhorns –asking McCarthy to step out of that church and engage in a debate of ideals and stop his warmongering, his guilt by association and his talking people into wiping out other people’s careers. The people in the churchyard were getting removed by the police, but he knew about a law that said that they had no jurisdiction if you were on private land. So, they left him alone. But the congregation got really angry and they started jumping over the fence and shaking up his car, so the police had to remove them in order to protect my father. So, that began his FBI and CIA dossier.

Your father wrote various articles that reflected his opinions on politics. What made him change from the printed medium to film to express his ideas?

What happened was, all his work that he would send back to the U.S. [In 1961, Jerger left the U.S. for Europe – living in Germany, France and Belgium in the following ten plus years.] was confiscated by the FBI and the CIA the minute it hit New York. We discovered this because we would send things through registered mail to New York and it never got to anybody there. And back then, you didn’t have the internet, so it was difficult. When he finally received his inheritance – his stepmother took it when his father died, but when she then died he finally inherited that money, what was left of it anyway – he decided to spend that money to make a political film, to get his message out there. He felt best able to portray that role himself, because he knew exactly how he wanted to do it. He was not a shy man. It was not a question of him wanting to act; it was a question of him wanting to get that film out there. I mean, he even wrote me into the film, which I did not enjoy at all. [Laughs.] But I had to do it. So, what the heck…

Your father had already been involved in film projects before, in small acting parts, as a set photographer and so on, no?

Yes, he had been in a few small parts here and there. Because he had a wife and four children to support, he did what he had to do. But his real love was photography and writing. He did most of his work in black and white, back in those days, of course. He was one of Hugh Hefner’s first cheesecake photographers, not on staff, but he did a lot of cheesecake photography. Beautiful, beautiful stuff that has been copied since then and followed by other photographers.

One of the things that also drove him to do what he did was that he taught the Great Book Seminars. He taught about the great thinkers: Einstein, Erasmus, Thoreau… He had those book discussions going on all over the place. He was good at it and people loved him for it. He would always stimulate them and ask very, very provocative questions that would bother people. So that they couldn’t help but react… Trying to engage them in that conversation.

That’s also what’s happening in the film, this provocation. People can’t but be affected by it?

Yes, when Al Grundy [American basketball player – playing in Belgium – who took up the part of the black lieutenant who interrogates General Massacre] is questioning the general in the courtroom. Those really are my father’s ‘thoughts’ going on. Even though the general is a compulsive killer, he still argues from the point of a liberal. But, he also then argues from the point of being a military man and my father didn’t believe in the necessity of the meaning of that.

General Massacre also shows the real-life gunning down of a cow and two geese, and actual footage of a Vietnamese man being shot in the head. Shooting that cow was on purpose. My father wanted people to be so outraged by the cow’s shooting to point out how they were not enraged by the shooting of people. It was gruesome and pretty bad… That was the whole point of that particular scene, but of course not a whole lot of people got it and they were really upset.

To me the most horrendous part was actually when the cow was killed. I was not prepared to watch that. That and watching the man in Saigon getting the bullet in the head. That was just very upsetting to me.

How did your father get to the newsreel footage of this man being shot?

I’m trying to remember. I don’t think there were a whole bunch of newsreels that were available by the various agencies and I think he just called them up and found out where they were and asked if he could buy a clip of film. In those days you could do that, just buy them and use them. So, I think that’s what happened. I remember sitting in the theater with my father and  Herman Wuyts [assistant director, cinematographer and editor], viewing all of it to see which ones we would use. That’s when I saw it the first time and it was so disturbing.

The censorship and the controversy mainly focused on the animal cruelty instead of discussing the political message, right?

Of course, that’s what my father wanted, he wanted that to happen. He wanted people to be aware of how upset they’d get over that and not over what was happening in the world, across other countries. Armies going into countries and shooting, killing and raping people. That’s why he showed the clips from the killings in Vietnam, the shots of some My Lai things and the man in the square in Saigon. They blew up his head, and that was all real stuff. But most people don’t think deeply enough to understand these connections. They didn’t get it. But he wanted them to get upset. He wanted them to talk about it. He wanted them to start question about this, that was the way he was.

Was the film ever distributed in the U.S.?

No, never. When my father came back to the U.S. [in August 1974], it was too soon. People wouldn’t touch it. Later on, he became very ill with cancer and it was a mute point. My brother still has the film in reels; I have the VHS version of it. I just think we haven’t pursued it because it’s an expensive effort. Just renting a screening room is four to five hundred dollars. Years ago, I took that film to New York and showed it to Twentieth Century Fox and to, I think, a couple of other people, but they wouldn’t touch it. It was too soon after the Vietnam War, they didn’t want political repercussions. When Twentieth Century Fox came to see it, they saw the first ten to fifteen minutes and they got up and left. That’s how it is in the movie industry. Unless there is something that they think is going to be a commercial success, they’re not going to sit there and spend ninety minutes watching something they think is a political dialogue… That’s the way it is.

But, I think if it were taken to venues that were politically oriented, canvases, and things like that, that would make a difference. I think people would watch it and talk about it. I think now they can do that. Particularly now, because America is at war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The film was based on the obscure D.W. Griffith’s film Broken Blossoms (1919)?

The role that Lillian Gish played in that film, where she was this little waif who was soft and tender and didn’t have a way to protect herself, my father loved the way she acted that role. He thought that was one of the classics. He was trying to use Christine in that role. [Belgian amateur actress Christine Dheere was credited under the pseudonym ‘Christine Gish’.] She played the daughter, to be this innocent waif who really didn’t know how to protect herself and became the victim of an absolute brute. Which is what happens in our society when people are isolated. They’re not educated, they’re not taught to stand up against authority and they’re basically destroyed.

At the time the film was made, articles mentioned that your father had met Lillian Gish in L.A in the forties. It is even said he worked for her as a houseboy?

I’m not sure that that happened. I don’t really know for sure. I do know that when he was teaching the history of silent film in Hollywood, the meetings would take place in the various homes of producers, directors and actors. For example, one month it would be at D.W. Griffith’s home and another month it would be at Chaplin’s home. The kinds of people who would show up to watch the films would be Buster Keaton, Fritz Lang and all those people. In fact, Charlie Chaplin was tremendously in love with my mother, because she was so beautiful. He was jealous of my father, because my father was 28 and my mother was 18. So, it’s certainly possible that my father got to know Lillian Gish at some form or another, but I’m not sure it was in that role.

He definitively caught up with these people for a while when he was a teacher of silent film. It was a wonderful way to engage in conversations about the films and what they were aspiring to. Buster Keaton never saw his films. He was so critical of his work that he couldn’t bear to watch his films. It was at these seminars where my father was showing and discussing them that he saw them for the first time. And Buster Keaton would just roll all over the floor. Fritz Lang used to be really upset, he would pound the table and scream and yell: ‘the contracts by Twentieth Century Fox were written on toilet paper’… So there were a lot of lively discussions going on during this time and I’m sure that’s where my father met Lillian Gish, but I can’t verify that.

There were all sorts of stories going around the time of the film’s production and release because the Belgian press seemed very eager to welcome this American director who talked about starting a genuine Belgian cinema?

My father was engaged in a lot of things. Whatever he got excited about or was inspired by, that was what he would engage himself in. And it would often have to do with cinematography and his writing. So, a lot of what you read is certainly possible because he would do a lot. He also was very interested in getting some kind of filmmaking launched in Belgium that lent itself to social commentary. There was a young director at the time, I’m trying to remember his name… His first name was Robbe…

Robbe De Hert? [Antwerp director and co-founder, in 1966, of the film collective ‘Fugitive Cinema’]

Yes, Robbe De Hert… So, I remember many nights sitting with my father, having conversations about films that could be made and the direction things could go into, that sort of thing. But, you know, it was always a question of money. It was always a question of being able to pay for all these things. It’s not cheap to make a film and then the publicity after that is expensive. So, one of the ways that you got publicity is to create a spectacle.

Creating a buzz in the media?

Exactly, and he was very good at that. He was not a shy man. From being around my father I learned that everyone puts their pants on the way I do in the morning and the worst thing they can do is tell me no.

How do you look back on your role in the production?

The acting part I did not enjoy. [Laughs.] I loved working behind the camera with Herman Wuyts. I loved being in the editing room, the sound editing room, loved doing that. My father taught me photography, so it was fun to do that. Actually, I thoroughly enjoyed the creative process. I knew the film in and out. Whenever my father was writing – we lived in this huge 32 room mansion [in and around which the film was almost entirely shot] – he would ring a bell. Two bells was my call and I would go to this bedroom that was the size of an apartment and he said: ‘You gotta listen to this.’ So I heard everything read to me that he has ever written. So, I knew it backwards and forwards. As an eighteen-year-old I just kind of thought that everybody did this. I didn’t think it was special. I would meet famous people and I thought everybody did that. I didn’t realize it was unique. There was this series of about a month, where my father and I would go to Antwerp every day to see a number of films, to see which ones were worth it.

One film that we saw was The Long Day’s Dying, by Peter Collinson. My father was so excited about that anti-war film that we actually packed up, went to England and spend a week with Peter Collinson, interviewing him, talking to him, and meeting his family. His wife was the substitute singer for Barbara Streisand. Peter Collinson was an orphan and as a child he became a ward of Noël Coward. So we spent a full afternoon in Noël Coward’s hotel room talking to him.

And that was before General Massacre was shot?

Yeah, that was before the film was shot. But those were the kinds of things that my father did. At the time, I didn’t realize how special that was for me to spend an afternoon watching this discourse between Noël Coward, Peter Collinson and my father. It was very interesting. Noël Coward was extremely witty, a chain smoker, and it was lots of fun. When my father was excited about something, nothing stopped him from getting engaged in it. Nothing. He just went for it. He was extremely read and knew how to do those things, how to talk that talk.

Was it hard for your father to engage Herman Wuyts? Because the story goes that Wuyts was so disappointed by the poor reception of his feature debut, Princess, only a few years earlier, that he never wanted to make another film.

It wasn’t difficult to engage Herman Wuyts at all. My father called him, made an appointment to talk to him and we went to Herman’s house. He used the live right in Antwerp, near the Central Station. My father talked about the script and what he wanted to do and Herman was happy to do it. So both scripted it and put the film together. Herman Wuyts had in fact put his own short film together in the beginning of his career that was very politically oriented. The one with the people going against the walls. Have you seen it?

Yes, I have. It’s called The Other Side [1966, in which civilians press themselves against the walls in deserted streets, haunted by a violent authority and their own life-stifling fear].

Herman Wuyts liked the idea to put this political statement into the film and he also wanted to do something different for a change in addition to BRT’s schedule of films that he was doing, making documentaries and things like that. [Wuyts worked for BRT, the Belgian (Dutch-speaking) national television station.] So, this was exciting for him and he thoroughly enjoyed it. And he went to Cannes with us, when we were showing it.

What happened in Cannes? There have been reports of screenings that were cancelled without your father’s knowing. And then the film was hit with a distribution ban [which was only lifted two years later, in 1974].

I do remember when I was there with my father and Herman the first time in Cannes with the film. We rented film studios to show it to various film companies and their representatives would get as far as the general being indicted for the massacre [about fifteen minutes into the film] and would then walk out. The political taboo was so great that they felt there would be too much political backlash if they took on the film. It’s also so easy for a film company to reject a film that they didn’t invest in, don’t have a big name in and find some of the amateurish acting enough to justify not sinking any of their own money into. As it was, films about Vietnam did not begin to hit the theaters in the States until they had a big name and it was safe to venture into that arena. Back then, there was such a CIA and FBI watch being practiced on my father that the lines are blurry as to which came first, the political fear on the part of the film distributors or the government pressure to abstain from having any connection to the film.

Herman Wuyts was there in Cannes with you and during the production he had also contributed to various aspects of the filming process. Would you say he was as much the director of the film as your father?

Oh, well, my father actually directed the content and the way he wanted to go. Herman Wuyts’s brilliance came in in the camerawork and the shots that he took. We were working with amateurs and the best way to shoot around an amateur is with extreme close-ups. Because then you don’t catch all the stuff that’s not working behind him. The brilliance of the cinematography of that film was due to Herman Wuyts, absolutely. The man was gifted, he was fantastic.

Did your father try to engage real actors instead of amateurs?

No, he basically looked for the look he wanted. I think he saw Christine at a supermarket somewhere and she had the look he wanted. Because my father had such a good eye for photography, he knew exactly what he wanted in the facial features and the look. Christine was extremely shy, by nature, and he wanted that to come over to the camera. He wanted that reticence to be present. And I’m trying to remember where he met Tsai [Adolph Tsai played the role of (oriental) corporal Tsai, who serves as the general’s assistant]…

I believe he was a worker in a factory nearby…

Yeah, he worked for General Motors or Ford or something… Tsai was also an extremely gifted artist. He used to make the most exquisite stain glass windows. In fact, he was gifted in just about anything he put his hand to. He had bought an old broken-down farm house, I’m trying to remember where it was… and then he totally rebuilt it himself. He had never acted before in his life. In fact, none of us had.

And none of you pursued a career in acting.

My father put on Lassie and a few other television programs when we were children, but it’s a very rough life and it’s not something that we really wanted to get involved in. So we didn’t do it. It’s not our cup of tea. I don’t think we were neurotic enough. [Laughs.]

Perhaps that’s a good thing. There was also talk of a next project that your father wanted to start in Belgium. What was that all about?

I’m not sure if that was with Robbe [De Hert] or what he wanted to do. There was this other project that he wanted to do that was based on a story he wrote, called Fort Computer. By that time, I think, we were back in the U.S. And he had had me contact some black actors and also… I’m trying to remember who it was…

Was it perhaps Huey P. Newton [co-founder of the Black Panthers]?

Yeah, I contacted Huey Newton by telephone and I tried to talk to him about being interested in this film. But I don’t think… I kind of had the sensation that I wasn’t really talking to Huey Newton, but to a representative of his. I’m not sure. Had I made that phone call from home, that would have created some serious repercussions for my family. Because of the political situation at that time in the U.S. And, you know, I was quiet young then. So, he did write the story, he wrote the screenplay and he did want to put that film together, but at that time he had ran out of money. So it was very difficult to launch another project.

My father was an exciting person to be around. He was kind of a gypsy, in a sense. Sometimes he had socks on, sometimes he didn’t, you know. Most of the times he would walk around in that big old house with just a big, long shirt on and nothing else. He would answer the door naked. That’s just how it was. That was not important to him. What was important to him was intelligent conversation and always asking the next question, always digging and digging, and challenging authority.

Was it eventually a disappointment for him the film didn’t have a widespread release?

I think it was, but I don’t think it was heartbreaking. What was important to my father was to leave something behind to be remembered by. That was really his goal. He often said that if you become an older man you realize that there is not so much time left and you hope to leave something behind for people to remember and to profit from, to learn from. That was his goal, besides the fact that he was driven when he got excited about something. There was no stopping him.