THE EXOTIC ONES: JIMMY MCDONOUGH IN CONVERSATION

JUNE 30TH - JULY 2ND 2023 | https://watch.eventive.org/matchboxcine

Matchbox Cine and Trasho Biblio present Jimmy McDonough: In Conversation alongside Nicolas Winding Refn’s new restoration of If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (Ron Ormond, 1971)

This exclusive, online-only double bill marks the release of The Exotic Ones, McDonough’s epic new biography of The Ormond Family, 40 years in the making.

Exploitation film-makers Ron and June Ormond experienced a spiritual awakening after their private plane crashed on the way to a premiere. Turning their back on secular show business, they made a series of shocking, surreal religious pictures which made millions without ever being shown in an actual movie theatre. Their story has never been told - until now.

If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? is the first of three “Baptist scare pictures” which director Ron Ormond would go on to make with firebrand preacher, Estus W Pirkle, and surely the most unsettling and outrageous. A feverish nightmare prediction of what “will” happen when Communism infects an American small town (in this case, Pirkle’s church setting of New Albany, Mississippi), it was never intended to be screened outside of churches and community centers. It has been restored from the only surviving master elements by Nicolas Winding Refn’s byNWR and Cinema Preservation Alliance’s Peter Conheim, so that it may finally reach a wider viewing audience.

Jimmy McDonough is the legendary author of The Ghastly One: The 42nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan and Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer as well as celebrated biographies of Neil Young, Tammy Wynette and Al Green. John Waters frequently cites Time Magazine-certified “masterpiece” The Ghastly One as one of his all-time favourites.

Our career-spanning conversation, hosted by Trasho Biblio’s Tommy McCormick, will be pre-recorded on 24th June, 2023. If you would like to pose a question to Jimmy, contact Trasho or Matchbox directly.

Thanks to Jimmy McDonough, FAB Press, byNWR and Cinema Preservation Alliance.

Special thanks to Kier-La Janisse.