While surfing Ain’t It Cool News I came across this sad news that the great exploitation and proto-independent filmmaker Russ Meyer has passed away at the age of 82. Known for outrageous, violent, and flamboyantly pop white-trash epics like Vixen, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (with a screenplay by Roger Ebert) and the impossibly great Faster Pussycast, Kill, Kill!, Meyer made films with lust-crazed guys, massively endowed women and a purely American mixture of sex, violence, and pop culture. Click the link above for Harry Knowles’ tribute to Meyer.