andy warhol as filmmaker

I meant "tell me what you think Warhol's films should achieve"

I am at work now and am very bored. but at least they are paying me to be here. they weren't paying me to see that Warhol film.

how do i say this w/o theory--they are noise for the eyes, washing all of the debris of charachter, narrative, etc out in the deluge of pure form.

now that i got that out of my system.

i think that beauty is can be transgressive, and by sheer concentration, these films are both.

(its like we are supposed to work work work work, everything has to be work, everything has to be about the worker, the artist in his workshop making work, and warhol takes the xian day of rest, and amplfies it--fuck work, fuck artist as worker, listen and rest) i find that arresting.

Morrissey's films are like indie films of the time; for a rough analogue think maybe John Waters. His 70s Italian horror duo (Blood for.../Flesh for...) are like Hammer films, but with better scripts, acting, and cinematography.

i wanna see empire.

not if you have 3 dvds/vcrs that can play simultaneously, it doesn't.

anthony that'd mean i'd have to see his paintings too!

Right with you there, I sat and watched a 45 minute cutdown at a Warhol exhibition once and it worked splendidly as an installation/ambient artwork type thing. When the lights came on it was fantastic! Pity there was no sound, really would have liked to heard the supposed arguing that went on.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/southbank/seasons/warhol/

anything in partic you all like to recommend? I'll probably pick a cpl of things..

Tarzan and Jane Regained, Screen Tests.

I hear Blowjob is good.

^^^Screen tests, Beauty # 2, Vinyl.

I'm not a giant fan of his films, but I really disagree w/amst's criticisms above; to me, the boredom-as-suspense, experiential componant of the films is far more valuable than the Big Ideas they (may) embody.

bfi thing:

supported by:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/images/global/partnerlogos/coke.gif

that's really too perfect

It really is! I didn't think it would be too long before someone pointed that out.

I don't know as to some of the criticisms of this thread - I have a clear impression of what these films might be like just from listening to music, say. I'm def not bored by a lot of it - if I ws I would've stopped all that long ago, but my interests in that stuff still run strongly enough.

I think its a problem that most likely I'd love this stuff, and maybe its time to start doubting and distrusting all that more...but that is all for another time. For now I just wanna watch.

if i weren't semi-sometimes-employed by the bfi i wd have written something about the insanity of the nft/bfi doing this ridiculous season.

in the era when every arts administrator calls themself a "curator" people have totally forgotten how to curate. a comprehensive warhol season showing every bit of celluloid he ever exposed is a monstrous waste, and they will surely make a huge loss.

you just do not need to have this many films shown, especially when the ny avant-gardes warhol was stealing from remain relatively unseen. do not expect the nft to publicize any of the relevant arguments w. the fluxus guys etc. do expect more tedium about 'celebrity culture'.

I agree with you but aren't most NFT seasons along these lines? More about a filmmaker's back catalogue than any wider context? I would sort of be shocked if they did it any other way (and I like the NFT and the BFI, even if they never live up to the idea of what they COULD be, or WERE).

It doesn't look like they're actually showing that many films of his films (or am I missing something in the program?) -- no Chelsea Girls or Blue Movie, for example.

it's a two-part seaz! continues september. they are showing loooaaaads anyway.

adam: yes. well: kind of. i mean, the *national* film theatre (it's called bfi southbank now, which is lame: originally the nft was financially independent of the bfi and this attempt to brand it is pretty stupid) did a season of michael powell two years ago which showed perhaps half his films.

in general i think they have cut back a little from these two-month blockbuster seasons, but i do think they're the worst idea ever, but *especially* for warhol. they're showing about four programmes of his 'screen tests' shown back to back. some of these *might* be interesting (bob dylan) but, y'know, a little editorial control after forty years...

that's right. I forgot about "bfi southbank". I'm glad they have a shop again!

i haven't been. i think the last time i went was like two years ago. and i was living in london till march...

Yes it might have been nicer if they were to do a kind of minimalist cinema, if that's what you mean.

minimalist cinema season, or whatever..

They had something like that at the Tate earlier this year, I think?

well, that's another can of worms really, cinema in a gallery bidness. i don't really mean minimalist cinema, no, because it's boring i think that's what this stuff got categorized as during the 70s when it went legitimate... i'm for robert frank, ron rice, jim mcbride.

I missed this whole season! Almost. I did see "The Velvet Underground & Nico", which is groovy. And "The Velvet Underground", which is shit.

Tho the latter is almost worth it to see Lou Reed looking incredibly boyish and cute and doing some embarassingly weird frugging

NYC series in Astoria, starting next weekend:

http://www.movingimage.us/site/screenings/mainpage/andy_warhol.html

thanks
i think i'll see chelsea girls

Fuck, didn't they just do a Warhol series a few months ago?

i liked the one about the building
i watched four hours and i thought "i want to pee on that"

Not that I remember, Colin.

Hoberman: For the next four weekends, the Museum of the Moving Image will be screening vintage Warhol in what may be the largest such event since Warhol's own Edie Sedgwick retrospective back in the day...

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0742,hoberman,78062,20.html

It occurred to me a while ago that the place to see Warhol's films is not in a cinema but in an art gallery, as part of some kind of video-style installation work. I was able to test this in the Niland Gallery in Sligo on Saturday, where they have an Andy Warhol exhibition on. The screen tests and the Velvet Underground film were great to sit and watch for a bit before wandering off to play with the silver balloons.

My beloved and I are still trying to work out whether the unquiet Americans were part of the exhibition or not.

warhol's films have probably been more seen in art galleries than in cinemas, on the whole. 'chelsea girls' got a big release in '66, but since then...

that's kind of fair because cinemas should be used for proper films rather than the fucking "screen tests" of a bunch of self-important narcissists who, a couple of reluctant exceptions excepted, left nothing of value except... their connection to andy warhol's factory scene.

jokes.

i watch bootleg DVDs of "chelsea girls" and the screen tests all the time while I'm working on sound. It's like a visual way of putting the radio on; to put it awkwardly but accurately, they are never not beautiful. "Chelsea Girls" can be quite brutally depressing, and that deliberate "bringdown" factor is rarely discussed when people talk about Warhol; they tend to focus on glamour and starpower and iconography, but when you really listen to Ondine and Eric talking in their long rants in "Chelsea Girls" it is super uncomfortable. The screen tests are a different thing entirely; they are like stained glass windows of saints or something.

The jabbering of the 3 guys on the soundtrack to Harlot, which gets a little tedious once Mario Montez pulls out his fourth banana, sort of sounds like a minimalist forerunner to Mystery Science Theater 3000.

so they showed a 46-min excerpt of Empire (the 8-hour fixed shot of the Empire State Building) on Saturday, and as I anticipated, the audience interaction was the drama. A group of 4 or 5 came in late, fairly noisily -- I heard plastic bracelets clattering throughout -- and there was giggling and whispered WTFs after 10 minutes.

MAN #1: Will you be quiet?

#2: No.

#3: Yes, do.

#4: For you youngsters, you were supposed to talk during this movie, and have a cigarette.

The noisy party left after another 10 minutes, with a woman huffing "Eight hours of that!"

This is a handy "star" guide:

http://www.warholstars.org/index.html

"The noisy party left after another 10 minutes, with a woman huffing "Eight hours of that!"

-- Dr Morbius, Monday, October 29, 2007 7:15 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link"

what a SQUARE huh.

am kind of amazed that the audience was WTFing this. it'd be like going to 'hear' 3'33 and then going -- OMG WHERE THE TUNE!?!?!?!

Yeah, walking out not as puzzling as WALKING IN!

The Chelsea Girls: still fastest 3-1/2 hrs in cinema

I lost interest about half way through.

“A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory,” a documentary about a filmmaker who had been one of Warhol’s intimates,

I watched this tonight. I really liked the excerpts of Danny's films!

Very sad news from the Warhol as filmmaker front. Callie Angell, curator of The Andy Warhol Film Project, has died.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/arts/artsspecial/11angell.html?hpw

Quite eerie for me because just yesterday I was reading about her in Roy Grundmann's amazing book on Blow Job.

just saw her speak at the 0rph4ns symposium a month ago! by all accounts this was very sudden. RIP.

lol @ $74.50 for a 280-page analysis of a 35-minute film of a guy making sex faces

am nailing it in first post basically

xpost

Oddly enough, that's not the only book on the film. There's a much cheaper one by the great, albeit a bit hardline, avant-garde filmmaker/polemicist Peter Gidal.

Also, the anthology Pop Out: Queer Warhol has an absolutely superb essay by Jonathan Flatley called “Warhol Gives Good Face: Publicity and the Politics of Prosopopoeia.” Don't let "Prosopopoeia" scare you off (or let your mind drift towards Mexican desserts) - it's an easy to digest essay explaining some of Warhol's preoccupations, with a good chunk on Blow Job.

http://www.ubu.com/film/rice_chumlum.html

Ron Rice ws discussed up there hence the link - this is...Parajanov before Parajanov? Just w/a bunch of bohemian NY-ers -- except not nearly as well made, but the overload of images with the music has a trance to it.

if chelsea girls is one of warhol's best movies, i'd hate to see his worst

Saw this old documentary on Warhol's films:

http://www.ubu.com/film/warhol_cinema.html

Lots of great clips -- got v excited about seeing Chelsea Girls. Hoberman alluded to rolling news and you could easily add reality TV to this now.

Anyway it looked boring and great too. A must see.

I love seeing docs about Warhol because of interviews w/old factory members. They seem like aliens from a far away galaxy.

Best left at a distance i think.

i saw a 2-screen projection of chelsea girls a few months ago, it was cool

I saw some of the National Gallery's Warhol retrospective this past fall. If you ask me the Warhol estate is doing the world a favor by limiting these films' distribution. (Only Ondine made Chelsea Girls tolerable.)

I'm leading a panel w/Tom Kalin and Claire K. Henry of the Whitney Museum on Nov. 20 discussing Lupe, Hedy, and Harlot. Anyone seen'em?

rather, point me to a couple of good articles I can cite

Stephen Koch's Stargazer is still the locus classicus on Warhol's films

Saw Kitchen last week, Poor Little Rich Girl tonight, five or six more in the coming weeks. Still mulling over Kitchen. "I suspect that a hundred years from now people will look at Kitchen and say, 'Yes, that is the way it was in the late Fifties, early Sixties in America. That's why they had the war in Vietnam. That's why the rivers were getting polluted. That's why there was typological glut. That's why the horror came down. That's why the plague was on its way.' Kitchen shows that better than any other work of that time." Norman Mailer in Edie...Wish I could get him to expand on that. (He does, a bit--the full quote is longer.) I sort of get it--there's a real feeling of violence in a couple of Edie Sedgwick's outbursts--but for me the experience of actually watching it didn't match the intrigue of that quote. Occasional lines made me laugh, and I will remember Sedgwick's getup (I liked how, when Warhol wanders into the film, you realize why two or three of them are wearing striped shirts). I think I drifted off for about 10 minutes.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GDut44PSbmg/hqdefault.jpg

I enjoyed Tarzan and Jane Regained...Sort Of for short stretches. Kitchen and Poor Little Rich Girl are so heavily invested in Edie Sedgwick, I think you've got to find her as endlessly fascinating as Warhol does to get much out of them. She mostly just wore me down. Taylor Mead, who came from the stage, is simply better in front of the camera--his vamping and clowning around is very funny at times. (The whole film seems to be predicated on the question "How do you make a Tarzan film?" "If your lead actor wears a loincloth and remembers to beat his chest every minute or two, it's a Tarzan film.") Throw in some deadpan voice-over ("This is the bathtub scene...it's endless"), the Orlons and Little Eva and lots of other girl-group stuff (felt much more like a Kenneth Anger film than the other two, even though Poor Little Rich Girl also has a pop-heavy soundtrack), Dennis Hopper and Irving Blum (recognized him from the Ric Burns documentary; also Claes Oldenburg and the director James Bridges), and some nudity, and it’s halfway lively. It walks up to the edge of a couple of really dark corners--bestiality (for laughs) and pedophilia--but glancingly. Eighty minutes; 40 would have been enough. Dionne Warwick overtop color footage of Naomi Levine swimming was the highlight for me. Beautiful, sort of.

Lonesome Cowboys is the usual mixture of tedium and funny, sometimes deadpan (and sometimes not) camp, the best of it from Taylor Mead, who I'm pretty sure is stoned throughout. Loved "Magical Mystery Tour."

I must have slept through a quarter of Nude Restaurant's 100 minutes, including much of the beginning and end (which included some of the Taylor Mead/Julian Burroughs scene, which seems to be the film's most famous). I had been contemplating skipping it altogether earlier--knew I was tired, and reading up a little beforehand I thought "Do I really want to see this?"

Anyway, actually enjoyed a lot of the rest. I'm now convinced that Mead is a borderline comic genius. He's even funny when he's not saying anything (e.g., the whole time he's listening to Viva), and he's great at mocking the very existence of these films, like when he finishes his song and says "And now I'd like to order something from the menu," extra-large quotation marks around "menu." I also found Viva much more entertaining that Sedgwick in the two films I posted about earlier. Loved the monologue about her psychiatrist, and her derision of mass media is better than Dylan and the Time reporter: "We're beginning to sound like Newsweek. 'Hippiedom. Trouble in Hippiedom.'" I hope that somewhere, sometime, somebody named their band Trouble in Hippiedom.

Pretty detailed piece here:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2011/10/02/letting-it-all-hang-out-at-the-nude-restaurant/

For 40 years, the only films I'd seen Viva in were Midnight Cowboy and Cisco Pike. I've seen her in three Warhols now--saw Bike Boy tonight--and I think she's fantastic. And again, she and Ingrid Superstar and Brigid Polk seem so much more interesting and funny to me than Sedgwick.

(IMDB lists Valerie Solanas as "Woman on street" in Bike Boy. I either missed her--I don't even remember seeing the street--or, my guess, she was excised from the film.)

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjAzMDg2MDQzNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzI2MzAyOA@@._V1_SX640_SY720_.jpg

I don't think that worked, anyway, don't forget her appearance in "Play It Again, Sam"! And on "Escalator Over the Hill".

Forgot about that...Haven't seen it in a while, so I can't quite remember her in it--I always think of Susan Anspach and the art-gallery woman in Play It Again. I've never heard "Escalator Over the Hill"--interesting.

I really enjoyed a lot of this series--all the stuff that made me think about stuff--but Mrs. Warhol was not a good way to end. An hour of Warhol's mother puttering around the kitchen while Richard Rheem, about 50 years her junior, kind of half humors her and half affectionately mocks her. I think it's supposed to be charming; I was bored out of my mind.

Nude Restaurant screens in Brooklyn tomw night

http://www.bam.org/film/2016/the-nude-restaurant

Saw newly restored Drunk aka Drink last night. Emile de Antonio, bolting J&B, is a riot in the first reel, just sad in the second. Catch it when you can.

https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/2521?locale=en

a lot of NYC cinephiles are excited about tomorrow's screening of Empire at the Whitney

but, y'know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuSIOK5Jj8g

"Kiss" by Andy Warhol (1963–64) is now streaming through @MoMAFilm in a newly restored edition. Could be the first time a Warhol 16mm classic has legally appeared on the inner nets. https://t.co/FqJHxHrmTK

— Dave Kehr (@dave_kehr) August 13, 2020

Blow Job, Chelsea Girls, Vinyl and more available as legit rentable streams!

https://stream.warhol.org/browse

My friend and I did a Zoomcast on Scorpio Rising, Vinyl, and Pink Flamingos (their soundtracks being the link.) I hadn't seen Vinyl in a long time, but I've really come to love it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqxkK_qmf8c&t

37th anniversary of his death. Played parts of three Screen Tests (Mary Woronov, Nico, Dylan) for a grade 7 class, the first two with music from the Dean & Britta LP 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests. No idea what they thought.

"Anybody love those?" (no reaction)
"Anybody hate those?" (no reaction)

Maybe their blank stares were meant as a tribute to Warhol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHq9OEj4SvQ