week three - the underground

The Charles Theater was important to the development of "underground film" in New York City because it actually gave it somewhere to spawn and thrive. The Charles staked it's claim as the most eclectic and edgy as it got, and branched out into other forms of art as well. It exhibited works of local (still/painting) artists, had weekly jazz concerts, would show foreign language films, and began running a late night feature screening that often times featured a panel discussion at the end where the filmmaker was present. The Charles was the first step in making the "underground" mainstream, and not necessarily in a bad way, but more so by opening it's doors, and letting all who were interested attend. The audience began to feel rather at home there, too, becoming verbally involved in the films, booing, hissing, and cheering as they felt the need; and with no inhibitions. (It may have hurt many an artists feelings, but hey, at least they got an honest, albeit inebriated opinion.) The Charles was also the first place on record to have "open screenings," where admission was either 95 cents or one film, and artists could come screen their film in front of the audience.

During 1964, a few underground films ran into some trouble, notably Sleep, Flaming Creatures, Un Chant d'Amour, and Scorpio Rising. Sleep, although mild in nature (six hours of a man sleeping), had not been submitted to the NY State Board of Regents for licensing, and therefore it was deemed illegal to charge admission. Due to this, police attendance became a regular feature of the show, and in turn, Mekas began promoting the film more and soliciting contributions. At a film festival in Belgium where Mekas was to be a judge, Flaming Creatures was denied a screening (no doubt due to its overtly sexual content), so Mekas resigned from the jury and organized a special showing in his hotel room, and later commandeered the projection booth of the festival theater. This caused a small riot to break out (and for the Belgian minister of justice to be publicly embarrassed), and got lots of press throughout Europe. At home, Mekas ran into more trouble over Flaming Creatures, after he got arrested when police broke up a screening at the New Bowery Theater in early March. Ten days later, he was arrested again, this time over screening the film Un Chant d'Amour, which was intended to raise money for a Flaming Creatures defense fund. Across the country, Mike Getz was getting in trouble in L.A. for showing Scorpio Rising, labeled "obscene" for it's brief flash of male frontal nudity.

Why these films were significant to Warhol's career:
Vinyl - an adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, this movie was shot in real time and with a single camera set up. It also involved Edie Sedgwick, who would become a major player in Warhol's life and influence many things.
My Hustler - contained two locations, an intended camera pan, and an actual cut (thus unprecedented in his work.) It was Warhol's first commercial success, and it's influence bleed out of just the underground and into the "mainstream," gaining recognition, and often approval, from every angle.
The Chelsea Girls - was "funny, brutal, and transcendent." It was three and a half hours of real life. The popularity of this film gave the underground the resurgence it needed to prove that it could, and would, thrive.
**** - a twenty-five hour long piece that was only ever shown once, but again, was real life in a reel (or ten.) Almost like beatnik journalism, **** reverted back to the ability to capture spontaneous, real life and make it into art. It wasn't a movie made with a point, a story, or to be seen over and over; it was created to get down to the bare bones of life, and, as Jack Kerouac put it, "to go out and see what everybody, all across America, was doing at that very minute."
Blue Movie - originally titled Fuck, was a segment of **** in which two characters, Viva and Louis Waldron talk, eat, clean, live, walk, bathe, and well, fuck. The print was impounded (no matter the hardcore porns being made around it), and may have possibly been a reason for the insurgence of porn into New York some six or eight months later....?


Mussman's review of The Chelsea Girls:

Compares the film to Bunuel's L'Age D'Or, saying the two films resemble each other "in terms of violence which is already manifested in the human psyche."

Compares the film to Jean-Luc Godard's film Married Woman, saying that both films hold the same philosophically impossible question: when is it acting? when is it wholly sincere? "Role playing whether conscious or not is to one degree or another a fact of life." Also compares The Chelsea Girls to Godard's Breathless, saying they both embody improvisatory techniques to accomplish what Godard calls using the "cinema to seize life."

Contrasts the film[maker] to Hitchcock, saying that Hitchcock had a formula for his movies, and a calculated end and conclusion that he was pushing the viewer to arrive at (more or less). Warhol's work, on the other hand, is not metaphorical and encourages an open-ended response from the viewer, mainly because montage films have no answer nor an explanation. "A Warhol film becomes a sounding board for the spectator's own psyche as well as a tool for unlimited investigation of it."

Absolute life.


On drugs:
One thing I found interesting about these two articles is that when speaking of The Chelsea Girls, there is disunity between authors about who was on drugs, and who wasn't. In "El Topo: The Underground," it directly states that Eric Emerson drops acid and "babbles incoherently about his trip," whereas mentions nothing about Pope Ondine being under the influence. Mussman's article speaks of Pope Ondine's "drug-inspired tantrum" (although it was heroin, not LSD - hugely different); and later talks about scenes where "people do not appear to be high," and uses Eric Emerson as an example. Strange. Maybe getting high isn't just for heroin addicts anymore!