When Andy Warhol began making experimental films in 1963, his films were practically paintings with movement. They lacked a script and were limited to portraying people, actions and objects with frames. Titles like Kiss, eat, empire either Blow Job They make up Warhol’s first film period, which is also the most celebrated in terms of innovation. That changed in 1965 with the arrival of Paul Morrissey at the Factory. Until then, Morrissey had filmed experimental shorts –About A Face, Like Sleep– which he screened at collective events in Manhattan’s East Village, the hot spot for the counterculture of those early sixties.
After the meeting, Morrissey became a regular presence in Warhol’s studio. As was often the case with newcomers who wanted to be part of the Factory, the first task they gave him was to pass the broom. Shortly after, it already played a determining role in Warhol’s environment and work.
He eliminated the original statism of his films, added dialogue and action, thus promoting a cast of stars that ended up forming an alternative version of the star system from Hollywood. But his role was not limited to technically directing films like Chelsea Girls (1966). He also reorganized the Factory, which until then was dominated by hedonism, to try to make the most of what was being forged there. Under Morrissey, the open-door, anything-goes policy went into decline. The attack that Valerie Solanas perpetrated against Warhol in June 1968 ended that stage forever.
The ‘Flesh’, ‘Trash’ and ‘Heat’ trilogy
That Morrissey directed the films that Warhol signed was a procedure that fell within the creative philosophy of the artist, who had already used screen printing to reproduce pictorial series such as those of Campbell’s soup cans or Marilyn Monroe. Morrissey rolled flesh in 1968 when Warhol was still recovering from the shooting. With it began a trilogy of titles that popularized the world of the Factory beyond the circles of New York connoisseurs. For the first time, flesh It told a story with a beginning, middle and end. What was unconventional was the way it was told.
Exaggerated zooms, out-of-focus images and, above all, actors who were not professionals and who practically limited themselves to playing themselves. Joe Dallesandro stood out in the cast, whose body was displayed to the maximum by a camera that sought to cast him as a sex symbol. The other main protagonists were Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis, three trans actresses who left their mark on the popular culture that was to come.
flesh began a trilogy that continued with Trash (1970) and ended with heat (19872). The three established a way of making films that would influence generations of independent filmmakers from John Waters to Harmony Korine. None of the three managed to get Hollywood interested in that world of foul-mouthed transsexuals and men on the verge of a nervous breakdown or an overdose. The closest Morrissey came to commercial cinema was in midnight cowboy (1969). It was John Schlesinger who knew how to absorb and metabolize the marginal potential of Morrissey’s cinema – drug addicts, pimps, street people – and turn it into a commercial product. In the film there is a sequence that recreates the Factory in its own way and in which Morrissey and others appear briefly. superstars.
After Warhol
Born into a Catholic family in New York in 1938, Paul Morrissey was always faithful to his religious upbringing. He criticized promiscuity and drug use, even though both were key factors in the films he directed during that period. His surly character did not fit well with some of the artists belonging to that environment; in fact, their caustic statements would end up alluding to Warhol once they stopped working together. He never got along with Lou Reed and detested the music of The Velvet Underground, with whom he worked.
It was Morrissey who was in charge of launching the show called Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which mixed projections, dance and strobe lights with the group’s live music. The singer Nico was the great exception. Morrissey admired her and there are even those who point out that, if the band got a contract to record an album, it was only as a means to try to launch Nico alone into pop stardom. That attempt materialized in 1967 with the album Chelsea Girlbut the singer did not identify with that album and did not want stardom either.
The breakup between Morrissey and Warhol occurred in 1974. A couple of years earlier they had tried to reach commercial theaters with two horror films starring Joe Dallesandro and shot in Europe, where the Warhol brand imposed less anxiety on producers. So much Meat for Frankenstein (1973, filmed in 3D and distributed in Spain by the film arm of the Bocaccio club) and Blood for Dracula (1974) were a critical and public failure. Instead of becoming box office hits, they joined the B series catalogue.
Morrissey’s filmography after his time with Warhol passed without pain or glory. In 1978 he directed a humorous version of The Hound of the Baskervilles starring the comedy duo of Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. He returned to underground cinema and Warholian plots in 1981 with Madame Wang’s which tells the story of a lover of sadomasochism who travels from Germany to Los Angeles to meet Jane Fonda to help him carry out his particular social revolution.
Three years later he filmed Mixed Blood-released in Spain as Blood and sauce-a plot of confrontations between Latin gangs that was one of John Leguizamo’s first roles and that also contains a cameo by Ari Boulogne, Nico’s son. His last film, News From Nowheredates back to 2010. Like almost all of his post-Warhol filmography, it was stranded in that uncertain territory where a film does not arouse greater interest than what its author’s CV can offer.
Recently, an IG account named @paulmorrisseyarchive had begun publishing material from its archive. Michael Chaiken, administrator of the account, is the one who has told the media that Morrissey has died due to pneumonia. Among the images published on said account is the autograph that George Cuckor signed and which says: “Paul, you have talent.” Morrissey was one of the extras at the beach house party that appears near the beginning of Rich and famous. It was another of the fleeting moments in which his name was mixed with that of 20th century Hollywood royalty.
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