FM4 - Spectatorship - Andy Warhol: Experimental and Expanded Film/Video

When people describe who I am, if they don’t say, ‘Andy Warhol the Pop artist,’ they say, ‘Andy Warhol the underground filmmaker.’

Andy Warhol, POPism

Andy Warhol was not only the twentieth century’s most “famous” exponent of Pop art but, “a post-modern Renaissance man”: a commercial illustrator, a writer, a photographer, a sculptor, a magazine editor, a television producer, an exhibition curator, and one of the most important and provocative filmmakers of the New American Cinema group of the early 1960s. The influence of Warhol’s filmmaking can be found in both the Hollywood mainstream film, which took from his work a “gritty street-life realism, sexual explicitness, and on-the-edge performances,” and in experimental film, which “reworked his long-take, fixed-camera aesthetic into what came to be known as structural film.”

Read more from sensesofcinema.com here.

Spectatorship - Andy Warhol: Experimental and Expanded Film/Video

Chelsea Girls is a 1966 experimental underground film directed by Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey. The film was Warhol's first major commercial success after a long line of avant-garde art films (both feature length and short). It was shot at the Hotel Chelsea and other locations in New York City, and follows the lives of several of the young women who live there, and stars many of Warhol's superstars. It is presented in a split screen, accompanied by alternating soundtracks attached to each scene and an alternation between black-and-white and color photography. The original cut runs at just over three hours long.

The title, Chelsea Girls, is a reference to the location in which the film takes place. It was the inspiration for star Nico's 1967 debut album, Chelsea Girl. The album featured a ballad-like track titled "Chelsea Girls", written about the hotel and its inhabitants who appear in the film.

The film was shot in the summer and early autumn of 1966 in various rooms and locations inside the Hotel Chelsea. Filming also took place at Warhol's studio "The Factory." Appearing in the film were many of Warhol's regulars, including Nico, Brigid Berlin, Gerard Malanga, Mary Woronov as Hanoi Hannah, Ingrid Superstar, International Velvet and Eric Emerson.

Once principal photography wrapped, Warhol and co-director Paul Morrissey selected the twelve most striking vignettes they had filmed and then projected them side-by-side to create a visual juxtaposition of both contrasting images and divergent content (the so-called "white" or light and innocent aspects of life against the "black" or darker, more disturbing aspects.) As a result, the 6½ hour running time was essentially cut in half, to 3 hours and 15 minutes. However, part of Warhol's concept for the film was that it would be unlike watching a regular movie, as the two projectors could never achieve exact synchronization from viewing to viewing; therefore, despite specific instructions of where individual sequences would be played during the running time, each viewing of the film would, in essence, be an entirely different experience.

Spectatorship - Andy Warhol: Experimental and Expanded Film/Video

Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included Bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons. Discover more about this highly provocative, prolific and influential filmmaker and his films here.

Watch an extract from Warhol's 8hr 'Empire'.

'Heat' (1972) Dir Paul Morrissey/Andy Warhol:

Heat was the last film that Andrea Feldman made with Warhol before committing sucide. Because of her suicide, Andy, Paul Morrissey and Fred Hughes decided that the the premiere of the film on October 5 at the Lincoln Center Film Festival should be a "quiet number." Sylvia Miles and Pat Ast disgreed and tried to get Bob Colacello to reverse the decision.

Andy didn't go to Hollywood for the filming but Paul Morrissey would call the Factory every morning before they started shooting. Jed Johnson would call Andy every night after the shooting. Andy would also make late night calls to Sylvia, Andrea and Pat Ast. According to Bob Colacello, the "three actresses were meant to hate each other - they were all, in the typical Paul Morrissey schema, after Joe - and after Andy's calls they did. He made Sylvia jealous of Pat's Halston muumuus. He made Pat jealous of Sylvia's star billing. And... it didn't take much to drive poor Andrea crazy." 

The dialogue of the film was unscripted for the most part. It was meant to be a take - off on Sunset Boulevard with Sylvia Miles as an aging actress pursuing a younger Joe Dallesandro who rejects her in the end. John Cale composed the film's musical score heard at the opening and ending of the film.

The last scene of Heat was filmed in the New York apartment (Second Avenue in the Fifties) of Brooks and Adriana Jackson. It was their pet ocelet, Trumba (Italian for mixed-up), who appeared in the film. A few nights after the scene was shot, an electrical fire engulfed the apartment. Brooks saved Trumba, Adriana saved their Picasso gouache but suffered third degree burns on both hands from the red-hot gilt frame. She did not blame the film crew, "even though the fire might have somehow been caused by the film equipment."
Sally Todd's (Sylvia Miles) "mortgaged up manor" in Hollywood was formerly owned by Boris Karloff in real life.

Also in the cast was Harold Stevenson, an Iolas Gallery artist, who had a small part in the film.

Heat cost between $50,000 - $100,000 to make. It took in two million dollars in the states and was "praised by the established critics from Cannes to Venice and from New York to Los Angeles". (BC136) Critics Vincent Canby, Rex Reed and Variety magazine all gave Heat good reviews. Some critics, however, were not so impressed:

Time Magazine: "a faggot rehash of Sunset Boulevard... [that] exploits the sorry selection of freaks who have been recruited for the cast. What is despicable about Heat is the way it both flaunts and mocks the grotesqueries of its cast, who seem generally neither to notice nor greatly care."

Peter Schjeldahl: "Miss Feldman, with her twisted little face and frightening laugh, was clearly in a bad way, and the pitiless exposure of her suicidal mood makes Heat a repellent document."

Source: http://www.warholstars.org/warhol/warhol1/warhol1f/heat.html