DC's

* (reconfigured)

 

‘I’d like to use this opportunity … to introduce you to a poet you’ve never heard of before. Ed Smith. A common enough name. There are a zillion Ed Smiths on Facebook—I gave up counting them once I reached one hundred. But this Ed Smith was no ordinary Ed Smith, let me assure you. He was born in Queens, New York, in 1957; his family moved to Southern California in 1959. He grew up in Downey (the hometown of Richard and Karen Carpenter) and attended Pomona College in Claremont for one academic year (1975-76). He then made his way to Los Angeles, Hollywood specifically, where he worked as a paralegal and for an independent record and video company, became involved in the punk rock lifestyle, then finally found his niche as a poet in the scene that centered around Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Venice, California, when Dennis Cooper ran the reading series there in the early eighties. The Beyond Baroque scene has sometimes been called “hip,” sometimes “infamous.” It was lively, that’s for sure. Other young poets who gravitated to the literary liveliness were Amy Gerstler, Bob Flanagan, Jack Skelley, and myself.

‘Ed published two books of poetry in his lifetime, both with Cold Calm Press: Fantasyworld in 1983 and Tim’s Bunnies in 1988. You’ll probably have trouble finding either of these titles—Cold Calm Press was a very small operation. Ed also published his work in Poetry Loves Poetry: An Anthology of Los Angeles Poets (Momentum Press, 1985) and in what Bruce Hainley calls “the most rambunctious publications of the day: Barney, Mirage, Santa Monica Review, and Shiny International [later just Shiny], a magazine for which he conducted interviews with artists Jim Isermann, Mike Kelley, and Chris Burden and eventually served as West Coast editor.” Publishing poems in rambunctious magazines does not pay the rent, so Ed worked as a typesetter, a movie ad copywriter, and a math tutor at a private school. He moved to New York City in the late nineties, married artist Mio Shirai, and founded Creative Systems Architecture, Inc. (CSAI), a consulting firm meant to help companies apply W. Edwards Deming’s principles of emergent intelligence to their organizations. (Sounds crackpot, but there’s something to it.) Sadly, Ed took his own life in 2005.

‘At first I didn’t care for Ed. I mistook his irreverence for disrespect. And maybe there was some jealousy. He was slightly younger than the rest of us in the Beyond Baroque group, cute (almost everyone was infatuated with him at some point), and punkish (he had, after all, come of age in the punk rock scene). I thought he could be obnoxious, a brat. But after I got sober (in 1984) and calmed down a bit (I’d been an uptight alcoholic, which kind of defeats the purpose), I became quite fond of him. Underneath the brash exterior was a very sweet, guileless young man. …

‘And what of his poems? Ed’s poetry was exactly like he was: playful, free of inhibition and decorum, troubling in just the right way. And wrought with intelligence, brilliance even, though on the surface they may seem apathetic to loftier poetic aims. He wrote “Return to Lesbos” (most likely his longest poem) in a black-and-white composition book, scrawling the whole poem throughout it, often with only two, three, four words per page. Ed apparently never typed or tried to publish it. He read the poem at least once to my knowledge, at Beyond Baroque in 1982. Lucky for us this performance (which Amy remembers as a sublime consummation of Ed’s talent as a poet and performer) was filmed and included in Gail Kaszynski’s 1983 documentary about the Beyond Baroque scene, Fear of Poetry. It’s breathtaking to watch Ed stand at the mike, wearing a short-sleeved nerdish shirt he undoubtedly bought at a thrift shop, and read the poem from the composition book, swiftly turning its pages. He simply gallops through the poem, as if he’s uncomfortable with what it’s saying. Fitting, since “Return to Lesbos” is an emotionally charged onrush in which he repeatedly questions his responsibility as a poet: is he going to just hold that “fucking pencil” or use it to “cry for civilization.”

‘Ed is at his best in his short lyrics. They have the sense that they were jotted down on scraps of paper while waiting at a bus stop or standing in a club nursing a beer he’d bought with his last bits of loose change. They probably were. I’ve always thought of Ed as a punk Dorothy Parker. Bruce Hainley refers to Ed’s poems as “toy time bombs.” I think that’s perfect. Something does tend to “go off” as you read them. They delight and cause unease at the same time—they’re authentic, that’s why. There’s real pain and real experience in them, despite their apparent toy-ness.

‘Last year, Bruce Hainley edited a generous selection of Ed’s poems for Court Green (issue 10), a journal I co-edit at Columbia College Chicago. The feature was called, appropriately enough, “Memoirs of a Thrill-Seeker.” This year, in Court Green 11, we published a transcription of “Return to Lesbos.” At the publication party in March, we showed a clip of Ed reading the poem. The audience went wild. “Where can I find his work?” many in attendance eagerly asked. Students, in particular, showed irrepressible excitement. Young people love Ed; his work speaks to them, it’s pertinent. Amy Gerstler and I have been talking about co-editing a book of Ed’s work. I think this would please him—his poems gathered up by two poet friends he hung out with. I’m glad we can continue to hang out with him, and that you’ll be able to, too, since he let himself get caught “being words on paper.”’ — David Trinidad

 

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Trailer

 

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Buy the book

https://bookshop.org/p/books/punk-rock-is-cool-for-the-end-of-the-world-poems-and-notebooks-of-ed-smith-ed-smith/5d29fe3798226cdc?ean=9781885983671&next=t

 

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Homages

‘In the very early ‘80s Ed was intimidatingly skinny and gorgeous and as reckless and charismatic as that guy in The Libertines who got caught doing coke with Kate Moss, but very, very talented and massively intelligent, and even when he was a little too wild, he was always so kind and heartbreakingly sweet and smart. Saying he was our Rimbaud is way too lazy, but there was that. I thought of him as LA’s John Wieners. Ed’s poetry has Wieners’s deep melancholy and low-key, note-perfect lyricism, mixed with Ed’s strange, bright ideas and his dead-pan, startling sense of humor. I‘m one of the many people who misses his poetry a lot.’ ― Dennis Cooper

‘Years ago my wife slept with Ed Smith and wrote him into her novel; we goggled, bemused by his ubiquity. It was a time when Ed was everywhere, or so it seemed, and his energy and taste for the zany and the outrageous fit right in with what we in San Francisco appreciated most about the heroic LA artists―Bob Flanagan, Mike Kelley, Amy Gerstler, Dennis Cooper, so many more. The present anthology is not only the best of Ed’s writing but contains in his notebooks the single greatest account of the genius brewing in the Southland at that moment. Hats off to David Trinidad for bringing it all back home―his exquisite care in selecting and contextualizing is the greatest gift he could have given his late friend. — Kevin Killian

‘Sappho invented civilization, and Ed Smith made it punk.’ — Tony Trigilio

‘Reflecting the heroic editorial efforts of David Trinidad, this collection of Ed Smith’s poems and journals makes me nostalgic for a lost era; sad that this talented if troubled poet took his own life; glad that we included his work in The Best American Erotic Poems, and in total agreement with David Trinidad that Smith’s poetry would have a salutary effect on a group of young writers, such as those attending a graduate writing program.’ — David Lehman

‘Ed Smith was this brilliant, handsome, charismatic, disarming, hedonistic, wounded math and science nerd who discovered punk music and art and poetry and was swept away, besotted with all three, and never looked back. He loved drugs and bands and science fiction and science and Sappho and poets and poetry. He liked to give people a little treatise by Alfred North Whitehead on mathematics for a gift. He loved being part of a cool scene. He introduced me to Prince’s music when his first album came out. I think he would have described himself as bi-sexual. He was intense and sensitive and wild. He burned hotly.’ — Amy Gerstler

 

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Gallery

Ed Smith and Mary Emerzian, December 3, 1981. Photo by Sheree Rose.

First row (left to right): Amy Gerstler, Ed Smith, Bob Flanagan. Second row (left to right): unknown, Michael Silverblatt, Mark McLaughlin, David Trinidad, Sheree Rose. (1985)

(L.to R.) Michael Silverblatt, Bob Flanagan, Tim Dlugos, Donald Britton, Dennis Cooper, Jeff Wright, Amy Gerstler, Ed Smith. (1981)

Ed Smith, Venice, California, 1980. Photo by Skip Arnold.

 

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Page

 

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Extras

Dennis Cooper, Bob Flanagan, Jack Skelley, Amy Gerstler, David Trinidad, Ed Smith,, Sherree Rose.and Steven Hall. (very poor quality)

A poet and a comedian: Taylor Negron, Ed Smith (very poor quality)

 

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Book

David Trinidad, editor Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World: Poems and Notebooks of Ed Smith
Turtle Point Press

‘In Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World, David Trinidad brings together a comprehensive selection of Ed Smith’s work: his published books; unpublished poems; excerpts from his extensive notebooks; photos and ephemera; and his timely “cry for civilization,” “Return to Lesbos”: put down that gun / stop electing Presidents.

‘Ed Smith blazed onto the Los Angeles poetry scene in the early 1980s from out of the hardcore punk scene. The charismatic, nerdy young man hit home with his funny/scary off- the- cuff- sounding poems, like “Fishing”: This is a good line. / This is a bad line. This is a fishing line.

‘Ed’s vibrant “gang” of writer and artist friends― among them Amy Gerstler, Dennis Cooper, Bob Flanagan, Mike Kelley, and David Trinidad― congregated at Beyond Baroque in Venice, on LA’s west side. They read and partied and per-formed together, and shared and published each others’ work.

‘Ed was more than bright and versatile: he worked as a math tutor, an animator, and a typesetter. In the mid- 1990s, he fell in love with Japanese artist Mio Shirai; they married and moved to New York City. Despite productive years and joyful times, Ed was plagued by mood disorders and drug problems, and at the age of forty- eight, he took his own life.

‘Ed Smith’s poems speak to living in an increasingly dehumanizing consumer society and corrupt political system. This “punk Dorothy Parker” is more relevant than ever for our ADD, technology- distracted times.’ — Turtle Point Press

 

Excerpts

UNTITLED

This is a good line.
This is a bad line.
This is a good line.
This is a bad line.
Here is a country,
an idea we share.
There is an idea for paying
all debts public and private.
This poetry is now in its own future,
and let me say as an eyewitness
that we are quite primitive back here,
sophisticated only in things we do not do.
My people roll their autos
over goddam asphalt.
This line is doing its best to remain indifferent,
but here it is in this poem.

1982

 

BENEDICTION

Fuck you.
Fuck your mom.
Fuck your cat.
Fuck your mom’s cat.
Fuck your cat’s mom.
Fuck your mom’s cat’s second cousin
from Schenectady.

1982

 

LETTER FROM THE GRAVE

This situation is so embarrassing
that i’m considering approaching it
sheepishly,
but i can’t cause i’m too numb.
Well, numb isn’t exactly the right word,
but it’ll do for now.
Anyway, this is called “Letter from the Grave”
cause i was supposed to have killed myself
last Tuesday,
but i didn’t:
i’m still here,
and next year i’ll be eleven.

1982

 

A LIST OF 3 LETTER WORDS

fun
sex
art
gin
you

1983

 

ODE TO A STREETLIGHT

O ye moon
who shines so bright
it hurts my eyes

1984

 

THE POEM THAT CANNOT BE

I want my whole life to be a poem.

1984

 

CHEATING THE STORK

We fuck
for pleasure alone.

1984

 

DEAR FUCKFACE ASSHOLE JERK,

I am writing you because of the bad review you wrote of my book in Magazine. Not that you thought the book was all that bad just that your review sucked. As an example of how inattentive and lame your supposed criticism was and without going into too much detail you didn’t even manage to get the goddam line breaks right in the quote you took. I won’t even bother demanding a formal apology from a jerk like you, but instead I’ll leave you with this curse: may you wake up with a ringing in your ears, hair in your teeth and Clayton Eshleman lying in bed next to you.

Most Sincerely,

Ed Smith

1984

 

YOU CAN’T LEGISLATE MATURITY

In 1986 I was arrested and charged with armed robbery, possession of a controlled substance, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, statutory rape, indecent exposure and lewd conduct (but not resisting arrest!). Fortunately, that year I was awarded a Literature Fellowship in Poetry by the National Endowment of the Arts and was able to use the Fellowship money to retain some state-of-the-art legal counsel. What with plea-bargaining and all I only ended up serving two years forty-seven days. Since my release I have attained the eighth Operating Thetan level in the Church of Scientology. My short-term goal is to have my civil rights restored so I can pursue my long-term goal of being elected President of the United States.

1985

 

You have to use a washcloth
on the hot water knob in
order to turn it hard
enough to get it all the
way off. I never told
you that. I just went
in every time after you took
a bath and did it myself.

1990

 

MY LAST BEER

It was a long time ago and
I don’t remember it. I was
sitting in a stuffy, dark bar
on a hot sunny afternoon and it
came in a mug. It was one
of those things I thought
I would enjoy more than I
actually did. And not the
first time either. One of
those many things. One of
those many things that just
gradually got replaced by
what’s become everything
else, everything else that’s
just always never enough.

1991

 

When I wrote
this poem rays
of sagacious
afternoon sun-
shine were
streaming in
through the
south-facing
windows, billowy
white clouds
billowed across
the azure dome
of the sky,
birds sang and
chirped to each
other gaily,
the kittens were
asleep in the
living room, one
on the couch,
one on the easy
chair and one
on the futon,
and the tv was on.

1991

 

15 LINE SONNET

You lie on your side back curved
legs bent your knees drawn
up in front of you. I nestle
behind you the two of us
like heavy silver spoons
wrapped in velvet my arms
reach around your tiny
shoulders my hands grip
my forearms securely.
You hold my erect penis
inside you. We rock together
lazily and twist our bodies
slowly. Your head bends
forward and I lick the
back of your neck.

1994

 

ART AND POETRY

Don’t kid yourself it’s
all about power and control

1995

 

SEAT 47K

The last time I was on an
airplane was when I was
leaving you.

1995

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Hey. Dude, I’ve been doing not much else than trying to set up film screenings in other cities for more than a year, and it is a pain for sure, but the things themselves are worth it. Own that penis, man. It should be possible. Presumed hug from Zac and actual hug to Tadhg. ** Carsten, Yeah, she’s very interesting. No, I don’t know Bernard-Marie Koltès, but just the fact that her new film is based on a play curls my lips further downward. Who knows, we’ll see. Or you will at least. The filmmakers you mention are all prominent, respected, proven artists with distinct possibilities of Cannes premieres and worldwide theatrical distribution, etc. as calling cards, and Zac and I are nobodies making strange very low budget films with no future financial or critical establishment benefits in sight, so, no, those examples do nothing for us, unfortunately. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yes, yes, on both fronts. ** Steeqhen, Hang in there until your appointments and max them out for every bit of info and help that you can get. I’ve never been very interested in Gorillaz. Just was never inclined to dig deep there. But I assume they must do something special. Based on the video clips I’ve seen, seems you’ll have fun. ** HaRpEr //, Are the announcements live voices or pre-recorded ‘Mind the gap’ type things? I think maybe ‘Play It as It Lays’ is her best work maybe? I have a fondness for ‘Lord Love a Duck’ too. K. Dick definitely does only what he does, but I do think he can pretty extraordinary at it. ‘Ubik’ is my favorite, but I also really like ‘The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch’ and ‘VALIS’, among others. ** Nicholas., I just blinked twice. More than twice, actually. Gigs that give you time to write are obviously the best gigs except, I guess, on the financially rewarding side in many cases, which is my way of applauding your inclination. I’m not famous except somewhat in select places, and I really like it. My friends who are actually famous do nothing but complain about it. My dinner was some vegan material and mashed potatoes wrapped in two flower tortillas. Treated me okay. Update me as you see fit and enjoy the ride. ** Thom, Yeah, because, like you it seems, plot is my least favorite part of fiction. If a plot more than a novel’s forwardly propulsive, well integrated fuel I get antsy. Okay, horror, yes, there it’s a thing. But there the plots are so blatant and roller coaster track-like that they’re kind of fun. Interesting: I’m going to find those short novels of his, ‘A Mountain to the North …’ first if possible. ** Laura, Yep, on TW. There was a band called Tuesday Weld at some point, but I don’t remember them being interesting enough to have deserved that name. ‘Sex Kittens Go To College’ is a hell of an influence aka nice! Oh, sure, I still read and love poetry, yes. I think my gif fiction is much better than my poetry, but who am I to judge. I don’t think my emotions are chaotic enough anymore to inspire poetry. I think I understand myself too well. I have a good friend here who has long Covid, and it’s more than kind of shocking what she has to continue to deal with years later. Terrible, terrible thing. I have yet to predetermine what would stick to going kaboom rather than exploding, but my mind is hunting. <3 returning. ** Right. I’ve relit the old spotlight that fell upon the book of collected poems by the late, exciting poet and a dear friend and comrade of mine from my early writer days, Ed Smith. I swear that there’s great stuff for you therein. See you tomorrow.

—-

“When I’m working I never need an entourage or anyone with me. Time has no meaning; I don’t notice how many weeks or days go by. I’m so totally absorbed that I really like to be alone. Actually, it’s not only when I’m working; I like to be alone in general. I have a hunger for it. I eat up silence.” — Tuesday Weld

 

________________________

Emmanuel Levy: “Tuesday Weld began her showbiz career as a child model. ‘Mama tried to turn my brother and sisters into models too,’ Weld says. ‘but they preferred swimming. But me, I was the backward child, and I took to modeling immediately. Anything to escape.’ At the age of three, she became the sole supporter of her widowed mother and two siblings. She began drinking heavily at ten.”

TW as child model

Tuesday Weld: “When I was 9, I had a breakdown, which disappointed Mama a great deal. But I made a comeback when I was 10. I was in and out of several schools, but I never really went. There were no rules then in New York protecting working children. I was doing television shows as well as modeling, and instead of going to school, I used to do what they called correspondence, which meant that if I was working, I’d just write in and say I had jobs. Even when I didn’t have jobs, I’d get up in the morning and say, ‘Goodbye, Mama, I’m going to school,’ and then I’d head for the Village and get drunk. I started drinking heavily when I was about 10 years old. I made my first suicide attempt when I was 12. I had fallen in love with a homosexual and when it didn’t work out, I felt hurt.  A bottle of aspirin, a bottle of sleeping pills, and a bottle of gin. I was sure that would do the trick, but Mama came in and found me. I was in a coma for a long time and I lost my hearing, my vision and several other things. When I recovered, I decided that I should try to get some help, but Mama didn’t think I needed analysis.”

 

_________________________

The Wrong Man (1956)

Wikipedia: “Weld made her acting debut on television at age twelve and her feature film debut the same year in a bit role in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock crime drama, The Wrong Man.”

Tuesday Weld: “Once I wanted to study acting, so I had an interview with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. I was 14. That was against the rules. Mama told them I was 18, but they knew. It was horrendous. He asked me these stock questions. I hate stock questions. He said, ‘Who’s your favorite actor?’ I said, ‘Constance Ford.’ He said, ‘Who?’ Very sarcastically. I don’t have favorites, I don’t think about actors, she just seemed to me good. Obviously, that was not the right answer. I guess the Actors Studio is OK for people who want to act all the time, so when they’re not working they can put on their own plays, keep acting — well, I don’t want that. I want to act some part I like, and then stop.”

Guy Flatley: “Weld’s mother was so distressed by her rejection from the Actors Studio that she bundled up Tuesday and the rest of the Welds and went West. There Tuesday proved sufficiently ripe to play rambunctious teeny-boppers in Sex Kittens Go to College, The Private Lives of Adam and Eve and Rally Round the Flag, Boys, as well as Danny Kaye’s sweet, invalid daughter in Five Pennies. She was also ripe enough to participate in amorous off-camera activities with men double –- and triple -– her age.”

‘The Private Lives of Adam and Eve’ (1960)

 

________________________

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959)

Wikipedia: “In 1959, still only sixteen years old, Tuesday was given a role in the CBS television show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Although Weld was a cast member for only a single season, the show gave her considerable national publicity, and she was named a co-winner of a “Most Promising Newcomer” award at the Golden Globe Awards.”

 

_______________________

Sex Kittens Go to College (1960)

Ray Davis: “Career tragedy struck Tuesday Weld in 1960’s beautifully titled but incompetent Sex Kittens Go To College, in which Mamie Van Doren — “What does she do? Sag?”, Lou Reed — usurped Weld’s natural role. Weld retired, reflected, and returned, cardiac tissue toughened, determined to build a meaningful career of such demeaning roles.”

Jack C. Stalnaker, TW fanatic: “It only took me (almost) four decades, but I FINALLY got the semi-legendary Tuesday Weld single “Are You the Boy?” There is nothing else in life to look forward to now, unless, maybe, if Tuesday could be convinced to tour with a musical review. Amazingly, the A side, “Are You the Boy?” is really not bad at all. It’s got a nice Lesley Gore feel to it. Tuesday sings off key, but it really sounds like her persona of 40 years ago. Even more amazing is that the B-side (“All Through Spring and Summer” is actually rather good. She even sings well on it. It’s a Connie Francis-type ballad, and very nice. Both sides are very well produced; nothing cheap for our girl. Both sides are definitely in the Paul Petersen/Shelley Fabares mode — very bubble gum. But I’m still very impressed with the record.”

 

________________________

Wild in the Country (1961)

Tuesday Weld: “Elvis walked into a room and everything stopped. Elvis was just so physically beautiful that even if he didn’t have any talent… just his face, just his presence. And he was funny, charming, and complicated, but he didn’t wear it on his sleeve. You didn’t see that he was complicated. You saw great needs.”

Theresa Duncan: “In 1961, after starring opposite Elvis Presley in Wild in the Country, he and Tuesday Weld began an off-screen romance. In Hollywood, her reputation for a reckless lifestyle was fodder for the gossip columnists and Louella Parsons reportedly said, as politely as possible, that “Miss Weld is not a very good representative for the motion picture industry.” The romance with Elvis did not last long after Colonel Tom Parker cautioned Presley against the relationship, fearful it would harm his image.”

 

_________________________

Bachelor Flat (1962)

Roddy McDowell: “No actress was ever so good in so many bad films.”

Emmanuel Levy: “In the 1960s, Tuesday went through a period of depression and seclusion, during which she married, had a child, divorced and saw her house burn down. But with her film career all but finished, suddenly fans began to notice that she had been a first-rate actress all along, a major talent that had the misfortune of appearing in one horrible film after another. Indeed, in the late 1960s, Tuesday became the center of a growing cult of aficionados. Special Tuesday Weld film festivals began to spring up in New York and in other cities.”

Dudley Moore, at the time TW’s husband: “We’ve very few friends. We live in sort of isolation. She’s almost paranoid about public life. She just prefers to stay home.”

 

______________________

Lord Love a Duck (1966)

Ray Davis: “1966’s Lord Love A Duck was the first of might be termed the Dobie-deconstructions. Here Roddy McDowell plays a young upstart whose intellect (clearly signalled by a mid-Atlantic accent) is only surpassed by the passion inspired by Weld, who easily reduces the owlish McDowell to hawk-like screeching and mowing down of suburbanites, ironically paralleling both the bloody technocrats who conducted the Vietnam war and the impending revolutionary fervor which would reap Richard Nixon as its reward.”

Douglas Hawes: “Over the years I have met a number of people who were aware of the remarkable behind the scene aspects of Tuesday Weld’s life and influence. A friend of mine in Santa Cruz talked at length with Kenneth Anger at the Silver Screen years ago about Tuesday Weld’s hidden influence in the realm of underground occult activities. Another figure I know, a New Age teacher (now deceased) with widespread Sufi/ Masonic/ Rosicrucian contacts told me that Tuesday was involved in the promotion of a certain grand master to the leadership of the AMORC Rosicrucian order in San Jose back in the eighties… A Vietnam veteran I knew said he had attended a ritual in the Santa Cruz mountains in which Weld officiated (it didn’t involve anything scandalous). He once got up in a political meeting I attended in Santa Cruz and said that Weld was doing all she could to help the cause….

“I could tell other stories as well… The hidden life of Tuesday Weld has largely been undisclosed in the media, and remains one of the great undisclosed stories of the sixties and seventies. The only major reference to her that discloses her occult connections, but only in a discreet way, is a long forgotten book, “Popular Witchcraft,” which was published by Bowling Green University Press in 1972. In it Anton LaVey in an interview says that his book “The Satanic Bible” was partially dedicated to Tuesday because “she was the embodiment of the goddess,” and was “part of the ritual.” LaVey’s remarks reflect a close personal acquaintanceship with Weld, and hints heavily on her involvement in his ritual activities. So why the coverup?”

 

______________________

Pretty Poison (1968)

Tuesday Weld: “Don’t talk to me about Pretty Poison. I couldn’t bear Noel Black (the director) even speaking to me. When he said ‘good morning,’ it destroyed my day. I learned more from the old Dobie Gillis TV shows than from Pretty Poison.”

Emmanuel Levy: “By l968, Tuesday was becoming a little tired of playing the eternal nymphet. At 25, she was still playing the precocious adolescent but, this time, with a difference. Under the baby-doll exterior lurked a heart of pure evil. Pretty Poison, with a script by Lorenzo Semple Jr., was based on the novel “She Let Him Continue”, and co-starred Anthony Perkins in his usual Psycho-like psychopathic role. At its release, Pretty Poison was not commercially successful; it was not until some critics praised Tuesday’s performance that the film acquired a cult status. Over the years the movie has become an underground classic. “

Tuesday Weld: “I should do movies worthier of my talent? You’re crazy! Do you think I want success? I refused to do Bonnie & Clyde because I was nursing at the time, but also because down deep I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of Bob & Carol & Fred & Sue, or whatever it was called. It reeked of success. I turned down Rosemary’s Baby because they asked me to test for it, and will not test…. To test is the ultimate humiliation. No, not quite: my daughter was very young then. Do you know what it is like, stuck in a house all day with an infant? Monstrous! Did you ever have to talk to a five-year-old, day in, day out? I did! I was suddenly playing this wife role, cooking, cleaning, mothering, it was worse than testing! I may be self-destructive, but I like taking chances with movies. I like challenges, and I also like the particular position I’ve been in all these years, with people wanting to save me from the awful films I’ve been in. I’m happy being a legend. I think the Tuesday Weld cult is a very nice thing.”

 

___________________

I Walk the Line (1970)

Tuesday Weld: “Gregory Peck and I had to do a love scene in bed and it showed my bare back. I wasn’t nude or anything, maybe a half-slip, I don’t remember exactly, but I was as nude as possible. And he got into the bed with his pants and his shoes on. Now they weren’t moccasins. They were big clunky businessman’s shoes, laced up, you know. With socks, and… what more can I say.”

 

______________________

A Safe Place (1971)

Tuesday Weld: “It’s been quite a year. Everything has really fallen apart for me. A Safe Place is a dud. I got a divorce, my car disintegrated, and my house burned down. There was absolutely nothing left of my house. Nothing. Not even a picture of my daughter Natasha. All the paintings I’d done are lost, as well as five years of journals I had been keeping. I enjoy writing so much. In fact, I’ve begun on my novel again. It’s going to be a good book, but I may have to wait until my ex-husband and my mother die before I publish it. From here, I go to Paris, but I feel so misplaced everywhere. Sometimes I just walk the streets at night, for hours and hours. I’m incredibly restless; I guess maybe it’s time for my renaissance.”

PlatinumCelebs.com: “A few years after turning down the role in Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski wanted her to star in his film version of Macbeth (1971). She lost the part when she refused to do a nude sleepwalking scene.”

 

________________________

Watch the film here

Play It as it Lays (1972)

Emmanuel Levy: “Weld was always Frank Perry’s first choice to play Maria Wyeth in Play It as it Lays. She was widely quoted at the time as saying ‘I could phone it in.’ However, this was not her feeling about the role. Although she knew the ground covered in the picture, she insisted the part ‘has nothing to do with my life and my past. And I’m not that personality at all. I’m not typecast for it.’ Asked if she liked her role, she said, ‘Who could like it? It’s not a part I relished playing. It went against my personal feelings of life. And I had to think about the state I would be in. It was unsettling.’ Although Tuesday won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival, Play It As It Lays was not well-received by American critics.”

Tuesday Weld: “All these lost people I do, Maria Wyeth, saying ‘Nothing applies.’ That’s bullshit! No, forget the bull, one syllable’s better. Everything applies! I am not Maria Wyeth, or any of these schleps!”

Melissa Anderson, Film Society of Lincoln Center: “If you were to imagine a celluloid ancestor to Mulholland Drive’s Diane Selwyn, she’d probably look a lot like Maria Wyeth, the heroine of Frank Perry’s acerbic Play It As It Lays, a 1972 film based on Joan Didion’s merciless second novel, published two years earlier. Brilliantly played by Tuesday Weld, Maria is rapidly unraveling, as is her marriage to her director husband, Carter Lang (Adam Roarke). Carter has previously directed her in both a vérité short, barking bullying off-camera questions (“Did you ever want to ball your father?”), and an acid-rock biker movie called Angel Beach. As Carter prepares to shoot his next movie in the desert, Maria — which rhymes with “pariah” — drifts through a succession of ghoulish Hollywood parties and hotel-room assignations with producers from the East Coast, always returning to the driver’s seat of her banana-yellow Corvette.” Rating: ***

 

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Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)

Psuedopodium.org: “Now in her thirties, Weld gave a memorable performance in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress. Playing Diane Keaton’s sexually promiscuous air hostess sister whose influence turns Keaton’s character from a frigid romantic into a slut, a rape and murder victim waiting to happen, it was a beautifully played but utterly thankless role, as thinly conceived as an imbecilic scrawl on a toilet stall, each cliché transmuted by Weld into glimpses of gold behind the foregrounded rubble of inferior stars-du-jour.”

Tuesday Weld: “I think that from here on, I should be paid to do interviews. And do them myself. I should be sent the questions, and write the answers. I mean, an interview isn’t going to get me a job, or make me act well, it’s of no use. I mean, can you make me a star?”

Arthur Bell, talk show host, after interviewing TW: “Tuesday Weld depressed me so much, I went from her hotel to Bloomingdale’s and shoplifted, and I’ve never done that before or since.”

 

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Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Wikipedia: “In 1984, Weld appeared in Sergio Leone’s gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America as a masochistic prostitute featuring a brutal rape scene with her and Robert De Niro that may be among the most shocking ever filmed. The scene was the source of some controversy as Weld’s character is depicted as eventually enjoying the rape.”

Melanie Clark: “The film would have been much much better without Tuesday Weld. I fast forwarded through all scenes with her in it. She was atrocious.”

Emmanuel Levy: “About this time, the long-standing tension between Tuesday and her mother erupted in the press. Tuesday began telling people that her mother had died.”

Tuesday Weld: “I hated Mama. She took my childhood away from me. I was expected to make up for everything that had gone wrong with in Mama’s life. She became obsessed with me, pouring out all her pent-up love — alleged love — on me. It’s been heavy on my shoulders ever since. I didn’t feel really free until she died. Otherwise her death didn’t really affect me much…. ”

Tuesday Weld’s mother: “I wasn’t really mad at Tuesday until she started telling everyone I was dead. I didn’t like being called dead. Why, if it hadn’t been for Patty Duke, I might have starved to death — that’s how much help Tuesday has been.”

 

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Falling Down (1993)

Rob’sReviews.net: “Like most movies designed to be debated on the op-ed page, Falling Down doesn’t live up to its negative hype. It’s been called dangerous and borderline racist, a charge it narrowly deflects by showing one good Hispanic cop for every Hispanic punk, and so on. It has also been called a powerful black comedy, but considering the true classics of black comedy we’ve produced (Dr. Strangelove being the pinnacle), it’s an embarrassing assessment — an indication of how far movies have sunk. Tuesday Weld plays a cop’s shrewish, neurotic wife who spends the movie shrieking at him over the phone. The script provides a plausible reason for her sad craziness (their daughter died at age two), but director Joel Schumacher treats her cruelly.”

Filmreference.com: “Forty years into her career, Tuesday Weld still percolates through American pop culture. A 1995 biography is devoted to her, and a worldwide web site; she will soon appear in the off-mainstream Feeling Minnesota, her first movie since 1993’s Falling Down (reportedly the first commercially successful film of her entire career). Weld’s uncredited picture adorns the cover of rock musician Matthew Sweet’s 1991 Girlfriend album, epitomizing her continued if obscure relevance — but also suggesting that her signature star qualities of self-determining sexuality, insolence, and nearly self-destructive wastefulness (philosophically grounded in antimaterialism as it may be) fit the rock ‘n’ roll era’s patterns more than classical Hollywood’s.”

Tuesday Weld: “I like everything open. Everything. I don’t like shut doors. I like to see. In the kitchen, I like to see all the spices, all the food. I wasn’t really aware of it until people complained. It was completely unconscious. I would hear, ‘Could you please shut that door! We’re gonna lose all the ice.'”

 

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Feeling Minnesota (1996)

Tuesday Weld: “I got bored after a while with analysis, with me-me-me. Could that be one of the purposes of it, you get so bored with self-absorption? Enough, already, getting yourself together is preferable. It is so uncomfortable, all those personal things you’re supposed to say, except I never did, I never opened up totally.”

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: “Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz fuck on the bathroom floor right at the beginning of Feeling Minnesota, and it’s still not any good. Poor Keanu. First he flops with a big-budget action flick (Chain Reaction), and now he scrapes bottom with this indie stinker. … His mom, Nora, played by Tuesday Weld. Yes, the Tuesday Weld, of Pretty Poison and Lord Love a Duck, grown plump but still flirty fun and undeserving of such a nothing role.”

Sam Shephard: “Tuesday Weld is the female Marlon Brando.”

 

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Chelsea Walls (2001)

The New Yorker: “Ethan Hawke, as director, presents a group of friends and fellow-actors in a series of mushy dramatic moments inside the venerable Chelsea Hotel, the onetime haunt of William Burroughs, Sid Vicious, and other artists. Hawke captures the woozy, dissolute atmosphere of the place (the rough, grungy surroundings are well suited to the shadowy digital filmmaking used here), and there’s a single superbly rich scene featuring the great Tuesday Weld and Kris Kristofferson, and some beautiful use of Jeff Tweedy’s music, but the movie sinks with its script. The writer Nicole Burdette based it on her stage play, and all the woe-is-me bohemian angst grates on the viewer eventually.”

MGSinNYC: “The most noteworthy scene is with the luminous TUESDAY WELD! I had almost fogotten what a terrifically talented and gorgeous actress she is. Acting students take note and watch her in action for she is the real thing. Why doesn’t she work more? I didn’t even realize she was in the movie and when I saw her scene, I was riveted. A true pro in every sense of the word. Only complaint was her role was too small. MORE TUESDAY!!”

MovieCrazed.com: “Now 64 years old, Tuesday Weld keeps a lower profile than ever. The most recent of her marriages to Israeli concert violinist and conductor Pinchas Zukerman ended in 1998. He divorced her for the official reason of ‘lack of interest in his career.’ He quotes her as saying: ‘Why do I need to go to another concert when I’ve heard the piece before?’ Tuesday Weld’s last film performance was a small role in 2001’s Chelsea Walls. Since then, as far as the public is concerned, that silence she has been quoted and saying she ‘hungers for’ and ‘eats up’ seems to have eaten her instead.”

Tuesday Weld: “I love the cult thing. Love it! Why? It’s fun. And it has endurance. When you’re a “cult goddess”, you don’t have to do anything to keep being it! You don’t have to work, it’s better you don’t, great, know what I mean?”

 

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Additionally

MR. BROADWAY – guest stars Steve Cochran, Tuesday Weld (1964)

Tuesday Weld presents the Oscar® for Sound Effects at the 36th Academy Awards in 1964

Tuesday Weld in Bathtub Scene from The Legend of Lylah Clare

Tuesday Weld – I Never Had a Sweetheart (1956)

Tuesday Weld Arrives In Dallas – March 1962

At 82, Tuesday Weld Confesses the Truth About Her Mother

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hi. For most of them, it was about being or claiming to be bisexual and proud. Even then in that flamboyant context, coming out as full on gay was considered too risky. With ultra-few exceptions. No, I don’t know Hell Screen. Of course I know Diablo. Wow, I haven’t thought about that in ages. That re-interpretation sounds cool. I’m good, you too, I trust. ** _Black_Acrylic, I’ve never seen ‘The Jungle Book’. I think I was too old by then to tilt towards it. My loss, no doubt. I have no doubt you would ace chemo with your legendary strength and style, but I sure hope you don’t have to meet it. Any news? Major hugs, man. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks! Yeah, now there’s a new visa wrinkle, but hopefully one that easy to smooth out. On the script, it will depend on how satisfied Zac is with it. I suspect he’ll have a few things he wants added or changed. But I think we’re ultra-close to finished. Then we’ll start looking for a producer for the film itself. I would assign love the task of saving your citrus trees, but it doesn’t sound too good, and I dare not saddle him with failure. Love urinating apple juice, G. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! So lovely to get to hear from you, maestro. I think I’m going to stick to my nearly lifelong vow to die without ever reading Proust. It feels good. Last vestige of my misbehaving youth or something. And if more’s the pity, I guess I’ll never know. Much love and all the strength to you, although you’re pretty caught up on that front. ** Adem Berbic. Hey. I don’t know Zac’s and my exact Berlin travel dates yet, but the screening is on May 19. So right around then. And we’ll go to Amsterdam for an RT screening there around its particular screening date, May 30. I want to make something go kaboom. Not explode, go kaboom. I guess I need to determine what exact material would do that and only that. I’m on it. ** John Christopher, Hi John! I’m good, how are you? Yes, that Schroeter retrospective, or rather knowing that it was happening, triggered the post. I should be here April 13 to 17, yes. Let’s meet up, yes! Let me know what’s good. I’ll be in the US from the 2nd to the 9th is all. And, yes, I did indeed like the interview very much! Thanks, and hopefully see you quite soon. ** Laura, Hi. Phew indeed. Are there preventative things one can do to scare off the migraine kernel? I just don’t have the inclination to write poems. It just went away. I think maybe it evolved into my interest in making gif fiction, but when I stopped doing that, it didn’t come back. Strange. I might find my way back, who knows. I think Jobriath always looked sad no matter what. If there’s a photo of him smiling, I’ve never seen it. Thank you for attending to the fires. Yikes, but good yikes! ** Carsten, I love lighting fireworks, and I think that’s where my pyromania is organised. I haven’t liked a Claire Denis film since ‘White Material’, so I expect very little. We want to shoot the new film in English, but the location is very open and flexible, so we could shoot it here if we have to and if it’s possible to get an English film funded here, which is a big question. ** Steve, We’re not sure. Like I just said to Carsten, it’ll be in English barring the unexpected. That might make it hard to finance in France. But supposedly it is possible. So, right now, it could be either a US or French production. US would be better, but we would need to find a producer there, and I don’t know how that would work yet. I watched ‘PHM’ on my laptop via soap2day, and I think seeing it scrunched will suffice. I’m dreading when my laptop will die. It’s not that old, but I use it so much that it probably has a dog’s foreshortened lifespan. ** HaRpEr //, Awesome about the ‘Castration Movie’ premiere. Zac and I met Louise Weard at a festival, and she was very nice and cool. Crazy how much life those films are having. They just announced a giant US tour of the films. That’s wild this far into their life. Moby is such a boring, boringly minded jerk. Always has been. Great how Dave Davies came right back at him. ** Bill, I don’t precisely know where the top gif came from. I guessed it was from a documentary about volcanoes? I’ll try to find ‘Everyone Still Here’, thanks, pal. ** Thom, As best I can picture it, that gig does seem like good times. 7 piece! I hope you didn’t have a horn section. (Not a big ‘horn’ <-> rock fan). I’m pretty certain that I’ll read a few paragraphs of Steinbeck and decide I’ve gotten it. I do that with a lot of writers. Although I did read a few Hemingway novels at one point ages ago, which seems quite odd to me now. I don’t think I knew that Krasznahorkai wrote short novels. Wow. I’ll look into that. Huh. I think my week is going to be an art viewing week, that’s my guess. May yours overcompensate. ** Okay. Today you are asked to accept a paean to the great, picky, individualistic, wonderfully named actor Tuesday Weld. See you tomorrow.