Holly Woodlawn Day *

* (restored/expanded)

 

‘I meet Woodlawn at her apartment in West Hollywood, Los Angeles’ gay village or ghetto, on a sweltering hot day. In a few weeks she’ll be in the UK to promote an exhibition of paintings of herself by the British artist Sadie Lee, showing her in a less glamorous guise than usual. “I said, ‘Why don’t you paint me as everyday me for a change, instead of all peaches and cream?’” she says.

‘As we sit on her balcony talking, we’re favoured with an ambient soundtrack that, appropriately, seems more redolent of Manhattan than of sleepy California: a fire nearby means that we’re constantly interrupted by screaming sirens. “All right, already,” howls Woodlawn. “Find the fucking fire and shut up. I swear, West Hollywood is breeding pyromaniacs today.”

‘The Holly Woodlawn of 2007 is a far cry from the sweet-voiced cross-dresser who made her first splash in the film Trash in 1970, fake-masturbating with a Miller beer bottle to considerable acclaim. Back then – during what we must inevitably call her 15 minutes of fame – she was one of the many drag queens and hustlers at the lower end of the Warhol social scene, congregating around his Factory studio and at hangouts like the bar Max’s Kansas City. “The mole people,” Factory manager Billy Name called them. “The amphetamine people.” At the other end were the rich, famous and powerful: Jim Morrison, Yoko Ono, Janis Joplin, author George Plimpton.

‘The 61-year-old man who answers the door today is out of drag, bent and frail, though indefatigably cheerful, using a Zimmer frame because of various slowly fusing discs in his spine that, he says, are unimaginably painful and incurable. “Oh no, this is IT, honey, downhill all the way from here on!”

‘He rises at six; by 11 his painkillers have slurred his speech a little and fogged his memory. The outrageous spark is still there and the stories are as funny as ever, but delivered with a weariness and frustration he blames on the pills. I play nursemaid a little, fetching coffee and cigarettes from the nearby market, and getting the phone for him when it rings, treading carefully around his untidy, sparsely furnished apartment, with its bed and carpets covered in fag ash, and its one shrine-like photo of Andy, Candy, Holly and others in its most visible corner.

‘I ask him about his alter ego, the boy born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl. “I don’t even know who he was,” he says. “When I was younger, I was extremely shy and living in what’s now Miami Beach. My father had a nice job. I guess we were middle income. I had good schools. I just was unhappy because I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t associate with the other kids in school, the suburban-minded ones. Plus I came out very young. I was raised in Puerto Rico for the first few years of my life, where the culture is more Caribbean. Everyone’s naked, it’s hotter, you come out earlier. I was having sex when I was seven and eight in the bushes with my uncles and cousins – of course, they were only 11 or 12 themselves. I was raised in a house full of women and my uncle was gay. We lived in a little tiny town, so those were my role models. Then Miami Beach. All the Cubans arrived after Castro took over, and that’s where I really came out, on 21st Street in Miami Beach.”

‘The same month that Woodlawn hitchhiked north, July 1962, Warhol had his first major art show not 10 blocks from where we’re talking, at Irving Blum’s Ferus Gallery. Although the Campbell’s Soup paintings didn’t sell well at the time, Warhol had arrived. The night the show closed, Marilyn Monroe died three miles away in Brentwood, causing Warhol to work a poster image of her from the 1953 movie Niagara into his famous Marilyn screenprints – which in time turned him into, in the words of the American critic Wayne Koestenbaum, “our greatest philosopher of stardom”.

‘To some extent, Woodlawn was a product – or an exemplar – of his ideas. Although she didn’t become a full-fledged Factory insider until 1969, she was very much on the same scene. She’d decided against the sex-change by this point, though: “Honey, once they cut it off, it’s OFF!” And she didn’t get to know Lou Reed until after A Walk on the Wild Side came out, but nonetheless saw many early shows by the Velvet Underground and Nico.

‘”I was just one of the audience,” he says. “I used to go to the Exploding Plastic Inevitable at the Dome, with all that colour and insanity, with Gerard Malanga [Warhol’s assistant] brandishing a whip and Mary Woronov from Chelsea Girls dancing. So I was very happy when I gradually became a Warhol superstar. I felt like Elizabeth Taylor! Little did I realise that not only would there be no money, but that your star would flicker for two seconds and that was it. But it was worth it, the drugs, the parties, it was fabulous. You live in a hovel, walk up five flights, scraping the rent. And then at night you go to Max’s Kansas City where Mick Jagger and Fellini and everyone’s there in the back room. And when you walked in that room, you were a STAR!”

‘Trash, a film improvised and shot in 1969 in the basement apartment of its director, Warhol’s manager Paul Morrissey, was the nearest Woodlawn came to broader fame. A kindly, soothing presence on screen, Woodlawn certainly had acting ability: her horny, drug-happy character is the film’s highlight. “That beer bottle scene is to my career what eating dogshit was for Divine in Pink Flamingos!” The gay director George Cukor is said to have tried to get Woodlawn nominated for an Academy award, but the issue floundered, perhaps predictably, on whether Woodlawn belonged in the Best Supporting Actor or Actress category.

‘Since then, Woodlawn has published her autobiography – the toothsome and scandalous A Low Life in High Heels – and made a cult career in drag. Although based in New York until a couple of years after Warhol died in 1987, Woodlawn has lived on the west coast ever since. And she’ll be in London shortly. “It’s all blossomed into this week of Holly Woodlawn. I’ll be busy every day, at parties and shows. Who knows? Hopefully I’ll come home with a whole bra-full of money!”‘ — The Guardian

 

___
Stills

 

_____
Further

Bring Holly Woodlawn Home
Holly Woodlawn Website
Holly Woodlawn @ imdB
Holly Woodlawn @ warholstars.org
Holly Woodlawn @ Facebook
Book: ‘A Low Life in High Heels: The Holly Woodlawn Story’
‘warhol superstar holly woodlawn came from miami, fla…’
‘TRASHING ‘TRASH’ WITH HOLLY WOODLAWN’
HW interviewed @ Powder Zine
Holly Woodlawn @ mubi
‘Trash’ re-reviewed @ Slant Magazine
Podcast: ‘A Low Life in High Heels, part 1’

 

___
Sings, etc.

Holly Woodlawn as Maria von Trapp

Holly Woodlawn – “Do Re Mi” from The Sound of Music – production number

Holly Woodlawn in Berlin

Holly Woodlawn Live at SNAFU (1980)

Holly Woodlawn “Walk Right Up To Him”

 

___
Talks, etc.

Holly Woodlawn Interview

Holly Woodlawn “Low Life in High Heels” Stephen Holt Show -Xmas ’91

Holly Woodlawn Nervous Breakdown on the Set

Holly Woodlawn–1992 TV Interview

Holly Woodlawn vs. Madonna

 

______
Interview
from Bright Lights Film Journal

 

Holly Woodlawn: Gary, I’m smoking a cigarette and having a glass of wine and watching Sabrina. So the rest of the world will know I don’t have emphysema. My lungs — god only knows what color they are. And my liver? Forget it. I don’t think I even have one anymore. I’m 57. I’m a kreplach. That’s Jewish for, you know, you’re an old douche bag! My face is still flawless. You know why? Because I hang upside down, from my bed.

I have a wonderful apartment in West Hollywood with a little balcony so I can scream “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina!” I have my dog — a little tarantula. A Chihuahua-terrier mix. She looks like a tarantula. She’s black. Colored. But I digress. When I first heard about The Color Purple, I thought they meant “The Colored People” — my biggest faux pas. I will never live that one down. Oprah, forgive me!

I picked the name Holly from Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. And then my friends were up on speed one night and I had met Andy Warhol at a party, and he said what’s your name, and I said Holly, and I didn’t have a last name. So we went home that night and we were watching Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy where she had this thing, this trophy, stuck on her head. And it said Woodlawn Cemetery. So my friends and I decided on Holly Woodlawn, and I would be the heiress to the Woodlawn Cemetery fortune!

I was at Max’s Kansas City, and Fred Hughes came up to me and said Paul Morrissey is doing a movie and he wants you to call him. I called him up and Paul said, I’m doing a movie with Joe Dallesandro, are you going to be available on Saturday? And I said sure! I’m going to be a movie star! Lana Turner. Elizabeth Taylor. Cleopatra! And I showed up and he said, You play this trash person, you pick up trash. And you’re supporting this junkie. I said gee, that’s a stretch. I don’t know if I can do it! So I showed up with my boyfriend, little Johnny, who I shot up in the movie. When I went to the set, which was Paul Morrissey’s basement, I was terrified. I had never been on screen. But I knew that I was the next Elizabeth Taylor.

When I saw Joe Dallesandro, so fucking gorgeous. I said, Johnny, get outta here. Go buy something! I was at the Cannes Film Festival with Joe. He’s still such a gentleman. He’s like Greta Garbo, he wants to be alone, but if you call him up, he’ll speak to you. He’s like me — shut her up! He’s a guy’s guy — he likes to hang out and watch ball games and drink beer and smoke cigarettes. He’s very bisexual. That’s why he’s such a gentleman. He’s got a very soft side, he loves giving, and hanging out.

That was not a Coke bottle, it was a beer bottle! I would have preferred Dr. Pepper.

George Cukor wanted to nominate me for an Academy Award. And all these people signed a petition — Paula Prentiss and her husband, Richard Benjamin, Robert De Niro. They didn’t know what category to put me in. They had no clue. Is this a man being a woman, or a woman being a man? I preferred Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Actor — because I didn’t have a pussy. So I’m an actor. I still don’t have a pussy. It [the operation] hurts too much!

As far as pioneer is concerned, I don’t know. I did what I had to do because I had to do it! If you can make sense of that. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what I wanted to be, but I knew what I had to be. When I was 16 years old, living in Brooklyn with this guy who wanted me to have a sex change, I thought that was what I wanted. We had the money, and I was at Johns Hopkins Hospital and they said I had to wait a year, so I said honey, I’ve been living as a woman for the past eight years — don’t tell me! So I took the money and I went shopping. My boyfriend was very disappointed. I blew $3,500 at Saks Fifth Avenue. Fabulous gowns but no pussy! Once you cut it off, it’s off. I like me having a hard-on. I love having sex. I like what I have.

I’m going to make a complete idiot of myself. Heklina said I could just stand up there and blow kisses. The hell with that. I plan to do an entire concert. I plan to do “Hello San Francisco.” Then I’m going to do songs that nobody ever fucking heard in their life. Like “Princess Poopooly Has Plenty Papayas.” Yes, I’m going to take you around the world. And I’m going to sing a little French song called “Once Upon a Summertime.” That’s the only ballad. It’s a pretty song. It’s going to be Marlena, Barbra, Bette, Beulah, Mona, Lola, and Falana! And Holly. All the girls.

My future? Gary, don’t laugh. I have a dream. My dream is to open up a bed and breakfast in of all places the Pacific Islands, Pago-Pago or somewhere, and have everybody just run around half naked, in grass skirts, run amok with no clothes. I’ll call it Holly’s Whorehouse. And I will feed them, and make sure they have a bed, or a straw mattress to sleep on and fuck on. I just wanna watch!

 

_______________
18 of Holly Woodlawn’s 23 roles

_______________
Paul Morrissey Trash (1970)
‘The wonderfully tawdry ‘plot’ of Trash sees Holly Woodlawn playing long-suffering girlfriend to super-hunk Joe Dallesandro. They live in a grubby cellar on the Lower East Side: Holly sustains them by selling garbage she finds in and around the local streets. Alas, Joe can rarely satisfy her rampant lust due to impotence caused by his heroin addiction. In one particularly memorable scene, Holly gets ‘intimate’ with a beer bottle, after Joe yet again fails to get a stiffy. Despite having no formal drama training, she dazzles with an improvised performance throughout the film. So much so, in fact, that the prominent Hollywood director George Cukor petitioned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Holly to be nominated for an Academy Award. Unfortunately, there was no category into which a man playing a female role could be slotted. Furthermore, Holly was unable to attend the film’s glitzy premiere, as she was in prison at the time, banged-up for embezzling money from the bank account of the wife of the United Nations’ French Ambassador!’ — Ponystep

Trailer

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

______________
Paul Morrissey Women in Revolt (1971)
‘The film went through various name changes. Documents found in Andy Warhol’s Time Capsule No. 40 indicate almost 80 possible names including Pearls Before Swine, Make Date and Andy Warhol’s Earthwomen. On June 25, 1971, a payment of $1,000 was made by Warhol’s company for the rights to use a song titled Give Me the Man in a film titled Sisters, apparently another name for Women in Revolt. Paul Morrissey was filming Heat in Los Angeles when this payment was made, while Warhol stayed in New York. On July 22, 1971 Variety reported that the film was ready for release – now titled Sex, the same name that was used when it premiered at the first Los Angeles Filmex film festival in November 1971. However, when it later opened on December 17, 1971 at the Cinema Theater in Los Angeles, it was called Andy Warhol’s Women. It was first shown in New York on February 16, 1972 at the Cine Malibu which Warhol had rented because no distributor was interested in taking the film. In 1978, author Patrick S. Smith separately interviewed Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis for a book he was writing on Warhol’s art and films. Jackie said that it took two and a half years to make Women in Revolt whereas Holly told Smith that it took approximately a year to film with “about three weeks of filming days,” but “months in between.”‘ — warholstars.org

Excerpt

Excerpt

the film’s first hour

Holly Woodlawn talks about WOMEN IN REVOLT

 

______________
Robert J. Kaplan Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (1972)
‘Following considerable critical and media acclaim for her performances in two Andy Warhol productions (1970’s TRASH and 1972’s WOMEN IN REVOLT), transvestite Holly Woodlawn took on the starring role in her first non-Warhol film, SCARECROW IN A GARDEN OF CUCUMBERS (1972). Ismail Merchant had offered Woodlawn a $3,000 role in his film “Tacky Women” (later retitled SAVAGES), but Woodlawn instead took up the offer to star in SCARECROW IN A GARDEN OF CUCUMBERS for $6,500. The film was about an aspiring actress from Kansas who comes to New York and meets a host of zany characters. Holly Woodlawn played both the female lead, “Eve Harrington,” and a male anti-hero, “Rhett Butler.” A split-screen technique was used for the sequences in which the characters appeared together. All of the characters’ names in the film were taken from popular motion pictures and books. Characters included “Mary Poppins,” “Ninotchka,” “Margo Channing,” “Walter Mitty,” “Blanche DuBois,” “Baby and Jane Hudson” (played by twin sisters), “Marjorie Morningstar,” “Joe Buck,” “Noel Airman,” “Ratzo Rizzo,” and “Stanley Kowalski.” The film also had musical numbers that were spoofs of 1930s and 1940s routines choreographed by famed dance director Busby Berkeley. One production number, “The Dusty Rose Hotel,” sung by Tally Brown, paid homage to Judy Garland’s “born-in-a-trunk” sequence in 1954’s A STAR IS BORN.’ — Bob Mucci

 

______________
Dallas Broken Goddess (1973)
‘Broken Goddess is a revival of silent cinema – silent in that there are no spoken words; rather the story is told in title cards drawn from the lyrics of Laura Nyro’s songs against a soundtrack of Debussy’s music. The project was conceived around a then-fledgling starlet named Better Midler. And it would have worked. But one night while I was photographing Tally Brown’s act at the Continental Baths, a strange thing happened. Tally introduced me to her then co-star in a film Scarecrow in a Garden of Cuncumbers (which willl be forever remembered if only for the fact that its title song was performed by Bette Midler and there was a fleeting cameo by Lily Tomlin as a telphone operator) – one Holly Woodlawn. La Woodlawn, you will remember, was riding high on the smashing success of Warhol’s Trash [directed by Paul Morrissey] and an unprecendented write-in ballot to secure this new film personality an Oscar nomination. We had all seen that bizarre snaggled-toothed creature’s poignant performance. And when the thundering applause that night subsided, the number one Warhol star of then and now rose in the presence of a shy, curly haired boy in farmer overalls. I, like everyone else present that night, was floored. The flash was instant. I would turn Holly Woodlawn into a silent film siren – the new Gloria Swanson/Theda Bara.’ — Dallas

Excerpt

 

______________
Armand Weston Take Off (1978)
‘This magnificent yet still massively underrated adult movie’s famously based on Oscar Wilde’s ironically timeless The Picture of Dorian Gray, already the subject of many straight film versions, using that narrative as a framework to spoof a number of Hollywood classics and their iconic stars such as James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando. Commencing at a present day (well, circa 1978 anyway) pool party where no one seems to know the host, lusty Linda (radiant yet often outrageously overlooked Lesllie Bovee) retreats to the palatial mansion with cowboy Ray (stalwart Eric Edwards) for nookie when she accidentally turns on an old movie projector. Before their disbelieving eyes unspools a reel of passionate poking between a 1920s flapper and her decrepit old paramour. Losing Ray once they’re out of the house, Linda finally meets their elusive host, handsome Darrin Blue (career performance plus for the late Wade Nichols, who passed away from AIDS in the early days of 1985) who begins to tell her his mighty strange life story. As the young lover of freethinking socialite Henrietta Wilde (another awardhogging turn from the legendary Georgina Spelvin) in 1922, he was first confronted with his youthful beauty – the value thereof his mature mistress rarely hesitated to emphasize – when she had their lovemaking surreptitiously filmed by her chauffeur. As the elder Henrietta bemoans the inevitable decay that time will bring, Darrin utters the wish that not he but his image on film should age instead. Be careful what you whish for indeed…’ — Dries Vermeulen

 

______________
Bobby Woods Madonna’s Deeper and Deeper (1992)
‘Woodlawn’s iconic early roles didn’t lead to a sustainable film career, and so she established herself as a cabaret performer before experiencing something of a career renaissance in the ’90s, when she appeared in the video for Madonna’s “Deeper And Deeper”.’ — AV Club

 

______________
Jeffrey Arsenault & Matthew Patrick Night Owl (1993)
‘This odd, independently produced horror film features performances by Warhol-era legend Holly Woodlawn and the versatile performer John Leguizamo. In the story, the handsome young man (James Raftery) who picks up women at a disreputable neighborhood bar is a real lady-killer; in fact, he’s a vampire. When his sister doesn’t come home one day, Angel (Leguizamo) tries to find out why. Meanwhile, the vampire is having a love relationship with a young woman he would rather not kill.’ — collaged

Trailer

Night Owl (1993) (Review)

 

______________
David Gregory Scathed (1995)
‘A truly odd little mood piece, it features Matthew Bell (the narrator of Gregory’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Shocking Truth) as a guy named Joe who stops off for an afternoon beer at a bar where nudists and weirdos prowl around outside. There he strikes up a difficult conversation with a beautiful but not-very-conversant young woman in an eyepatch who tells him about how she wound up at this hole in the wall, a perverse saga involving an iron-fisted owner named Miss Antonia Curis.’ — Letterboxd

Watch an excerpt here

 

______________
Gino Colbert The Matinee Idol (1995)
‘A Hollywood movie star (played by Ken Ryker) desperately tries to hide the truth about his homosexuality, whilst at the same time having several promiscuous encounters with men. With Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn.’ — IMDb

Watch the film here

 

______________
Matt Cobey Beverly Hills Hustlers (1996)
‘BIG Video does it again with a release that will give you everything you want in a hardcore ass-banging video! We have assembled brand new, never before seen actors, and again some of them are right off the fashion magazines of New York. If you like new actors fucking and sucking like old pros and Warhol legend Holly Woodlawn, who makes a special appearance; then Beverly Hills Hustlers should be added to your collection.’ — themoviedb

the entire film

 

______________
Tommy O’Haver Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss (1998)
‘Director O’Haver tries to flesh out his otherwise lightweight story with numerous subplots and familiar queer icons. Paul Bartel weighs in as a jolly, sinister underwear photographer, and the glorious Holly Woodlawn is wasted in a party scene where for some unknown reason we barely see her face. There’s a sexy but annoyingly stereotyped Latin hunk named Fernando, no doubt inspired, to use the filmmakers’ analogy, by Fernando Lamas or Ricardo Montalban in any number of 1950sMGM tropical melodramas. And while Sean P. Hayes and especially Brad Rowe are easy on the eyes, the film’s inability to breathe life into them beyond the snappy dialogue and campy narrative intrusions eventually capsizes the film. Using Sandra Dee and Doris Day comedies as blueprints for a 1998 comedy can be diverting but has one fatal drawback; you may end up with characters as foolish and forgettable as they were.’ — Bright Lights Film Journal

Trailer

Watch the film here

 

______________
Michael Polish Twin Falls Idaho (1999)
‘Although Michael Polish is credited as the sole director here, it’s fairly obvious that he made this picture in tandem with his identical twin, Mark Polish. The two, in fact, play a pair of reclusive conjoined (or so-called “Siamese”) twins, renting a room in a shabby hotel as they try to track down the birth mother who abandoned them years earlier. They soon befriend a young prostitute who starts falling for the healthier of the two brothers (played by Mark, who does most of the heavy actor lifting in the film), even as the sicklier brother (Michael) grows more and more ill. (The oddball cast, from cult icon Holly Woodlawn to once-famous leading lady Lesley Ann Warren to long-forgotten Saturday Night Live alumnus Garrett Morris, suggests that either the Polishes were having a laugh or simply desperate to increase their low-budget film’s marketability with a handful of recognizable names.) A tender spin on sibling responsibility, Twin Falls Idaho is what all American indies should aspire to be: original, well-crafted, sophisticated, and heartfelt.’ — Cassava Films

Excerpt

the entire film

 

______________
Allan Mindel Milwaukee, Minnesota (2003)
‘Having lived his entire life under the watchful eye of his overbearing mother, Albert must fend for himself when an unidentified automobile suddenly kills her. Free for the first time, Albert quickly responds to the bait dangling in front of him, putting his aggressors against one another in a race for his trust. Using his skills that make him a gifted fisherman, Albert turns the tables on his seemingly doomed fate, capturing the heart of the woman most eager to deceive him, and fooling the man most intent on destroying him.’ — imdB

Trailer

the entire film

 

______________
Robert Feinberg Heaven Wants Out (2009)
‘Once a hot spot, the Bowery Follies Cabaret is now just another broken down New York City nightclub populated with the last vestiges of vaudeville entertainers, misfits and a headliner known as Heaven. She, like the club, has been there too long. In a drunken reverie, she wanders through the lives of the men who watch her sing night after night, looking for love …trying to make sense of how she got there in the first place, hoping, for a ticket out. The film stars a bevy of Warhol Superstars including Holly Woodlawn, Mary Woronov, Ondine, and photographer Francesco Scavullo.’ — collaged

the entire film

Documentary about the finishing of the film ‘Heaven Wants Out’

 

______________
Joshua Leonard The Lie (2011)
‘When they first met, Lonnie and Clover were young idealists, but an unplanned baby forced them to flip the script. Lonnie put his music on hold and got a shitty job. And now Clover is abandoning her activism for an “opportunity” in the corporate world. Drowning in disappointments, Lonnie decides he needs some time off work to reexamine his life. He calls in sick, but his abusive boss demands he sh…ow up or get fired. Lonnie panics and tells a shocking lie to justify his absence – and once the lie is out, there’s no going back. Now, it’s only a matter of time before the grenade he’s thrown on his life explodes and Lonnie is suddenly pushed to figure out who he is, what he wants, and just maybe, what it means to be a father.’ — collaged

Trailer

 

______________
Richard Carroll The Ghosts of Los Angeles (2011)
‘A series of monologues written by Godfrey Hamilton. The overlooked and forgotten souls consider missed opportunities and what might have been. Holly Woodlawn plays herself.’ — Carroll Film

Excerpt

Trailer

 

______________
Gary LeGault East of the Tar Pits (2012)
‘Two months ago, I ran a post about a movie I’d seen on DVD—Gary Legault’s East of the Tarpits, starring drag icon Holly Woodlawn as a chanteuse who worships Streisand—and was outraged that in all its fruity glory, the film had been rejected by every single film festival in the world. I mean it’s an “intoxicatingly funny Douglas Sirk-ian campathon” and there were no takers, not even at Cannes, which will show anything, even that Norah Jones flick! Well, someone from the illustrious New York Underground Film Festival read that item and instantly booked the kitchen-sink comedy for tonight at 1030pm at Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Avenue). They’re promoting it so heavily they’ve even gotten someone very special to introduce it onstage—the same person who said it’s an “intoxicatingly etc etc.” You’re reading him! See you there!’ — Michael Musto

Excerpt

 

______________
Zachary Drucker She Gone Rogue (2012)
‘“Darling” (played by Zackary Drucker) attempts to visit her “Auntie Holly” but instead falls down a rabbit hole, encountering trans-feminine archetypes (legendary performers Holly Woodlawn, Vaginal Davis, and Flawless Sabrina) who are in turn confounding, nebulous, complicated and contradictory. Engaging a world of dream-like magical realism, SHE GONE ROGUE references Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, utilizing a space where singular selves multiply and expand, offering windows into parallel dimensions, with time and space collapsing into a whirlpool of divergent possibilities. When Drucker finally finds the white rabbit, the process of identity construction completes a full circle, offering more questions than answers.’ — ZD

Titles

the entire film

 

_____________
Adam Dugas & Casey Spooner Dust (2012)
‘“I have a spa fetish, and this scene is based on a honey treatment I did at Liquidrom, an amazing coed naked spa in Berlin,” gushes Casey Spooner of today’s clip of Dust, the feature-length that he wrote and directed with his creative and romantic partner of 13 years, Adam Dugas. Spooner, frontman for electro-pop duo Fischerspooner, and Dugas, co-founder of performance troupe The Citizens Band, envisioned their debut film as a Skype-age re-telling of Chekov’s Three Sisters, with cohabiting dysfunctional siblings colluding and colliding as they wrestle with their individual dramas. The cast includes Ssion’s Cody Critcheloe, artist and photographer Jaimie Warren, and fashion designer Peggy Noland, plus Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn as the family matriarch. “In the tradition of early John Waters and the films Warhol made at the Factory with Paul Morrissey, Dust defines its own era by reveling in and rolling around in the 21st century’s sadness, audacity and flashpoint laugh-out-loud directness,” says R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, who produced the tragi-comic collaborative effort.’ — Nowness

Trailer #1

Trailer #2

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks!!! My eyes do that to me all the time, no prob. Kinetic magic sand … I’m gonna look that up. That does sound ticklish. Love arranging a cage wrestling match between Holly Woodlawn in her prime and Ru Paul in her pre-‘Supermodel (You Better Work)’ days, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, That Gander curated show looks pretty intriguing. Thanks re: 7038634357. Our fingers are crossed. Wow, good on ya, Leeds. That’s a real turn around for them if memory serves, no? ** Charalampos, Hello from the borderline of the 8th and 1st arrs. Helium was cool, yeah. I don’t think I know who Samson deBrier is, but I’m probably spacing. My brain is pretty toasted at the moment. Pollard’s solo album ‘Kid Marine’ is up there with the very best GbV albums and comes highly recommended, for one. Love still from that borderline mentioned above. ** Jack Skelley, Hey, J-J. Things go well re: film. We’re close. I’m very fried, but we’re close. Yes, Endora was hanging over the stage in that incredible clip. Wow, you or someone really needs to do a very good video of that FOKA play, I’m serious. Netflix might just eat that thing up. I’m being forced soon to join Instagram to use it as a platform to promote our film because Zac is social media-phobic. Not looking forward to enlarging the world that much, but … Love, Raymond Burr. ** Larst, Hey. That is strange about the subtitles. We have the opposite problem because we keep wanting the French subtitles of our new film to be tiny enough not to fuck with the image, and the powers that be are ordering them to be enlarged, albeit for correct, practical reasons. Chris Stamm, wow! I wonder what’s happened to him. I haven’t heard a peep from/about him in ages. ** Misanthrope, The idea is that teenagers don’t blush much so them blushing is a sign of something’s outrageousness? Because that doesn’t seem right. Granted, I can see teens trying to tamp down on their blushes for their dignity’s sake, but … Anyway, dude, so happy for you. Enjoy every second and its microscopic components. ** Guy, Hi, Guy! I could tell there was something about the post, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Weird will definitely do. Thank you! What’s exciting on your end? ** Bill, Wow, Bill, that looks fantastic. I’ve only peeked so far but I’ll give it the full spin in a bit. Very cool! Everyone, Do not leave your interest in spheres behind before you click this, which takes you to a visual representation of a sphere-inclusive live work made and performed by the great multi-faceted artist (and d.l.) Bill Hsu plus musician John Butcher. It looks stellar! We got a flash flood warning (in Paris!) last night, but no flood was forthcoming or even much of a downpour. Still, we were with you guys in spirit briefly anyway. ** Otto, Hi, Otto!! When I was a teenager, I had a stylin’, rich kid friend who had a GE Orbiter Radio in his bedroom, and, let me tell you, it looked wonderful when one was on psychedelics. Although I guess his strobe light probably helped too. Very cool that you started with Tobin Sprout. My all-time favorite song is one of his: ‘To My Beloved Martha’. Yay! What’s going on with you? ** Sypha, Luckily I was concentrated on physical spheres. I’m happy that if Current 93 is in descent that the blog managed to squeeze that great post out of you before your interest waned. He owes you. ** PL, Hey, PL! Welcome! No, I don’t know that anime. But I just marked it down for a search to be undertaken later today. Thank you! Oh, I do like animation. I’m hard pressed to name names though. Anime is definitely at the top. Do you know this really odd anime called ‘Tamala 2010: Punk Cat in Space’? I have a fondness for it, for instance. What else do you especially love and recommend? Thanks so much for coming in here! ** Justin, Hi, Justin. I’m one of the seemingly rare film buff types who doesn’t like Pasolini’s ‘Salo’ very much. I mean, all credit to it and him, but, probably being such a giant fan of the novel, I thought the visualisation of its sexual horrors was just kind of silly looking. But I think that’s a problem in general: I tend to think giving people the material to allow them to visualise the disturbing and shocking is much more successful than trying to visualise it for them, if that makes sense. That said, I totally get that ‘Salo’ is an impressive thing. ** Darby 🔥🔥, Yes, Beth Gibson, that’s her. I love fried mushrooms. In fact I had some yesterday during my lunch break, with delicious Chinese noodles and sauce as their accompaniment. Oh, yes, I know ‘Dummy’ and that song. Ah ha, well, I like for each day’s to be a surprise, so I will have to respectfully decline answering your question. Sorry, just one of little blog rules/things. Can you foresee and describe your tomorrow? ** Uday, Hey. Yes, I agree with you, it’s true. I just can’t bring myself to dictate what I agree is best. I’m weird. Timely question: i.e. look up above. I do like drag, of course. I was kind of spoiled by coming to drag through early-ish genius practitioners like Ethel Eichelberger and Vaginal Davis and, yes, the Warhol performers, so I like drag best when its smart and a bit dark and confrontational. But it’s all good. What about you re: drag? A particular interest? ** Right. I decided to restore and expand the blog’s rather ancient Holly Woodlawn Day just to drench up a particular form of fun from the relative past for you folks today. See you tomorrow.