Starring Taylor Mead *

* (restored)

 

‘Taylor Mead, an underground cinema legend whose comic charm and sense of the surreal inspired Andy Warhol and other seminal figures in the alternative film world, died in early May, 2013 in Denver. He was 88. A fixture of bohemian New York who was also a poet and artist, Mead was visiting family in Colorado when he had a stroke, said his niece, Priscilla Mead.

‘Called “the Charlie Chaplin of the 1960s underground,” Mead was an elfin figure with kewpie-doll eyes who appeared, by his count, in 130 films, starting with the 1960 art house classic The Flower Thief. In a review for the Village Voice, film critic J. Hoberman pronounced him “the first underground movie star.” He later became one of Warhol’s first superstars, appearing in films such as Tarzan and Jane Regained … Sort Of and Lonesome Cowboys. He also was known for his work in Ron Rice’s The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man and Robert Downey Sr.’s Babo 73. Indie auteur Jim Jarmusch, who cast Mead in a moving vignette that closed his 2003 film Coffee and Cigarettes, considered Mead one of his heroes.

‘A dropout from a life of privilege, Mead allied himself with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and other early leaders of the San Francisco Beat scene of the 1950s before settling in New York to eke out a living as a member of its thriving arts underground. He was a familiar face on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he wandered the streets with a notebook, read his poetry in coffeehouses – often against a background of a Charles Mingus recording – and fed feral cats in the predawn hours.

‘”Taylor was a spark who inspired filmmakers, poets and artists on both coasts,” said Haden Guest, director of the Harvard Film Archive, which sponsored a Mead retrospective last fall. “He saw his life as his art and his art as his life and didn’t separate them the way we do today.” He was the subject of Excavating Taylor Mead, a 2005 documentary by William Kirkley that knits the actor’s personal history with later struggles to hold on to his decrepit New York apartment and maintain his free-spirited life.

‘Born on the last day of 1924 in Grosse Pointe, Mich., Mead was the son of a wealthy businessman and his socialite wife who divorced before he was born. He floated through boarding schools and a number of colleges before his father found him a job in a brokerage house, which was not to his liking. Openly gay since he was about 12, he left the East Coast in the mid-1950s, hitchhiked to California and studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse.

‘Inspired by Pull My Daisy, a short 1959 film based on the Kerouac play Beat Generation, he collaborated with Rice on The Flower Thief, a somewhat haphazardly structured film shot with a handheld camera that features Mead wandering through San Francisco coffeehouses and dives carrying a flower, an American flag and a teddy bear. “There was no plot, no planning,” he told the Philadelphia City Paper in 2005. “It was … extremely spontaneous, and all of us were just crazy anyway.” Village Voice critic J. Hoberman praised it as “the beatnik film par excellence,” with Mead playing “a kind of Zen village idiot.”

‘In 1964, before Warhol was a pop-art mega-celebrity, he invited Mead on a road trip to California for the opening of a gallery show. They wound up making Tarzan and Jane Regained…Sort Of, a spoof of Hollywood adventure movies that was Warhol’s first partially scripted feature. It starred Mead as a Hollywood Tarzan cavorting with a naked Jane in a bathtub at the Beverly Hills Hotel, exercising on Venice Beach and having a bicep-flexing contest with Dennis Hopper as a rival Tarzan. Mead would appear in about 10 Warhol films over the next decade, including a curious 76-minute piece featuring his naked rear end.

‘Calling himself “a drifter in the arts,” Mead also acted on stage, winning an Obie Award in 1963 for his performance in the Frank O’Hara play The General Returns From One Place to Another. He published poetry and three volumes of his journals, displayed his art in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and read his poems weekly at Manhattan’s Bowery Poetry Club. “His whole campaign was, stay creative, active, busy. And he did,” said filmmaker and friend Clayton Patterson.

‘He made his biggest splash in decades in 2003 in Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, a loosely connected series of vignettes with a wide-ranging cast including Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Tom Waits and Iggy Pop. Critics were moved by Mead’s performance as a janitor on a coffee break who doesn’t want to go back to work. The film ends with Mead closing his eyes to the strains of a favorite Mahler song, which resonated with his colorful past: I am dead to the world’s tumult, / And I rest in a quiet realm! / I live alone in my heaven, / In my love and in my song!’ — Elaine Woo

 

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Stills

 

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Quotes

‘Art is all a scandal – life tries to be, Taylor Mead succeeds, and I come close.’ — Tennessee Williams

‘The source of his art is the deepest and purest of all: he just gives himself, wholly and without reserve, to some bizarre autistic fantasy. Nothing is more attractive in a person, but it is extremely rare after the age of 4.’ — Susan Sontag

‘Taylor taught all us little punks from CBGB’s what a real “New York City Star” was.’ — Patti Astor

‘To quote Taylor Mead, the great Taylor Mead, “Enjoy your amateur status”.’ — Al Pacino

‘Once we walked downtown from an event in Times Square, stopping on 6th Ave so he could leer at bodybuilders in a gym on 17th street. Later we headed to Bowery Bar, where his presence produced a Parting of the Red Sea and afforded us entry into a snooty, vile watering-hole for young urban professionals immersed in a particularly repellant form of toxic narcissism that inexplicably enthralled Taylor. As muscle bound Ken Dolls reached around Taylor to grab their brewskies while engaging in besotted mating rituals with assembly-line Barbie Dolls exuding a noxious inbred plasticity, I asked Taylor if this was his idea of “fun.” “These are MY people!” he exclaimed. “You need to get out of the Lower East Side, Nick.” “But THIS IS THE LOWER EAST SIDE, TAYLOR!” I replied.’ — Nick Zedd

‘Taylor Mead is the Shirley Temple of the Underground.’ — Elizabeth Taylor

‘Taylor Mead looks like a cross between a zombie and a kewpie and speaks as if his mind and mouth were full of marshmallow.’ — Orson Welles

‘Taylor said the only comfort he had allowed himself as a child was the logic that even though God surely didn’t like him, that still, if He really hated him, He would have struck him dead.’ — Andy Warhol

‘I used to pretend I was Taylor Mead when I wrote songs. The whole “Blonde on Blonde” record is a Taylor Mead seance.’ — Bob Dylan

‘Oh shit — I’m a mistake.’ — Taylor Mead

 

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Nonfiction

Taylor Mead, The Lower East Side Biography Project

Quentin Crisp in conversation with Taylor Mead

Taylor Mead Remembers Jackie, Candy, & Holly

Taylor Mead, Song to Jake Gyllenhall

Taylor Mead talks about French and American Film Avant-Gardes

Excavating Taylor Mead: Trailer

 

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Interview
from Brooklyn Rail

 

As a witness of a certain time you have your own memory and then there is the history you remember. Could you talk a little about where you come from and your first memory of New York?

Taylor Mead: I’m coming from Detroit; my father was a Von Hindenburg, a Michigan political boss. My mother was high society with no money. They divorced before I was born. I went to boarding schools in Connecticut and grew up in the middle of the tracks as the expression goes. High society on one side and then a father from another background. My mother died when I was 13 and then my father took over. When I moved into downtown Detroit at the time I didn’t know what a great jazz city it was. I was used to a whole different life. I worked in a brokerage house and was fascinated by the stock market. I could have been a very good broker. But there was no nightlife and of course, I had to have nightlife. I had to have a love life. There was nothing. Detroit was a dead city as far as I was concerned. I couldn’t have a private life because my father was The Boss. So I just went away one day and began hitchhiking through the country, traveling through the whole United States and then the world, being thrown in jail and having tremendous experiences.

As I know from Warhol and Hackett’s Popism, you were influenced by Kerouac’s On the Road and by Ginsberg’s “Howl.”

Mead: Who wasn’t? My first influence was from George Bernard Shaw. People kept talking about the movie Pygmalion and I missed seeing it. So I went to the library; I found a book with a preface by Bernard Shaw on parents and children. It talked about how bourgeoisie sent their children to boarding school to get rid of them. All the schizophrenia in the upper-class families just struck me and it opened up my mind. Then I came back to Detroit in time for World War II but I didn’t go into the army because my eye droops. I was very upset because I believed in WWII. I didn’t know it was from an accident at birth because my head is so big and brilliant that the forceps slipped. I didn’t know. The forceps just couldn’t get a grip.

It is a mark of your fate. A special sign.

Mead: I hitchhiked to California and in the mid-50s, when Allen was blossoming, reading “Howl.” I forget when “Howl” came in but it was terribly important. Robert Frank came out with his film Pull my Daisy, which influenced all of us making our first films. I think I may have already visited New York then, coming down for Broadway shows in the 40s. I was afraid of New York. I wanted to go to Cape Cod and look for Tennessee Williams, but then I went through New York one hot summer day and I could see people sitting on their stoops in another world and minding their own business, and I knew that’s where I belonged.

Then came the 50s. In North Beach I knew there was a great excitement in the air and then the police kicked me out of San Francisco because they were doing a storm trooper kind of thing, eliminating non-desirables from the streets, because they knew there was this tremendous beat movement going on. No one gave a shit when we were protesting middle class America. Everyone knew the establishment was bullshit. Before he left office even Eisenhower warned against the military/ industrial complex, the power it had, and that was exactly where I’d come from. The police were down on everybody. They would go around with a big wagon and pick up people off of the street and threaten them and put them in jail. It was horrendous. Then the beat got cool and there was money around and they let up some. And that was 15, 20 years before the “Summer of Love.” The same thing happened in here in the 80s, downtown after the 70s.

Money was around?

Mead: When Allen and Ferlinghetti won a freedom of speech thing with “Howl,” it was terribly important for writers, for artists, for everybody. So I returned and went back to New York.

In the late 50s the coffeehouses were opening. Everyone read poetry. Larry Poons, who is a famous artist who does circles, had this house where poets would read with toilet seats around their necks; they would try to get rid of the audience. They saw me writing in a book all the time so they insisted I read. I was so shy I had to sit at a table to read. Everything I read people responded to tremendously. From then on I got up on stage and couldn’t be stopped. I couldn’t get rid of the audience, so they got rid of me. No, not really!

So you never had the idea of yourself as an actor?

Mead: I was always a star. I was B.A. (before Andy), because Andy discovered me long before I discovered him reading poetry. Woody Allen and Bill Cosby and Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan and Peter Orlovsky, we were all reading because the poetry in New York in the early 60s was becoming tremendous. So Andy knew about me.

Do you still have any good friends from the 60s time?

Mead: Oh yeah, at funerals. So many died by the time they were 50. There was Charles Henri-Ford, lover of the painter Tchelitchev, he was 94 I think. You find out more about the person you knew at a memorial. People will give wonderful anecdotes of a phase of the person that you didn’t know. Very, very interesting. The last funeral though was for Billy Kluver. We were having a memorial for him just the other week at No Name. A delightful, pseudo ill-tempered man.

Tell us about Warhol’s funeral.

Mead: It was a major event in New York—several thousand people. The people that read were outside the Warhol circle, generally. They had no wild readers, just everyone doing these ordinary things about how wonderful Andy was and how awful we were—those 60s people. Where would Andy be without his movies?

As Jonas Mekas puts it, “What would they have done out on the streets?” He describes Warhol as a psychiatrist who kept everyone together, but without them he wouldn’t have made his movies. He was like a vacuum. One of the lines, he said, “I glued myself together before going out.” Do you know “like a moth to the light”—this beautiful song by Marlene Dietrich?

Mead: He was Marlene Dietrich. He knew what was au courant. He knew what the rich liked too. He was a conduit between the very rich and the people who bought paintings and gave him a great deal of money for his commercials. He was a conduit and he knew what was coming.

So he was a double agent in a way.

Mead: He was always photographing or recording. He was so easy to talk to. He was so demure. Oh yeah, he would talk. We had a big conversation on a plane from La Jolla, California where we made a movie called San Diego Surf. On the plane—I think it was ’68 or so—he outlined my career. 1968 was a very productive year for Andy after Chelsea Girls. We had done three or four movies that year and then I did The Secret Life. I was to be his biggest star with the use of all movie equipment, publishing my book, pushing my paintings, readings of my work. Unfortunately, two days later he was shot. I never brought up the matter of what he promised because he promised people everything anyway.

He changed after that.

Mead: The energy went out of him and he brought in the Countesses and the children of European aristocracy. He felt safer with them. We were sort of left out. We were all excluded. Then Paul and Andy were still close.

Paul Morrissey. Paul was another type.

Mead: Paul Morrissey. Well, I made my first movie with Paul. Before when I tried to introduce him to Andy, he didn’t want to meet Andy. It just happened a couple years later.

What movie was it?

Mead: Taylor Mead Sings and Dances Sort Of. I think it comes to 20 or 30 minutes or something like that, and I’m in a Rolls Royce throwing money out the window. Silly. I made a great film with Peter Beard, Jonas and Adolphas Mekas, Hallelujah The Hills, up in Vermont. It won at the Lacarno Film Festival.

So you traveled around Europe?

Mead: Yeah, my friend Jerome Hill had a villa in Cassis. Forty miles east of Marseilles on the Mediterranean and I was a guest there, along with Peter Beard who would work on putting trip books together. We all did trip books. Anyway then I went to stay in Rome for a year, and showed The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man, by Ron Rice, who died at 28 or 29 years old. It is my favorite movie and it’s not by Andy Warhol. It’s B.A., before Andy. In fact it influenced Andy immensely. I showed it to Gallery Tataruga and Gallery Marlborough, to Antonioni, and Moravia wrote a big article. I was very famous in Italy for two weeks. Fifteen minutes plus two weeks.

Did you have the feeling that the Europeans were different from the Americans then?

Mead: A little more elegant. They were more elegant and they were extremely interested. At the cinemathéque in Paris they showed Chelsea Girls and I was with Jean-Jacques Lebel and all the young avant-garde French painters. They all walked out on Chelsea Girls. And I thought what am I doing in la dolce vita land? Chelsea Girls is for real.

What other projects have you been working on lately? You have a couple of films now?

Mead: Yes, there’s The Excavation of Taylor Mead—they didn’t realize that I was going to be excavated. All my things being thrown in the backyard, life is very parallel. All the movies I made came about close to the reality that we were living. These kids are doing a great job of editing. They have a hundred hours that they are editing down to two. Some big companies like Miramax and HBO have a lot of interest. We had a showing at the Angelika, my favorite movie house. And then there’s Curious White Boy by Wright Thomas, which we’ve been making for five years. It’s where I went to boarding school for 50 years because my family doesn’t know what to do with me. It’s been showing around, the most beautiful film you’ll never see. My brother says it is a biography. And there’s Jim Jarmusch’s Cigarettes and Coffee, or Coffee and Cigarettes I can’t remember which. It should be out in May. And then there’s another one made by Sebastiano Piras called Exposing Taylor Mead, or Taylor Mead Unleashed, which is a very charming film.

I find that in general, independent film has filtered into the mainstream Hollywood establishment. With all the different festivals here and there, it’s unlike the time you and Warhol and other people were doing it—when independent films was still made marginally.

Mead: We were sort of uncontrollable. We and Ron Rice were fascinated by the image of the film. His whole thing was picking people and locations and letting us loose and he’d send it to the lab and the moment it came back from the lab we would show it in a coffeehouse and get an immediate response. It was almost like being in a play. Now you work on a film and in a couple of years it comes out. I still love watching myself on screen, even when I’m not in there.

This is very interesting because the process now is much more immediate. We’re sitting here and taping you and can watch it as we are taping it.

Mead: But as a result you make 10 times more film and it takes a couple of years to edit it.

 

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19 of Taylor Mead’s 53 film roles

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Ron Rice The Flower Thief (1960)
‘Experimental filmmaker Ron Rice, whose 16mm $1,000 feature film The Flower Thief (shot in 1959; released in 1960) is one of the signature works of the New American Cinema. Ron Rice was one of the original wild men of the New York underground film scene; working with the brilliantly gifted Taylor Mead, Rice improvised the entirety of The Flower Thief on location in San Francisco, shooting the film on 50 ft. cartridges of outdated, surplus World War II aerial gunnery film donated by none other than Sam Katzman, the most notoriously cost-conscious producer in Hollywood, at the absolute last minute. The finished film is raw, anarchic, and utterly assured, all at once. Rice uses very inch of film available to him, and Mead’s Chaplinesque everyman is the perfect artistic collaborator for such an enterprise; the film gets its title from a hastily staged sequence in which Mead “steals” a flower from a street vendor, and then, imagining that the police are after him, makes good his “escape” in a child’s Radio Flyer truck down a San Francisco street in blissful slow motion. As Rice said of The Flower Thief, in the program notes for the film’s premiere, “in the old Hollywood days movie studios would keep a man on the set who, when all other sources of ideas failed (writers, directors) was called upon to ‘cook up’ something for filming. He was called The Wild Man. The Flower Thief has been put together in memory of all dead wild men who died unnoticed in the field of stunt.”’ — Frame by Frame

Stolen Flowers (for Ron Rice)

 

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Adolfas Mekas Hallelujah the Hills (1963)
‘HALLELUJAH proved clearly that Adolfas Mekas is someone to be reckoned with. He is a master in the field of pure invention, that is to say, in working dangerously – ‘without a net.’ His film, made according to the good old principle – one idea for each shot – has the lovely scent of fresh ingenuity and crafty sweetness. Physical efforts and intellectual gags are boldly put together. The slightest thing moves you and makes you laugh – a badly framed bush, a banana stuck in a pocket, a majorette in the snow. He shows life as defined by Ramuz: ‘As with a dance, such pleasure to begin, a piston, a clarinet, such sorrow to be done, the head spins and night has come.’ — Jean Luc-Godard

Excerpt

 

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Ron Rice The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man (1963)
‘As the title characters, Winifred Bryan and Taylor Mead are a comic-strip Adam and Eve in a distinctly non-Edenic industrial wasteland. Made shortly before his death in 1964 at age 29, Ron Rice’s magnum opus also features an all-star supporting cast: Jack Smith, Jonas Mekas, Judith Malina, Julian Beck and many others, including Rice himself. Mead’s performance exhibits the charm and impish physicality of the great silent comedians. His Atom Man is no superhero but rather a Cold War-era everyman at play. Unfinished at the time of Rice’s death, Mead created the present version from available footage and added a soundtrack in the 1980s with the assistance of Anthology Film Archives.’ — Harvard Film Archive

Excerpt

 

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Robert Downey Sr. Babo 73 (1964)
‘Downey saw Ron Rice’s 1960 film The Flower Thief (“The beatnik film par excellence,” according to J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum’s book Midnight Movies), which starred Taylor Mead, a stockbroker turned Beat poet and performer extraordinaire (he would eventually become a featured player of Andy Warhol’s). Captivated by Mead’s sincere and eccentric persona, Downey tailored a role to his oddball talents, casting him as the president of the “United Status” in his first long-form film, the bonkers, all-purpose political satire Babo 73. Mead’s President Sandy Studsbury, whose qualifications include having majored in hotel management at Millard Fillmore University, presides over an administration of ne’er-do-wells like Chester Kitty-Litter (Studsbury’s “left-hand man”), Lawrence Silver-Sky (“The fascist gun in the West”), and Phillipe Green (who “majored in self-flagellation at the University of Hard Knocks”). They conduct important Cabinet meetings from folding chairs on a deserted beach, kill the prime minister of Luxembourg, discuss ways to combat contraceptives produced by “the Red Siamese,” try to forge a disarmament agreement with Albania, and make inspiring declarations like “Every man has a right to be a bigot!” Though much of Babo 73 takes place in a ragged nowheresville—on that beach, along desolate highways, in and around a crumbling Victorian house with a caved-in roof, known as the White House—Downey and his intrepid crew also shot all over Washington, D.C., capturing Mead and his cronies scrambling around on the Capitol steps and in front of the real White House. (Luckily, Downey has said, President Kennedy was in Europe, so security was loose.) At one point, Downey even filmed Mead insinuating himself into a real-life military parade.’ — Michael Koresky

Robert Downey Sr. and Paul Thomas Anderson on ‘Babo 73’

 

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Andy Warhol Taylor Mead’s Ass (1964)
‘According to Watson’s Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties, Taylor Mead had achieved a degree of fame that “inspired a backlash.” One example was a letter to the editors at The Village Voice in August 1964 which complained about “films focusing on Taylor Mead’s ass for two hours.” Mead replied in a letter to the publication that no such film was found in the archives, but “we are rectifying this undersight.” Two days later, Warhol shot the “sixty-minute opus that consisted entirely of Taylor Mead’s Ass, during which Mead first exhibits a variety of movement, then appears to “shove a variety of objects up his ass.” The film was Mead’s last for Warhol “for more than three years”, at the end of 1964, “Mead felt betrayed by Warhol for not showing the film.” The film was described as “seventy-six seriocomic minutes of this poet/actor’s buttocks absorbing light, attention, debris” by Wayne Koestenbaum, in Artforum. In his book, Andy Warhol, Koestenbaum writes “Staring at his cleft moon for 76 minutes, I begin to understand its abstractions: high-contrast lighting conscripts the ass into being a figure for whiteness itself, particularly when the ass merges with the blank leader at each reel’s end. The buttocks, seen in isolation, seem explicitly double: two cheeks, divided in the centre by a dark line. The bottom’s double structure recalls Andy’s two-paneled paintings . . . “.’ — Wikipedia

LIVE PERFORMANCE OF TAYLOR MEAD’S ASS (excerpt)

 

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Andy Warhol The Nude Restaurant (1967)
‘Andy Warhol shot two versions of The Nude Restaurant on the same day at the Mad Hatter restaurant in October 1967. The original concept was to edit both versions into a final one. One version contained footage of an all nude all male cast and was never released publicly as an independent film. The other version, with both actors and actresses wearing G-strings, was shown at the Hudson Theater on West Forty-fourth Street as one of Warhol’s series of sexploitation films or “nudies” as Warhol liked to call them. The all male nude version is often referred to as Restaurant but should not be confused with the film of the same name from 1965 that starred Edie Sedgwick. The nude footage may also have been included in Warhol’s twenty five hour movie, **** (Four Stars) as Allen Restaurant.’ — warholstars.com

Excerpt

 

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Andy Warhol Lonesome Cowboys (1968)
‘An outrageously funny spoof on the Western film, in the Warhol tradition, this film is immediately historic for several reasons. It is like a synthesis of Warhol’s most recent sorties into the New York underworld, but much more humorous and with closer adherence to a nonsensical plot. The film was photographed in Arizona, in a ghost town where (somehow) two of Warhol’s superstars are discovered. These two incongruous mountebanks happen to be Viva, as chic and sarcastic as she was in Bike Boy, resembling a displaced model for Hound and Horn, and she is accompanied by Taylor Mead. Mead is the zany of our time, reminiscent of the ghost of Jimmy Savo, and when five mysterious cowhands saunter into town, the hilarity commences. The cowboys are an odd assortment, a bit androgynous and city-wise, and they interact with the two in varying attitudes of lust and indifference. Since both Viva and Mead are not averse to erotic suggestiveness, some of the episodes are inspired set pieces of film comedy. Often, Lonesome Cowboys reaches the ultimate in surrealist imagery: Taylor Mead in cowboy deputy’s outfit, performing the Lupe Velez Twist, his own choreographic distortion; one of the cowboys performs ballet exercises at the hitching post and Viva’s languorous seduction of the most innocent-looking among the cowboys is actually a satirical comment on sexual artifice. This erotic, sagebrush comedy has its cruel edge, and one feels that Andy Warhol attempts to make some statement about the nature of brotherly love and the impossibility of virtue rewarded in these times of fallen idols. However, put the film in the category of a Zane Gray idea, written by Aristophanes and performed by recent inmates of De Sade’s stock company Charenton: It is, in short, a total gas.’ — Albert Johnson

Excerpt

Taylor Mead and Tom Hompertz interviewed by Claire Clouzot

 

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Andy Warhol San Diego Surf (1968)
‘A characteristically informal narrative, San Diego Surf concerns an unhappily married couple (Taylor Mead and Viva), new parents who rent their beach house to a group of surfers. Filmed with two 16mm cameras by Warhol and Paul Morrissey in May 1968, San Diego Surf was the first movie Warhol made in California in the five years since Tarzan and Jane Regained, Sort of…. It was also one of the last films in which the artist had direct involvement; in June 1968, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas, after which his work behind the movie camera came largely to an end. San Diego Surf was only partially edited and never released. In 1995, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. commissioned Paul Morrissey to complete the editing, based on existing notes and the rough cut.’ — MoMA

Trailer

Freak Show: Andy Warhol in La Jolla, 1968

 

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John Schlesinger Midnight Cowboy (1969)
‘In Midnight Cowboy, I had a magnificent scene coming down a winding staircase in drag singing “I’m flying” from Peter Pan. Schlesinger said, “Do you want to rehearse it or wing it?” I said, “Just do it.” At the bottom of the stairs, Viva is a movie newsperson who tries to interview me and asks, “How is show business?” I pull out my fake breasts and my wig and throw it at the camera and say, “Show business is easy, it’s when you reach the stage door that things get rough.” The set exploded and the grips and everyone came up screaming, “Now we have a movie, now we have a movie!” And they didn’t invite me to the screening of it. The old queen Schlesinger cut me out. I hear he’s dying now. Well, good luck John! But I loved his pictures. I love Midnight Cowboy. When they restored the movie, I asked Jon Voight, “Is my scene back in?” and he said, “No, no.” I think they couldn’t get the rights to the song as sung by me. It was too much and Schlesinger wrote some scenes that he hated to cut but they unbalanced the movie. The real Factory unbalanced their idea of the Factory. Andy was very upset about that—as much as he could be [snort]. He thought it was the only scene that reflected the Factory, when the Factory was trying to make a party scene.’ — Taylor Mead

Trailer

 

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Wynn Chamberlain Brand X (1970)
‘Brand X was born on a snowy weekend in early 1969 in Staatsburg, N.Y., where Mr. Chamberlain and his wife, Sally, had a weekend cottage. Sally recalls, “We couldn’t get out; the only thing to do was watch television, We hadn’t watched much daytime television, and Wynn was immediately struck by its banality and superficiality.” Mr. Chamberlain was by then an established Pop-realist painter and a fixture in the New York art scene, with work in the Whitney Museum of American Art and what is now the Smithsonian American Art Museum and a social set that included Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara and John Cage as well as Warhol and the Factory denizens. He was also, like most of his friends, enamored of the counterculture and dismayed by the conservatism of mainstream culture, as embodied by the television he watched that day. He wrote a script, cast Mr. Mead as his lead and cobbled together $10,000 from supporters. Much of the rest of the cast came together by osmosis. The film was shot over several months in the spring and summer, in and around places where the Chamberlain family lived and worked: Bard College, where Mr. Chamberlain taught art history; the Staatsburg house; a loft in the Bowery building where he kept a studio. A distribution deal was signed with New Line Cinema after the initial run, and Brand X went on to tour several college campuses.’ — Sam Shepard

Trailer

 

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Anton Perich Candy and Daddy (1972)
‘Candy and Daddy stars Taylor Mead and Candy Darling, who is best described as “a riotous satire of Park Avenue life.” Mead plays a pervert and increasingly drunk father of Darling, who, with her boyfriend (Craig Vandenburg), has just thrown a wild party and destroyed their Central Park West apartment that is filled with large Marilyn and flower paintings by Warhol. Within this tranquil domestic setting, Daddy attempts to seduce his daughter and her boyfriend.’ — Purple

the entire film

 

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Anton Perich The Aging Rock Star (1973)
‘In The Aging Rock Star (1973, 30 minutes, B&W;), a gaggle of “ladies” and one highly cute gent all try to seduce Mead’s retired songster, who claims he only has $500,000 of the $6 million dollars he earned at the height of his career. Totally adlibbed, plot lines and facts keep getting confused as Candy Darling and others can’t remember if they’re one of Mead’s wives or daughters. But it doesn’t matter when Mead intones, “I’m thinking of going back on speed . . .” and Darling responds, “Don’t do that! It destroys all the vitamin C.” Some time passes and Darling notes for no reason at all that she was “the only blonde in darkest Africa,” Mead, after sniffing a shoe, accuses her of murder, “You killed Wally Cox!” Verbal mayhem ensues. For example, after being told he has varicose veins, Mead admits, “Drugs destroy your toenails.” Then the game cast that also includes Darsea D’Wilde and Nancy North all break into song.’ — Culture Catch

the entire film

 

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Eric Mitchell Underground U.S.A. (1980)
‘Underground USA is a satire of contemporary New York “scenemaking” in the form of an update of Sunset Boulevard, Underground USA is both a personal triumph for its creator, actor-director Eric Mitchell, and a further indication of the importance of New York’s new-wave film movement. New-wave filmmakers like Mitchell have emerged to challenge both commercial movie making and the avant-garde. Shown in rock clubs and lofts, these loose, free-form super-8mm narratives quickly gained a loyal cult following for their witty explorations of hip urban life and times. In a style combining amateur enthusiasm with sophisticated visual know-how and a sharp sense of social and political observation, these films are the diametric opposite of the staid formalism of the ’’experimental’’ establishment. … Underground USA is, on the surface, less political than these other films, but in moving the super-8 underground into the 16mm big time, Mitchell has managed to remain true to his “outlaw” origins while at the same time bringing the New Wave movement to the attention of a larger public than it has ever enjoyed.’ — David Ehrenstein

Excerpt

 

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Alyce Wittenstein The Deflowering (1990)
‘The Deflowering by Alyce Wittenstein is not not exactly anti-sex, but it proposes that full body condoms and test-tube babies are the way to go.’ — collaged

the entire film

 

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Rebecca Horn Buster’s Bedroom (1991)
‘Buster’s Bedroom is a 1990 independent German comedy film directed by the renowned visual artist Rebecca Horn. The film follows a young woman with an infatuation for Buster Keaton. The film was shown at the Marché du Film of the Cannes Film Festival in May 1990. Later that year it was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles together with Horn’s exhibition. The objects of the exhibition were connected to the film, as themes, character references and props. The film was released in Germany on 9 May 1991. The film stars Amanda Ooms, Donald Sutherland, Taylor Mead, and Geraldine Chaplin.’ — Wikipedia

Excerpt dubbed into Russian

 

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John Gutierrez Doses of Roger (2006)
‘Taylor Mead stars in a short film where a scientist’s manufactured memories become his ultimate addiction.’ — collaged

the entire film

 

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Jonas Mekas January 6, 2007 (2007)
‘Mekas’ film The Brig was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1963. Other films include Walden (1969), Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), Lost Lost Lost (1975), Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990), Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992), As I was Moving Ahead I saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000), Letter from Greenpoint (2005), Sleepless Nights Stories (2011) and Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man. In 2007, he completed a series of 365 short films released on the internet — one film every day — and since then has continued to share new work on his website.’ — JM

the entire film

 

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Lloyd Kaufman Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000)
‘Citizen Toxie is Troma’’s most ambitious and successful movie. When the notorious Diaper Mafia take hostage the Tromaville School for the Very Special, only the Toxic Avenger and his morbidly obese sidekick Lardass can save Tromaville. However, a horrific explosion creates a dimensional portal between Tromaville and its dimensional mirror image, Amortville. While the Toxic Avenger (Toxie) is trapped in Amortville, Tromaville comes under the control of Toxie’s evil doppelganger, the Noxious Offender (Noxie). Will Toxie return to Tromaville in time to stop Noxie’s rampage or is he doomed to remain a second-class citizen in Amortville forever? How did Toxie’s wife Sarah become pregnant with two babies from two different fathers? Will Tito, the Retarded Rebel, ever get over his teen angst and become a productive member of society?’ — Troma

Trailer

 

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Jim Jarmusch Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
‘Coffee and Cigarettes is the title of three short films and a 2003 feature film by independent director Jim Jarmusch. The film consists of 11 short stories which share coffee and cigarettes as a common thread, and includes the earlier three films. William “Bill” Rice and Taylor Mead spend their coffee break having a nostalgic conversation, whilst Janet Baker singing “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” from Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder appears from nowhere. William Rice repeats Jack White’s line, “Nikola Tesla perceived the earth as a conductor of acoustical resonance.” It is possible to interpret the relevance of this line to the constant recurrent themes throughout the seemingly unconnected segments.’ — collaged

Excerpt

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! A madness with an expiration date at least. Yes, we’re editing in Paris at least to begin with and probably for the whole time. ‘That was weird’ is a good gravestone epitaph. I liked the one in the post that just said ‘See you’. Well, this won’t be remotely a surprise, but I’d like a walk-through haunted house attraction to be built over my grave, and of course my coffin would be one of the props. Not the centrepiece, just one of the props in one of the rooms you walk through. Love selling you the first ticket, G. ** Jamie, It’s going good. It is nice to think that when you’re about to die you spend your disintegrating energies trying to think up the perfect death joke. Uh, the plan/hope is to finish the film by mid-fall so we can submit it to the Berlin and Rotterdam film festivals. If it’s the usual drill, it’ll play at festivals until the options run out, and then it’ll get released/screened in places and then end up online for streaming. I don’t know the when’s though. We are going to screen it in Paris early on at The Pinault Collection because they gave us some dough to help make it in return for showing it early. Surely needless to say, the premise for your novella is very highly intriguing. Freaking people out is definitely a high goal. Well, for fiction, maybe not, like, personally. I know, the scale model novel, I’ve been wondering how one could do that ever since the idea tripped off my fingertips yesterday. I’m just trying to write and catch up on a ton of emails and get out some. Friday … worked and dinner with pals that was supposed to be at Hard Rock Cafe (nachos!) but was downgraded to a nearby Indiana Cafe (no nachos!) due to HRC’s 90 minute wait for a table. What did your weekend do to you precisely? ** Misanthrope, Yeah, I guess just ask him? Although you do risk finding out if he supports Putin or not. Might be better to leave that dog lying and sleeping if he’s going to be under your clothes. I’m on PlanetRomeo but only because they have an excellent escorts section that I can fish within for post fodder. That’s quite a meta dream. It’s very Freddie Kruger, so you better watch out. A hair metal band playing at a tiki bar … now I’ve heard of everything. And KIX, no less. They’re breaking up? Oh my god, no, no, no! No!!!!! ** _Black_Acrylic, Yes, the Caufield, yes indeed. You’re still on that taxing sleep schedule and battling with your toe? Shit, sorry, Ben. I hope the iodine is magic. The wrapping too. Oh, interesting that Cragg book. Let me know how much fun it is. ** Mildred, Hello, Mildred. It’s a fine thing to see you. I still have a lifelong fear of being cremated, but I think maybe it’s gradually fading away. I still have this lifelong feeling that I’m immortal, but I think that’s gradually fading away too. Ooh, how soon do you think you’ll have that Mildred album public? Or the demos, worst come to worst? I do really like The Legendary Pink Dots, yes. I think I did a gig post featuring just them a long time ago. One of my all-time favorite band names too. The Teardrop Explodes is another one. TLPD on mushrooms, sure. Worth the vomiting, maybe. Little Joy is in Venice Beach now? What?! ** A, Congrats on the Aussie promo reception. I can confirm from afar that your will is strong. Oh, god, summer, make it go away. Use your famous will. ** Steve Erickson, Yes, that’s the film. Seeing it in a theater is twice the fun or weirdness factor, I imagine. I hope the electrician is in your apartment fiddling productively as I type. Your Schrader review looks very interesting. I look forward to reading it. Everyone, Steve lends his brainpower to the new Paul Schrader film here. ** Minet, Hi. I think he was ghost. Don’t ask me why I think that because I don’t know why. I actually am planning to go to one of Paris’s famous cemeteries (Montparnasse) any day specifically because Rohmer is buried there. I will tell you once I’ve read them, yes! I’ve mostly been reading poetry lately (see: my next 5 books I loved post coming soon). I really, really want to read the ‘new’ book by Agota Kristof that just got translated into English for the first time, but I haven’t been able to find copy in the stores here yet. I’m so happy you liked ‘Fable’. Yes, I need to remember to order that new, expanded edition of Sotos’s ‘Predicate’, like, today before it sells out. Have a splendid weekend yourself! ** Nightcrawler, Hi. Yeah, I saw a Kusama infinity room here in Paris, and it was so crap. They’re obviously made to be selfie backgrounds on TikTok, etc. Warhol’s films are great. That’s where his genius most lay, if you ask me. I dread summer because I hate hot weather so much, but oh well. The only film I saw in a theater recently was ‘Skaza’, which was trippy and odd. I’m going to try to see something projected this weekend but I’m not sure what yet. I’d really like to see this, so maybe I’ll do that. Great weekend to you and yours! ** malcolm, Hi, malcolm! I was just thinking about you and wondering how you are. So, what’s the plan with your short, i.e. when can it be seen? Thanks, yeah, the film shoot was great, and now we’ll see what we can build out of it. We want to finish it by the fall to submit to Berlin and Rotterdam. That’s the initial plan. For me, ‘TFU’ was Araki’s peak kind of by far. You saw ‘Pickle Surprise’ when you were 9 years old? Wow. I’ll see that new Almodovar, but I don’t think I’ve read any reviews of it or anything. It’s a short, right? So I wonder how one will get to see it. I’m really, really excited to see that last short Godard film that’s premiering at Cannes soon. It’d be great if you could hang out here, for sure. How was dinner? What was it? I ate something called a Green Burger and french fries and a tiny cheese quesadilla that was too tiny. ** Bill, I have a stinking suspicion that the Louise Bourgeois spider grave was a photoshop job, but I didn’t check. No, I’ve never heard of ‘W the Whore’. NYRB published it, how interesting. I’ll try for it. Good weekend? ** Okay. I decided to restore this post so you can spend a fun and enlightening weekend or portion thereof with the legendary and singular Taylor Mead, and I hope you will. See you on Monday.