Issue No. 132: An Excerpt from "Karl, Andy and Me".

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I get a sense that there was a deeply intrinsic need for people to "express" that is somehow threaded to the spirit of social change looming in the early 60s that has been eclipsed by the "I-got-mine's" attitude pervasive today. Also, you must keep in mind that Warhol/Morrissey were interested in creating a new kind of cinema (at least in the beginning) which was supposed to be an extension of Abstract Expressionist Painting. While thematically being extremely subversive and almost transgressive compared to the mainstream American cinema of the time. Even movies that touched on controversial subject matter like "Butterfield 8" were covered in a family-friendly veneer (which the Warhol/Morrissey films pealed away). Suddenly, the provincial movie-going audience was seeing objectification of the male nude form, homosexual sex, men beating women, queens being bitchy and reading each other, blatant iv drug use all presented in an unshielded, unapologetic, glorious way. It was modern independent cinema inventing itself, improvisational acting for unscripted dramas and queer culture namelessly birthing itself in the public eye. Whether you like the films or not, it's undeniable that they have laid a topical blueprint which the makers of transgressive and queer culture continue to draw from.

Yes, in many ways "Women in Revolt" is a shitty movie. By Hollywood - and even independent - standards, but it sparked and continues to spark very poignant cultural dialogues. Why does it take a cast of drag queens talking about radical feminist theory for radical feminist theory to actually have an impact? Would the luminaries of the New Drag Feminist Movement of the early 90s like Vaginal Davis exist if not for the legacy of the ladies preserved by that film?

It is wrong to compare Waters to Warhol/Morrissey. First of all, Waters has a definite, self-consciousness about making comedy that the audience is really going to laugh at. He's not inspired by high art, but bad COMMERCIAL film-making of the 50s. A huge distinction between him and Warhol. You somehow don't have to laugh out loud at Warhol/Morrissey to experience their films. Like being coked up or on speed when something amusing happens, one often laughs in the brain but is unable to physically manifest the guffaw. Waters mainly was a pot-smoker.
Another significant distinction. Waters also wrote very specific scripts which he insisted all his actors follow to the letter. If someone said "a" instead of "an" he would reshoot the scene. Warhol/Morrissey scripts were more akin to a modern Woody Allen script. Prose outlining concepts and themes which he wants the actors to improvise dialogue about.

"Heat" is an amazing meditation on many of the themes and concepts introduced by "Sunset Boulevard" viewed and then regurgitated through a prism of an amphetamine-attled eye of liberated queerness steeped in the fringe social mores of 1970................................................................................
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~ Erik Peterson