My Hustler

Uhh. This is my least favorite Andy Warhol movie. It's neat to think of Andy Warhol actually getting out to a beach! But the actual movie is kinda boring. An experienced hustler gives advice to a younger one, as they get dressed in front of a mirror. I did however like how they would show the title randomly like in the middle of the film!

The first sequence is considerably the better of the two. The middle-aged queen who owns the house on Fire Island is fairly entertaining. People like him were still around ten years after the movie was made. Indeed: The whole thing is very prescient. (Not that this is a surprise with Andy Warhol.) There have been numerous plays, movies, and television shows with plots that are cleaned-up versions of this part of the film: The older man, his paid-for date, the jealous neighbor, the female neighbor who wants to get in on the action.

The premise is brilliant, too: As we hear the primary characters in dialog, what we actually see is the young man he's renting lying on the beach, whittling. The waves, the whittling ... It's not anywhere as long as some of Warhol's other movies but it's focused on a simple task, repeated.

The second part is about the guy and the neighbor. They are in the bathroom. It's kind of like soft-core porn. I see less of Warhol's art here. And it's less entertaining.

This is one of those 'let's make a movie on the weekend and see what happens' experiments. The results, as one may expect in such situations, are mixed: part one where the hustler is pursued while his client watches on has suspense and the unconventional camera treatment is interesting. The improved dialog led by Ed Hood is funny and inventive. Once Ed Hood leaves the scene, it gets way more boring as two hustlers just jabber about aimlessly half naked, until he returns.

But hey, it's Andy Warhol and he had a name, plus lots of gay men wanted to see other gay men (this was the mid sixties after all), so that was enough to get people interested. You need to have more than that these days. Still, as a time capsule it's also amusing to watch. Morrissey used the film to get his technical chops together, in preparation for his directing projects.