Lonesome Cowboys

Andy Warhol proves he was a head of his time and a genius! For those who are unaware of the genius that is Warhol, you may not like this film because you come from a place of ignorance.

It's a great film. Cinema Verite at its best.

All the sound track pops and whistles are intentional.

hey are part of the art.

As is the loose acting and rough cuts.

This movie is mesmerising on so many levels.

It foreshadows every reality show of today. Just splendid.

Warhol convinced a bunch of rich brats to be in a grotty flick and mix it up with a seedy bunch of drug addicts and homosexuals -- pre aids days!

Brilliant

I had heard of this movie and was expecting something artistic and unique. It was absolutely devoid of artistry and the only thing unique about it is that it stands out as probably the worst film I have ever seen.

It was just plain sloppy on every level of film making possible: camera work, editing, sound editing, acting, cinematography...any aspect of movie making found it's low point in this film. The plot is utter crap, with explicit homosexual overtures that are simply lewd. Warhol does not even attempt to portray sexuality (homo or hetero) as anything more than indiscriminate slut-dome. And for that it's not even erotic!

This flick is utterly worthless and there's a reason why no one would distribute it and there are so few copies of it out there.

This movie is great. Joe Dallesandro is young and full-on hot and sexy. The dialogue is pure camp. The performances are funny, goofy, and stupid. Totally crazy bordering on dumb scenes. Similar in style and feel to a pre-Pink Flamingo John Waters low budget film. At times you'll wonder how in the hell they ever got it made, or why they bothered to spend time on the project. Ultimately, you appreciate the time piece that it represents. These artists and the works they produced were the "burning bush" to that era's counter-culture Moses. Irreverent and living out of bounds.

An outrageously funny spoof on the Western film, Lonesome Cowboys is a synthesis of Warhol's 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. The incongruous montebanks happen to be Viva, as chic and sarcastic as she was in Bike Boy and resembling a displaced model for Hound and Horn, and Taylor Mead. Mr. Mead is the zany of our time, 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 in set-pieces of inspired film comedy. Often, Lonesome Cowboys reaches the ultimate in surrealist imagery: cowboy-deputy Mead performing the Lupe Velez Twist, his own choreographic distortion; or one of the cowboys performing ballet exercises at the hitching post. Viva's langorous 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. Select just about any Warhol film from the mid-sixties and you'll find a scandal tucked away. Lonesome Cowboys's most notable run-in with the law was in Atlanta where it was seized after replacing Gone with the Wind in a mall theater. Lonesome Cowboys is filled with wildly comic setpieces, including a cowboy practising ballet moves at the hitching post and a peevish lecture on the misuse of mascara. These desperadoes are real trailblazers when it comes to libidinous appetites and it is here that Lonesome Cowboys distinguishes itself from the herd. Unflinchingly, Warhol shoots down the myth of the de-sexed cowhand.

This is practically a vignette of the lives of some 'cowboys' in Nowhere, Arizona and a 'married' couple whom they met. In the arid weather, they talk and mess around and lives on.

I personally love this films. I think Trash and Flesh has a similar aesthetic in that it borders into incoherence. Its a free form narrative. Its like visual stream of consciousness. Morrissey happens to have his camera on, with the smallest inputs to their character. He just let his actors speak with almost no direction. The structure here is not what drives the film but MOMENTS. Its is a high risk , high reward film style that I can only described as a Abercrombie commercial meets Kenneth Anger.

And it works. The film's success is heavily lifted by the charms of it actors, led by Viva, Tom Hompertz (who out sleazed everyone even the latter) and Joe. They are not the best actors but they have natural magnetism and quirky disposition. With the aid by Morrisey's janky but weirdly effective editing style, they become stars you cannot just look away.

In my eyes, it just feels so alive. Its so uniquely different but it never bores me. I do get why people might hate it BUT I did it specifically for that. It moves when it needs to.

Morrisey clearly would shift towards more classical narrative in his later films BUT I always feel that this and the other films that precedes this are his masterpieces. Its a narrative style that I personally still think about everytime. I still think that it precursors Akerman's Je Tu Il Elle and the slow cinema movement of the coming years.