Tgrain

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.

Morrissey took the lose, improved nature of his earlier films and made something with a tighter narrative and a great actress, with a brilliant use of non-professionals. Unfortunately, countless indie filmmakers have tried to rip him off with disastrous results. There are very few directors who can treat things with such amazing cinematic simplicity, creating crazy characters you want to follow. It's almost an impossible formula to get right, and very difficult to reproduce.

The highlight of this film for fanatical leftists is the appearance of Kathleen Cleaver at the beginning of the film. For normal people there are no highlights, just an example of self indulgence by a filmmaker who's success at making non-plot driven films got to his head. Even die hard fans of Pink Floyd will be disappointed at how the music is used for plotless meander.