Bike Boy

Brigid Berlin is funny in this and I liked it a lot. It's interesting to hear about the star's "born to lose" tattoo and all of the cast's comments on it. Including Ingrid Superstar's. It's also funny to see Ingrid throw herself at him, while he looks straight ahead, never once even glancing at her!

First he's seen as meat on a stick, a himbo lathering up in a shower that's punctuated by pip-pip-pop strobe edits shoving bits of his lummoxy body in our face. Then this guy, a guido-y wannabe biker dude, seems like more of an unconscious-hustler type (like the young dude in MY HUSTLER), gets turned loose on the Factory gang. First he becomes less than a pornographic object of desire: his meanness, his homophobic bullying, his self-satisfaction with his own unapparent cleverness all make him distasteful--the rough trade Andy brought to the party who then spoiled it for everyone. Then we get to know him better, hear him talk in depth about himself--and it's wan stuff about his job history. He comes to seem like a hurtin', hurt-dealin', profoundly unreflective guy--someone, to put it delicately, without a lot of resources. But then there are these amazing moments when the Warhol crew is struck dumb by him--either by his crude hostility or by his near-mute, cowlike perceptions that bowl them over in their childish truthfulness. And these druggy sophisticates come to seem suddenly, crashingly vulnerable too. It would be easy to hand all the credit to Paul Morrissey here; his influence is obvious (though the movie is a superior version of later, Morrissey-credited pictures like TRASH and HEAT). But in its biggest, abstractest shapes--the war-dance between looks without brains and brains without looks--it's quintessentially Warholian.

Bike Boy has Morrissey's influence everywhere, from the characteristic in-the-camera edits (as we would see in later films like Flesh) to character driven storyline. Bike boy is easier to watch than Warhol's earlier stuff, where the camera was static, and dialogue was minimal. Here Morrissey adds some structure to the narrative, Using more settings and adding more characters into the story. More of the same would follow from the factory as Morrissey would assert his influence more and more, not coincidently subsequent films would garner more box office bucks (go figure, who wants to watch an empire state building for 8 hours). Also this is the film that a young Richard Gere saw that made him want to become an actor.

While bike boy is actually one of the easier films to watch made by Warhol, it is still haunting in its harsh realism and cutting edge dialogs.

The movie is constructed of five encounters of bike boy with New York bohemian types, mostly women, and their conversations, mostly about sex.

The contradiction between the macho biker and the artsy Warhol gang shows human relationships and human behavior in a ridiculous light, especially concerning the issues of love, sex and loneliness in the metropolitan. It is an extremely funny film, although some moments can get a little bit too real, making it hard to watch... Of all of Warhol's films, this one is perhaps most reminiscent of the kind of cinema we are usually acquainted with. It's unique editing and use of sound position this film as a clear influence on film makers such as Hal Hartly, Todd Solondez etc. Highly recommended!