Blow Job

Blow Job (1963)

BOMB (out of 4)

Andy Warhol's directorial debut is a forty-minute movie showing the facial expressions of a guy getting a blow job. Um, yeah. To say this thing was boring would be the understatement of a lifetime. I'm sure this film only made sense to Warhol and God only knows what state of mind he was in. I know this film has it share of fans but I'd certainly love to hear from them.

Kiss (1963)

BOMB (out of 4)

Andy Warhol directed this film, which runs fifty-minutes and features various couples kissing for 3 1/2 minutes each. Man and woman, woman and woman and man and man. Once again, who in the hell would want to watch this?

Empire (1964)

BOMB (out of 4)

Andy Warhol is back again and this time he's got a camera set up shooting the top of the Empire State Building. I watched a 60-minute excerpt of this film, which originally ran a shocking eight hours. Can you imagine watching an eight hour film of nothing but the top of a building? This 60-minute version had me on the verge of suicide so....

Mario Banana 1 (1964)

1/2 (out of 4)

Mario Banana 2 (1964)

1/2 (out of 4)

Andy Warhol directed these two films, which show a man in drag (or an incredibly ugly woman) sucking and eating a banana. Part 2 of the film features the same footage in B&W. The only reason I didn't give these two a BOMB rating is because they thankfully only run three minutes each.

An astonishing film in very sense. Warhol was far more zen-like than he'd ever know. In my opinion one of the most sexy films ever. It doesn't matter who's giving the blow job, once you get used to the tempo of the film you're forced to focus on the most minute details - the man's face. He deprives in order to enrich. He wants to make you work, guess - he succeeds. It's mini-maximalism an amazing. See it whenever you can. Why can't the Warhol foundation release these on video?!?!

The idea by itself is interesting: an attempt to catch a man's facial expressions and emotions (maybe thoughts?) while receiving oral sex. But it fails to deliver.

The result was simply a very boring movie, which drags itself along over 27 minutes. Trying to find innuendos, enlightening messages, eroticism or any deeper concept behind the scene requires an enormous dose of imagination.

The receiving "actor" is cute, but mostly bland, seeming incapable of expressing a consistent sense of pleasure, remorse, satisfaction or whatsoever.

A total waste of time. I wouldn't recommend it at all.

Nicely referenced in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5, from Episode 96, "Intervention," it is one of the more wicked of Joss Whedon's famous pop culture references. Spike has Warren make a Buffybot for him to play with, since the real Buffy is still more interested in staking him than falling for him. Writer Jane Espenson uses "Blow Job" in a transitional scene that lasts only seconds in Act II. Many of Warhol's films were mandatory when I was in film school, and Blow Job was my favorite for sheer audacity. I think Bill Viola's The Passions video installations at the Getty Museum last year come closest to doing seriously what Warhol did to shock. Both artists take facial expressions and show them apart from the motivating circumstances, changing the viewer's reference point. Wonderful, and Whedon's use of it is delicious.

Like all of Warhol's works, one does not need to see this film to understand all of it. It works better as an idea rather than a product, while lacking the boldness of, say, Duchamp's Fountain.