Paul Morrissey
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Paul Morrissey in 1967
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| Born | (1938-02-23) February 23, 1938 (age 86)
New York City, U.S.
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| Occupation | Filmmaker |
| Known for | Warhol superstar |
Paul Morrissey (born February 23, 1938) is an American film director, known for his early association with Andy Warhol.[1] His most famous films include Flesh, Trash (1970), Heat, Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974), all starring Joe Dallesandro, and the 1980's New York trilogy Forty Deuce (1982), Mixed Blood and Spike of Bensonhurst (1988).[2]
From 1965 to 1973, Morrissey ran the publicity and filmmaking activity for Warhol at The Factory (first at 231 E. 47th St. and then at 33 Union Square West in New York City).[3] Additionally, between 1966 - 67, he managed the Velvet Underground and Nico and co-conceived and named Warhol's traveling multi-media Happening the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.[4][5] In 1969, alongside Warhol and publisher John Wilcock, Morrissey launched the print magazine Interview hiring its longtime editor Bob Colacello in autumn 1970. [6]
In 1971, Warhol and Morrissey purchased Eothen in Montauk, New York, a 12-hectare oceanfront estate on the Long Island shore for $225,000.[7] Morrissey would sell the estate in 2006 to J. Crew CEO Millard Drexler. [8]
In 1998, Morrissey was given the Jack Smith Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival.[9]
Born to Irish Catholic parents Joseph and Eleanor Morrissey, Paul Joseph Morrissey grew up in Yonkers across from the Woodlawn section of the Bronx.[10] The second youngest of five children, Morrissey attended Fordham Prep and Fordham University, both Catholic schools. Upon graduation, he enlisted with the United States Army, going through basic training at Fort Benning and Fort Dix, achieving the rank of First Lieutenant. While on reserves from active duty, he moved to the East Village in late 1960 opening the Exit Gallery, a small cinematheque at 36 E. 4th St., where he programmed a mix of underground films and documentaries including Icarus (1960), the first film by Brian De Palma.[11] Simultaneously, Morrissey began making his own short, silent 16mm comedies including Mary Martin Does It (1962), Taylor Mead Dances (1963) and Like Sleep (1964).[12] [13]
Introduced by poet and filmmaker Gerard Malanga, he first met Andy Warhol in June 1965 at the Astor Place Playhouse where Morrissey was having a retrospective of his work. Warhol, taken by Morrissey's resourcefulness and filmmaking expertise, invited him to the Factory to assist him with his next project Space, filmed at the E. 47th St. Factory in July 1965 and featuring Edie Sedgwick, Danny Fields, Donald Lyons (a friend of Morrissey's from his Fordham University days) and folk-singer Eric Andersen. Several more Warhol-Morrissey collaborations followed including My Hustler (1965), The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound (1966), More Milk, Yvette (1966), Chelsea Girls (1966), Imitation of Christ (1967), Tub Girls (1967), Bike Boy (1967), I, a Man (1967), San Diego Surf (1968) and Lonesome Cowboys (1968).[14][15]
While filming a scene in the Manhattan apartment of John Wilcock for Andy Warhol's 25 hour movie Four Stars, Morrissey first met Joe Dallesandro who happened to have friends living in the same building.[16] Morrissey immediately cast him in a scene that would later appear in Loves of Ondine (1967), Dallesandro's first appearance in a Factory film.[17]
After the attempt on Warhol's life in June 1968 by Valerie Solanas, Morrissey directed his first solo feature Flesh. Produced for $4,000 by Andy Warhol and starring Joe Dallesandro alongside Maurice Braddell, Geri Miller, Geraldine Smith, Patti D'Arbanville, Louis Waldon, Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling the film became a box office hit in West Germany with over 3 million tickets sold.[18][19]
The commercial and popular success of Flesh continued into the 1970s with two more films directed by Morrissey, produced by Warhol and starring Dallesandro: Trash, featuring Jane Forth and Holly Woodlawn, the first transgender actress ever cast as the girlfriend of a lead character,[20] and Heat, a satire about Hollywood based on Sunset Boulevard starring Dallesandro alongside Sylvia Miles.
In 1971, Morrissey would executive produce and direct Women in Revolt, a send-up of the Women's liberation movement starring trans Warhol superstars Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling.[21] A film still of Candy Darling from Women in Revolt appears on the cover of the "Sheila Take a Bow" single by The Smiths, the second such instance of a Morrissey film appearing on the cover of a Smiths record.[22]
Reflecting on this period in an interview with Lucy Hughes-Hallett for British Vogue in March 1978, Morrissey said: "To me, moviemaking is dealing with personalities, people who are always the way they are in every film, like John WayneorClint Eastwood, that kind of film-star personality which is not very fashionable now. It doesn’t really matter what the camera’s doing as long as the people are worth watching.”[23]
In March 1973, Morrissey went to Rome and directed two back-to-back features Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974) starring Dallesandro and Udo Kier. Produced by Carlo Ponti and presented by Andy Warhol, their international success propelled Morrissey out of the Factory and into his first and only attempt at directing a studio film The Hound of the Baskervilles, co-written by Morrissey, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. A commercial and critical flop,[24] Morrissey moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s and returned to independently produced features starting with Madame Wang's (1981), a satire on the LA punk-rock scene, starring Patrick Schoene alongside Morrissey's niece Christina Indri.[25] [26]
Returning to New York City in the early 1980s, Morrissey began a collaboration with playwright and screenwriter Alan Bowne, directing a film version of his 1981 play Forty Deuce (1982) starring Orson Bean and Kevin Bacon.[27] Morrissey worked again with Bowne on the screenplays for Mixed Blood (1985) and Spike of Bensonhurst (1988) completing a trilogy of films taking a satirical, empathetic look at the political, social and moral decay of New York City and its outer bouroughs during the Ed Koch years.[28]
When film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum asked Morrissey in a 1975 interview for Oui why he portrayed drug addicts and street hustlers with such sympathy despite his personal convictions as a lifelong conservative Catholic, Morrissey responded:
"A human being is a sympathetic entity. No matter how terrible a person might be, someone with an artist’s point of view will try to render his individuality without condescension or contempt. That’s the natural function of a dramatist. The movies I’ve made have no connection to my personal beliefs. They don’t say, "Do this", or "Don't do that". They portray a kind of emptiness in people who are living through a transitional cultural period when they don’t know who they are or what to do."[29][30]
Morrissey's most recent feature News From Nowhere (2010) made its U.S. debut at Film at Lincoln Center in fall 2010.[31]
Speaking to screenwriter and biographer Gavin Lambert, filmmaker George Cukor said of Morrissey's work:
"He makes a marvelous kind of world, and a marvelous kind of mischief, holding nothing back and just watching it happen. 'Personal expression' is a much abused expression, but these films are real expression. . .Nobody has done anything like it. The selection of people, the casting, is absolutely brilliant and impertinent. The life they see, the gutter they see, or the world they see is so funny and agonizing, and they see it so vividly, with such original humor.”[32]
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Films directed by Paul Morrissey
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