Blue Movie (1968)
Color/Sound/133 mins
Directed, Photographed, Produced by Andy Warhol
Executive Producer: Paul Morrissey/Sound: Jed Johnson
Viva/Louis Waldon
German lobby card for Blue Movie
Andy Warhol:
I'd always wanted to do a movie that was pure fucking, nothing else, the way Eat had been just eating and Sleep had been just sleeping. So in October '68 I shot a movie of Viva having sex with Louis Waldon. I called it just Fuck. (POP294)
Fuck or Blue Movie was shot in October 1968 at David Bourdon's apartment in Greenwich Village. (FAW36) Although Viva and Louis Waldon do have intercourse in the film, they spend much of the time talking about the war in Vietnam, cooking food and taking a shower. The blue tint of the film was actually an error. Warhol had used tungsten (indoor) film but there was sunlight streaming into Bordon's apartment, resulting in the blue tint.
It was shown only at the Factory until the following year when all four reels that were shot were shown at a benefit for Film Culture magazine at the Elgin Cinema on June 12, 1969. (Ibid) (For a discussion of the Elgin as one of Jonas Mekas' Film-Makers' Cinematheque - see: "The Jewish Museum, the Elgin Theatre and the Gotham Art Theater.")
Village Voice ad, 5 June 1969
Then on 21July Warhol put it into the New Andy Warhol Garrick Theatre where Lonesome Cowboys had been playing but was dying "pretty quickly." (POP294) It was a shortened version (only the last three reels lasting 100 mins) and renamed Blue Movie to avoid the censors.
Village Voice, ad, 17 July 1969, p. 49
Less than a month after it opened, the police seized the film on grounds of obscenity.
Village Voice, 7 August 1969, p. 39
An article that appeared in the 18 September 1969 issue of the New York Times noted that the film was ruled obscene the previous day:
New York Times, 18 September 1969, p. 44
According to Bob Colacello, when the film Last Tango in Paris was released, Andy Warhol thought it was based on Blue Movie. (BC199)
Gary Comenas
warholstars.org
(2002, rev. 2015)
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