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Blue Movie

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This article is about the 1969 film, and related 1970 book, by Andy Warhol. For other uses, see Blue movie (disambiguation).
Blue Movie
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAndy Warhol[1]
Written byAndy Warhol
Produced byAndy Warhol
Paul Morrissey
StarringViva
Louis Waldon
CinematographyAndy Warhol
Production
companies
Constantin Film
Andy Warhol Films
Distributed byAndy Warhol Films
Release date
June 13, 1969
Running time
105 minutes[1][2]
CountryUSA
LanguageEnglish
Budget$3,000[2]

Blue Movie (stylized as blue movie; aka Fuck[3][4]) is a 1969 American film directed, produced, written and cinematographed by American artist Andy Warhol.[1][5] Blue Movie, the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States,[1][3][5] is a seminal film in the Golden Age of Porn and helped inaugurate the "porno chic"[6][7] phenomenon in modern American culture. Further, according to Warhol, Blue Movie was a major influence in the making of Last Tango in Paris, an internationally controversial erotic drama film, starring Marlon Brando, and released a few years after Blue Movie was made.[3] Viva and Louis Waldon, playing themselves, starred in Blue Movie.[2][3]

Synopsis

The film includes dialogue about the Vietnam War, various mundane tasks and, as well, unsimulated sex, during a blissful afternoon in a New York City apartment.[1][5] The film was presented in the press as, "a film about the Vietnam War and what we can do about it." Warhol added, "the movie is about ... love, not destruction."[8]

Andy Warhol

Warhol explained that the lack of a plot in Blue Movie was intentional: "Scripts bore me. It's much more exciting not to know what's going to happen. I don't think that plot is important. If you see a movie of two people talking, you can watch it over and over again without being bored. You get involved – you miss things – you come back to it ... But you can't see the same movie over again if it has a plot because you already know the ending ... Everyone is rich. Everyone is interesting. Years ago, people used to sit looking out of their windows at the street. Or on a park bench. They would stay for hours without being bored although nothing much was going on. This is my favorite theme in movie making – just watching something happening for two hours or so ... I still think it's nice to care about people. And Hollywood movies are uncaring. We're pop people. We took a tour of Universal Studios in Los Angeles and, inside and outside the place, it was very difficult to tell what was real. They're not-real people trying to say something. And we're real people not trying to say anything. I just like everybody and I believe in everything."[9]

According to Viva: “The Warhol films were about sexual disappointment and frustration: the way Andy saw the world, the way the world is, and the way nine-tenths of the population sees it, yet pretends they don’t.”[10]

Cast

Production

Andy Warhol described making Blue Movie as follows: "I'd always wanted to do a movie that was pure fucking, nothing else, the way [my film] Eat had been just eating and [my film] 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."[3][4]

The film itself acquired a blue/green tint because Warhol used the wrong kind of film during production. He used film meant for filming night-scenes, and the sun coming through the apartment window turned the film blue.[11][12]

Reception

Showings

Blue Movie
(1970 book)[13]

Variety magazine, on June 18, 1969, reported that the film was the "first theatrical feature to actually depict intercourse."[13][14] While initially shown at The Factory, Blue Movie was not presented to a wider audience until it was shown at the New Andy Warhol Garrick Theater on July 21, 1969.[1][5][8][13]

Viva, in Paris, finding that Blue Movie was getting a lot of attention, said, "Timothy Leary loved it. Gene Youngblood (an LA film critic) did too. He said I was better than Vanessa Redgrave and it was the first time a real movie star had made love on the screen. It was a real breakthrough."[9]

Controversy

On July 31, 1969, the staff of the theater was arrested, and the film confiscated.[3][5][15] The manager was eventually fined $250.[3][5][16] Afterwards, the theater manager said, "I don't think anyone was harmed by this movie ... I saw other pictures around town and this was a kiddie matinee compared to them."[8] Warhol said, "What's pornography anyway? ... The muscle magazines are called pornography, but they're really not. They teach you how to have good bodies[8] ... I think movies should appeal to prurient interests. I mean the way things are going now – people are alienated from one another. Blue Movie was real. But it wasn't done as pornography—it was done as an exercise, an experiment. But I really do think movies should arouse you, should get you excited about people, should be prurient. Prurience is part of the machine. It keeps you happy. It keeps you running."[9]

Aftermath

Afterwards, in 1970, Warhol published Blue Movie in book form, with film dialogue and explicit stills, through Grove Press.[13]

When Last Tango in Paris, an internationally controversial erotic drama film, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Marlon Brando, was released in 1972, Warhol considered Blue Movie to be the inspiration, according to Bob Colacello, the editor of Interview, a magazine dedicated to Pop Culture that was founded by Warhol in 1969.[3]

Nonetheless, and also in 1970, Mona, the second adult erotic film, after Blue Movie, depicting explicit sex that received a wide theatrical release in the United States, was shown. Shortly thereafter, other adult films, such as Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door and The Devil in Miss Jones were released, continuing the Golden Age of Porn begun with Blue Movie. In 1973, the phenomenon of porn being publicly discussed by celebrities (like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope)[7] and taken seriously by film critics (like Roger Ebert),[17][18] a development referred to, by Ralph Blumenthal of The New York Times, as "porno chic", began, for the first time, in modern American culture.[6][7] Later, in 1976, The Opening of Misty Beethoven, based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (and its derivative, My Fair Lady), and directed by Radley Metzger, was released theatrically and is considered, by award-winning author Toni Bentley, the "crown jewel" of the Golden Age of Porn.[19][20]

Blue Movie was publicly screened in New York City in 2005, for the first time in more than 30 years.[21]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Canby, Vincent (July 22, 1969). "Movie Review - Blue Movie (1968) Screen: Andy Warhol's 'Blue Movie'". New York Times. Retrieved December 29, 2015.
  2. ^ a b c Staff. "Blue Movie (1969)". IMDB. Retrieved December 29, 2015.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Comenas, Gary (2005). "Blue Movie (1968)". WarholStars.org. Retrieved December 29, 2015.
  4. ^ a b Staff (April 27, 2013). "Andy Warhol – Blue Movie aka Fuck (1969)". WorldsCinema.org. Retrieved December 29, 2015.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Canby, Vincent (August 10, 1969). "Warhol's Red Hot and 'Blue' Movie. D1. Print. (behind paywall)". New York Times. Retrieved December 29, 2015.
  6. ^ a b Blumenthal, Ralph (January 21, 1973). "Porno chic; 'Hard-core' grows fashionable-and very profitable". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved February 8, 2016.
  7. ^ a b c Corliss, Richard (March 29, 2005). "That Old Feeling: When Porno Was Chic". Time (magazine). Retrieved January 27, 2016.
  8. ^ a b c d Watson, Steven (2003). Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties. p. 394. Retrieved January 19, 2016. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  9. ^ a b c Bockris, Victor (August 12, 2003). Warhol: the Biography. p. 327. Retrieved January 19, 2016. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  10. ^ Bockris, Victor (August 12, 2003). Warhol: the Biography. p. 274. Retrieved January 23, 2016. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help) [Note – original publication: “Viva and God,” The Village Voice 111.1 (May 5, 1987), Art Supplement 9.]
  11. ^ Flatley, Guy (November 9, 1968). "How to Be Very Viva--A Bedroom Farce. D7. Print. (behind paywall)". New York Times. Retrieved December 29, 2015.
  12. ^ Goldsmith, Kenneth (April 1, 2009). I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews 1962-1987. Retrieved December 29, 2015. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  13. ^ a b c d Comenas, Gary (1969). "July 21, 1969: Andy Warhol's Blue Movie Opens". WarholStars.org. Retrieved January 20, 2016.
  14. ^ Haggerty, George E. (2015). A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies. p. 339. Retrieved January 20, 2016. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  15. ^ Haberski, Jr., Raymond J. (March 16, 2007). Freedom to Offend: How New York Remade Movie Culture. Retrieved January 19, 2016. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  16. ^ Staff (September 18, 1969). "Judges Rule 'Blue Movie' Is Smut". The Day (New London). Retrieved January 19, 2016.
  17. ^ Ebert, Roger (June 13, 1973). "The Devil In Miss Jones - Film Review". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved February 7, 2015.
  18. ^ Ebert, Roger (November 24, 1976). "Alice in Wonderland:An X-Rated Musical Fantasy". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved February 26, 2016.
  19. ^ Bentley, Toni (June 2014). "The Legend of Henry Paris". Playboy (magazine). Retrieved January 26, 2016.
  20. ^ Bentley, Toni (June 2014). "The Legend of Henry Paris" (PDF). Playboy (magazine). Retrieved January 26, 2016.
  21. ^ Staff (October 2005). "Blue Movie + Viva At NY Film Festival". WarholStars.org. Archived from the original on October 27, 2015. Retrieved January 20, 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
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