In 1973, filmmaker Anton Perich, the legendary Candy Darling and Taylor Mead, and the Broadway actor Craig Vandenburgh went to a nice apartment on Central Park West to make a film. The apartment belonged to the art collector Sam Green and the walls were groaning with Warhols. Perich came up with a simple scenario: Taylor Mead would play a decadent and perverse wall street type, Candy his socialite daughter. As the film opens, Craig Vanderbilt plays the piano for Candy while she screams “Play!” and strikes the instrument with her high heeled shoe. From there, everything is improvised. Before the night is through, Candy and Craig have split, Taylor Mead sits on the stairs, singing incoherently, with his pants around his ankles, and Anton Perich had a finished film.
Many of Perich’s films were made this way, in two or three takes and improvised from simple premises. His films and interviews feature many regulars from Max’s Kansas City (he was a busboy there) and Warhol’s clan (he was also a photographer for INTERVIEW), including Andrea Feldman, Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis, Edwige Belmore and Tinkerbelle, as well as orbiting artists and celebrities like John Cage and Merce Cunningham, Hugh Hefner, Grace Jones and John Waters, resulting in an incredible cross-pollination between art and personality.
FRANKENSTINO (1973, starring Taylor Mead as Frankenstein, Katrina Toland, Jayne County and Robert Starr) was shot in the studio of sculptor John Chamberlain atop one of his giant works of foam (and features the line which serves as title for this series, uttered by Taylor Mead). In VICTOR HUGO ROJAS, the performance artist descends into an “Egyptian trance” (he’s wrapped in toilet water, spritzed with water and doused with baby powder) before destroying an original Warhol painting. In HUNTINGTON HARTFORD’S TIE e still uses improvisation to build on simple narratives – lately they often have to do with technology (he equates googling oneself to masturbating).
Proust is his hero these days. Perich said that he thinks about the fact that Proust made his contribution to the world with just a pencil. Now for the first time, a pen can cost more than a video camera. “Everyone can be a filmmaker, but not everyone is.” Therefore, “it’s a good time for people to redefine cinema again”.
In this special series, Spectacle presents both old and new works by extraordinary underground filmmaker Anton Perich.
Spectacle Theatre $5
123 So. 3rd Street, Williamsubrg
TUESDAY, JUNE 24 at 10:00pm
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