Paul Morrissey

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Paul Joseph Morrissey (February 23, 1938 – October 28, 2024) was an American film director, known for his early association with Andy Warhol.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> His most famous films include Flesh (1968), Trash (1970), Heat (1972), Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), and Blood for Dracula (1974), all starring Joe Dallesandro, 1971's Women in Revolt and the 1980s New York trilogy Forty Deuce (1982), Mixed Blood (1984), and Spike of Bensonhurst (1988).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Additionally, between 1966 and 1967, he managed the Velvet Underground and Nico and co-conceived and named Warhol's traveling multi-media Happening the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.<ref>Bockris, Victor and Gerard Malanga. Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story. Omnibus Press. 1983. pp 30</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1969, alongside Warhol and publisher John Wilcock, Morrissey launched the print magazine Interview hiring its longtime editor Bob Colacello in autumn 1970.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 1971, Warhol and Morrissey purchased Eothen in Montauk, New York, a 12-hectare oceanfront estate on the Long Island shore for $225,000.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Morrissey would sell the estate in 2006 to J. Crew CEO Millard Drexler.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 1998, Morrissey was given the Jack Smith Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Early life and career

Born in Manhattan, New York, on February 23, 1938, to Irish Catholic parents Joseph and Eleanor Morrissey, Paul Joseph Morrissey grew up in Yonkers, New York.<ref name = Grimes>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Yacowar, Maurice. The Films of Paul Morrissey. Cambridge University Press, 1993. pp 13</ref> The fourth of five children, Morrissey attended Fordham Prep and Fordham University, both Catholic schools. Upon graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Army,<ref name = Grimes/> going through basic training at Fort Benning and Fort Dix, achieving the rank of First Lieutenant. While in the reserves following active duty, he moved to the East Village in late 1960 and opened the Exit Gallery, a small cinematheque at 36 E. 4th St., where he programmed a mix of underground films and documentaries, including Icarus (1960), Brian De Palma's first film.<ref name="The Films of Paul Morrissey">Template:Cite book</ref> Simultaneously, Morrissey began making his own short, silent 16mm comedies, including Mary Martin Does It (1962), Taylor Mead Dances (1963), and Like Sleep (1964).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="The Films of Paul Morrissey"/>

Village Voice ad for the Film-makers' Cinematheque. June 17, 1965

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. Taken by Morrissey's resourcefulness and filmmaking expertise, Warhol 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).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Warhol and Morrissey filming Viva and Taylor Mead in Lonesome Cowboys. Oracle, Arizona. January 1968

While filming a scene in John Wilcock's Manhattan apartment for Warhol's 25-hour movie Four Stars, Morrissey first met Joe Dallesandro, who had friends who lived in the same building.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Morrissey immediately cast him in a scene in Loves of Ondine (1967), Dallesandro's first appearance in a Factory film.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

After Valerie Solanas's attempt on Warhol's life in June 1968, Morrissey directed his first solo feature, Flesh. Produced for $4,000 by Warhol and starring Dallesandro, Maurice Braddell, Geri Miller, Geraldine Smith, Patti D'Arbanville, Louis Waldon, Jackie Curtis, and Candy Darling, the film was a box-office hit in West Germany, with over 3 million tickets sold.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Flesh (1968)

The commercial and popular success of Flesh continued into the 1970s with two more films Morrissey directed, 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,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and Heat, a satire about Hollywood based on Sunset Boulevard starring Dallesandro and Sylvia Miles.

In 1971, Morrissey executive produced and directed Women in Revolt, a send-up of the Women's liberation movement starring trans Warhol superstars Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn, and Candy Darling.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> A film still of Darling from Women in Revolt appears on the cover of The Smiths' single "Sheila Take a Bow", the second time a Morrissey film appeared on the cover of a Smiths record.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Reflecting on this period in an interview with Lucy Hughes-Hallett 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 Wayne or Clint 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."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Post-Factory years

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 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. It was a commercial and critical flop.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Morrissey moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s and returned to independently produced features, starting with Madame Wang's (1981), a satire of the LA punk-rock scene, starring Patrick Schoene and Morrissey's niece Christina Indri.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Madame Wang's (1981)
Forty Deuce (1982)
Mixed Blood (1984)

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Morrissey worked again with Bowne on the screenplays for Mixed Blood (1984) 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 boroughs during the Ed Koch years.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In later years, Morrissey was publicly critical of Warhol, saying that work attributed to Warhol was created by associates without his involvement, and expressing frustration when his films were associated with Warhol's name.<ref name = Grimes/><ref name = Vlessing>Template:Cite news</ref>

Spike of Bensonhurst (1988)

Morrissey's last feature, News From Nowhere (2010), made its U.S. debut at Film at Lincoln Center in 2011.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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.<ref>Lambert, Gavin. On Cukor. Putnam. 1972. Template:ISBN pp 153-4</ref>

Personal life and death

Bright Lights Film Journal once called Morrissey a "contradiction": a Warhol collaborator who was a "straight right-wing Catholic Republican".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> When film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum asked Morrissey in a 1975 interview why he portrayed drug addicts and street hustlers with such sympathy despite his conservatism, 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".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Morrissey died from pneumonia at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, on October 28, 2024, at the age of 86.<ref name = Vlessing/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Filmography

Source:<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Additional citation needed

References

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Further reading

  • For an analysis of each of Morrissey's feature films, see Maurice Yacowar, The Films of Paul Morrissey (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
  • For an in-depth interview with Morrissey on his early years as an independent filmmaker, see "Captured: A Film/Video History of the Lower East Side" Clayton Patterson, ed. (New York: Seven Stories, 2005)
  • An in-depth interview with Morrissey about his years working with Warhol appears in "The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol" by John Wilcock. Edited by Christopher Trela; photographs by Harry Shunk.(New York, Trela Media, 2010.)

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