Flesh (1968) (aka Andy Warhol's Flesh)

Writer/director Paul Morrissey was responsible for this avante-garde, low-budget experimental film from pop artist and producer Andy Warhol. Morrissey's solo-directorial debut feature film was this pioneering, small-scale indie film, shot in the early fall of 1968. Morrissey claimed it was inspired by director Mauro Bolognini's film La Giornata Balorda (1960, It.) (aka From a Roman Balcony) co-scripted by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The film-maker would go on to frequently collaborate with Andy Warhol on his many film projects, although their films ran into severe censorship issues. Their first film together was filmed shortly after an assassination attempt on the pop artist's life in June of 1968 by crazed radical feminist Valerie Solanas.

Flesh (1968) was the first of a controversial trilogy of Morrissey's documentary-styled films produced by Andy Warhol and starring Joe Dallesandro and other non-actors - the other two films were:

• Trash (1970)
• Heat (1972)

Trash (1970)

Heat (1972)

Morrissey's contribution to "independent" cinema included the filming of these amateurish, compelling, improvised movies (with frequent, abrupt and jerky jump-cuts substituting for editing, and camera flashes) featuring radical individuals on the outer fringes of society (hustlers, drag queens, trans-sexuals, studs, lesbians, etc.). The bizarrely-fascinating Flesh (1968) provided a stark look at the decadent lifestyles of heroin drug-addicted and marginal, underground individuals in society.

It was reported that Warhol put up only $4,000 to fund the controversial film (although it cost less to make), and it became a major cross-over box-office hit with mainstream audiences (especially in Germany), as did the ground-breaking pornographic film Deep Throat (1972) a few years later. Flesh played for 7 months at the Garrick Cinema (aka Garrick Theatre) on Bleeker Street in the Greenwich Village area of NYC before playing in other venues, both in uptown NY and in Los Angeles. Many of Warhol's films were known as Factory films made with his selected pack of adult-film performers (or "superstars").

This self-indulgent and influential cult film was an explicit, X-rated, counter-cultural underground film with non-chalant, frequent male and female nudity, and mostly improvised and sexually-blunt authentic dialogue. However, there were no scenes of sexual intercourse, violence, drug-taking, exploitation, or serious perversion. It specifically objectified the ever-visible "flesh" of its main actor Dallesandro, plus it featured transvestite drag queens (i.e., Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis in their film debuts), an exotic stripper (sexploitation actress "super groupie" and stripper Geri Miller - before breast implants), and fellow hustlers and johns.

The borderline, cinema verite home-movie was essentially a candid, ad-libbed chronicle of one day in the life of handsome, bisexual hustler Joe (Joe Dallesandro) in New York City. Some considered Warhol's film about the sexual odyssey of a male hustler as an attempt to undercut John Frankenheimer's Midnight Cowboy (1969), filming at the same time, about another NYC street hustler that went on to win the next year's Best Picture Academy Award.

• the opening title credits were presented in a long scrolling horizontal string of letters, in a green, electronic-ticker tape typeface
• in the interminable opening scene, to the tune of Sophie Tucker's 1930s rendition of "Making Wiki Waki Down in Waikiki," the camera observed naked, 'flesh' hustler Joe (Joe Dallesandro) sprawled on his bed sleeping, sunken into a blue and white-striped pillow; he was next to a small b/w TV playing an episode of Jackie Gleason's popular TV show The Honeymooners; he was stirred from sleep after prompting from his lesbian wife Geraldine or "Geri" (Geraldine Smith) to "go to work" - she swatted a pillow at him and pulled at his hair, and accused him of lazily sleeping all day and wasting his time after a night of carousing with other females

Opening Scene Between Joe (Joe Dallesandro) and His Bisexual-Lesbian Wife Geri (Geraldine Smith) - She Requested $200 For Her Girlfriend's Abortion

• while making out with Geri for awhile (including one of the earliest instances of an erect penis in a non-pornographic film), he begged her to stop as he repeatedly asked her to do his laundry:
  • "Why do I always have to tell you when to do my laundry, iron my shirt, and ask you if you did it?...They're dirty. Do my laundry, without me asking this once. I make you happy, don't I? What do I have to do to make you happy? Look at me, if you want to make me happy, do you really want to make me happy? - Do my laundry"
• and then he asked for her to stop loving him; she urged him to make $200 to pay for an abortion for her pregnant lover-girlfriend Patti (Patti D'Arbanville); at first, he was reluctant to go cruising on 46th Street for customers, but eventually agreed to go out and hustle for her that evening; she playfully wrapped his flaccid penis in her sheer white scarf: "Oh it looks so great wrapped up. It looks so scrumsish...it's looks so beautiful with a little bow on it...isn't it beautiful?...isn't it the cutest little thing?...I want to sit and watch this pretty package...oh, but it looks so good "; he again complained about not being able to make money for her without any "clean underwear"
• while Geri ironed his clothes, Joe played with his infant son (his real-life one-year old son) who was eating a crumbly blueberry muffin
• later in the day, Joe (wearing a red bandanna) was out on the street soliciting himself; he soon received a $20 bill for his services (he was buckling his pants) from a satisfied 'john'/customer (John Christian) who confirmed: "I'd like to see you again"; Joe was then propositioned to be an artistic nude photographic and sketch model for an elderly Artist (Britisher Maurice Braddell); in the Artist's modern home, the Artist admired and became obsessed with Joe's athleticism and physical body structure; Joe first posed as Myron's ancient classic Greek discus thrower sculpture known as The Discobolus, a muscular and athletic male figure, and Joe was also posed in a "runner" position resembling another sculpture; from pictures taken of him, the Artist described how he would then make large drawings from the photos; during the session, the Artist revered Joe's perfect body and offered his wordy, rationalized artistic opinion about body worship:
  • "In a liberated person... body worship, I think, is the whole thing behind all art, all music, and all sex and all love. If you cut it out for any reason, you've deprived yourself of one great chunk of life, just as if people who say they don't dig rock 'n' roll. This is all vitally important....Body worship is in the makeup of the human animal. All human beings, whether they are puritanicals, or whatever they are, they love it. They all come to the theatre. They all come to the films. They all dig it. And they all get what they call the sex kick, which is bulls--t. There's no sex in it. It's body worship which becomes sex...That's the other thing. Food and sex go together. Body again."

Posing Joe as the Sculptured Greek Discus Thrower Statue - The Discobolus - and Other Athletic Poses

• later, he told how he had made $100 dollars for the posing, plus a meal for himself and his wife; afterwards on the street, Joe also got together with a pair of inexperienced hustlers who were just "starting out" and needed mentoring; they were credited as "Boys in Street" (Barry Brown and Joe's real-life brother Roberto D'Allesandro); Joe advised them:
  • "Nobody's straight. What's straight? It's not a thing of being straight or being not straight. You just do whatever you have to do. It's hard to learn how to do that, but once you got that down pat, don't even worry about it no more...Do you consider yourself abnormal?...What other people think doesn't matter, you know. If you have to care about what, you know, the straight people - what they're gonna think, man, like then you're not in your bag. Do you care? Do you really care?"
• Joe stated that it took him time to become successful; now if he went out every day to make "bread" and did it four times a day, he could make $150-175 dollars or more in a week; he explained how he had a wife who didn't care how he made money, and that he already had a kid with her; he told the two:
  • "You don't have to follow everybody. Do more or less what you wanna do, and what you like to do is make bread, right, make it fast? So the easiest way to do it is, you know, what you're doin' here. Lookin' for those dirty old men as they walk by, right?....Most of your jobs are between $20 and $30 dollars, you know...Well, everybody's a little crazy"
• he also claimed he had only an 8th grade education, followed by reform school after he was caught stealing cars; he offered to have the bespectacled one 'shadow' him for a day of work, and suggested it was smart to find a "good street corner" for clients (somewhere near 3rd Avenue and 55th or 56th Streets)
• in a beauty salon, a pair of transvestites Candy Darling (as Herself) and Jackie Curtis (as Herself) perused Hollywood gossip magazines and chatted together about some of the articles and glamorous movie-stars of the 40s (i.e., Juke Girl (1942), starring Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan); the camera slowly moved to the right, to focus on the jeans-backside of Joe as he received oral sex from his unseen stripper/go-go dancer and ex-girlfriend Terry (Geri Miller), possibly making them jealous; the two females obliviously gossiped about the magazine's various topics: "Does exercise make women muscular?", "When is a tampon right for you?", and "The Low-Down on High Fashion"; Jackie asked Terry and Joe: "Do you know any poems? I'm starving for culture"; Joe finished up with Terry and pulled up his pants, and then told the transvestites: "Mother used to watch. She didn't mind"; Terry added that she didn't mind if Joan Crawford had been watching them from heaven ("She understands")
• Terry described a recent disturbing rape assault that she had experienced from a brutish guy named Mikey and a second guy in a "filthy hotel"; Terry explained how uncomfortable she felt afterwards as a topless stripper dancing in a club with her rapist in the audience: ("Do you know what it's like to dance topless in front of someone who raped you?"); she told how she had sought revenge on her rapist by showing how sexy (and "fantastic") she could be; she regarded the rape as very bad at the time, but now she thought of it as "fun": ("...but it was fun... at the time it wasn't, but now that I think about it, it was weird")
• then, Terry announced to everyone that she was considering silicon breast "shots" (size D implants); she removed her top to show off her natural-sized breasts; she believed that they were inadequate in helping her to get more dance customers: ("I know they're too little, especially for dancing topless...Wouldn't you like them bigger? I mean, like, the bigger, the better"); as Joe sat next to her, he gently touched and fondled her breasts and nipples; Candy was against Terry oversizing her breasts: "Why don't you develop your brain instead of your bust?"; Terry answered:
  • "My brain can't be developed any more than it is, and I think I'm cute. I don't want to change. If I learn too much, I won't always be happy, because the more you learn, I think the more depressed you are"
• Joe mentioned how he thought that Terry's breasts were slightly drooping; Terry wanted Joe to become as interested in her breasts as he had been in the past when they were perky: ("Joe, you don't seem like you like them like you used to. Are you turning gay or something?"); when he urged her to go ahead with implants or shots, she responded: "Well, if you want it, you got it"; while she gave a demonstration of her topless dance gyrations behind him, Joe spoke with transvestite Jackie Curtis; to reattract Joe's attention and distract him, she tilted his head back between her breasts, and kissed him; she also laid in Joe's lap and let Jackie touch her "jiggers" (or "itty tuggers")
• earlier, Joe had phoned his buddy-friend and frequent client David (Louis Waldron), a Korean war vet whom he had originally met at a gym; they decided to meet up in David's apartment where David mentioned how it was important for Joe in his line of work to keep in shape; he also stated that he was worried about getting older and his gut was getting embarrassingly fat; Joe agreed that he wanted to restore his muscle tone and that the gym was very "relaxing"; David recalled in the past at the gym how he had helped Joe to become fit, and where he had also become popular
• David showed off his Korean War burn scar on his right upper-arm and shoulder, and claimed he wasn't able to easily reach for things; he also admitted he couldn't get sexually-aroused, and that he regarded Joe as a friend and not as a studly hustler; Joe kept asking his friend for some cash ($30 dollars due to "financial difficulty") and assured David: "I just want you to like me"; in the middle of their conversation, David popped a pimple on Joe's cheek
• Joe again requested money and calmly rationalized that it wasn't for services rendered, but just for fun: "It has nothing to do with whatever we may do, you know"; Joe promised on his word that he would pay his friend back; as they lovingly touched each other, David suggested that they move in together: "Why don't you come and live with me? I mean, you f--k around too much"; Joe responded that he wasn't ready to make the move or commitment, plus it would upset his wife Geri: ("Who else does she have besides me?"); David tried to reassure himself that he was heterosexual, but that he still semi-loved Joe: ("We're not queer") and Joe agreed: "I know, but a lot of people, other people don't understand that"; David checked out Joe's arm for any signs of shooting heroin; as David read a story from a "dirty" photo-magazine, he placed his arms around Joe's shoulders, and then grabbed at him for some rough-housing, demanding that Joe stay all night with him; David begged: "You can't treat me like this"; although Joe was gay (or bi-sexual), he was forced into defending his marriage to Geri: "I did marry her...as gay as I am maybe, whatever!...I married her, I'm sorry. It's just what I had to do at the time, you know, one of those things"
• after an abrupt edit-cut and transition, in the film's final sequence, Geri was conversing in bed with her pregnant friend Patti; tired after a long day, Joe arrived home and got in bed between them; when Patti asked Geri who the male was, Geri reacted to him: "I don''t know you" - she introduced Patti: "Well, this is my new girlfriend, so you can go f--k off"; to show off Joe's body, the two females undressed him (including his crucifix), and then Geri showed off Joe's private parts: "There it is. There it is!...Let's see it now. Come on. Do you like it, Patti?"
• Patti asked Geri: "Where did you find him?...I don't understand why you got married"; Geri admitted: "I don't understand why either. I know we all make our little mistakes"; she explained why their marriage hadn't worked out due to sheer boredom: "The same thing every day"; Patti agreed: "If you're together every day, it's tiring... it's just the magic isn't there anymore"; Geri and Patti agreed that the best kind of marriage was when the two people didn't live together, and they could see each other only when they wanted to, and could always leave at any time
• the two females continued to be talkative and chatty with each other, ignoring Joe, who was completely bored with them; Geri complained about how Joe was very tired and "lazy" -- and Patti asserted: "Nothing in his body works properly. Just the blood doesn't flow. Girls have vitality, energy" - she attributed female vitality as the result of taking birth control pills; Geri confessed she had married "to get out of school"; Patti claimed she had learned more out of school than in school; she advocated compulsory education only until 8th grade, and then students should have the option only if they desired to continue on into high school or college: "If it wasn't forced on you, you know, you would enjoy it"
• the two soon asked about his day, and were told that he hadn't raised the abortion money they demanded, although he now realized that they didn't need it; after an exhausting day, he promised that he would go out again and try the next day; as the two desired to cuddle next to each other, Joe was moved to one side - where he fell asleep (mirroring his sleeping in the opening scene)

Final Sequence: Joe In Bed with His Wife Geri Who Cuddled With Her Lesbian Girlfriend Patti