AndyWarhol Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Yesterday, we kicked off our first installment of Cinematical's Free Flick of the Day, where one of our writers will humbly suggest a good, bad, or truly ugly film you can watch for free over at AOL's /SlashControl. Since the content over there is constantly shifting, we'll try our very best to point you towards the good, the bad, and the ugliest films you can watch there for free.

Today's pick is an ugly little time-waster. Before Troll 2 rose to such "So bad it's good" acclaim, Frogs had the dubious honor of being called "The best bad movie I've ever seen in my life" by Fran Lebowitz, and was reportedly Andy Warhol's favorite horror movie. I first encountered it on a dollar DVD rack, and purchased it as a gift for a friend who adores bad movies. How can you resist a DVD cover like the one to your right for a whole dollar? How can you resist it for free? You can't, and it might be the most fun you have this Halloween. (I hope not.)

Frogs is a 1970s eco-"horror" flick that stars Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark, Adam Roarke, and Judy Pace. Milland plays a wealthy, wheel-chair bound Southern patriarch, who has no compassion for wildlife. His chemical company is responsible for wrecking havoc all over the wilderness, but its the critters that surround his plantation that decide to rise up and defend their wetlands. Don't watch this movie alone if you can help it -- not because it's scary, but because it's stupid, and you'll want the company. It's the perfect film to play MST3K / Rifftrax with, and if you can't make at least one trouser snake joke during its mercifully short runtime (particularly with the deliciously hunky Elliott running around in very tight pants), then I don't know what to make of you.

I want to hop Over to AOL /SlashControl, and watch Frogs!

Are you one of those people who feel Steven Spielberg lost that "it" factor -- that special something that made him so famous? (Or, at the very least, massacred Indiana Jones?) If so, maybe it's time we inspired him with new radio dental implants and fuzzy televisions? (That comment was not out of left field, I swear! Read on...)

Above you can check out a brief old-school conversation between Spielberg, Andy Warhol, and Bianca Jagger. While Warhol was usually tapped as the kooky member of the bunch, ol' Steve steals that honor -- chattering on about his belief that ghosts are trying to get out of fuzzy television sets, and fillings in his teeth that he swears let him listen to radio.

Hmm ... Maybe reminding him of his past beliefs isn't the best idea. I mean, after the ending of Crystal Skull, I'm not sure I want any more fantastical* twists. Nevertheless, it's wild to see Andy looking downright simple in comparison.

*For lack of a more appropriate, but spoiler-free word...

[via Movie City Indie]

Even the weirder artists of the twentieth century have been attracted to the allure of Hollywood filmmaking, and Salvador Dali was no exception. In the fall of 1941, the surrealist painter hosted a masquerade party at Pebble Beach during one of his regular visits to the town. Called "Surrealism Night in An Enchanted Forest," the fundraising event, intended to assist European refugee artists, brought out a number of stars, including Bob Hope and Ginger Rogers. It was here, the story goes, that Dali became attached to a major studio production called Moontide. The great German emigre Fritz Lang was hired to direct the movie, and asked Dali to create a three-minute nightmare sequence for the film. Unfortunately, after the incident at Pearl Harbor later that year, Twentieth Century Fox deemed the project too bleak. Lang was replaced, and Dali's nightmare sequence went with him.

Although inspired by the movies, Dali didn't always have the easiest time making them. He would get another chance to inject his hallucinatory vision into American cinema with the hypnosis scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, but it's his unrealized projects that truly indicate the scope of the painter's ambition. So many ideas, such little time. Dali: Painting and Film, a breathtakingly unique exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, surveys Dali's completed cinematic works in addition to tidbits from the ones that never came to fruition. Marvelously structured to show how his paintings were intentionally cinematic, the exhibit contains all the obvious highlights from Dali's movie career alongside lesser-known productions. The importance in film history of his collaborations with Luis Bunuel remain uncontested; two large screens in separate rooms showing Un Chien Andalou (where the opening eye splicing retains its original gross-out impact) and L'Age D'Or attest to that. Fewer visitors, however, might know about Dali's collaboration with the Marx Brothers on a deliriously strange movie that sounded too good to be true.

NASA's Phoenix lander has its rendezvous with Mars, and that, as well as the upcoming Puerto Rican primary, gives a torn-from-today's-weblogs quality to this purported horror film, aka'd both as Mars Attacks Puerto Rico and Mars Invades Puerto Rico. But Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster is a film for all seasons anyway. Lou Cutell's alienating Doctor Nadir (above) in bald wig, goblin ears, and loads of clown white makeup, isn't even the most uncanny part of this particularly inexpensive sci-fi epic, which pits a disfigured robot Frankenstein against the gorilla-suited, skull-headed Mull: a sort of an alien attack dog.

Made by Robert Gaffney, a long-time second-unit director for Kubrick (this piece from dvdtalk.com considers Gaffney's career), FMTSM is a good-looking li'l crapburger. It's remembered fondly for Mull, and the hoity-toity aliens who keep him on a leash. Recently at the Super-Con in San Jose, I saw two separate TV horror hosts on a panel endorsing FMTSM as their favorite bad film. Could it give Plan Nine From Outer Space a run for its money? Hard to say, but it shares four essential qualities of Plan Nine; four things that may be completely necessary to the making of a memorable turkey. You've heard it said that it's as hard to make a bad movie as it is to make a good one. Fair enough: there are plenty of filmmakers out there who want to work hard making a bad movie.

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means -- time for The Write Stuff! This week Cinematical spoke with screenwriter Captain Mauzner. Mauzner has an interesting perspective on screenwriting because he's written two major films based on true events and actual people. He co-wrote 2003's Wonderland -- the story of the infamous "Wonderland Murders," which starred Val Kilmer as legendary porn star John Holmes. And he wrote last year's Factory Girl, the tale of Edie Sedgwick (played by Sienna Miller), Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce), and a Dylanesque "Musician" played by Hayden Christensen. We spoke about Mauzner's scripts, process, and the trickiness of writing scripts based on fact.

Cinematical: Are you working on anything right now?

Captain Mauzner: I am working on something right now, yeah. I'm adapting a book. It's a small book, it's called The Food Chain, by Geoff Nicholson. A friend of mine runs a small company and I'm adapting it with the hopes of directing it. It's kind of about food, sex, and cannibalism. Revenge, food, sex, and cannibalism.

Cinematical: Well, alright!

CM: It's a little dark comedy. It's fun. And what was nice about it was -- I've written so many things and a lot of them are true life stories, and they all seem to be about kind of deplorable human beings. And I think that my comfort zone is really kind of in the dark side -- the drug addicts, the deviants. And I think that as I've kind of gotten older and left that world myself, I guess you could say I've become less and less interested in it. You see these movies like Wonderland and Factory Girl and you could say "oh, they're like an argument against doing drugs." But I know for myself, there's always a glamorizing element to it. And as much as you want to say this is the downfall of these people, which it is -- and obviously there's nothing glamorous about the drug lifestyle, or the party lifestyle because it does lead to bad things. But just the act of writing about it or making these the main characters or trying to explain these people, I feel like that somewhat glamorizes it, or at least in my mind it was very glamorous. I had a very romantic notion, at like 14-years-old I discovered Bukowski and I was kind of off to the races. So I think that as I get older I'm ready to move on to maybe something light and happy. My family's always like "Why can't you write something that we can take Grandma to?"

Cinematical: So do you find when you're writing about drugs and debauchery, that you're not looking to condemn it and point a finger, you're just looking to present it and let the audience decide?

CM: Absolutely. I'm not looking to condemn it at all. I'm not looking to be moral about it. I believe in experimentation. I believe in doing kind of what you want and not having anybody else tell you what to do. I think that my fascination with it is always the "why." Why do people do this? I think that's kind of the fun of being able to do those kind of things is that you can live kind of vicariously through these people, and try to figure out the "why" without being judgmental.

Just by watching the trailer for Factory Girl, I gathered that Hayden Christensen's character is supposed to represent Bob Dylan. He's got the voice, the look and the harmonica. Sure, the character has a different name, and the film's producers are insisting that it is actually a composite of Dylan, Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison, but as played and depicted, it is as obviously specific as it gets. The whole thing makes me think of Velvet Goldmine, which featured Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Ewan McGregor blatantly portraying David Bowie and Iggy Pop, respectively, without the film's use of real names. But that film had no intention of being passed as a true story, unlike Factory Girl, a biopic that otherwise represents real people by name. Velvet Goldmine also didn't implicate any of its characters as being responsible for a person's death.

Dylan is no idiot, and he isn't about to let a movie indirectly accuse him of being the cause of Edie Sedgwick's suicide. According to the NY Post's Page Six column, he's prepared to take legal action; lawyers have already begun proceedings by demanding they see the film before anymore screenings are held. Though the case isn't yet involving the courts, if Factory Girl producers Bob Yari and Holly Wiersma don't comply with the missive issued them, things might get ugly.

Dylan is reportedly very concerned about how the film will affect his image. And he should be. As if the trailer wasn't enough, it is being noted that people who've seen the film say that it is unmistakably Dylan being portrayed. Plus, there's the matter that the original script had the character named Bob Dylan before it was changed to the fictionalized "Billy Quinn" (or is it "Danny Quinn"?).

This legal matter adds to a very long list of controversy surrounding Factory Girl, including a lawsuit over distribution rights and a complaint from the literally depicted Lou Reed.


[via Hollywood Wiretap]

Is it just me or does it seem a little odd that in the trailer for Factory Girl, the film that was supposed to be Sienna Miller's big Oscar hope ends up being more about Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol? I really can't blame them considering Pearce's performance as the perpetually bored Warhol looks spot on. Pearce actually managed to make me a little more excited about the film. Most of the talk surrounding the movie has been gossip; Katie Holmes departure, lawsuits, and Millers hectic personal life, very little of it had anything to do with the film itself -- I'm sure Lou Reed's comment didn't help either.

Moviefone has finally premiered the trailer to the film, along with the poster. Edie Sedgwick was the daughter of a prominent family who dabbled in modeling and was taken into Warhol's Factory studio during the mid-sixties. She was a star in his films until the two had a nasty falling out -- if you believe the trailer, it was all Bob Dylan's fault. Sedgwick was one of the many casualties of The Factory and is usually remembered more for her premature death than anything she accomplished when she was alive -- well that, and that really lame song by The Cult. So take a look at the trailer and tell me if this is Sienna's big break -- or did she manage to let Warhol steal the show from Edie Sedgwick once again?

I can hear you now. "My life would be complete, if only I could watch all 485 minutes of Andy Warhol's Empire. Preferably outside, perhaps in London." I don't know how many times I've said the same thing myself - and our chance has finally come! (The film, which consists of a single, overnight shot of the Empire State Building, promoted Warhol to announce that he preferred movie-making to painting, because the former was easier.)

Empire will be shown four times in London next month, projected every Friday night onto the facade of the National Theatre (notice the proper spelling). Each screening will begin at dusk, so that night in New York and night in London will coincide. While only the certifiably insane are likely to sit and watch the thing for eight hours, it would be pretty cool to glance over and see the Empire State Building on the banks of the Thames, if only for a few minutes.

[Curious non-Londoners can see a clip here.]