Blank City: A valentine to bohemian New York Add to.
The other must-see Super-8 movie this summer is a documentary on the film-music scene in New York’s East Village, circa 1974-88. And just as filmmaker J.J. Abrams’s homage to Spielberg admits to covert financing when a teenage auteur announces, “I’m going to steal money from my mom,†before tackling a big scene, Blank City acknowledges DIY (do-it-yourself) movies often require unwitting backers.
“I really wanted to shoot in this building,†director (now painter) James Nares explains. “So I went to the place, pretending to be someone who was interested in renting it. And this guy took me upstairs in the elevator. And the elevator opened up to this beautiful domed ceiling. … When his back was turned, I went to the windows and undid the locks. That night, we crept up the fire escape and went to the window I opened, brought everyone in and shot our movie.â€
Nares’s Super-8 movie, Rome ‘78 was colloquial Caligula (“Her ass is pretty imperialâ€) – a toga party for way downtown musicians, including most of James Chance and the Contortions, Lounge Lizard John Lurie, and the infamous Lydia Lunch (Holly Golightly gone punk!).
In addition to providing a business model for guerrilla filmmaking, Blank City is a valentine to New York back when it was the Rotten Apple. In the mid-1970s, bohemian artists and squatters (it was hard to tell the difference) populated the East Village. “Ford to City: Drop Dead†read a front-page, 1975 Daily News headline when President Gerald Ford refused the city bailout money.
As well as unearthing flavourful clips from films only determined cineastes have seen ( War Is Menstrual Envy. You Killed Me First). French filmmaker Céline Danhier has reassembled many of the era’s crucial players, from directors John Waters, Jim Jarmusch and Susan Seidelman to actors Steve Buscemi and Ann Magnuson and a slew of talkative musicians – John Lurie (in good shape despite recent stories about his disappearance and mysterious illness), Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, Lydia Lunch and Debbie Harry.
The result is bracing history and proof there were cameras whirring during New York’s great age of rock and roll (the Ramones, Blondie, New York Dolls, Television, Patti Smith, Talking Heads … meanwhile out in Jersey, the boy prophet Springsteen was moving it handsome and hot). The movies come from the same place much of the music did: inspired brats determined to turn hard into good times.
Truth be told, the moviemakers didn’t make as much noise as the musicians. A third of the way into Blank City. we jump in our seats when a clip from Jarmusch’s first movie, Permanent Vacation is shown. At last, a director who knows how to compose a shot . Still, much of what we see here has a cheerfully ragged insouciance. And Blank City is alive with wild stories. John Lurie stole his own saxophones for insurance money to finance movies. Pal Jarmusch shot Permanent Vacation in Lurie’s tiny apartment and, in one scene, had to hide freeloading (and comatose) house guest, then unknown graffiti artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat from every shot.
Such recklessness seldom ends well. What was called the No Wave film movement couldn’t sustain itself. Drugs, AIDS, and money from a growingly prosperous Wall Street ruined everything. But as Blank City proves, the all-night, every-night party was fun while it lasted.
- Directed by Céline Danhier
- Starring: Amos Poe, Ann Magnuson, Steve Buscemi, Jim Jarmusch and Debbie Harry
- Classification: 14A
Special to The Globe and Mail