Empire 1965
A single static wide shot of the Empire State Building from early evening until nearly 3 am the next day.
A single static wide shot of the Empire State Building from early evening until nearly 3 am the next day.
Andy Warhol’s screen adaptation of Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange”.
The film depicts a rehearsal of The Velvet Underground including Nico, and is essentially one long loose improvisation.
Photographed entirely in color, Four Stars was projected in its complete length of nearly 25 hours (allowing for projection overlap of the 35-minute reels) only once, at the Film-Makers' Cinematheque in New York City. The imagery in the film is dense, wearying and beautiful, but ultimately hard to decipher, for, in contrast to his earlier, and more famous film Chelsea Girls, made in 1966, Warhol insisted that two reels be screened simultaneously on top of each other on a single screen, rather than side-by-side. The film's title is a pun on the rating system used by critics to rank films, with "four stars" being the highest rating. From Wikipedia.
Mario Montez in drag eats a banana.
Documents each member of The Velvet Underground having their cards read at a big apartment party. The tarot reader is continually interrupted in her readings by the chaos created by the characters around her.
Five lonesome cowboys get all hot and bothered at home on the range after confronting Ramona Alvarez and her nurse.
Andy directs Lou Reed drinking a Coke.
Soap Opera, starring Baby Jane Holzer and Lester Persky, among Factory regulars, intercuts television commercials of its day with silent domestic scenes shot by Warhol.
At a New York City restaurant, the patrons are men, nude but for a G-string, waited on by one woman, also clad in a G-string and a G-bestringed waiter.
Egotistical faded star Hedy Lamarr visits a plastic surgeon to be transformed into the "14-year-old girl" she believes herself to be. She is then caught shoplifting by Mary Woronov and is put on trial, with Tavel as the judge and her five ex-husbands the jury. Hedy remains self-centered and detached throughout, posing and primping and bursting out renditions of "I Feel Pretty" and "Young at Heart."
Screen Test: Helmut, by Andy Warhol, is a five minute silent black and white continuous close-up of a young man’s face. The face remains deathly still other than the occasional blink or involuntary bat of his eyelash. The film is slowed down to about 24-frames per-second to capture these slight movements a bit better, but other than this and the choppy fade-in’s and out’s at the beginning and end respectively, nothing changes throughout the film.
"Tub Girls" features Warhol superstar Viva lying in a bathtub with different people of both sexes, including Brigid Berlin (as Brigid Polk), who appeared fully clothed in the tub.
Andy Warhol directs The Factory regular Louisa "Jackie" Foster for a screen test.
Or "Moe in Bondage" - The "Moe" of the title is the Velvet Underground's drummer, Maureen Tucker, whose band-mates have tied her to a chair and are now hanging around nibbling on sandwiches and pieces of fruit.
"In January 1965, over drinks at the Russian Tea Room, the documentary filmmaker Emile de Antonio (Point of Order, In the Year of the Pig) warily agreed to collaborate with Warhol on a movie. Believing their politics and art to be absurdly different, De Antonio instead gamely proposed to drink an entire quart of J&B scotch in 20 minutes under the unflinching, voyeuristic gaze of Warhol’s camera. Their Factory session, recorded in this film, instead lasted 66 minutes, its grand finale a reckless and grandiose De Antonio writhing on the floor, clawing the walls, and speaking in tongues." - MoMA
Black-and-white version of Mario Banana I, in which Mario enjoys another banana.
Andy directs Edie for a screen test.
Taylor Mead humorously bares his ass for Andy Warhol.
The movie has a fixed point of view showing a bed with two characters on it, Sedgwick and Piserchio. Chuck Wein is heard speaking but is just out of view. Sedgwick is wearing a lace bra and panties, and Piserchio, wearing only jockey shorts, engage in flirting and light kissing. Wein asks Sedgwick questions seemingly designed to harass and annoy her. Piserchio is more or less a bystander not interacting with Wein. The dialogue seems created adlib and no conclusions are reached in the film. The only conceivable climax is when Sedgwick finally becomes so mad, she throws a glass ashtray at Wein, breaking it.