Paul Morrissey, the avant garde filmmaker who collaborated with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground and was behind cult films like Flesh, Trash, and Women in Revolt, has died. He was 86.
His archivist Michael Chaiken confirmed to The New York Times that Morrissey died of pneumonia in a New York hospital.
Born in 1938 in Manhattan, Morrissey graduated from Fordham University before joining the US military. He moved to the East Village in New York City in 1960, and opened an underground cinema where he screened his own films as well as early works by Brian De Palma.
Morrissey’s early work with Warhol on films like Chelsea Girls in 1966 and Lonesome Cowboys in 1968 solidified his cult status as a filmmaker.
They met in 1965 after being introduced by poet and filmmaker Gerard Malanga at a film screening, shortly after which Morrissey agreed to do the publicity and filmmaking for Warhol at the loft on East 47th Street known as the Factory.
They worked on budgets under $10,000 and on cinema that focused on the New York subculture, beginning with My Hustler in 1965.
Their films were rarely scripted and often featured Warhol superstars, a clique of New York personalities promoted by Warhol.
Their most commercially successful work was 1970’s Trash, featuring Joe Dallesandro and Holly Woodlawn in a movie about a heroin addict.
He also made Flesh, again starring Dallesandro, in 1968 and Women in Revolt in 1971 with Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn.
“Andy and I really try not to direct a film at all,” he told The New York Times in 1972. “We both feel the stars should be the centre of the film.”
In an interview with Oui magazine in 1975, he spoke about why he preferred making independent cinema. “I think the films I have made have been different. Their strong point is that they are very rich in characterization, even though they are not commercial. I still enjoy all the films that I made with Andy Warhol,” he said.
“What Andy hit upon was that characters were vanishing from films, characterization was disappearing and was being upstaged by a lot of cinematic claptrap.”
After Morrissey parted ways with Warhol in 1974, he downplayed the pop artist’s influence on his work. “Why are they Warhol films, you stupid son of a b***h?! Why are they HIS films! Why do you call them Warhol films?!” Morrissey told Bright Lights Film Journal in 2012.
“Don’t say ‘Warhol films’ when you talk about my films! Are you so stupid, you talk to people like that? I have to live through this for fifty years. Everything I did, it’s Warhol this, or he did them with me. Forget it.
“He was incompetent, anorexic, illiterate, autistic, Asperger’s—he never did a thing in his entire life. He sort of walked through it as a zombie and that paid off in the long run.”
In 1966-67, Morrissey also managed the Velvet Underground and German singer Nico, and worked with Warhol on the movie The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound.
Morrissey continued making films, going on to make the 1978 Sherlock Holmes spoof The Hound of the Baskervilles, starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, Forty Deuce in 1982 starring Kevin Bacon, and a mafia comedy named Spike of Bensonhurst in 1988. His final film News From Nowhere was released in 2010.
Morrissey is survived by his brother Kenneth and eight nieces and nephews.
