Leaving the Factory: Morrissey After Warhol

Subject of a sprawling 42-page dossier in the second issue of The Metrograph magazine, Bronx-born Paul Morrissey, who died last October aged 86, was nothing if not a bundle of contradictions: an icon of Underground cinema who worshiped at the altar of Golden Age Hollywood, a self-described “reactionary” who adored working with trans actresses, a model of sobriety hanging around the drug-bleary environs of Andy Warhol’s Factory. In fact, when one thinks of “Warhol’s” films, very likely one is thinking of Morrissey’s, a confusion the latter would come to deplore later in life—but there’s no confusion concerning the films he made after separating his name from Andy’s, a run of ’80s features including the astringent satire of Madame Wang’s (1981), the street tough Loisaida-set melodrama Mixed Blood (1984), and the elegant anti-biopic Beethoven’s Nephew (1985). They’re all here, with the ultra-rare Forty Deuce (1982), a tragedy set in the milieu of Port Authority hustlers featuring a pre-stardom Kevin Bacon, and the buoyant bonehead character study Spike of Bensonhurst (1988) for good measure. And they’re all playing on 35mm, just as God—and Paul, his humble servant—intended.

Special thanks to the Paul Morrissey Films Trust