Fame

I went to two films at the Film festival over the past two days - yesterday was Teenage Paprazzo, and tonight was Radiant Child: Jean Michel Basquiat. Both dealt with fame, in a way.

Teenage Paparazzo is directed by actor Adrian Grenier, who plays Vincent Chase in  tv show Entourage, which is all about an actor (Chase) and his mates from New York, who move out to Hollywood when their boy hits it big. Grenier discovered this 13 year old boy shooting his photo one night as he was coming out of a restaurant and cornered him and asked him what he was up to. Kid says "I'm just doing my job". Teenage Paprazzo is about Grenier getting to know this kid, Austin, and find out more about the world of the paparazzi.

Then Grenier decides to try being a paparazzi. He also talks to some famous people (Matt Damon, Eva Longoria, Paris Hilton) about fame and the paparazzi. He visits some of the magazines that publish these photos. As the film says, when these actors are on the way up, they need the paparazzi to get exposure. So the star's relationship with that media is rather complex, depending on where they are on the fame scale. The film evolves into a measured, thought-provoking  take on the celebrity culture we exist in.

In Radiant Child: Jean Michel Basquiat, one of Basquiat's friends, Fab Five Freddy, says that when they were coming up, they all wanted fame, but not like fame today, cos thats a complete mindfuck. Another friend, Julian Schnabel (who directed Basquiat, the feature film based on Basquiat's life) talked about the level of fame he had to deal with, and that Basquiat "did not have the tool to deal with that sea of shit."

Basquiat took part in a group show in Times Square in 1981 then got invited to be in a show at PS1 by Diego Cortez. Cortez invited anyone who wanted to exhibit along, as he was bored with conventional shows where, as he  says, there were "white walls, white people  and white wine".

Cortez invited gallery owner Anina Nosei out to see the show, and she held Basquiat's first solo show that same year. At the opening of that show, Basquiat sold $200,000 worth of paintings in one night. He was 20. He shot to fame in a short space of time, but didn't have a bank account (at first), he had piles of money lying round his studio, stuffed in books etc. He also found himself earning much more money than his friends which made him paranoid about people's motives. Add in drugs, that made him even more paranoid.

As highlighted in the film, he didn't feel accepted by the art world, especially as art writers tended to talk down to him - one example, an interviewer calls him  the black Picasso, which Basquiat responded to by saying "that's very flattering, but also demeaning".  In the main interview in the film, done with film maker and friend Tamra Davis (who directs this doco), she asks him about how critics and writers react to him and his work, and Basquiat says that they wouldnt write the same things if he were white, and that's racist.

It's a tough film to watch, as you know how it's going to end.  But it's also a fascinating glimpse into the New York scene in the late 70s/early 80s, which the crowd are labelled as the downtown 500. Fab Five Freddy talks about how back then, you could just say "I'm a film maker (or artist, or musician)", and then you'd make a film and people would turn up at your first screening and you were a film maker. And it was incredibly cheap to live - I recall reading a book called New York No Wave, where Lydia Lunch talks about renting an apartment for $100 a month, and that was considered expensive back then.





Recollections of Jean-Michel Basquiat by John Seed: Basquiat memoir by his former assistant during his time living in Venice, Los Angeles.

Fab Five Freddy talks about when he first met Basquiat.