This has been sitting on top of the DVD player all over Christmas since I haven’t watched it in a long time and I seemed to recall it made wonderful use of the Pogues’ song, my favourite Christmas song, “Fairytale of New York”. Turns out it does, it opens with it, but for the record, I definitely consider this more a Summer movie than a Winter one (don’t ask me why, I just do, lol – it just feels like a movie to watch when it’s still light outside at 6 o’clock in the evening with the smell of barbecue and sunshine coming through the window – ie. the last time I reviewed it, lol).

This movie gets better and means more to me every time I see it. What I loved this time around is that I realised that it doesn’t matter what you think of the art that these people created – if you think it was all a pile of rubbish that was embraced by clueless rich folk, which a lot of it was, the movie doesn’t deny that. Yet you still see the people behind it all – no matter how good or bad a painter Basquiat was, this movie shows more how he was a guy who wanted respect, wanted love, wanted to do right, like anyone; but sold out, perhaps, got rejected, mixed-up, and screwed up, like anyone; likewise, when Warhol dies, you feel the emotional impact not because of the work he did, but because of the loss Basquiat feels. The defining image of Warhol in this movie isn’t any of his work, it’s the ducks he remembers from his childhood.

I put this on today knowing how much I loved it already and figuring I might get some computer stuff done with it on in the background, but I forgot how visually arresting it is. I said plenty about the acting in this movie in the last review: where was the Oscar nomination for Art Direction for this one? Every scene is wall-to-wall art – well, art or “art”, it’s beautiful.

And then, the glorious soundtrack. From the opening Pogues’ “Fairytale” to the closing Pogues’ “Summer in Siam”, via a couple of Tom Waits songs (the kind I like) and the end credits, John Cale’s version of “Hallelujah”, this really is one of the greatest soundtracks and is a huge factor in the movie’s impact for me. This movie is just amazing.

Recommended side-orders: In the Realms of the Unreal, Rent, The Hours and maybe that Simpsons episode about outsider art, for balance

August 25th, 2004:

I love this movie bigtime. The cast has to be one of the greatest of all time (David Bowie, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Parker Posey, Jeffrey Wright, Michael Wincott, Claire Forlani, even Courtney Love… all perfectly cast). The only reason anyone wouldn’t like it is because, like the people it protrays, it’s totally pretentious and artsy, and not all people like that kind of thing. I just love the extremes to which the movie goes, and the soundtrack full of music that perfectly reflects the emotions involved, and the overwhelming artsiness of the whole product.

The movie’s defining scene might be where a well-to-do New York couple are in Basquiat’s studio looking for stuff to buy and the wife keeps saying, “I love this but.. but I don’t know… the green… I don’t like the green.” The husband is unbelievable after Basquiat replies, “How about I make it a nice s**t brown?”, saying, “Hey, nobody insults my wife but me!” and finally Basquiat actually sells the green thing to them after saying, “Get a f**king decorator, these things aren’t even done yet.” The movie is just one big discussion about the value of art. What is art? Who says so? etc.

Bowie’s performance as Warhol, though, is worth your time alone. I’m sure somebody should have won an Oscar for this movie, and I’d probably pick Bowie – I guess ‘96 was just a year with too many great movies, and this one lucked out.

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