Originally published at: New biopic about legendary street artist Basquiat | Boing Boing
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I had the pleasure of seeing this piece, “Bird on Money”, when it came through KC as part of the “30 Americans” exhibit a couple years ago. It looks like the exhibit is currently in South Carolina at the Columbia Museum of Art until January 17th. Check it out if you can.
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I mean… are people not familiar with Julian Schnabel’s film starring Jeffery Wright?
But the past is dead, and those of us who preserve it are pointless, so yeah, constantly revamp that shit to make it SHINY AND NEW…
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A talent lost to drugs.
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I mean… I think Schnabel’s film is just about perfect, so I’m not sure we need a reprise? YMMV, I guess…
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I know some people around here don’t care for Andy Warhol but holy cow does David Bowie nail that part. Brilliant casting all around. Christopher Walken has a cameo as an interviewer, and when Wright (as Basquiat) calls him out on an unintentionally racist question Walken visibly blushes on queue. How does one train for that?
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He’s great in it… the whole cast was fantastic, you’re right there.
Here’s what the director said about why he wants to make another one… I mean, I guess so. The Schnabel film was certainly a tribute to his friend, and so had much of his perspective on Basquiat.
He also said this…
Which, I guess there’s some truth to that?
I dunno… we’ll have to see it when it comes out, I guess.
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Well sure, but it’s not like that’s a great treatment of him. I’m with bell hooks in thinking it was pretty much the opposite. Fingers crossed the new film isn’t so white.
Schnabel’s film is not really a work that imaginatively interprets the life of Jean Michel Basquiat. It treats him as though he is merely a compelling artifact in a particular milieu. The social context that enabled a Basquiat to emerge is what this film is about. That context is always and only white. And it is the “critic” in the film whose voice has prominence, who has the power to name, describe, interpret, theorize. . . . Basquiat is what writer Zora Neale Hurston once defined as a “Negro pet”.
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Thanks, I’ll check out the essay! As always, she made an important point here…
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That was scarily good!
His portrayal of Nicola Tesla in The Prestige was a treat too. Bowie didn’t do all that much screen work compared to his musical career but when he did he went all-in.
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“The thing to talk about in a movie about a black artist is the white characters and how amazing the white actors were.”
–bell hooks, maybe. Wait, no, definitely not bell hooks.
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