Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll

>> Subculture filmmaker-cum-moral crusader Paul Morrissey on his 1970 epic Trash

by MATTHEW HAYS

Though heroin has been done to death and back on the big screen in the past decade or so, something about director Paul Morrissey's films remains captivating. There they are: characters shooting up before our eyes, often buck-naked and reciting choppy dialogue that's somehow campy and realistic at the same time.

As Andy Warhol's right-hand man, Morrissey emerged from the late art legend's shadow to direct such bizarre counter-culture cult movies as Trash, Heat, Women in Revolt and Blood for Dracula. He was accused by Warhol purists of mainstreaming the Factory, interfering with the experimental atmosphere at Warhol's studio and pushing it in a far too conventional direction. Ironically enough, Morrissey left the film business 12 years ago, saying he couldn't find proper financing and distribution for his independent vision. Morrissey now argues he was the brains behind much of Warhol's empire, including Interview magazine and the Velvet Underground, telling me Warhol was simply a "cipher--he was a nice enough man but he wasn't very organized.

Trash has been rereleased in a new print, which screens at the Cinéma du Parc this month. The film features cult faves Joe Dallesandro and drag queen Holly Woodlawn as a couple struggling with abject poverty. He plays a heroin addict and she's his live-in girlfriend, frustrated by the fact that he can't get it up due to the habit. Unusual and touching, their performances put these two on the map. The New York Times' Vincent Canby argued at the time that the film was "funny, provocative, affecting and somehow very fine." Not wanting his politics to be misinterpreted, Morrissey explained that "the basic idea for the movie is that drug people are trash. There's no difference between a person using drugs and a piece of refuse." Now 62 and managing real estate, the straight director has made headlines for distancing himself from the gay community, objecting to his films' inclusion in gay film fests, saying that he doesn't think homosexuality should be "promoted."

The Mirror caught up with Morrissey at his New York office, where he looked back on Trash, praised George W. Bush, explained "disease-o-theques" and dissed Traffic.



Mirror: I watched Trash again last night. I hadn't seen it since film school. It's great...

Paul Morrissey: It hasn't dated, has it? There are a lot of unusual things about the movie, but aside from the fact that it's good, I'm the only person I ever heard of who made a film about heroin addiction that was a comedy. It says a lot about what I think about just by the very fact that I made a comedy out of it. I would never dramatize that subject. I think it doesn't deserve dramatization.

M: Why not?

PM: Because it's such a foolish thing to do, to inflict sickness and death on yourself. It's like throwing yourself in front of an automobile. Anybody who does it is a silly, foolish dope.

M: The lib-Left argument is that people get caught up in the cycle of addiction and--

PM: But why did they start in the first place? Because their record company told them to do it, to be one with the rest of the dopey kids in the world. Guess what? They want to be with those other dopey kids. If you think about it for even a while, it's not a very difficult problem to figure out. Kids are told to do drugs by rock 'n' roll, and if you don't take drugs you're a piece of shit. So they take drugs. That was my problem with that movie Traffic. It didn't have any position on it. It showed the drug dealers, which we've seen in a hundred movies, and the innocent families. I think we've seen it all. It's so foolish a thing, but it's not going to go away. No one seems to say anything against it. Except that we have to spend more money on programs. When I was in school and even after I got out of school, I never heard of anybody who did drugs. And there were no programs telling them not to do drugs, there were parents and schools and priests and rabbis and people who said, "Don't do drugs." They've all been flushed down the toilet as being meaningless and now the kids are all dropping dead.

God bless Bush

M: You think that organized religion would help?

PM: I think we should do what Reagan wanted to do and what Bush wants to do, dismantle these hideous government programs such as the department of education, the department of this, the department of that, and pour the money into the churches. The real churches, not the Scientology, crackpot, Jesse Jackson, fly-by-night churches and--having destroyed the churches over the past 30 years, and the family in the process, and the prospects of people having a future--reinvest in that. People say you can't have church in government. Well, you can't have government without the church! It can't be done by government leaders, it's got to be done by church leaders.

M: One could argue the churches are already handed huge subsidy through their tax-exempt status...

PM: That's a total lie of the communists and the liberals. Their tax-exempt status means nothing. They own buildings that need maintenance--churches and schools--all of which are closing and turning into toilet discotheques so the kids can go shoot up. There was an article a week ago in The New York Times--who's never been against printing an article, so long as it destroys religion--and they have in these discotheque toilets, I call them disease-o-theques, they have separate rooms in the back, and when the kids all pass out from Ecstasy or crack or whatever it is they're killing themselves with, they don't want to call the police because you have to fill out too many forms when someone ODs. So they take them to this back room and lay them out like a scene where the war wounded lie down in Gone With the Wind, and this is a description in the Times! They have someone there to send for a private ambulance to take them to a private hospital, so they don't get a criminal record. This is what parents are giving money to their children for. How much money do you need to go to your toilet discotheque, take your drugs, jump up and down and scream to the music and maybe you'll drop dead? What can you say? You don't see that in the movies because it might make that music world look bad.

Fools on film

M: I find this perspective rather interesting, in that your films, especially ones like Trash and Heat, have been noted for opening up to disenfranchised people, particularly drug addicts. And yet you seem to have a lot of disdain for these people...

PM: Those films were a human reaction to foolish lives, which is reflected in humour. People making fools of themselves is the basis for all humour. People who are well behaved are not good subjects for humour. What you just said, you should really analyze it. You said that because I opened the cinema up to something that hadn't been seen before, I was endorsing it. Come on! You sympathize with the characters, but they're doing foolish things--taking the line that drugs are good for you, do what you want, live in the gutter, have sex whenever you want with whoever you want. I just showed people doing that and they didn't look so great.

M: Why do you think people draw that from your work then?

PM: It's a basic kind of media position. (makes a mocking, whiny voice) "We must accept every kind of behaviour, no matter what, or we're not good people." You understand human nature, you make a story about it. A doctor who treats cancer doesn't endorse cancer. Life today is a very empty thing for most people. Movies reflect this, though inadvertently. I don't see many movies these days, but I'll tell you, I saw Fight Club, and the first hour is essentially a justification for the Oklahoma bombing. If you look at that film, Brad Pitt was Timothy McVeigh. He enunciated an incredible hatred of people and women as well.

Unhealthy hip hop?

M: But one could argue that the director, David Fincher, was depicting his characters somewhat sympathetically but wasn't endorsing what they were doing, like you with Trash...

PM: But I never had characters doing things like that. Killing people, blowing people up, beating up women. I'm not saying the film shouldn't have been made, I'm just saying the film is indicative of the hatred a lot of people have. I never made movies that said this was a wonderful new lifestyle that people should take up. I thought it was just a fad, I didn't realize there was that much money in it, that Time Warner would end up financing films of this nature. The hugest corporations in the world are behind this kind of negativity, drugs, hip hop, rap--it's all supposed to be healthy, according to The New York Times.

M: Can you think of a film that doesn't promote that kind of negativity, a recent film you liked?

PM: Best in Show was the best film of last year. It was the output of one individual, not a committee or a company. One guy, writing, directing and acting in it with his friends. It said more about America than a movie like Traffic could ever hope to say. Those characters were more a portrait of where America is, they were totally idiotic. They were all these people living together as couples to raise dogs, not children. What has the world come to when children are just things you kill or abort, and if you have them they become drug-addicted whores like in Traffic, and you raise a dog because they're more preferable? When you deal with humour you can say so much more.

M: Are you married?

PM: I luckily avoided all that. I find so many people with children have led such an unhappy life. Something must have soured me over the years to put me off. I have lots of brothers and sisters who have children and they've been fairly successful at it. In a way I just didn't want the responsibility.

Trash screens at Cinéma du Parc on Friday, May 11 and throughout the month