Paul Morrissey
Paul Morrissey (born February 23, 1938 in New York ) is an American film director , who became known through film productions for Andy Warhol in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Morrissey, together with Gerard Malanga , is the discoverer of the music group The Velvet Underground , and he also discovered and promoted the young actor Joe Dallesandro . Morrissey replaced Malanga after his discrepancies with Warhol at the end of the 1960s as the "right hand man" of the pop art artist.
Live and act
Morrissey came from a strictly Catholic family in Yonkers , New York. He received an education at the Jesuit -influenced Fordham University in the Bronx . After graduating, Morrissey worked briefly at an insurance company, then as a social worker at New York City's Department of Social Services in Spanish Harlem .
Morrissey met Andy Warhol through the then Factory employee Gerard Malanga, who had invited him in the summer of 1965 to a screening of the Warhol films Vinyl and Poor Little Rich Girl at the Astor Place Playhouse . At this point, Morrissey had already tried his hand at filmmaking, engaged in underground film and moved into the circles of alternative filmmakers in New York. His own films, however, were more in the tradition of narrative cinema: they did not follow the avant-garde film propagated by Jonas Mekas and were considered to be “retrograde” as the Warhol biographer David Bourdon described it.
In the following years Morrissey joined the factory entourage and because of his business acumen quickly became an indispensable employee for Warhol, who was to replace the previous "factory majordomo" Gerard Malanga as Warhol's right-hand man. With an open disdain for rock music and drug use, Morrissey made sure the Factory was no longer a place to stay for junkies and loitering partygoers who did nothing productive.
Although Andy Warhol had withdrawn from the film industry from around 1968 - around the same time as the assassination attempt by Valerie Solanas - Morrissey was responsible for Warhol film productions for several years.
Filmography
- 1966: The Chelsea Girls
- 1967: I, a Man
- 1968: The Loves of Ondine
- 1968: Flesh
- 1968: Lonesome Cowboys
- 1968: San Diego Surf
- 1970: Trash
- 1971: Women in Revolt
- 1972: Heat
- 1973: Andy Warhol's Frankenstein
- 1974: Andy Warhol's Dracula (Blood for Dracula)
- 1978: The Hound of the Baskervilles
- 1981: Madame Wang's
- 1982: Forty Deuce
- 1985: Mixed Blood - Die Ratten von Harlem (Mixed Blood)
- 1985: Beethoven - The Whole Truth (Beethoven)
- 1988: Brooklyn Kid
- 2005: Veruschka - The staging (m) of a body (documentary film)
- 2010: News from Nowhere
literature
- David Bourdon: Warhol . DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-7701-2338-7
Web links
- Paul Morrissey in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Official website ( Memento of July 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
Individual references and sources
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Morrissey, Paul |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American film director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 23, 1938 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New York City |