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the pleasure in each task. After his first visit to the rooftop set of Flaming Creatures,
Tony Conrad commented on how surprised he was “when it turned out that
people took three hours to put on their makeup” and “when people took several
more hours to put on their costumes.” 10 Andy Warhol witnessed a similar scene on
the set of Smith’s Normal Love: “preparations for every shooting were like a party—
hours and hours of people putting makeup on and getting into costumes and
building sets.” 11 According to Markopoulos, Smith “spent hours, a whole night”
before shooting Normal Love, “arranging, changing, shifting, replacing, placing objects,
people, cheese cloths, fabrics about a prefabricated moon pool.” 12 As Stefan
Brecht commented on the community that came together in the Theater of the
Ridiculous, “while the framework of reference of conventional theater experience is
the individual presentation of the play, in this theater it is the [collective] production
of the play—the series of presentations, rehearsals, composition of the script
… the performance gives a glimpse into a process of personal interactions within
a continuing community, everyone contributing personally.” 13 Or as Michael Moon
puts it, this community of performers created a “voluptuous fringe” 14 —the creative
excess which Flaming Creatures and Chumlum document so brilliantly.
Lupe, Rodriguez-Soltero’s homage to the Mexican-born
actress Lupe Velez, displayed Montez’s capacity for self-transformation more than
any other film. Like Maria Montez, Velez’s B-movie career and tragic end led to her
becoming a gay diva (she committed suicide in 1944). Velez became a star in the
late 1920s and was a major focus of the tabloids due to her high-profile romance
with Gary Cooper and subsequent marriage to Johnny Weissmuller. Toward the
end of her film career she starred in the B-movie Mexican Spitfire comedy series at
RKO, playing a stereotyped fiery Spanish woman.
Rodriguez-Soltero’s Lupe stands in sharp contrast
to Andy Warhol’s Lupe (1966), made at the same time. While Warhol focusses
on the sad, lonely, sordid end of Velez’s life, Rodriguez-Soltero and Montez
celebrate her operatic-like successes and tragedies. They portray her as choosing
and living a life of excess, and even in her death they show her body and soul
ascending to a saintly, inspirational place. Unlike Warhol’s minimalist, deadpan
aesthetic, with its improvisational, long take structure, Rodriguez-Soltero’s Lupe
is “visually very generous,” as Sontag would have put it. Filmed on Ektachrome-
EF and printed on Kodachrome-II stock, it contains exuberant explosions of Vera
West-like reds and greens and amazing superimpositions shot in the camera.
This lavishness draws loving attention to Mario Montez’s costumes and makeup.
While Warhol’s film depicts the self-destruction of the star (played by Edie
Sedgwick), Rodriguez-Soltero’s Lupe celebrates the freedom and pleasure of Mario
Montez’s transformation into this cherished actress, relishing his ascension and
departure from ordinary life—a life constrained by political, moral, and economic
structures—into an alternative space of glamor and pleasure.
By creating an unfettered “cinema of attractions,”
Smith, Mario Montez and their contemporaries
appropriated Hollywood excess in order to construct
and perform their own utopian spaces of pleasure. Their
glamour and gestures, generous visuals and vibrant
music created spaces of pleasure for both audience
and performers. They enabled a group of impoverished
filmmakers and actors to affirm their lives and their
right to existence. Anything but abject, they became
the exotic, glamorous and confident Scheherazade and
Cobra Woman.
contributors to neW YorK seAson
jerry carlson is Professor and Acting
Chair of the Department of Media
& Communication Arts at The City
College and a member of the doctoral
faculties of French, Film Studies, and
Comparative Literature at the Graduate
Center, CUNY. A multiple Emmy
award-winning Senior Producer for
CUNY-TV, he created and produces the
series City Cinematheque about film
history, among others.
stuart comer is Curator of Film at
Tate Modern, London. He oversees film
and video work for the Tate Collection
and Displays and organises an extensive
program of screenings, forums and
lectures focusing on current cultural issues
and the history of artists’ film and
video. He has contributed to numerous
publications and periodicals, including
Artforum; Frieze; Afterall; Parkett; and
Art Review. Recent freelance curatorial
projects include ‘Andy, as you know I
am writing a movie...’ at Beirut Art Center
and the 2007 Lyon Biennial.
caroline evans is Professor of Fashion
History and Theory at Central Saint
Martins College of Art and Design, University
of the Arts London. She has published
widely on fashion in the 20th and
21st centuries. Her recent publications
include Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle,
Modernity and Deathliness (Yale UP,
2003) and The House of Viktor & Rolf
(co-authored with Susannah Frankel,
Merrell, 2008). Her forthcoming book
Modelling Modernity: Fashion Shows in
France and America 1900-1929 (Yale
UP) is due to be published in 2012.
inga Fraser is Associate Curator of
Fashion in Film at Central Saint Martins
College of Art and Design, University
of the Arts London. She has cocurated
and coordinated major projects
including Kinoscope Parlour (London,
2010) and the forthcoming “colour inventory”
installation for Arnhem Mode
Biennale.
ron gregg is Senior Lecturer in
American Studies and Film Studies
and Director of Film Programming for
the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale
University. He has published articles
and curated programs primarily on topics
of gay identity and queer representation,
for festivals internationally including
the San Francisco International
LGBT Film Festival, Chicago Gay and
Lesbian Film Festival, and the South
African Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
Amy Herzog is Associate Professor of
Media Studies and Coordinator of the
Film Studies Program at Queens College.
She is also a member of the Ph.D.
Program in Theatre at the Graduate
Center, CUNY. She has published articles
and chapters on a number of topics,
including the philosophy of Gilles
Deleuze, film theory, musical film, and
the history of coin-operated film machines.
Her book, Dreams of Difference,
Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment
in Film (University of Minnesota Press)
was published in 2010.
stephen Horne is one of the leading silent
film accompanists based in the UK.
His speciality is to combine up to three
instruments in one live score—piano,
flute and accordion. He is a house pianist
at the BFI Southbank and plays
for festivals and venues internationally,
including Lincoln Center New York,
the National Gallery, Washington and
Pordenone Film Festival.
pat Kirkham is Professor at the Bard
Gradaute Center: Decorative Arts,
Design History, Material Culture, New
York. She is a distinguished historian
of design and has also written widely
on film and gender. She is the editor
of Women Designers in the USA, 1900-
2000: Diversity and Difference (Yale
University Press, 2000) and author of
Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of
the Twentieth Century (MIT Press, 1995)
among many others.