{"id":882,"date":"2010-05-15T13:34:51","date_gmt":"2010-05-15T18:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/?p=882"},"modified":"2021-08-26T10:25:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T15:25:29","slug":"for-callie-angell-1948-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/15\/for-callie-angell-1948-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"For Callie Angell (1948\u20132010)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I learned the news about the passing of Callie Angell<\/a> the other day. It made me sad, a feeling that has stayed with me days later. I knew Callie Angell from when I lived in NYC in the \u201970s. I didn\u2019t know her well, but we hung around in the same circles and I often ran into her at screenings at Anthology Film Archives where she worked for Jonas Mekas. As the curator of the Andy Warhol Film Project, she was responsible for the painstaking task of archiving all of Andy Warhol\u2019s films.<\/p>\n

I had a chance to chat with her after a gap of nearly thirty years at the Warhol Symposium, which was part of the \u201cOther Voices, Other Rooms\u201d<\/a> exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts in the fall of 2008. Whenever factual questions related to the films arose at the symposium, everyone automatically would look to her. Callie always had the answer. It\u2019s safe to say that Callie Angell knew more about Warhol\u2019s films than anyone else in the world. Her work has provided the groundwork for all future Warhol scholarship. Her two slim catalogs on Warhol\u2019s films at The Whitney Museum are seminal pieces. She wrote major articles in The Andy Warhol Museum<\/em> and on Outer and Inner Space<\/em><\/a> in Millennium Film Journal<\/em>. Her encyclopedic book Andy Warhol Screen Tests<\/em> is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in Warhol’s films.<\/p>\n

I have referenced Callie in other blogs I\u2019ve written on Warhol (please see here<\/a> and here<\/a> and here<\/a> and here<\/a>). There\u2019s simply no way to avoid citing her. Jim Hoberman wrote a really nice memorial tribute<\/a> about Callie in the Village Voice<\/em>. I\u2019m posting this piece about a little-known, but extremely important Warhol film Since<\/em> (1966) \u2013 a work that I\u2019m very fond of, but which no one ever seems to talk about \u2013 as my own personal tribute to her:<\/p>\n

In his book POPism<\/em>, Andy Warhol commented about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963: \u201cWhat bothered me was the way the television and radio were programming everyone to feel so sad. It seems like no matter how hard you tried, you couldn\u2019t get away from the thing.\u201d The Kennedys had captured the imagination of the public and become a modern American myth. Warhol would turn Jackie Kennedy into an iconic image of national grief in the numerous silkscreens that he made of her. Douglas Fogle also reminds us in ANDY WARHOL\/ SUPERNOVA<\/em>, \u201cAs television broadcasts would endlessly show footage from the 8mm film taken of the Kennedy assassination by Abraham Zapruder, Jackie herself would become the unwitting star of her very own film.\u201d Another avant-garde filmmaker, Bruce Conner, made a film of Kennedy\u2019s assassination, Report <\/em>(1967), so perhaps it was inevitable that Warhol would also shoot his own film about this traumatic event, which had so transfixed the nation that no one could leave their television sets for several days.<\/p>\n

Conner used pre-existing or found footage, such as that taken by Zapruder, to comment on mass media itself. To a certain extent, John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy were media creations. They were sold to us just like appliances, which is why Warhol claimed not to see any differences between the commercials and other types of television programming, including the news. Warhol\u2019s version of the Kennedy assassination, Since,<\/em> turns out to be one of his most anarchic films. It\u2019s almost as if the death of the president becomes directly related to the sense of utter chaos that seems to exist among the participants on the set. Like Tarzan and Jane Regained, Sort Of <\/em>. . . (1963), Warhol\u2019s Since<\/em> seems so heavily reliant on improvisation that it appears at times to lack any sort of clear sense of direction (even though there\u2019s evidence in the actual film of at least some type of written treatment).<\/p>\n

In Since<\/em>, Warhol inadvertently plays Abraham Zapruder by filming the media events that the actors stage for the camera. The film features Ondine, as Lyndon B. Johnson, in the lead role. Other cast members include: Ingrid Superstar (Lady Bird Johnson), Mary Woronov<\/a> (John F. Kennedy), Susan Bottomly (Jackie Kennedy), and Richard Rheem (Texas Governor John Connally). Gerard Malanga and Ronnie Cutrone, the artist and one-time Warhol assistant, play a combination of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. There is no attempt at realism. A large, crumpled sheet of red construction paper becomes blood. A banana substitutes for a gun. The couch in the Factory serves as a car. Rather than evoking sadness, Since<\/em> is rather comedic.<\/p>\n

Warhol\u2019s mobile camera moves around the set in a seemingly random fashion. Each assassination attempt results in some type of incomplete coverage \u2013 the shaky camera movement often misses the important action, but invariably ends up focusing on the blood. Inflatable Baby Ruth candy bars create their own commercials within the film. Indeed, Since<\/em>, along with Soap Opera <\/em>(1964), might be viewed as the Warhol films that relate most directly to Pop Art. It\u2019s probably not a coincidence that both deal with Warhol\u2019s fascination with television. In The Philosophy of Andy Warhol,<\/em> Warhol comments, \u201cRight when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it\u2019s all television.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we view Ondine in a closeup shot at the opening of Since<\/em>, a male voice offscreen indicates the conceptual framework of the film, which will follow the model of the \u201cOswald display on television.\u201d He continues: \u201cFirst it happened, then it was played back in tape, and then it was played back in slow motion . . . Except that we don\u2019t have to maintain the stiff character portrayals \u2013 like one individual can assume another role, assuming that he has assumed that role by choice originally.\u201d The commentator also states that we\u2019re not in Dallas. Ondine seems surprised and immediately contradicts this by saying, \u201cIt\u2019s marvelous being in Dallas with the President.\u201d<\/p>\n

The participants appear to be pretty confused about the events. They are unable, for instance, to cite the proper street on which the motorcade is traveling or to supply the name of the Book Depository. Ondine indicates that Ingrid Superstar is his First Lady. He initially seems to think he\u2019s the President, but then is informed that he\u2019s actually the Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Ondine announces that he has to hire the assassins, suggesting one of the common conspiracy theories surrounding the event, namely LBJ\u2019s desire to be president at all costs.<\/p>\n

Ondine gradually becomes frustrated, mostly because the other characters aren\u2019t very imaginative in their repartee, especially Ingrid Superstar. Ondine complains that they \u201care absolutely boring.\u201d The only person Ondine praises is the \u201cclose-mouthed\u201d Jack Kennedy (his pal, Mary Woronov), who he claims \u201cmay have been the most interesting person here.\u201d At one point Ondine turns his back to the camera in protest. He then addresses his fellow performers: \u201cWe all have to try to cohesively keep attention away from Jack and play some kind of a vague scene. I hate to be the announcer of this, but I really think that we\u2019re all lacking in character. I have mine, sketchy as it is \u2013 I\u2019m still trying to maintain it. After insulting others on the set, Ondine yells, \u201cWhat the hell is the matter with you people?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost as if by trying to stage the Kennedy assassination as a television event on film, Warhol is showing the inability of a theatrical presentation to be convincing or to hold our interest, because it\u2019s incapable of employing the very techniques \u2013 repetition, slow motion, images of real celebrities in moments of tragedy \u2013 that kept viewers glued to their television sets, even though what they were watching was as minimal as anything Warhol had done in his own films. Since<\/em> is ultimately about the artifice of live theater, and the fact that it relies so heavily on a suspension of disbelief.<\/p>\n

In theater, an action is always different, whereas Warhol was fascinated with mechanical reproduction, with television\u2019s ability to reproduce or replay the same exact image over and over again. On the other hand, Warhol allows for imaginative transformation to take place. Not only are objects mutable, but characters can change identities, gender roles, and move between the living and dead. Throughout Since<\/em>, the recording apparatus \u2013 camera and microphone \u2013 as well as the lights becomes an intricate part of the action. Warhol stages the assassination of JFK, not as an historical event, but, largely due to the impact of television, as the media spectacle it truly was.<\/p>\n

Note: For a detailed analysis of Since <\/em>and other Warhol films, please see my book The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol<\/em> (University of California Press, 2012).<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

Image \u00a9 2010 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Film still courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I learned the news about the passing of Callie Angell the other day. It made me sad, a feeling that has stayed with me days later. I knew Callie Angell from when I lived in NYC in the \u201970s. IRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,10,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":108,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4332,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions\/4332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}