''My Hustler'' is a 1965 American film by
Andy Warhol, and Paul Morrissey
Paul Morrissey (born February 23, 1938) is an American film director, best known for his association with Andy Warhol. He was also director of the first film in which a transgender actress, Holly Woodlawn, starred as a girlfriend of the main cha ...
. The film is propelled by the sonorous, magnetic acting of 30-year-old
Ed Hood interacting with the blonde Hustler,
Paul America
Paul Johnson (February 25, 1944 – October 19, 1982), better known as Paul America, was an American actor who was a member of Andy Warhol's Superstars. He starred in one Warhol-directed film, ''My Hustler'' (1965), and also appeared in Edi ...
.
Joe Campbell ("Sugar Plum Fairy"), Genevieve Charbin and
Dorothy Dean
Dorothy Dean (December 22, 1932 – February 13, 1987) was an African American socialite, connected to Andy Warhol's The Factory—for which she appeared in the films ''Batman Dracula'' (1964), ''Space'' (1965), ''My Hustler'' (1965), ''Afternoo ...
also compete for the attentions of the Hustler and provide foils for the interaction of the main characters. The erudite and very funny Hood, a perpetual graduate student in English at Harvard and "live parody of southern gentility", was recruited by
Chuck Wein
Chuck Wein (March 24, 1939March 18, 2008) was an American promoter and manager of entertainment acts whose celebrity stemmed from his five-year (1964–1969) association with Andy Warhol and from his discovery of Edie Sedgwick who became a ...
. Hood's magnetic performance was driven by his deep, mellifluous voice, trained by elocution lessons as a privileged child in Alabama, and lubricated copiously by alcohol. Among his many peculiarities was his habit of drinking beer from the bottle, not by placing the bottle to his lips, but into his mouth, sucking on it, as seen in the film.
Production
The film is a collaboration between Warhol, Chuck Wein and
Paul Morrissey
Paul Morrissey (born February 23, 1938) is an American film director, best known for his association with Andy Warhol. He was also director of the first film in which a transgender actress, Holly Woodlawn, starred as a girlfriend of the main cha ...
, with Morrissey as camera and audio operator and Wein credited as director, and was filmed over Labor Day Weekend, 1965, on Fire Island, NY using a 16mm
Auricon Auricon cameras were 16 mm film Single System sound-on-film motion picture cameras manufactured in the 1940s through the early 1980s. Auricon cameras are notable because they record sound directly onto an optical or magnetic track on the same film ...
news camera.
My Hustler is the first Warhol film worked on by Paul Morrissey, who introduced, in this film, camera movement and audible sound to Warhol's cinematography.
Release
Distribution
The first advertisement for a screening of ''My Hustler'' appeared in the 6 January 1966 issue of the
Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creat ...
for screenings on the 12th, 13th and 14 January at 8 and 10 pm at the Filmmakers' Cinematheque and was mentioned in the
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
on January 30. On January 20 a "special notice" in The Village Voice informed the reader that the film would play "every midnight indefinitely" due to public demand. It ended its first run at the Filmmakers' Cinematheque in the middle of April, 1966. Opening at the more mainstream Hudson Theater in July 1967, the film was shown near-continuously in New York City through the end of 1968. The film first showed in Los Angeles and Chicago in early July, 1966 and then ran near-continuously in L. A. and Chicago through 1969. The film was also shown in Tucson, San Bernardino, Albuquerque, Akron and Indianapolis in 1966-67.
Revivals
My Hustler was revived in New York City numerous times after 1969, although, since Warhol withdrew his films from distribution between 1970 and 1984, the provenance of some of these showings is unclear. After 1984, with Warhol's approval, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum "agreed to collaborate on the largest archival research project in the history of American avant-garde cinema: to catalogue Warhol's massive film collection, investigate its history, and preserve and re-release all of the films in conjunction with a program of scholarly research and publication." Since 1988,
My Hustler has been screened several times at both museums, but, like other Warhol films, has never been commercially released on DVD or other medium.
Reception
Box office
My Hustler was the first Warhol film to make any money, grossing $4,000 from its initial run at the Filmmaker's Cinematheque. At the Hudson theater in New York, it grossed $52,400 in its first 3 weeks.
Critical reception
A common expression at the time of the film's initial release was one of revulsion, viz. Bosley Crowther:
"It is sordid, vicious and contemptuous. The only thing engaging about it is a certain quality and tone of degradation that is almost too candid and ruthless to be believed."
A few years later the revolutionary nature of
My Hustler was being recognized; Vincent Canby, in somewhat backwards and grudging praise, complained that distributors were taking his critical remarks out of context and using them as advertising come-ons:
"Warhol, of course, is responsible for one of the toughest dilemmas facing critics today. Largely as a result of his pioneering in the making of movies like
Chelsea Girls and
My Hustler it's impossible to accurately describe many new movies without automatically writing phrases that can't be picked up and used as instant come-ons,"
By 1995 the critical perspective of Warhol's most influential films, including
My Hustler had shifted to an appreciation of their unique, semi-documentary perspective, Stephen Holden:
"The esthetic running through Warhol's films is an icy voyeurism. As witty or sexy or photogenic as Warhol's superstars may have been, their largely unstructured, crudely edited play-acting in front of his camera could also be cruelly revealing. Again and again, one has the feeling of confronting people with limited internal resources, desperate to be noticed at any cost."
Censorship
My Hustler was the subject of plainclothes police surveillance in the audience during its initial theatrical release in 1966, and on April 12 the owners of the Filmmakers' Cinematheque were served a summons to a hearing to show-cause why the theater's license should not be revoked for showing films of "sexual immorality, lewdness, perversion and homosexuality." On November 16, after a defense by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the charges were thrown out.
[The New York Times, April 13, 1966 p. 36; Nov. 17, 1966 p. 54.]
See also
*
List of American films of 1965
A list of American films released in 1965.
''The Sound of Music'' won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
A–D
E–I
J–R
S–Z
See also
* 1965 in the United States
Notes
References
*
External links
*1965 filmsat the Interne ...
*
Andy Warhol filmography
Andy Warhol directed or produced nearly 150 films. 148 ---> Fifty of the films have been preserved by the Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street betwe ...
References
Bibliography
* Escoffier, Jeffrey. ''Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore.'' Philadelphia: Running Press, 2009.
* Victor Bockris, ''Warhol: The Biography.'' Da Capo Press, 1989.
*
Watson, Steven, ''Factory Made.'' Pantheon Books, 2003.
External links
''My Hustler'' at IMDB{{Warhol
1965 films
Films directed by Andy Warhol
American independent films
1960s American films