Paul Morrissey, iconic director and Andy Warhol collaborator, dies at 86

Paul Morrissey, cult director and one of the first Andy Warhol colleague, died. He was 86 years old.

Morrissey archivist Michael Chaiken spoke about this. Hollywood Reporter The director died in the early morning of October 28 at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York after suffering from pneumonia. His most famous auteur films include Flesh, garbage, heat, flesh for Frankenstein and the classic B-picture Blood for Dracula which starred Joe Dallesandro.

Morrissey’s films also include such classics as Women in revolt and a trilogy about 1980s New York Forty deuces, mixed blood And Spike from Bensonhurst. But it was Morrissey’s early association with pop artist Andy Warhol that helped establish him as a director and maintained his cult status throughout his career.

The two artists first met in 1965, and Morrissey signed a contract to advertise and film Warhol at the Factory until 1973. Space And My hustler a year later from The Velvet Underground and Nico: a symphony of sound And San Diego Surfing And Lonely cowboys in 1968.

Morrissey has become defensive in recent years about Warhol taking too much credit for their film collaborations with The Factory.

“Don’t say ‘Warhol films’ when you talk about my movies! Are you so stupid that you talk to people like that? I’ll have to live through this for fifty years. Everything I did was Warhol, or he did it to me. Forget it. He was incompetent, anorexic, illiterate, autistic, Asperger’s – he had never done anything in his entire life. He kind of went through it like a zombie and it paid off in the end. But I just can’t accept this shitty reference. What were you going to say if you could forget about it? Morrissey told Sam Weinberg during an interview in Bright Lights Film Journal in February 2020.

Typical of the posters for their joint films were Warhol advertisements – for example, “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein” or “Andy Warhol’s Dracula”, followed just below by “A Paul Morrissey Film” to attract the attention of moviegoers.

Morrissey was more generous in interview early March 1975 Yes with Jonathan Rosenbaum, where he admitted that Warhol at least occasionally operated the camera while he made the rest of the logistics and creative decisions. “I just understood what Andy was doing and helped him do it. Andy usually operated the camera. I was always doing the lighting, organizing the film, getting the actors together, telling them what to do. We never told actors to just be themselves. This is complete nonsense,” Morrissey insisted.

Other contributions Morrissey made to Warhol’s iconic status included helping to open and manage The Velvet Underground and co-founding Interview magazine. Morrissey was born in New York on February 23, 1938. He graduated from Fordham Preparatory School in 1955 and from Fordham University four years later.

After serving in the US Army, Morrissey moved to the East Village in late 1960 and opened the Exit Gallery. There he showed underground films such as Brian De Palmadebut short film, Icarus, and made his first films.

In 1975, after his collaboration with Warhol came to an end, Morrissey briefly moved to Los Angeles and began financing and producing his own films. Among them was a studio film, Hound of the Baskervilles, a parody of Sherlock Holmes, starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and his final film, News from nowhere in 2010.