Doc Watch: Tortured Artists

 

WOJNAROWICZ (A-minus) - This documentary about a true insurgent, outsider artist follows David Wojnarowicz as an East Village pioneer and leading provocateur during the AIDS crisis. It is urgent filmmaking, delving deep into an important era in 20th century art.

Wojnarowicz, who came from an abusive household and escaped in his mid-teens to turn tricks on the streets of Manhattan, was a purist who never relinquished his grievances. He was passionate about bucking the system in the late 1970s and was a driving force in the underground art movement that included Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat and which exploded in the early '80s. He was skeptical of the mainstream art world, even though he eventually made the cut of the Whitney Biennial. He led the surreptitious takeover of abandoned Hudson River piers -- the former scene of some of his sexual trysts -- by outsider artists ... until the City caught up with them and demolished the buildings. When rich benefactors commissioned a new work for their house, Wojnarowicz, repulsed by their wealth, created an installation full of garbage and bugs.

The artist left behind a trove of recordings that were part diary and part polemics, and his deep haunting voice narrates Chris McKim's faithful, exhaustive biography. We also hear pithy answering-machine messages from his former lover, the portrait photographer Peter Hujar, as well as present-day interviews with Wojnarowicz's siblings and surviving partner; mother-hen gallerist Gracie Mansion; and fellow traveler Fran Lebowitz, the writer who knew him.

A key scene near the climax of the documentary involves Wojnarowicz -- finally diagnosed with AIDS -- explaining the fascinating thought-process behind one of his final pieces, how circles could represent both microscopic images and telescoped views of much larger images, all positioned within or near squares. It's one of the most compelling examples of an artist's mind that I've ever heard. It elevates Wojnarowicz far above the cliched image of an artist as an angry young man and makes you wonder why more of us had never heard of him before.

WHO IS HARRY NILSSON (AND WHY IS EVERYBODY TALKIN' ABOUT HIM)? (2010) (B) - I doubt the parenthetical part of this title was relevant even back when this film was released about 16 years after Harry Nilsson's death, and decades after he was a relevant singer-songwriter. But the first question is pertinent, and it's worth getting to know the man whose two biggest songs were written by others and who then became known for his epic drug- and alcohol-fueled benders in the 1970s. 

Nilsson left a broken home as a teenager and was recognized in the '60s for his smart songwriting and an impressive full-range voice. He broke big with "Everybody's Talkin'" from the award-winning  1969 film "Midnight Cowboy," and he soared to number one two years later with "Without You." Both songs were written by others. (And the big hit song he did write -- "One" -- was a hit for "Three Dog Night.") He probably peaked in 1971 with the "Nilsson Schmilsson" album, which featured that "lime and the coconut" song. By this time he had caught the ear of the Beatles, and he became particularly close friends with John Lennon and Ringo Starr. 

This documentary fills in a lot of the early years and the run-up to Nilsson's stardom. It saves for the final third his descent into debauchery, including the infamous "lost weekend" with Lennon and May Pang, which included the heckling of the Smothers Brothers, who recall that meltdown here. Also on hand are some of Nilsson's friends and co-conspirators, including Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees, Gerry Beckley of America, Pythons Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam, Robin Williams, producer Richard Perry and percussionist Ray Cooper, who calls Nilsson "a wonderful perpetrator" famous for his days-long benders. Nilsson's contemporaries as songwriters Jimmy Webb and Randy Newman weigh in.

Nilsson's attempts at career suicide and his apparent death wish are examined. Pals have fun recounting his colossal appetite for substances and a lifestyle that wore out his heart by age 52. 

BONUS TRACKS

Nilsson was in full voice for his cover of Badfinger's "Without You" from 1971. It was three years later, while recklessly recording an album with Lennon (originally to be titled "Strange Pussies"), that he blew out his vocal cords and never really recovered.

 

David Wojnarowicz was quite the renaissance man. He fronted a post-punk band called 3 Teens Kill 4:

 

And a fuck-you from career-crashing Nilsson: