Paul Morrissey
Meet Paul Morrissey: filmmaker, businessman for Andy Warhol's Factory, and one of the people most crucially responsible for making Andy's aesthetic accessible to a broad audience. Born in 1938, Morrissey's early interests quickly shifted from literature at Fordham University to independent filmmaking. His early work - e.g., Civilization and Its Discontents, and Mary Martin Does It, both from 1962 - mixed the brutality of the street scene with campy dark humor. After meeting Warhol in 1965, Morrissey brought aspects of these films to the experiments Warhol was conducting in his studio. His influence quickly grew from that of a co-director to assuming full control of film production, culminating in the trilogy of Flesh (1968), Trash (1970), and Heat (1972). Morrissey's visions of hustlers, drag queens and drug addicts transcended mere exploitation, channeling the personality-driven environment of the Factory Superstars onto the silver screen. In addition to his work as a director, Morrissey also convinced Warhol to become a rock 'n roll producer: the result of this was the discovery and artistic redefinition of the Velvet Underground. In 1975 Morrissey left the Factory, and struck out on his own, maintaining to this day a fiercely independent approach to filmmaking that can be seen in his more recent films, such as Spike of Bensonhurst (1988), with its "this ain't Rocky" story of a boxer wannabe crossing paths with the mob, and his documentary of the life of Vera von Lehndorff, Veruschka (My) a Displayed Body (2005), tracing the supermodel's trajectory from Prussian aristocrat, through darling of the modeling world, to avant-garde artist.
