Kenny used to manage TLA video back before it shut its doors forever in 2010. In 2006 he held onto copies of Flesh, Trash and Heat for me, for about two weeks, till I could purchase them. The Image DVD release of Paul Morrissey’s films was such a big deal for me. I had wanted to see these films ever since I had gotten Andy Warhol’s Bad a couple of years before. I love all of Paul Morrissey’s oddball films, but Flesh in particular. At one point I was so enamored of Joe Dallesandro in this film that I painted three portraits of him, one in color, two in black and white.
Flesh, much like Trash, isn’t a film where narrative is particularly important. The films Morrissey made before relocating to Europe in the mid-seventies are characterized by their emphasis on interactions in the form of brief encounters. As Joe hustles his way from client to client in episodic form each interaction becomes a piece in a larger tableaux. The overall achievement of the film is that, in this loose form, it still manages to say so much about how people not only relate to one another but also accomplishes a comic critique of American life in 1968.
When I had the chance to speak with Paul Morrissey at length about his career in 2012 I was surprised that he didn’t seem to realize the extent to which his films still matter to so many young people today. The free spirit and subversive sexuality of Women In Revolt and Flesh in particular represent some of the few truly articulate commentaries on non-binary sexual relations and kink lifestyles. Though, I suppose, it would be nice if these films were indeed more popular than they already are.
