Andy Warhol's TRASH  1970
Directed by Paul Morrissey
110 minutes
In English

This was the second of a Morrisey-directed, Warhol-produced trilogy based on the 60s anthem Sex, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll... this one being about drugs. It can be seen as an experimental film only in the sense that it totally abandons the Hollywood rules of filmmaking. It simply dives into the world of a couple who are living in poverty in a trashy basement apartment in New York's Lower East Side. Narrative gets pushed aside and the drama comes from real-life everyday occurrences. Doesn't sound like much? Well, it's fascinating. It has that grimy underground vibe that was so wonderful and specific... but if you can't tolerate causal sex or seeing people eat out of garbage cans, then you might give this one a miss. It does have a wild sense of humor, though.

Warhol created his own counter-culture stars among drug users and sex addicts, to counter the Hollywood star system. Here he drags many of them in like Joe Dallesandro, Jane Forth and Holly Woodlawn. Trash is an extremely black comedy centering around Joe Dallesandro and his gorgeous body, a junkie that all the women and transvestites are lusting to screw, but he's too strung out on junk to even notice. Weirdly enough, the famous old-school Hollywood director George Cukor loved this film so much he tried to get it nominated for an academy award! Of course it was impossible with such an edgy crazy film as this. It was heavily censored in England, where the producers tried to get it passed by arguing that it was an 'art' film.