Blue Movie is a 1969 American film written, produced, and directed by Andy Warhol. Blue Movie, the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States, is a seminal film in the Golden Age of Porn, and helped inaugurate the "porno chic" phenomenon, in which porn was being publicly discussed by celebrities and taken seriously by film critics, in modern American culture, and later, in many other countries throughout the world. According to Warhol, Blue Movie was a major influence in the making of Last Tango in Paris, an internationally controversial erotic drama film, starring Marlon Brando, and released a few years after Blue Movie was made. Viva and Louis Waldon, playing themselves, starred in Blue Movie.
Synopsis
The film includes dialogue about the Vietnam War, various mundane tasks and, as well, unsimulated sex, during a blissful afternoon in a New York City apartment. The film was presented in the press as, "a film about the Vietnam War and what we can do about it." Warhol added, "the movie is about... love, not destruction." Warhol explained that the lack of a plot in Blue Movie was intentional: According to Viva: “The Warhol films were about sexual disappointment and frustration: the way Andy saw the world, the way the world is, and the way nine-tenths of the population sees it, yet pretends they don’t.”
Cast
Louis Waldon as Himself
Viva as Herself
Production
Andy Warhol described making Blue Movie as follows: "I'd always wanted to do a movie that was pure fucking, nothing else, the way Eat had been just eating and Sleep had been just sleeping. So in October '68 I shot a movie of Viva having sex with Louis Waldon. I called it just Fuck." The film was supposedly filmed in a single three-hour session and 30 minutes was initially cut for the 140 minute version. The climactic section was shot in a 35-minute take. According to Variety magazine, the lovemaking only featured for 10 minutes. The film itself acquired a blue/green tint because Warhol used the wrong kind of film during production. He used film meant for filming night-scenes, and the sun coming through the apartment window turned the film blue. According to Wheeler Winston Dixon, American filmmaker and scholar, who attended the first screening of the film at Warhol's Factory in the Spring of 1969:
Release
The film had a benefit screening on June 12, 1969 at the Elgin Theater in New York City. Variety reported that the film was the "first theatrical feature to actually depict intercourse." While initially shown at The Factory, Blue Movie was not presented to a wider audience until it opened at the New Andy Warhol Garrick Theater in New York City on July 21, 1969 with a running time of 105 minutes. The film also opened at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California. On its opening day in New York, the film grossed a house record $3,050, with a total of $16,200 for the week. Warhol received 90% of the gross, so recovered the film's $3,000 cost quickly. Viva, in Paris, finding that Blue Movie was getting a lot of attention, said, "Timothy Leary loved it. Gene Youngblood did too. He said I was better than Vanessa Redgrave and it was the first time a real movie star had made love on the screen. It was a real breakthrough."
Controversy
On July 31, 1969, the staff of the New Andy Warhol Garrick Theatre were arrested, and the film confiscated. The theater manager was eventually fined $250. Afterwards, the manager said, "I don't think anyone was harmed by this movie... I saw other pictures around town and this was a kiddie matinee compared to them." Warhol said, "What's pornography anyway?... The muscle magazines are called pornography, but they're really not. They teach you how to have good bodies... I think movies should appeal to prurient interests. I mean the way things are going now – people are alienated from one another. Blue Movie was real. But it wasn't done as pornography—it was done as an exercise, an experiment. But I really do think movies should arouse you, should get you excited about people, should be prurient. Prurience is part of the machine. It keeps you happy. It keeps you running."
Aftermath
Afterwards, in 1970, Warhol published Blue Movie in book form, with film dialogue and explicit stills, through Grove Press. When Last Tango in Paris, an internationally controversial erotic drama film, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Marlon Brando, was released in 1972, Warhol considered Blue Movie to be the inspiration, according to Bob Colacello, the editor of Interview, a magazine dedicated to Pop Culture that was founded by Warhol in 1969. Nonetheless, and also in 1970, Mona, the second adult erotic film, after Blue Movie, depicting explicit sex that received a wide theatrical release in the United States, was shown. Shortly thereafter, other adult films, such as Boys in the Sand, Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door and The Devil in Miss Jones were released, continuing the Golden Age of Porn begun with Blue Movie. In 1973, the phenomenon of porn being publicly discussed by celebrities and taken seriously by film critics, a development referred to, by Ralph Blumenthal of The New York Times, as "porno chic", began, for the first time, in modern American culture, and later, in many other countries throughout the world. In 1976, The Opening of Misty Beethoven, based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, and directed by Radley Metzger, was released theatrically and is considered, by award-winning author Toni Bentley, the "crown jewel" of the Golden Age of Porn.
Revival
Blue Movie was publicly screened in New York City in 2005, for the first time in more than 30 years. Also in New York City, but more recently, in 2016, the film was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan.
