Basquiat (film)

Basquiat
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Julian Schnabel
Produced by	Joseph Allen Peter Brant
Written by	Julian Schnabel Lech J. Majewski John Bowe
Starring	Jeffrey Wright David Bowie Benicio del Toro Dennis Hopper Gary Oldman Michael Wincott Courtney Love Claire Forlani Parker Posey
Music by	John Cale Julian Schnabel
Cinematography	Ron Fortunato
Edited by	Michael Berenbaum
Distributed by	Miramax Films
Release dates	August 9, 1996 (1996-08-09)
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English Spanish
Budget	$3.3 million
Box office	$3 million

Basquiat is a 1996 American biographical drama film directed by Julian Schnabel and written by Lech J. Majewski and John Bowe based on the life of American postmodernist/neo expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat, born in Brooklyn, used his graffiti roots as a foundation to create collage-style paintings on canvas.

Jeffrey Wright portrays Basquiat, and David Bowie plays Basquiat's friend and mentor Andy Warhol. Additional cast members include Gary Oldman as a thinly-disguised Schnabel, Michael Wincott as the poet and art critic Rene Ricard; Dennis Hopper as Bruno Bischofberger; Parker Posey as gallery owner Mary Boone; and Claire Forlani, Courtney Love, Tatum O'Neal, and Benicio del Toro in supporting roles as "composite characters".

The film was written by Schnabel and Michael Thomas Holman, who was also credited for story development, with story by Lech J. Majewski and John F. Bowe. Holman, a former member of theatrical rock group The Tubes, had first met Basquiat in 1979 and together that year they founded an experimental, industrial/electronica group called Gray.

Cast

• Jeffrey Wright as Jean-Michel Basquiat
• David Bowie as Andy Warhol
• Benicio del Toro as Benny Dalmau
• Dennis Hopper as Bruno Bischofberger
• Gary Oldman as Albert Milo
• Michael Wincott as René Ricard
• Courtney Love as Big Pink
• Claire Forlani as Gina Cardinale
• Parker Posey as Mary Boone
• Tatum O'Neal as Cynthia Kruger
• Christopher Walken as The Interviewer
• Willem Dafoe as the Electrician
• Rene Rivera as Juan
• Sam Rockwell as Thug
• Rockets Redglare as himself
• Michael Badalucco as Counterman at deli
• Joseph R. Gannascoli as Guard at hospital
• Vincent Gallo as himself / Party Guest

Production

Schnabel's art in film

As director, Schnabel inserted himself into the film by adding the fictional character, Albert Milo (Gary Oldman), who he based on himself. Schnabel also added cameo appearances by his mother, father, and daughter (as Milo's family). Schnabel himself appeared as an extra as a waiter.

Basquiat was the first commercial feature film about a painter made by a painter. Schnabel said:

"I know what it's like to be attacked as an artist. I know what it's like to be judged as an artist. I know what it's like to arrive as an artist and have fame and notoriety. I know what it's like to be accused of things that you never said or did. I know what it's like to be described as a piece of hype. I know what it's like to be appreciated as well as degraded."

Basquiat died in 1988 of mixed-drug toxicity (he had been combining cocaine and heroin, known as "speedballing"). Basquiat's estate would not grant permission for his work to be used in the film. Schnabel and his studio assistant Greg Bogin created paintings "in the style of" Basquiat for the film.

Release

Box office

Basquiat opened theatrically on August 9, 1996 in 6 venues, earning $83,863 in its first weekend. The film ultimately grossed $3,011,195 domestically.

Critical reception

The film received positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 70% rating based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. Metacritic reports a 65 out of 100 rating based on 20 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three and a half out of a possible four stars. Conversely, Janet Maslin in The New York Times called the film "bold, attention-getting and more than a little facile, a stylish-looking film without the connective tissue to give it real depth."

"Directorial Debut Fails as Film, History"; review of Basquiat, by Julian Schnabel, San Francisco Examiner, August 16, 1996.

Similarly, the Los Angeles Examiner said that "Basquiat does not seem interested in anything that doesn't advance its director's personal agenda." The review stated that "Though as a writer-director, Schnabel's work is not the total fiasco the debut films of fellow artists David Salle (Search and Destroy) and Robert Longo (Johnny Mnemonic) were, it is fascinating to see what a compendium of Troubled Genius movie cliches he has turned out." Like several of the negative reviews, the review picked out for praise the acting of Jeffrey Wright as Jean-Michel Basquiat, saying "Basquiat's only genuine inspiration was casting Jeffrey Wright, who won a Tony for his work in Angels in America on the New York stage, as the artist. An actor whose talent is visible even in this standard role, Wright's ability creates more interest in Basquiat's fate than would otherwise exist."

The reviews in the art press focused more on the relation of Schnabel as director to his portrayal of Schnabel as artist in the film, and on changes to the facts of Basquiat's life introduced by Schnabel to make a more accessible film. In Art in America, the art critic Brooks Adams wrote:

Basquiat can be seen as a huge, lurking self-portrait of the artist-Schnabel, not Basquiat. So laden is the film with the innumerable coincidences of Basquiat and Schnabel's enthusiasms (among others, for pajamas and surfing) that the movie should be more appropriately called My Basquiat... To a remarkable degree, the movie succeeds, by dint of its authorial slant, in popularizing the myth of Basquiat as a young, gorgeous, doomed, yet ultimately transcendent black male artist, even as it extends and reinflates the myth of Schnabel as a protean, Picassoid white male painter... Yet for all one's apprehension about the very idea of Schnabel making such a film, Basquiat turns out to be a surprisingly good movie...It is also an art work.

After the film was released, the actor Jeffrey Wright said that "I think my performance was appropriated, literally, and the way I was edited was appropriated in the same way his [Basquiat's] story has been appropriated and that he was appropriated when he was alive. [...] Julian made him out to be too docile and too much of a victim and too passive and not as dangerous as he really was. It's about containing Basquiat. It's about aggrandizing himself through Basquiat's memory."

Comparing Bowie's portrayal of Warhol to others who've portrayed Warhol prior, Paul Morrissey (who directed many films that Warhol produced) said "Bowie was the best by far. You come away from Basquiat thinking Andy was comical and amusing, not a pretentious, phony piece of shit, which is how others show him." He also noted that "Bowie at least knew Andy. They went to the same parties." Bowie was able to borrow Warhol's actual wig, glasses and jacket from the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh for the film. Writer Bob Colacello, who edited Warhol's Interview magazine in the 70's and early 80's, said "[Crispin] Glover walked the most like [the real] Andy, [Jared] Harris talked the most like Andy, and Bowie looked the most like Andy. When I first saw Bowie on the set, it was like Andy had been resurrected."

Music

The following songs are in order of their appearance in the film.

• "Fairytale of New York" – The Pogues
• "Public Image" – Public Image Ltd.
• "Girlfriend" – The Modern Lovers
• "Suicide Mode" – Nicholas Marion Taylor
• "Suicide Hotline Mode" – Nicholas Marion Taylor
• "I'm Not in Love" – Toadies
• "Lust for Life" – Iggy Pop
• "The Nearness of You" – Keith Richards
• "Waiting on a Friend" – The Rolling Stones
• "Pixote Theme" – Electro Band
• "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" – Them
• "You Can't Be Funky (If You Haven't Got Soul)" – Bush Tetras
• "Flamenco Sketches" – Miles Davis
• "Ko-Ko" – Charlie Parker
• "White Lines" – Melle Mel (as GrandMaster Flash Melle Mel)
• "Beast of Burden" – The Rolling Stones
• "Rise" – Tripping Daisy
• "Is That All There Is?" – Peggy Lee
• "Paris Je T'aime (Paris, Stay the Same)" – David McDermott
• "April in Paris" – Charlie Parker
• "Who Are You This Time" – Tom Waits
• "India" – The Psychedelic Furs
• "D'amor sull'ali rosee" (Il trovatore, Act 4 Sc. 1) – Renata Tebaldi
• "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)" – Tom Waits
• Symphony No. 3, Opus 36 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) – London Sinfonietta
• "Summer in Siam" – The Pogues
• "She Is Dancing" – Brian Kelly
• "Hallelujah" – John Cale
• "A Small Plot of Land" – David Bowie
• "This Is the Last Song I'll Ever Sing" – Gavin Friday

See also

• List of American films of 1996
• Downtown 81

External links

• Basquiat at IMDb
• Basquiat at Box Office Mojo
• Basquiat at Rotten Tomatoes
• Basquiat at Metacritic