During thirty years of astonishing activity as a filmmaker, photographer and performer, Jack Smith produced a body of creative, antic writing that intersects and transcends the genres of hothouse fantasy, criticism and social comment. Bringing together long unavailable essays, performance scripts, interviews and other material, "Wait for me at the Bottom of the Pool" reveals the ideas and personality of an artist whose distinctive vision has influenced generations of filmmakers and performance artists. With caustic wit, Smith praises the performances of Maria Montez as well as the sculpture of Walter de Maria, examines the cult success of Reefer Madness and the uses of pornography, and discusses the perils of democracy, the evils of property and the police state, art history and architecture.
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During his lifetime Jack Smith was a legendary playwright, critic, and filmmaker with a small, but faithful cult following. His movie masterpiece Flaming Creatures defined avant-garde cinema in the 1960s. This collection of interviews, essays, and play scripts brings together most of Smith's unpublished work. With his sharp wit, shrewd observations, and radical aesthetics, Smith--who died of AIDS in 1989--is now viewed by many as an innovative founding father of post-modern performance and gay sensibility. Smith's work is still shocking and Wait For Me at the Bottom of the Pool is indispensable for anyone interested in contemporary theater and film.
From Kirkus Reviews
A vividly eccentric and entertaining posthumous collection of essays, interviews, scripts, cartoons, and fragmentary jottings from one of the granddaddies of American avant-garde filmmaking. Best known for the underground (and much banned) classic Flaming Creatures, Smith possessed a highly original, camp- inflected aesthetic that inspired everyone from Andy Warhol to Robert Wilson. Consider his synopsis of the grand finale of his film Sinbad in the Rented World: ``In the confusion of the climatic [sic] roach stampede, the Lobster in his final priestly disguise with the forehead-earring of exoticism in his back pocket, is drowned in Plaster Lagoon and now is hardened over.'' As this illustrates, Smith's work was informed by a unique, gnomic argot and set of stylized obsessions bordering on fetishism. Hoberman (film critic for the Village Voice) and Leffingwell (curator for an exhibition about Smith that will open this spring) helpfully provide a kind of field guide to this world where ``Lobsters'' are greedy landlords, ``mynah birds'' are imitators, and the phrase ``scum of Bagdad'' is a term of high praise. But the queen of Smith's universe was the 1940s B-movie actress Maria Montez. Not only did she ``feature'' in many of Smith's films, she also inspired his aesthetic theories. In a seminal 1962 essay, included here, Smith turns the conventions of Hollywood film upside down. Naturalistic acting (``reptilian acting'') is bad; bad acting is good; visuals are everything and script/dialogue only get in the way; and kitsch is noble and uplifting. Though the issues it raises are far from settled, this ringing defense of ``pure cinema'' anticipates not only Pop Art but postmodernism as well. Much of the rest of this collection is either a reiteration or an elaboration of these core theories. Smith is perhaps too obscure for the general movie-going public, but as these pieces ably demonstrate, he is an important part of the American avant-garde tradition. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
There was, in the early 1960s, at more or less the time when television had saturated the American market, a sense that movies - and not just individual movies but The Movies - were a form of culture, even the form of American culture. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Jack Smith, Maria Montez, Uncle Fishook, New York, Madame Nescience, Miss Montez, Jonas Mekas, Broadway Central, Mother Superior, Reefer Madness, Arabian Nights, Blonde Cobra, Jack Martin, Claes Oldenburg, Francis Francine, Judy Canova, Lower East Side, Walter de Maria, What's Underground About Marshmallows, Andy Warhol, Barbara Rubin, Ken Jacobs, Penguin Panic, Penguin Pits, Rented Desert New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
There was, in the early 1960s, at more or less the time when television had saturated the American market, a sense that movies - and not just individual movies but The Movies - were a form of culture, even the form of American culture. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Jack Smith, Maria Montez, Uncle Fishook, New York, Madame Nescience, Miss Montez, Jonas Mekas, Broadway Central, Mother Superior, Reefer Madness, Arabian Nights, Blonde Cobra, Jack Martin, Claes Oldenburg, Francis Francine, Judy Canova, Lower East Side, Walter de Maria, What's Underground About Marshmallows, Andy Warhol, Barbara Rubin, Ken Jacobs, Penguin Panic, Penguin Pits, Rented Desert New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 8
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- Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves by A. T. White on page 19, page 143, and Back Matter
- Mary Baker Eddy (American women of achievement) by Louise A Smith on page 20, page 82, and Back Matter
- Fernand Leger, an Exhibition by Robert Buck on page 54
- Hollywood Halluc P by Tyler parker on page 19
- Pop Art: Colour Library (Phaidon Colour Library) by Jamie James on page 22
See all 8 books this book cites
- Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons by Jonathan Rosenbaum on page 234
- Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000 by P. Adams Sitney in Back Matter
- O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance by Holly Hughes in Back Matter
- Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000 by P. Adams Sitney in Back Matter
- Experimental Cinema, The Film Reader (In Focus: Routledge Film Readers) by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster in Back Matter
See all 7 books citing this book
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