Composer · Actor · 1942

John Cale

3: briefs
13:00: average
39 min: in total

On film.briefs3

Basquiat

Julian Schnabel · 1996

Julian Schnabel’s 1996 directorial debut is a biographical film about Jean-Michel Basquiat, starring Jeffrey Wright and David Bowie as Warhol. Made without access to Basquiat’s actual artwork, it relies on stylistic approximation and a self-reflexive script co-written by Schnabel and Lech Majewski. The film traces Basquiat’s rapid ascent and decline in 1980s New York, foregrounding his relationship with Warhol and his struggle with addiction. Its strength lies in texture and restraint; its limitation, in the narrowing of Basquiat’s voice, politics and heritage to fit Schnabel’s personal elegy.

13:00

The Velvet Underground

Todd Haynes · 2021

Todd Haynes’s 2021 documentary examines the Velvet Underground not as a rock band but as a convergence of avant-garde film, minimalist composition, and 1960s New York counterculture. Built from newly shot interviews and rigorously curated archival material — much of it silent, scratched, or degraded — the film privileges texture, timing, and material constraint over narrative or biography. It foregrounds the roles of Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, and the Factory milieu while leaving gaps around later line-up changes and musical evolution. Edward Lachman’s cinematography and Affonso Gonçalves’s editing sustain a deliberate, almost tactile pace.

13:00

Something Wild

Jonathan Demme · 1986

Jonathan Demme’s 1986 film follows an uptight investment banker drawn into the chaotic orbit of a woman who shifts identities as easily as she shifts lanes. What begins as flirtation becomes a road trip, then a reckoning — with class, masculinity, and the quiet violence built into everyday American life. Anchored by Melanie Griffith’s layered performance and Jeff Daniels’ tightly wound transformation, it balances quirky charm with genuine unease, using genre not as container but as provocation.