Basquiat

This article is about the biographical film of the artist. For the artist, see Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Basquiat
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Julian Schnabel
Produced by	Peter Brant Joseph Allen
Written by	Julian Schnabel Lech J. Majewski
Starring	Jeffrey Wright David Bowie Benicio Del Toro Gary Oldman
Music by	Julian Schnabel John Cale
Cinematography	Ron Fortunato
Editing by	Michael Berenbaum
Distributed by	Miramax Films
Release date(s)	August 9, 1996
Running time	108 min.
Country	United States
Language	English Spanish
Budget	$3.3 million
Gross revenue	$3,011,195

Basquiat is a 1996 biopic/drama film directed by Julian Schnabel which is 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 include Gary Oldman as a thinly disguised Schnabel, Michael Wincott as the poet and art critic Rene Ricard; Dennis Hopper as Bruno Bischofberger; Claire Forlani, Courtney Love and Benicio del Toro in supporting roles as "composite characters".

The film was written by Schnabel while Lech J. Majewski and John F. Bowe each receives a story credit and Michael Thomas Holman receives a story development credit.

Cast

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

Production

Schnabel's art in film

As director, Schnabel is often found painting himself into the film by adding the fictional stand-in character, Albert Milo (Gary Oldman), based on Schnabel. Schnabel also leaves a bit more of himself in the film by adding cameo appearances by his own mother, father, and daughter (as Milo's family.) Schnabel himself is an extra as a waiter.

"Basquiat" was the first commercial feature film about a painter made by a painter. The director 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.”^[1]

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 Bogan created paintings "in the style of" Basquiat for the film.^[2].

Release and reception

Critical

The critical response to this film was mixed, and not as positive as towards Schnabel's later films, particularly The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

The Janet Maslin in The New York Times called the movie “bold, attention-getting and more than a little facile, a stylish-looking film without the connective tissue to give it real depth.^[3]”

Directorial Debut Fails as Film, History” review of Basquiat, by Julian Schnabel, San Francisco Examiner, August 16, 1996^[4]

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."^[5]

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 movie. 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.^[6]

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."^[7]

Music

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

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

See also

• List of American films of 1996
• Downtown 81

References

External links

• Basquiat at the Internet Movie Database
• Basquiat at Allmovie
• Basquiat at Box Office Mojo