Has anyone ever sat through the entire thing?
I know its not meant to be watched all the way throught (or maybe it is?), but has anyone watched this film in its entirity?
shareHas anyone sat in a park and watched the Empire States Building for eight hours straight? I'm sure someone has seen this film in it's entirity (and I bet the artist laughed at them - "jokes on you fkrs!"). I wonder if Warhol was by the camera for eight hours. I've sat on a beach for close to that, but I had beer and people to watch. I don't think I'd be interested.
That's, just like... your opinion, man.
I live in Montreal and in 1994 for its first time in 2 decades, the Festival of New Cinema was rescheduled from October to June. Anyway, Chamberland, the Festival's director, decided to screen Warhol's EMPIRE across St-Laurent Blvd. (Montreal's Main Street) during a hot June night, from 9:30 P.M. to around 4 or 5 A.M. At that time, I was living with that girl who was fond of out of norm experiments - like watching this 7-8 hour-long movie, sitting on her couch we brought on the sidewalk (it wasn't our idea of comfort, lying on the pavement for several hours). We actually stayed the whole night, watching the thing projected on a white wall across the street while cars and people passed underneath, eating, talking, drinking, smoking, reading the early newspaper delivery. Since there was really, REALLY no plot at all, and no dialogues nor sound of some sort coming from the screen, we wouldn't miss a thing if we were going for a piss or talking a few minutes to a friend passing by. It was indeed a fun experience, probably enhanced by the fact it was projected outside and on the street.
I remember reading that Warhol used most of his silent movies to project them on the Velvet Underground while performing on various Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia artshows, so I don't think these films (SLEEP, COUCH, EAT, etc...) were destined to be watched alone, in a dark screening room. If people want to do it - and probably many have already done it -, it's they're thing. If they want to share it here - or elsewhere - hey, why not?
But as for me, I wouldn't say that screening night of EMPIRE would have been so special if it wasn't for its context.
Jean
Andy Warhol: "... there's nothing more depressing than calling up somebody you've been calling up for years, any time of the day or night you felt like it, and suddenly someone else is answering the phone and saying 'Yes, just a minute.' It takes the fun out of it...I could only be really good friends with unattached people... if they're married or living with somebody, I would just forget them, usually."
That outdoor projection sounds great, especially if you had someone there to talk to while it was going on. Lying on lawn chairs on the roof maybe, talking to a friend, Empire playing on the street below, sounds memorable. I saw it playing at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, but they only had a short bit of it, like 90 minutes, not the whole thing. I probably wouldn't want to go to a museum and watch one thing all day anyway. Maybe outdoors with nothing else to do, but not during the day wasting precious museum time! That's it I guess, bye.
shareWow, that's exactly my idea of a romantic evening! And I mean it!!
shareMe too, I can feel it all as I think about it, it'd be really nice! I'll tell you what, find somewhere that's playing Empire, take your date to a "suprise movie" and if they like it as much as you, they're a keeper! Say, wanna go to a movie?
sharethats perfect!
haha.
i also know Jum Morrison watched this movie in its entirety,
this is just one of those awful avant garde movies that you see thinking it is something else, and end up having to watch cos the only other dude in the cinema wants to be there, and if you leave he'll think you are some kind of a plebian and a philistine.
shareThat actually sounds great in that context haha. Good story.
shareThank you for sharing your story.
This sounds like a film that should be played in the background of an art museum, as you have so slightly put it. Nowadays, with traffic cams, everything is filmed in real time, and can be sped up if need be.
I'm astonished for something that was produced in 1964. It's like Andy Warhol knew what the future was going to be like, à la George Orwell's 1984, even if it was or wasn't intentional.
I did preview some of the footage on YouTube. It's a shame that he didn't include any of the scenery from that era. It would have been nice to see people's reactions back then.
I only knew about this from the Angry Video Game Nerd's (AVGN) review of Desert Bus. I was shocked to learn that there's actual footage of the Empire State Building being filmed for eight straight hours.
I knew of shorter films that existed, i.e. Passage de Venus (1874) (Series of photographs of the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun in 1874.), and, Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) (In the garden, a man asks his friends to do something silly for him to record on film.).
If trolling existed back then, Andy Warhol would be king.