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Paul Morrissey, Icon of NY Underground Cinema Behind ‘Trash,’ ‘Flesh’ and More Andy Warhol Films, Dies at 86
Paul Morrissey, a fixture of the NY underground cinema scene and a collaborator of Andy Warhol, died Monday. He was 86.
Paul Morrissey, a fixture of New York’s cinema scene whose collaborations with Andy Warhol in the ’60s and ’70s reinvented the American underground and made local legends of amateur actors and transgender performers, died Monday at a hospital in Manhattan. Working on budgets of under $10,000, the pair completed a series of features, reaching the most commercial success with a trilogy starring Warhol fixture and gay sex symbol Joe Dallesandro that composed of “Flesh,” “Trash” and “Heat.” Warhol served as producer, while Morrissey’s cinema verite direction and largely ad-libbed scripts provided his leads, such as Dallesandro, Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn and Viva, a melodramatic apparatus to flex big personalities and affirm their star power. After serving in the Army, Morrissey began running an underground cinema in the East Village, with programming including his own shorts and the early work of Brian De Palma.
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