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For those who experienced them, like the people who write about those years in New York and who were close to Warhol’s universe, it is easy to remember that working days were inevitably followed by evenings spent in the restaurant. It was always the same one and it was always full of people. Old friends and superstars. Visiting guests or regular visitors could include all those who were part of Swinging London from a very young Mick Jagger, Anita Pallemberg, Keith Richard, Marianne Faithful, Nico, Jim Morrison, to artists such as Dalì and Duchamp and writers such as Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams - the list could be as long as a phone directory.
Sometimes William Burroughs would be there too. Conversations were both frivolous and serious. But often ideas were also created there, so it was almost inevitable that the restaurant became a film. The restaurant, “Max Kansas City”, has long gone out of business. Andy hasn’t been around for a long time either… but I don’t always remember that… It is 1967, when the war in Vietnam, endorsed by Kennedy, degenerates, bringing only destruction and death. The first movements are created, in particular on the West Coast, which strongly underline the uselessness and absurdity of the war. At Berkeley, the first large student demonstrations commence.
Gradually more people join in the protest against the horrific situation. Jane Fonda would become a leader and a symbol of the great peace movement. These distant protests cannot avoid reaching New York, they cannot be ignored by the Factory or the Lady of the Factory, Viva, the Jane Fonda of alternative cinema. During those same years the first hippie groups were created, “flower power”, unarmed troops that were also slightly more confused than the protest and fighting groups that were gradually expanding and which quickly reached Europe.
It was 1967 when Warhol, assisted as in other films by the loyal Paul Morrissey, made two versions of the same film, The Nude Restaurant, in just one day using a real restaurant with a greatly symbolic and prophetic name “The Mad Hatter” as a set. A version with an all-male cast was binned to make room for the one presented here and which had its premiere at the Hudson Theatre on 44th Street in New York, causing great controversy in the puritan America of those days, since all the actors are almost totally nude. The reviews which followed the release of the film were either destructive or excited depending on the spirit of that period. To quote just a few lines from a nasty critic of those days, Stephen Koch: “… a large group of men and just one woman are sitting naked in a restaurant because it is terribly trendy to be nude, considering the new pornography… They talk, and talk and talk and even if you try really hard to understand there is nothing interesting to hear… Miss Hoffman’s (Viva) exaggeratedly long confession about her Catholic upbringing and the information about the lewd priest are more about her own personal obsessions than the events themselves…
DVD FEATURESOriginal Full Frame VersionEnglish and Italian audio optionsOptional Italian subtitlesInterview with Mario Zonta (Andy Warhol Foundation) (in Italian with optional English subtitles) |
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