Andy Warhol, The Connection and The Brig

to: 1951: FIRST PERFORMANCES OF THE LIVING THEATRE IN NEW YORK
to: 1959: THE CONNECTION OPENS AT THE LIVING THEATRE
to: MAY 1963: THE LIVING THEATRE PRESENTS THE BRIG

The Living Theatre's production of The Connection was filmed by Shirley Clarke in 1961. Their production of The Brig was filmed in the early spring of 1964 by Jonas Mekas. Both Mekas and Clarke were among the founders of the New American Cinema Group. Warhol's friend, Emile de Antonio (star of Drink aka Drunk) was also a founding member of the group and its possible that Warhol would have learned of Clarke's film through "De" as he was nicknamed. According to POPism: The Warhol Sixties, both Shirley Clarke and Jonas Mekas were also involved in distributing The Chelsea Girls. Warhol (via Pat Hackett in Popism) recalled that in regard to the distribution of The Chelsea Girls, we had an arrangement with the Film-Makers' Distribution Center (FDC), which was then headed by Jonas [Mekas], Shirley Clarke, and Luis Brigante, to split the net profits fifty-fifty, wherever it played." (POP203) As the founder of the Film-makers' Cooperative, editor of Film Culture magazine, and a film columnist for the Village Voice, Mekas would play a key role in the promotion and distribution of many of Warhol's films in the '60s.

In The Connection, two actors identified as the playwright and producer address the audience directly, explaining that they have assembled a cast of real heroin addicts who would not be speaking from a script but improvising around a loose scenario. (SB29) Accompanying the action on stage was a group of jazz musicians, some of whom were real addicts.

The technique of using actors playing themselves or pretending to play themselves around a loose scenario, was a technique that Warhol and other filmmakers would also employ. As with The Connection, John Cassavetes Shadows (1959) was also largely improvised and featured jazz music as did the Beat film Pull My Daisy (1959) - although it would later be revealed that although Pull My Daisy seemed improvised it was actually carefully planned and rehearsed. As editor of Film Culture magazine, Jonas Mekas awarded the first Independent Film Award to the Cassavetes film and the second to Pull My Daisy. He gave Warhol the sixth Independent Film Award in 1964.

Warhol's The Chelsea Girls (1966) would later bring the underground techniques of improvisation and actors playing themselves following a loosely written scenario to commercial venues. The Chelsea Girls, like The Connection, also featured drug addicts. Both Brigid Berlin and Ondine were shown shooting up on screen although in their case it was "speed" rather than heroin. Warhol had covered the drug scene as early as 1951 when he illustrated a poster and album cover for The Nation's Nightmare - a CBS radio program consisting of six broadcasts about drugs and crime which was also released as an album.

In addition to Clarke's film of The Connection, another of The Living Theatre's plays, The Brig, was filmed by Jonas Mekas. The Brig, (first performed by the The Living Theatre in May 1963 (JT185) and filmed by Mekas in early spring 1964), (PS416) focused on the dehumanisation of soldiers in the Marines. Mekas claimed that it was after he showed his film of The Brig to Warhol that Warhol decided to use an Auricon movie camera to shoot Empire.

Jonas Mekas:

"...in the early spring of '64, I filmed The Brig... with what's known as 'a single system camera' - Auricon camera. Auricon single-system camera, which is a camera used by newsreel men, where you can film a scene with sound on film simultaneously, magnetic or optical...I filmed The Brig that way because it was the cheapest possible means. It cost me, like, 600 or so to film The Brig.

So, then, I projected it two or three days later - I developed and projected the original and projected the original print with sound-on-film for The Living Theater people, and I told Andy, and he came, and he saw it, too, and he was very impressed with the possibilities of sound and how cheap, how simple, that was...

But before that, he decided to shoot Empire, which was mostly John Palmer's idea. And since it needed long takes - it's a long film - he asked me what he should use, and I said, 'Why don't you use - you know - you can use [the] Auricon. That's the cheapest. I already had rented [one]. We can, you know, just take it.' And he was interested because he watned to get used to it because he wanted... to go and use it to shoot sound films with it. You know: in the way of The Brig." (PS416)

Although it is not known whether Warhol attended the Living Theatre's stage productions of the The Connection or The Brig, he did at least view Mekas' film of The Brig. In regard to The Connection, Warhol was probably aware of Shirley Clarke's 1961 film of the play - possibly through Emile de Antonio - although there is no record of Warhol attending the Living Theatre's live performances of the play. The play had, however, attracted a considerable amount of press attention, including a three page spread in Life magazine (JT186), and it is likely that even if Warhol had not attended an actual performance of it, he would have been aware of the production because of the public controversy surrounding it.

to: 1951: FIRST PERFORMANCES OF THE LIVING THEATRE IN NEW YORK
to: 1959: THE CONNECTION OPENS AT THE LIVING THEATRE
to: MAY 1963: THE LIVING THEATRE PRESENTS THE BRIG