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Robert Fraser

Paul Morrissey:

"I was with Andy at the Cannes Film festival in 1967. We connected with Robert [Fraser] in London right away - he was really nice.

We had the print of Chelsea Girls with us when we got to London. We'd taken it to Cannes to show at the film festival, and there were so many reels and it was so expensive that we'd taken it in our luggage. Andy had paid for seven or eight people to go. Some were in the film, some were friends of others. There was a whole bunch of us: Nico and Eric, Gerard, Susan Bottomly and someone else. But they never screened it. They had announced it, it was part of the programme, but they hadn't given it a date. They didn't know how to screen the film. They needed two projectors and two screens, and I had to try and show them how to do it. Then they were afraid there'd be some scandal because of ten seconds of male nudity, which they'd heard about but never seen. They never screened it. They refused to show it. The first time ever that an invited film was never screened.

And then we left and took it to Paris and showed it at the Cinematheque, and then took it to London, all in our suitcases. And we met Robert and we must have shown it in Robert's apartment. He was renting his aaprtment from Kenneth Tynan and I was very impressed by that. It was pretty empty, that apartment - we went over there a number of times. Robert would just call up Paul McCartney or John Lennon. A lot of people came. Paul McCartney lent us one of the projectors." (GB134-5)

Fraser's friend "Stash Klossowski" aka "Stash De Rola" aka "Prince Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola," who was also a friend to the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, recalls bringing Paul McCartney's 16 mm sound projector to Fraser's flat so they could project it on two screens.

Stash Klossowski:

"Robert [Fraser] called and asked me to bring Paul's 16mm sound projector, because Chelsea Girls needed two projectors used simultaneously. So I took it over, arrived at 23 Mount Street and found about fifty or more people crammed in, lying all over the floor, all the Warhol entourage. We showed the movie and someone complained about the noise and the police came.

Robert had this amazingly arrogant attitude towards the police which stopped them coming in. They tried. They were pointing to people passed out on the floor, saying, 'Is he all right?', but Robert just ignored this and ordered or pushed them back out on to the landing." (GB135)

Paul McCartney later recalled a screening of Empire at Fraser's flat:

Paul McCartney:

"There wasn't that much action in the Empire State Building. And we just sat around with a bunch of friends, and Andy was very enigmatic, didn't say more than two words: 'Nice room. Thank you.' Then we ended up going to the Baghdad House, which was the only place we knew of in London where you could smoke hash downstairs. We sat around this long table and ordered up various couscous things. I never really talked to Andy though. But it was great fun and I thanked Robert for engineering those moments." (GB135)

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