If you’ve driven through Mt Lawley of late, you can’t help but notice the large billboard on the corner of Beaufort and Walcott. Emblazoned across it is the black and white visage of a ’60s Lou Reed. He emanates cool, effortlessly.
For those in the know, the image is instantly recognisable as being part of Andy Warhol’s iconic Screen Tests. The premise of this short film was simple: people who visited Warhol’s New York studio, The Factory, and exhibited a particular star quality had to sit for a screen test in front of an old Super 8 camera.
Now, Perth International Arts Festival bring a unique opportunity for people to witness a selection of Warhol’s Screen Tests thanks to the upcoming appearance of 13 Most Beautiful… Songs For Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. The soundtrack is supplied by Dean Wareham and wife Britta Phillips.
‘Well the first challenge was to narrow it down to 13, which took a long time,’ Wareham said of the process of writing the music for 13 Most Beautiful. ‘There were about 200 we could look at; he shot actually close to 500, but not all of them have been preserved and transferred.
‘The process is you start just by looking at it and its trial and error, at least it is for me, not having any formal training. That’s sort of my experience with scoring film; you can have an idea about something that you place against the picture and then the picture immediately tells you whether you’re on the right track or not. It might be a really nice piece of music but it makes the picture seem boring. The thing was to tease out the mood of each film.’
Warhol’s unique vision is one which has transformed modern art. It essentially blurred the lines between what was high brow and what was low brow, creating a playing field of potentiality.
‘He took things that maybe people had considered ugly before and made them beautiful. It’s like the original punk-rockers, because that’s kind of what punk was about, too; a celebration of the ugly. His paintings are obviously considered classics, now, undeniably, and people love them. The films are still challenging and out-there too.’
What makes the Screen Tests so amazing are the cross section of people they bring together, from New York’s finest avant-garde artists to critics and dancers and drug addicts. Of course, among these are definitive highlights, Wareham pointed out.
‘There’s this one woman, Ann Buchanan, who I don’t know much about. She was from San Francisco. There’s so many sort of bridges between the beatnik world of the late 50s. She lived with Allen Ginsberg and she manages to stare at the camera for the entire length of the film without blinking, until at the end, a couple of tears start rolling down her face. That was Warhol’s favourite screen test: he called it The Girl Who Cried A Tear.’
So what would Wareham do if Warhol had invited him to sit for a screen test? ‘Well, I’d try to play by the rules and just keep still. I don’t know. I’ve done a little acting; maybe I could do it. I think it’s a difficult thing to do. It’s a psychological test, what with trying to convey one thing and then they end up showing a different side of themselves.’
13 Most Beautiful opens appears at Astor Cinema on Thursday February 25 and Friday February 26 as part of PIAF.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
