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SCREEN TESTS  Andy
Warhol's movie, Screen Tests, is exactly what it sounds like, a bunch of close
ups of people who drifted through the early Factory. They were asked to sit on
a stool in front of a camera for what seemed like an eternity without acting,
dialogue, direction, or doing anything at all. It sounds easy, almost boring,
but in fact, when I did it, it was quite intense. Cornell had sent my class to Manhattan on a field
trip to visit famous artists' studios like Rauschenberg's and Oldenburg's, but
Warhol's was as far as I got. Andy's studio was called the Factory and instead
of the pristine white walls and bright lights of the other studios, it was dim
and dirty looking, as if it were underground. The only illumination was
reflected light coming off the tinfoil someone had pasted on the walls, making
everything seem unreal and flickering. Out of the gloom, Gerard Malanga walked
up to me, ignoring my classmates and flashing his blond hair and insolent
manner. I had met him before, when he came up to Cornell to read his poetry and
I was happy to see him now. I felt very special indeed as he led me to a little
silver painted couch. "Andy's doing something called Screen Tests," he whispered in my ear. "You just look into the
camera for fifteen minutes. Alan Ginsberg's already done one, he was great.
Maybe I'll get Andy to do one of us together, we could set it up right now..." I
watched my classmates file into the elevator as they started back to Cornell
without me. They looked like foreigners now, as the steel doors of the elevator
shut on their faces and I forgot I ever knew them. I
said yes, of course, knowing that the opportunity of being used by a famous
artist in any way was better than sitting in art classes which I was failing
anyway. Nothing happened for about an hour while I was ignored by the others
who were busy ignoring each other. In the sixties it was important to be cool.
Finally, I was lead to the far end of the cavernous studio and told to
wait...there was a lot of waiting here in the Factory...then Warhol walked over and
people buzzed around while a camera was set up in front of my face. Warhol did
not introduce himself which was fine with me. Later I would learn that he was
painfully shy and would rather eat ground glass than talk to a stranger. At the
time I figured, he's the artist here, no need for formalities, besides I liked
the freedom of anonymity. What I really liked was all the attention but it
didn't last very long. After turning on the camera, everybody left me there,
alone. They just turned around and walked away, leaving me with a running
camera pointed at my face. Next to the muzzle of a gun, the black hole of the
camera is one of the coldest things in the world. I chose to ignore it, but
what I couldn't ignore was the thought that this was all a joke, there was no
film in the camera and they were making bets at the other end of the Factory
about how long I would sit there like an idiot. I recognized this rabid thought
- paranoia - and grabbing it, I quickly dragged it kicking and screaming to a
closet in the lower left hand corner of my brain. Rather than spend my one and only screen test
wondering if I was an asshole, I went the other way. Staring down the camera, I
decided to take it all as seriously as a baptism, an ordeal one must pass in
order to be inducted into the infamous underground. Afterwards, like a new
convert, I couldn't stop talking about what a genius Andy was: the way people's
expressions changed in Screen Tests,
making it a psychological study as their images cracked, and their real
personalities crept naked out of their eyeballs, plus the idea of conferring
immortality onto unknowns - everyone's democratic little minute of fame - mixed
with the deafening speechlessness of it all. Like medieval inquisitors, we proclaimed
them tests of the soul and we rated everybody. A lot of people failed. We could
all see they didn't have any soul. But what appealed most of all to us, the
Factory devotees, a group I quickly became a part of, was the game, the cruelty
of trapping the ego in a little fifteen minute cage for scrutiny. I saw
Salvador Dali strike too flamboyant a pose for his test and when the arm
holding his cane collapsed, the upper lip holding his mustache twitched and
drooped. I liked him better that way. Now as I look back, I think we were the only ones
excited by these games. What Warhol was doing is what any artist does, try to
pin down the thing he finds most alluring and elusive, and for him that was
intimacy. In a society that frowns on staring as a breach of privacy, Screen
Tests allows you to look for as
long as you like into someone's eyes, as they look back at you. It is a
voyeur's forbidden fantasy to have the tables turned by being the object of the
gaze without its accompanying terror. Looking at Screen Tests, it is hard not to pretend that these haunting
faces do, in fact, finally recognize you as they stare out of their mysterious
celluloid world. Of course, the person who loved watching these films the most,
and did so over and over, while the rest of us ran to the other end of the
Factory, was Warhol. The black and white, the poor quality and cheap
production, and the sparse documentary style increases the intimacy, making us
feel that these faces have a life of their own, although it is frozen in another
time. Unlike portraits or photos, they seem to be alive in their untouchable
world - they breath, they blink, all of which heightens a nostalgic sense of
loss, both ours and theirs. They are masterpieces not for entertainment, but
for contemplation. Also these early tests set the tone of Warhol's directing style which was complete lack
of direction. The fifteen minute cage was lengthened to a reel, as he refused
to turn off the camera and we were left to our own rat-like devices until the
reel ran out. Yes, yes, that was fun, more games, and possible cruelty. But for
Warhol it was once again an effort to get close, to crawl under the defensive
artifice of acting while remaining completely non-judgmental about what we did. Some of the people in the film are dead now and all
of us no longer look as we did. The minute the film was finished we all became
ghosts trapped in the limbo of film. From EYE WITNESS TO WARHOL By MARY WORONOV Publisher VICTORIA DAILEY |