Director discusses basis behind ‘Basquiat’

Sunday, August 11, 1996

Schnabel’s first film details revolution brought on by
artist

By Brandon Wilson

Summer Bruin Contributor

While it is destined to be forever double-billed with Mary
Harron’s recent film "I Shot Andy Warhol," first-time director
Julian Schnabel’s new film "Basquiat" takes a very different
approach to exploring the often treacherous terrain of the New York
art scene. The connecting figure between these two films is Warhol,
the eye of the scene’s hurricane for 20 years, but while Harron’s
film dwells on Warhol’s legend-making exploits of the 1960s,
"Basquiat" features the artist and the art scene of the early
1980s.

Julian Schnabel makes an ideal tour guide on this trip back in
time. As he put it in a recent talk with The Bruin at the Four
Seasons Hotel, "I didn’t have to imagine this film, I just had to
remember it." Schnabel was making waves in the art world when
talented newcomer Jean-Michel Basquiat, a young black painter of
Haitian descent, appeared out of nowhere and took the art world by
storm. But, as though determined to live by the "live fast, die
young" credo of the youthful and talented, Basquiat was gone from
the scene almost as quickly as he appeared. He died in 1988 at 27
of a heroin overdose.

The painter left behind quite a legacy. The impressive volume of
work he produced, which set the art world’s jaded sensibilities on
its ear, still remains to influence new generations. His use of
color, his simple (often labeled "primitive") style of
representation and his incorporation of text into the paintings
distinguished him from his predecessors and contemporaries.

"I think Jean was like a cipher; he cataloged everything ­
information from all different times, things from the Bible, auto
mechanics catalogs, history books, things that people in the urban
world hear all the time and become part of our subconscious in a
way," says Schnabel. "He took the world, things we see as part of
our urban landscape, and he made these things into poems."

Schnabel’s debut as a motion picture writer and director was an
unexpected avenue the artist found himself on after being
approached by another filmmaker interested in the late great
Basquiat.

"Somebody came to interview me about Jean-Michel because I knew
him. I didn’t know I was going to make a movie, I thought I was
just going to help this person. I didn’t know what my role would
be, but as time went by I realized we had very different opinions
about what the real story was, so I bought him out of the project."
says Schnabel.

The jump from visual artist to filmmaker can be a daunting one.
One field offers solitude and a relatively pure realization of
one’s vision, while the other is a collaborative art form, known
for the endless compromises it forces on even the most accomplished
auteur. And then there’s money. Unlike painting a canvas,
filmmaking is one of the most money-intensive forms of artistic
impression, and this commonly results in battles of director vs.
the money men, a fight the directors often lose. Fortunately for
Schnabel, the production of "Basquiat" allowed him an unusual
amount of artistic freedom. "I tried to go the conventional route
to get this project financed," the director explains, "but that
didn’t go so well, so some friends and I put up the money
ourselves. I made the movie exactly the way I wanted, then we sold
it."

Money wasn’t all Schnabel was able to get from his friends. With
a few phone calls, the director was able to assemble one of the
year’s most impressive casts, featuring Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman,
Christopher Walken, Willem DaFoe, Parker Posey, Benicio Del Toro,
Michael Wincott and David Bowie as the aforementioned White-Wigged
One himself.

"They’re people I know," the director says of his cast, "friends
of mine; they know my work, they love Jean-Michel’s work, and they
believed in the project. They were really great. I think the
biggest compliment to me was that they would all just give me their
time and they were very generous."

To the freshman director’s credit, he gets some of the most
subtle and accomplished performances out of some of filmdom’s most
notorious scenery-chewers. Oldman’s turn as a level-headed
contemporary of Basquiat’s is notable for showing what the actor is
capable of besides going over the top with fury. And besides the
seasoned veterans, Schnabel also succeeds in drawing standout
performances out of newcomers Jeffrey Wright (playing Basquiat) and
Claire Forlani (playing Basquiat’s girl Gina, and recently seen as
Sean Connery’s daughter in "The Rock").

Wright, who won a Tony, a Drama Desk, and an Outer Critics’
Circle Award in 1994 for his work in George C. Wolfe’s Broadway
production of "Angels in America," landed the part of the painter
just after leaving "Angels."

"When I found out about ‘Basquiat’ I knew that was what I was
going to do next," he says. "I wanted to do it because the breath
of the characters is unlike what you usually get to do. To play an
artist is rare, to play a black artist is even more rare."

As an outsider to the art world, Wright’s perspective on
Basquiat differs from Schnabel’s and informed his view on the way
the world operates. "I think the irony is that his work which has a
populist aesthetic and a Negroidal aesthetic, yet most of his work
is in a chateau in Switzerland. I think that’s very representative
of the life he was leading and the difficulties he tried to
reconcile himself with."

Besides letting the world know who the young artist was,
Schnabel was also committed to airing the truth about the
relationship between Basquiat and Warhol. "What I wanted to show
was that Jean-Michel and Andy Warhol were real friends, that Andy
was a human being with him and when they worked together, you could
see they cared for each other. Their paintings together were
attacked, the reviews were bad, few sold. I thought it was
incredible that someone from an older generation and a younger
generation could get together, and those paintings are like a diary
of their relationship.

As for the future film career of artist Julian Schnabel, the
artist himself makes no long-range plans. "I don’t even know what
my next painting is going to look like, I don’t even know where I’m
going ’til I’m in the next room, but I’ll probably [direct again]."
One thing he is clear on is that "Basquiat" the film, like art
itself, isn’t meant to be enjoyed simply by those already inside
the art scene depicted. "I don’t think you need to know a damn
thing about the art world to appreciate this film, or care about
the character."

Film: "Basquiat," starring Jeffrey Wright and David Bowie and
directed by Julian Schnabel opened Friday in select theatres.

Jeffrey Wright takes on the role of painter Jean-Michel
Basquiat.

Basquiat was gone from the scene almost as quickly as he
appeared. He died in 1988 at 27 of a heroin overdose.