16 | Afterall

This content downloaded from 128.104.046.196 on January 18, 2018 11:56:21 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Hélio Oiticica, Neyrótika, 1973, MARIO MONTEZ, slide series 1 and soundtrack. TROPICAMP © Projeto Hélio Oiticica, Rio de h o nyk oct.12/15,1971 Janeiro for torquato neto.

MARILYN MONROE crosses a corridor-assembly, back view, the take is repeated, until feathers begin falling like snow: her steps become lighter, as if to evoke perfection: wanting to evoke-reproduce the famous scene in NIAGARA [1953] in which MARILYN hears the bell tower play the musical signal for the secret encounter with her lover, and she gets out of the car as if hypnotised and does the most perfect walk of all walks, crossing a bridge, holding a box purse, 7 hops, white-sexy blouse, black skirt: but here, in the repeating take, which transforms itself with every repetition, who evokes-parodies her is MM: MARIO MONTEZ in the film by BILL VEHR, which originally should have been called MM FOR MM, but became WAIT [sic] FOR SUGAR: remember SOME LIKE IT HOT in which MARILYN is SUGAR, whom at the end we see on a bicycle heading towards the yacht where the others are, yelling ‘wait for sugar!’ — the first time i met MARIO MONTEZ and was presented to him was Hélio Oiticica’s ‘MARIO MONTEZ, this year at a party at the house of film director IRA COHEN, sort of caliph of the TROPICAMP’ was first published in underground, who does neo-expressionist Portuguese in late 1971 in Presença, films using mylar plastic at all times: at this a magazine co-edited by Torquato Neto party MARIO was au naturel, that is, as a man: in all his films (except one, according in Rio de Janeiro. It has since nearly to SHELDON RENAN, called MOVIE, by been forgotten. The translation published ROBERT BLOSSOM, though it was called here aims at making ‘MARIO MONTEZ, A REHEARSAL as well, in which ‘he undergoes a metamorphosis into a dizzy TROPICAMP’ accessible to a larger and vain young thing’, this from the book public and bringing Oiticica’s an introduction to the american under- observations back into circulation. ground film; MARIO tells me: he is JOSÉ and runs after BEVERLY GRANT (a famous underground theatre actress): in this film he only says one thing: ‘i am JOSÉ’) he is a woman — when they first presented the most discussed film of the time, FLAMING CREATURES [1963] by JACK SMITH, his name was DOLORES FLORES — MARIO MONTEZ was introduced in CHUMLUM by film-maker , in 64: RON died the same year: about CHUMLUM PARKER TYLER writes (underground film: a critical history, p.[162]): ‘…a home-movie camp dressed up like a Middle Eastern harem (see ’s old films)…’ — the question arises: why choose MARIO MONTEZ: from what i’ve heard i guess JACK SMITH, with his obsession for MARIA MONTEZ, was of decisive influence in this, bringing him to adore the tropi-hollywood star — MARIO says: ‘you know, JACK talked to me a lot about her, such that in the process of choosing a name i got more and more interested and absorbed in reading and seeing everything about MISS MONTEZ — when it was time to do CHUMLUM, i said: i want to be named MARIO MONTEZ’ — in my opinion, more than any speculation about it whatsoever, this choice was something as simple and lucid as any true discovery: as the incarnated image-context MARIA MONTEZ: a MARIO MONTEZ — MARIA MONTEZ condition, this coincides with both finding themselves in situations of similarity: having a latin origin within an american context: an evocation of the tropi-pop cliché: in MARIA’s case it is Hollywood’s use of just this same cliché, in MARIO’s case, by the underground cinema — notice that MARIO MONTEZ is a direct product of JACK SMITH: JACK, in his oeuvre as in his general influence on underground cinema and theatre, is some sort of pop-tropicália: more than

1 Original text published by Hélio Oiticica in Presença, no.2, Rio de Janeiro, December 1971. Information in footnotes and square brackets added by the translator.

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This content downloaded from 128.104.046.196 on January 18, 2018 11:56:21 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). simple nostalgia for fox[-trot] and latin american music, his work is, contrary to the pure american pop of WARHOL, the search for the latin american cliché, and its incidence within the super-american context: MARIO MONTEZ is the actor-personality materiali- sation of it, straight product of this spirit-standing situation: referring to CHUMLUM, PARKER TYLER (op. cit.) says it is to be seen as a ‘JACK SMITH film’ too, identifying JACK’s way of seeing things with certain constants in the american underground cinema he has discovered; therefore one can imagine how much all those first activities in SMITH’s cinema influenced : it comes as no surprise that one of WARHOL’s first cinematic attempts was a film featuring JACK SMITH, DRACULA [1964], in which MARIO MONTEZ had his first appearance directed by WARHOL: he’s the lady in white: on his head, worn as a wig, a white-haired bolero jacket belonging to JACK: this very bolero-wig is used in the characterisation of HARLOT [1965], the key film at the beginning of WARHOL’s cinematic phase, with MARIO MONTEZ, also this terrific scene by RONALD TAVEL, in which a conversation between three ‘boys’ revolves around bananas till CARMEN MIRANDA is mentioned as ‘that tutti-frutti hat girl’: HARLOT is encapsu- lated in this off-scene conversation, juxtaposed with the original filmed part: i’ll transcribe here what PARKER TYLER says (op. cit., pp.149/150): ‘the solid time of WARHOL’s early films, with its delayed-action stalemate, is a temporal anamorphosis; the stretch of what seems a vertical situation, in HARLOT, for ex., is only abstractly horizontal. according to RONALD TAVEL’s synopsis, the situation of the four main characters in the film is potentially a design for real dramatic action of a funny or campy sort. the feminine two on the sofa are ‘JEAN HARLOW’ (a drag queen — MARIO MONTEZ) and a lesbian (CAROL KOCHINSKY); the masculine two leaning on the sofa’s back are a ‘mafia-type lover’ of JEAN HARLOW (PHIL FAGEN) and an ‘admirer’ of the lesbian (GERARD MALANGA). a charade atmosphere is established by the not altogether plausible casting. the supposed lesbian (a plumpishly attractive female) holds a fluffy white cat (WHITE PUSSY, MARIO MONTEZ’s cat-star); HARLOW and her lover are in evening clothes. in summary, the action of the film’s seventy minutes would read like this: HARLOW, reclining against her lesbian friend, works herself up by a very leisurely banquet of one banana after another into kneeling on the sofa and giving her lover a prolonged, prodigious kiss. the mafia-type’s eyes have usually rested on her while the lesbian and her admirer have stared steadfastly into the camera. the mafia-type makes a friendly gesture of offering the lesbian’s admirer a cigarette […], and then, toward the very end, lesbian and admirer pour beer over each other in playful malice. the only other action has been the cat’s spasmodic effort to get out of the lesbian’s lap — a procedure that probably was not anticipated, but for which one is grateful. with this to go on, any number of ‘plot actions’ and ‘situation developments’, mild or violent or whatnot, might have been thought of to fill out the running time. but, of course, not so: the vague, insinuating situation (fuzzily interpreted by the badly transcribed dialogue of three male watchers) is left, so to speak, hanging vertically before us, a sort of drugged, anamorphised shape, while time stretches the barely animate tableau into horizontal grotesqueness in the spectator’s addled optic nerves’. 2 for me, when i saw HARLOT, i was impressed by WARHOL’s ability to synthesise elements of his own art experience (for example the time-situation as described above) with elements pioneered by JACK SMITH, such as MARIO MONTEZ-banana-CARMEN- HARLOW, etc., in such an efficient way as to suggest to us, if one knows the work of SMITH, his use of music, and tropical-cliché images in general, a sort of PRE- TROPICÁLIA — as a matter of fact, from what i saw and know, i consider JACK SMITH both PRE and POST- TROPICÁLIA at the same time, an impressive fusion of tropihollywood and camp clichés — WARHOL developed himself more towards what he is: POP and POST-POP, an amalgamation of POP and HOLLYWOOD-AMERICA clichés — the importance and interest for us, in the incarnation-personality MARIO MONTEZ, is precisely that he is the materialisation of the cliché of LATIN AMERICA-as-a-whole, this makes me think of what SOY LOCO POR TI AMERICA by GIL-CAPINAM 3

2 Hélio Oiticica inserted ‘MARIO MONTEZ’, ‘CAROL KOCHINSKY’ and ‘WHITE PUSSY, MARIO MONTEZ’s cat-star’ into his translation of the original quotation by Parker Tyler into the Portuguese. 3 Explanatory note by the translator: ‘Soy Loco por Tí, América’ was composed by Gilberto Gil and first published in 1968 by Caetano Veloso on his Tropicália album. The lyrics by the poet Capinam were sung in a sophisticated mix of Spanish and Portuguese and describe the desirable incarnation of the utopia of a pan-Latin-American social movement first as a woman, then as a man, then as a people. The Brazilian military dictatorship considered the song to be ideologically ‘communist’.

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This content downloaded from 128.104.046.196 on January 18, 2018 11:56:21 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Scan of handwritten was for TROPICÁLIA-music in brazil, and even more, because this image-incarnation- manuscript for personality was created in the states — without a doubt everything emerged under the Hélio Oiticica's ‘MARIO MONTEZ, tutelage of JACK SMITH: MARIA MONTEZ and CARMEN MIRANDA, two precursors TROPICAMP', dated of what i will call here TROPICAMP, and thus they’re super-idols in the american 12 October 1971. underground — that is why HARLOT is the concretion of all these suggestions, © Projeto Hélio Oiticica, Rio de and yet ‘vaguely presented’: in fact this vague thing is the most concrete: HARLOT Janeiro means prostitute but is harlow at the same time: the very title is a play on words — the only instruction given to MARIO by WARHOL during filming: ‘eat the bananas slowly’, and this is fundamental in the oral-erotic action: the slow peeling and eating of every single of the (big!) bananas: the bananas appear miraculously one after the other: the harlowian

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This content downloaded from 128.104.046.196 on January 18, 2018 11:56:21 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). bag, each time it is opened, produces a new banana; MARIO tells me he hid some under Mario Montez as the sofa cushion before starting to film, to be able to carry these bananific appearances Carmen Miranda in Jackie Curtis's into effect — RONALD TAVEL describes how the soundtrack was made and ‘Vain Victory', WARHOL’s suggestion to speak from behind a screen, so that the conversation itself 1971, play performed would become dislocated — ‘we sat on the other side of the room, so that we could see at La Mama E.T.C. theatre space, the scene being filmed, so that we could refer to it but also could change the subject New York City. freely’ — MARIE MENCKEN, who made a film on ANDY WARHOL (of the same Photograph: title [1965]) writes (village voice, 6 may 1965): ‘it is strange when you think about it, Carlos Vergara. © Projeto Hélio but his (WARHOL’s) most impressive star is a man — MARIO MONTEZ. he/she does Oiticica, HARLOT with a blond wig, and there are moments in this movie that should guarantee Rio de Janeiro ANDY the fame of a great artist, even if not that of a great film-maker. i find the fragment in which MARIO is eating the bananas is among or even is the most sensual detail ever filmed!’ 4

TROPICAMP is part of what i call TROPICÁLIA-SUBTERRÂNIA: in my PROJETO 1 CENTRAL PARK [1971 — work not completed], i include MARIO MONTEZ doing CARMEN MIRANDA + other things in a performance area: an amalgamation as well: schemes, crumbs of synthesis — that’s why, leaping to 71, i want to talk about this anthological personification: have a look at the photos made on the occasion of this article by CARLOS VERGARA, they’re of the piece VAIN VICTORY [1971] by JACKIE CURTIS (also one of WARHOL’s impersonator-superstars), where MARIO does MALAFEMINA, and in one of the sketches (called URUGUAY) he does CARMEN: without imitating, what makes a lot of good people say it’s badly done: though image-CARMEN is in fact far more than that: it is not a naturalistic-imitative representation of CARMEN MIRANDA, but a key reference to the TROPICAMP-cliché; and the whole piece is constructed out of clichés: CAMP-clichés: ‘she, met her guy, uy, uy — in, uruguay, ay, ay …’: the red and green samba school dress — in my PROJETO 1, MARIO-CARMEN would also be a block-image [bloco-imagem], blending with other contrasting elements — ‘i’d rather eat the cottage cheese of a deadman’s jockstrap than marry you’: this phrase of one piece’s dialogue was refused by MARIO: ‘me, saying something like this: never: I’m no sex-freak’.—

4 Translation of the English original from the Portuguese by the author.

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This content downloaded from 128.104.046.196 on January 18, 2018 11:56:21 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). MORE MILK, IVETTE [sic]: by WARHOL (1966) in which MARIO MONTEZ does LANA TURNER, and CHERYL, LANA’s daughter, is a man in the film (the gender swap was WARHOL’s manipulation): MARIO-LANA is eating hamburgers with milk all the time: when the milk is finished, he/she says: ‘more milk, IVETTE’ — IVETTE was LANA TURNER’s maid. — BUFFERIN COMMERCIAL [1966], by WARHOL: paid by the aspirin company of the same name, to produce a tv commercial: everyone started ‘smoking’ the aspirin, in the end it was only shown at DOM (which functioned as the experimental laboratory of the time, for WARHOL and THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, a pop music band supported by him; the space is at st. mark’s place, east village).— THE [1966]: a classic, WARHOL’s masterpiece: MARIO does a 15 min. appearance, when he enters a room where a male couple is having fun in bed, and sings IT’S WONDERFUL — ‘how do you like my dress?’ — ‘it’s lovely’ — other films: [1963—65] and IN THE GRIP OF THE LOBSTER [1966] (JACK SMITH); THE MISTERY [sic] OF THE SPANISH LADY [c.1965—67] and BROTHEL [1966] (BILL VEHR), CANDY [date unknown], THE QUEEN [1968], THE WHORES OF BABYLON [1968] (in which he plays DELILAH No.1), and SCREEN TEST No.2 [1965] by WARHOL-TAVEL, for many his most perfect film.

MARIO for many years worked with THE RIDICULOUS THEATRICAL COMPANY of CHARLES LUDLAM, which premiered in may 66 in THE LIFE OF LADY GODIVA, directly afterwards in the second production of BIG HOTEL [1967], until his disengagement in 1970 —

MARIO is a very intelligent person, charming, who loves being precise in what he does, and in the details of his fantastic experiences he talks about: he doesn’t like ‘drag queenery’: he considers his work something better (and it is!), with a raison d’être: it is his work, and he wants to be permanently conscious about this; he is very organised: he has archived everything, recorded tapes of everything he has done so far, and of things that could relate to it: he inserted one, so i could listen, a film by CARMEN MIRANDA with JANE POWELL and WALLACE BEERY, you can hear CARMEN in dialogue and singing: ‘i recorded it from tv’; au naturel, as a man, that is how he usually is, he appears like so many puerto ricans in new york: he has a well-shaped masculine body, sometimes he poses as a nude model at drawing lessons; his congenital sympathy lets you always feel ‘at ease’ when he is around — ‘please relay to your brazilian readers two announcements: 1 — in new york a MARIO MONTEZ wall calendar for 1972 will be edited; 2 — also this year a book by CHARLES HERSCHBERG should be published, called MARILYN & THE OTHER GIRLS, on all the persons, men and women, who impersonate MARILYN MONROE, and in which, of course, i figure myself’.

MARIO is scheduled here, with the 3rd production of VAIN VICTORY, at FORTUNE THEATRE on east 4th street (between the bowery and 2nd avenue); very soon he is doing a reentrée with ANDY WARHOL, in his next film, which should have been filmed in hollywood, in a motel, yet is going to be filmed right here: it should have been called TROPICANA (that is the name of a motel chain in california), though HEAT was chosen instead, and nobody can imagine what the film will be like once it is edited and distributed —

Literature quoted in the text (as indicated by Hélio Oiticica):

Sheldon Renan, An Introduction to the American Underground Film, New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1967.

Parker Tyler, Underground Film: A Critical History, New York: Grove Press, 1969.

The translator would like to thank Ricardo Basbaum for his advice on the text’s translation, and the Projeto Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro and Fred Coelho for facilitating research of the historical material.

Translated by Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz.

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