MAGIC CARPET RIDE Behind the Scenes of Adam Green’S Debauched Aladdin Fantasy by MICHAEL SLENSKE
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MAGIC CARPET RIDE Behind the scenes of Adam Green’s debauched Aladdin fantasy BY MICHAEL SLENSKE “My first wet dream managed to make The Wrong was that I won Super Ferrari, his 72-minute “screw- Mario Bros. and ball tragedy”—starring they introduced me himself, Macaulay Culkin (who to the princess, and I ejaculated palled around and performed in my sleep as I won that with Green on the tour), level. To me, that’s how deeply Devendra Banhart, Arrested Nintendo is embedded in my Development’s Alia Shawkat, consciousness,” says Adam and a slew of other downtown Green, walking me through his cool kids—which was more Williamsburg painting studio or less a hyperbolically fictional dressed in bell-bottoms, a slapstick of his road life, shot striped button-down, and white one scene per week or as fast as tennis shoes. While that may the singer-songwriter could not sound like your typical pen the script on his then new explanation for a sustaining smartphone (which also served artistic inspiration, to hear as his video camera). the 34-year-old folk rocker “I had an insatiable appetite tell it, the Japanese video game for drugs and sleep depriva- company’s early eight-bit tion, and I was trying to write graphical interfaces have as much as I could on ketamine,” pervaded nearly every facet of says Green, who would hand his creative life for the past his actors index cards of two decades. “I want to excavate dialogue the day of each shoot. that material and transform “This is also probably where it into artwork, and I’m I got obsessed with technology almost entitled to do it because and this iPhone.” After pre- this corporation took over miering the film in 2011 at the my childhood brain.” Anthology Film Archives, Green When I first met Green three displayed his painted papier- years ago, in his old Gramercy mâché sets (which were made at loft studio in Manhattan, he Culkin’s loft, where numerous was in the process of doing just scenes were also shot) the that while still coming down following year at an art fair from a ketamine-fueled Euro- on the Lower East Side. Dealer pean tour for his 2010 album Kathy Grayson happened Minor Love. The tour was to see them and offered Green immortalized in Dima Dubson’s a solo show that summer at libidinal indie doc How to Act her gallery, the Hole, where he Bad, which captures Green’s screened the film, exhibited every smoke, snort, song, spank, the sets, and unveiled his and crowd-surf as the artist “Houseface” series of trippy deep-dived into his darker self Dubuffet-meets-De Stijl with two girlfriends and a sculptural abstractions of pack of groupies riding shotgun. Elmo, Big Bird, and Garfield, Despite the chaos of his personal which evoke everything from life, the musician somehow video game graphics and 88 MODERN PAINTERS MARCH 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM Adam Green in 2015 on the set of Adam Green’s Aladdin. KELSEY BENNETT KELSEY the jagged lines of Friedensreich “My dad grew up being bones “symbolic alphabet” from Hundertwasser’s art and interested in illustration, and Aladdin (a lamp, a genie, a architecture to the design motifs he did a few cards, very casually, flying carpet, a princess, and of Persian tapestries. for Hallmark,” says Green. wishes) filtered through the “I guess I set out to be a noise “I remember when I was eight artist’s current context. Helping painter at some point,” says years old he drew Superman Green realize his vision is Green, whose earliest artistic in this really weird way, almost Francesco Clemente as the jaded influences came courtesy of the like somebody who had never genie; Natasha Lyonne as now-shuttered Exile on Main seen Superman before, but Aladdin’s self-medicating, gold- Street record store in his it was still good and it blew my digging mother; Shawkat play- hometown of Mount Kisco, New mind, because I was like, ‘Are ing his documentary-filmmaker York. It was there he met you allowed to draw Superman twin sister, Emily; Culkin Kimya Dawson, his future band- like that? He’s a copyrighted serving as Ralph, the leader of mate in the Moldy Peaches, thing.’ There was something an Occupy-like rebel group and Matt Valentine (of the Tower discordant about it that was called the Magical Americans; Recordings), who introduced interesting to me.” It would Jack Dishel doing double duty as him to Skip Spence, Pearls Before appear that the experience is the e-history-erasing, pan- Swine, the Incredible String still paying dividends. European-accented Sultan and Band, the Sea Ensemble, Amon In April, Green and Grayson the twins’ Uncle Gary; and Düül, and the No-Neck Blues are teaming up again for a British It girl blogger-pop singer- Band. “I started taking second screening-and-set reveal fashionista Bip Ling as the at the Hole to celebrate his promiscuous Princess Barbara. new film, Adam Green’s Aladdin, “I was on an airplane with an 80-minute hypersexualized, my wife when we thought of “The more I thought techno-futuristic spin on the Francesco. He was visually the Arabian Nights tale, featuring most genielike person I could reality-TV crews, coke orgies, imagine,” Green recalls. Shawkat, about digitized and a transgendered parent. who had interviewed Clemente “I was drawn to the piece flesh, the more it because it is so immersive and a total work of art. It takes a lot of creative power to get so many seemed like a people to join, and to hold it all together is a real feat,” says Grayson, who participated in the potent image.” “dada absurdity” as a ruff-and- tutu-wearing extra during psychedelics, and I related to all the summer 2014 shoot. “The those things deeply,” he recalls. props were my favorite part,” she “It was the introduction of the says. “The movie has so many concept of noise—noise music, amazing sculptures in it.” noise in art. I began to see Originally, the idea for the sounds as fibrous textures, and project came from Green’s telling my line evolved as I tried to a younger friend in passing, draw noise. Pressing hard on the “Wouldn’t it be funny if I made paper so that I could feel the my own version of Aladdin?,” tension in my wrist appealed to he recalls, noting he grew up me as a musician.” reading various versions of the He also got some notes on Middle Eastern folktale and perspective growing up in a loving the Disney film. “She modernist house in Westchester. said, ‘No, don’t do that. I grew There, he and his brother up not liking Aladdin because (who became an astrophysicist of the World Trade Center.’ ” at NASA) were raised by a Green was flabbergasted that a psychiatrist mother and a younger generation could ever neurologist father, both atheist confuse the princely protagonist Jews. His mother volunteered at with a jihadist, so he made a the American Museum of humorous painting depicting Natural History in New York, Aladdin riding his magic carpet and his father became a into the Twin Towers. OPPOSITE, FROM TOP: headache specialist in order to “I thought it would be an Adam Green as Aladdin cure his own migraines. After interesting painting, but it has and Bip Ling as Princess Barbara go on a drug spending some time with Green, nothing to do with what I ended binge. They are filmed by it’s easy to see how such an up making,” says Green, who a camera crew played by Tennessee Thomas upbringing might form a mind raised $50,000 on Kickstarter and Michael Leviton. that references Finnegans and spent another quarter million Jack Dishel as Uncle Wake, Noam Chomsky, the Bible, dollars (much of it his own Gary in the mountains, and Nintendo in consecutive money) to finance the Gondry- trying to call Aladdin on his mobile phone. breaths (and with equal weight). esque opus, which utilizes a bare- 90 MODERN PAINTERS MARCH 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM ll A M GREEN M A ES: AD ES: ag BOTH IM BOTH BLOUINARTINFO.COM MARCH 2016 MODERN PAINTERS 91 92 MODERN PAINTERS MARCH 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM Ling met Green a few years ago while deejaying for a fashion brand outside the Colos- seum in Rome. “I remember “Nintendo took Adam told me that evening that he was planning Aladdin, and I remember thinking that I wanted to be the princess over my child- straightaway but never thought he would ask me to play the role,” she recalls. “When Adam hood brain.” sent me the storyboard, I immediately knew how visual Paul Thek’s “Technological the film would be. The outfits Reliquaries,” wax sculptures were so super, super cool, too. It made to resemble cubes of was a bonkers, surreal, and very flesh. “The more I thought enjoyable experience.” about digitized flesh, the more it While casting choices like seemed like a potent image— Clemente and Ling feel inspired, this pixel that has a skin they certainly have to compete element. You see it with 3-D for attention onscreen with printing, people using biological the 30 hand-painted sets (and cells to make 3-D grids, and I hundreds of papier-mâché even think that people who are props) Green created for the film. looking at Internet porn are “I love surreal landscapes really just jerking off to cubic and was amazed by what he mosaics of pornography.” came up with for the sets. It was By combining this notion like living in a video game, of “erotic pixel information,” but one that could fall apart at 3-D printing, and the Aladdin any minute—and did.