Paul Morrissey, a New York underground filmmaker and close friend of Andy Warhol, has died at 86

Represented by the Pope of Pop Art, his avant-garde films featured marginalized people, sex workers, transgender people and drug addicts.

Paul Morrissey, a director close to Andy Warhol who filmed New York’s underground culture in the 1960s and 1970s, has died at the age of 86, his archivist Michael Chaiken announced, citing the New York Times.

The artist, screenwriter and actor died on Monday October 28, 2024 of pneumonia while hospitalized in New York.

A literature student at Fordham University, Paul Morrissey began directing his first independent short films in the early 1960s.

A non-conformist, the future filmmaker had an important meeting in 1965 with the artist Andy Warhol with whom he shared the same artistic ambitions in the field of Underground and pop art. Their first work together, The Chelsea Girls identifying the musical characteristics of the group glam-rock The Velvet Underground.

In 1968, Paul Morrissey directed Meat and there is a young ephebe unknown at the time, Joe Dallesandro in a prostitute’s role in New York.

The sexual scenes immediately created a lot of controversy, but the film was elevated to the status of a cult work by the yuppies of the Woodstock generation.

Paul Morrissey will reunite with Joe Dallesandro in the movies Garbage (1970) et al Heat (1972), where he alternately plays a heroin addict and a star willing to do anything to succeed. Paul Morrissey created the trilogy with these three films the most famous underground in the history of cinema.

The filmmaker shows a certain sexual misery in America in the 1970s. Produced by Andy Warhol, his avant-garde films feature misfits, sex workers, transgender people and drug addicts.

Poster for Paul Morrissey’s trilogy from the 1970s. (ALLOCIN)

In the 1970s, he directed two horror films, Chair for Frankenstein etc Blood for Draculahis last two collaborations with Andy Warhol. He then introduces newcomer Kevin Bacon New York, 42e rue in 1981, in the role of a young gigolo.

He stopped filming at the end of the 1980s, disappointed with the artistic trends and developments that modern cinema offers. However, his filming continued into the 2000s with News from Nowhere in 2010.

In Andy Warhol’s world, Paul Morrissey also worked with Lou Reed’s group, The Velvet Underground, for their first album with German singer Nico, The Velvet Underground & Nico.

The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh announced the birthplace of the master of pop art “his deep sorrow” after the news of his death.