Amos Poe

Last updated

Amos Poe
Amos Poe at 2009 Tribeca.jpg
Poe in 2009 at the Tribeca Film Festival
Born1949 (age 7475)
Tel Aviv, Israel
Occupation(s)Film director, writer
Spouse
(m. 19832010)
Claudia Summers
(m. 2019)

Amos Poe is an American New York City-based director and screenwriter, described by The New York Times as a "pioneering indie filmmaker". [1]

Contents

Career

Amos Poe is one of the first punk filmmakers and his film The Blank Generation [2] (1976)—co-directed with Ivan Král— is one of the earliest punk films. The film features performances by Richard Hell, Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith, and Wayne County. Rolling Stone named it number 6 on its list of 25 Greatest Punk Rock Movies of All Time. [3]

He is also associated with the birth of No Wave Cinema due to films such as The Foreigner (1978), featuring Eric Mitchell, Debbie Harry, Anya Phillips; and Subway Riders (1981), [4] starring Susan Tyrrell, Robbie Coltrane, and Cookie Mueller. [5] During this time he was also the director of the public-access television cable TV show TV Party hosted by Glenn O'Brien and Chris Stein.

He is part of the Remodernist film movement, which he described as the next development of Postmodernism and the transformation of existing cultural features, but "using the technology and the sensibility of contemporary rather than nostalgia". [6] "My idea of my work's importance is to see how it moves the culture to where I'd like to see it," Poe said in a 1981 interview. [7]

In 2008, he wrote the screenplay for the 2008 Amy Redford film The Guitar . [1]

The New York Times reported in 2020 that Poe had lost all ownership of several of his groundbreaking films, including The Blank Generation, to Ivan Kral in a 2012 lawsuit over profits from licensing fees for showings of the film. Thereafter, Kral billed himself as the director of the film, demoting Poe to co-editor; Kral also acquired ownership, for $10 each, of Poe's films Unmade Beds, The Foreigner, Subway Riders, and Empire II. In late 2019, shortly before Kral's death, at a screening of The Blank Generation, it was revealed that Kral, or his wife, Cindy Hudson, had changed the ending of the film, switching out the original ending (depicting Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye), for a brief biopic about Kral, followed with the credit "directed by Cindy Hudson." Although the theater screening the film had, apparently unknowingly, marketed it as the iconic 1976 work, it was a considerably different film, and Poe's name was excised entirely. [8]

Partial filmography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Hell</span> American musician

Richard Lester Meyers, better known by his stage name Richard Hell, is an American singer, songwriter, bass guitarist and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wayne County & the Electric Chairs</span> Punk band

Wayne County & the Electric Chairs was a punk band part of the first wave of punk bands from the 1970s. The band was headed by Georgia-born singer Jayne County and became known for their campy, foul-mouthed ballads, glam punk inspired songs and image which was heavily influenced by Jackie Curtis and the Theatre of the Ridiculous.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mudd Club</span> Former nightclub in New York City

The Mudd Club was a nightclub located at 77 White Street in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It operated from 1978 to 1983 as a venue for post punk underground music and no wave counterculture events. It was opened by Steve Maas, Diego Cortez and Anya Phillips.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jayne County</span> American singer, songwriter, actress and record producer (born 1947)

Jayne County is an American singer, songwriter, actress and record producer whose career has spanned six decades. Under the name Wayne County, she was the vocalist of influential proto-punk band Wayne County & the Electric Chairs who became known for their campy and foul-mouthed ballads, glam punk inspired songs, and image which was heavily influenced by Jackie Curtis and the Theatre of the Ridiculous. County in particular was known for her outrageous and unpredictable stage antics as well as possessing a distinctive singing voice. She went on to become rock's first openly transgender singer, and adopted the stage name Jayne County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Remodernist film</span> Film genre

Remodernist film developed in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 21st century with ideas related to those of the international art movement Stuckism and its manifesto, Remodernism. Key figures are Jesse Richards and Peter Rinaldi.

No wave cinema was an underground filmmaking movement that flourished on the Lower East Side of New York City from about 1976 to 1985. Associated with the artists’ group Collaborative Projects, no wave cinema was a stripped-down style of guerrilla filmmaking that emphasized dark edgy mood and unrehearsed immediacy above many other artistic concerns – similar to the parallel no wave music movement in its raw and rapid style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Charlesworth</span> American conceptual artist and photographer

Sarah Edwards Charlesworth was an American conceptual artist and photographer. She is considered part of The Pictures Generation, a loose-knit group of artists working in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, all of whom were concerned with how images shape our everyday lives and society as a whole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anya Phillips</span> American music manager (1955–1981)

Anya Phillips was a Taiwanese fashion designer and the co-founder of the New York nightclub the Mudd Club. Phillips influenced the fashion, sound, and look of the New York-based no wave scene of the late 1970s. She was also the manager and girlfriend of musician James Chance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Gordon (singer)</span> American singer, musician and actor (1947–2022)

Robert Gordon was an American rockabilly singer.

Patti Astor is an American performer who was a key actress in New York City underground films of the 1970s, and the East Village art scene of the 1980s, and involved in the early popularizing of hip hop. She co-founded the instrumental contemporary art gallery, Fun Gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivan Král</span> Czech-American musician (1948–2020)

Ivan Kral was a Czech-born American composer, filmmaker, guitarist, record producer, bassist, and singer-songwriter. He worked across genres including pop music, punk rock, garage rock, rock, jazz, soul, country and film scores. His music has been recorded by such artists as U2, Téléphone, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Simple Minds, and John Waite, among others. The Czech three-time Andel Awards winner died of cancer in 2020, aged 71.

<i>The Blank Generation</i> 1976 film by Amos Poe, Ivan Kral

The Blank Generation (1976) is the earliest of the released DIY "home movies" of the 1970s punk rock scene in New York City. It was filmed by No Wave filmmaker Amos Poe and Patti Smith Group member Ivan Kral.

John Edward Heys is an American independent filmmaker, actor and writer who lives and works in Berlin.

Eric Mitchell is a French born writer, director and actor who moved to downtown New York City in the early 1970s. He has acted in many No Wave films such as Permanent Vacation (1980) by Jim Jarmusch, but is best known for his own films that are usually written and directed by him: Kidnapped, Red Italy, Underground U.S.A. and The Way It Is or Eurydice in the Avenues, starring Steve Buscemi, Vincent Gallo, Mark Boone Junior and Rockets Redglare. Mitchell worked out of New York City's sordid East Village area in conjunction with Colab and other performance artists and noise musicians. There he created a series of scruffy, deeply personal, short Super 8mm and 16mm films in which he combined darkly sinister images to explore the manner in which the individual is constrained by society.

<i>Geek Maggot Bingo</i> 1983 film

Geek Maggot Bingo is a 1983 comedy horror film directed by Nick Zedd, who also scripted and shot the film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1977 Deauville American Film Festival</span>

The 3rd Deauville American Film Festival took place at Deauville, France from September 5 to 11, 1977. The festival was non-competitive in nature and remained so until 1995. This year, festival also paid tributes to Gregory Peck, Vincente Minnelli and Sydney Pollack. Elizabeth Taylor's name was also announced for the tribute but she was unable to come to the festival that year. The festival screened 40 feature films.

Unmade Beds may refer to:

Subway Riders is a 1981 American thriller film directed by Amos Poe and starring Robbie Coltrane, Charlene Kaleina, Cookie Mueller, and John Lurie.

Duncan Rathbun Hannah was an American visual artist and author.

References

  1. 1 2 Wadler, Joyce (January 17, 2008). "Death and Decorating". The New York Times. Retrieved January 27, 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 4 McNeil, Legs; Gillian McCain (1996). Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk . New York City: Penguin Books. pp.  420. ISBN   9780140266900.
  3. Grierson, Tim; Adams, Sam; Fear, David; Garber-Paul, Elisabeth (August 9, 2016). "25 Greatest Punk Rock Movies of All Time". Rollingstone.com. Retrieved September 6, 2020.
  4. Subway Riders :: River Lights Pictures
  5. Curley, Mallory. A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia, Randy Press, 2010.
  6. Bremer, Erin (April 2008). "New York Observers" Archived January 6, 2009, at the Wayback Machine , City Magazine, pp. 42–43. Retrieved February 1, 2010. Also on amospoe.com Archived July 14, 2010, at the Wayback Machine .
  7. Sarah Charlesworth (April 1, 1981). "Subway Riders: Amos Poe". Bombmagazine.org. Retrieved January 9, 2019.
  8. Buckley, Cara (July 30, 2020). "His Film Is a Punk Classic, but the Credits Now Roll Without Him". The New York Times . Retrieved September 6, 2020.