Ciao! Manhattan

Last updated

Ciao! Manhattan
Ciao poster.jpg
Movie poster
Directed byJohn Palmer
David Weisman
Written byJohn Palmer
David Weisman
Produced byRobert Margouleff
David Weisman
Starring Edie Sedgwick
Wesley Hayes
Isabel Jewell
Paul America
Baby Jane Holzer
Pat Hartley
Jean Margouleff
Viva
Brigid Berlin
Roger Vadim
CinematographyJohn Palmer
Kjell Rostad
Edited byRobert Farren
Music by Gino Piserchio
Distributed byMaron Films (1973)
Plexifilm (2002)
Release date
  • July 1972 (1972-07)
Running time
90 minutes
CountryUnited States
Language English

Ciao! Manhattan is a 1972 American avant garde film starring Edie Sedgwick. A scripted drama in which most of the actors play themselves, it centers on a character very closely based on Sedgwick and deals with the pain of addiction and the lure of fame.

Contents

Overview

Written and directed by John Palmer and David Weisman, Ciao! Manhattan is the semi-biographical tale of 1960s counterculture icon Edie Sedgwick. [1] The film follows young Susan Superstar (Sedgwick) through her tumultuous party years in Manhattan as one of Warhol's Superstars. Through actual audio recordings of Sedgwick's account of her time in Warhol's Factory in New York City, paired with clips from the original unfinished script started in 1967, Ciao! captures the complete deterioration of Sedgwick's fictional alter-ego. The striking similarities between Sedgwick and Susan's life story, especially when recounted by Sedgwick in the midst of drug-induced audio interviews, make the film's candid depiction of excess and celebrity especially haunting. [2] The film is dedicated to the memory of Sedgwick and ends with the headlines announcing Sedgwick's (not Susan Superstar's) death, thus inseparably associating the fictional and the genuine figure.

Production

Production of Ciao! Manhattan began on March 26, 1967 as a project of Factory regulars John Palmer, David Weisman, Genevieve Charbin, Chuck Wein, Bob Margouleff, Gino Piserchio, with supplemental roles and tasks fulfilled by various other hangers-on. The film originally followed the excessively hip lives of Midtown scenesters Sedgwick and fellow Warhol Superstar Paul America as they lived life in the fast lane (literally speeding down the West Side Highway on massive amounts of amphetamine).

The project was riddled with budget problems and an unfinished, nonsensical script of debauchery, drug use and paranoia. Unreliable actors and rampant drug abuse behind the camera pushed shooting out of control as both Sedgwick and America went missing, putting production on hold. With barely any direction and no end in sight, the film's backers, Bob Margouleff's parents, lost faith in their son's project, and Palmer and Weisman were left with the fragments of an unpresentable film. To salvage these fragments, Palmer and Weisman decided to reshape the script to include the previously shot footage as flashback sequences to tell Sedgwick's tragic story through the persona of Susan Superstar.

In December 1970, they resumed filming on the dilapidated "Lucky" Baldwin estate in Arcadia, California. For a month, they shot Susan recounting her past through the dazed euphoria of perpetual substance abuse. The shooting lasted only a month and in 1971, Ciao! finally went into post-production. However, the excitement of the film's near completion was short-lived due to Sedgwick's death from acute barbiturate intoxication.

Ciao! Manhattan was finally completed on May 25, 1972 and had its premiere in Amsterdam in July 1972 to critical acclaim, due in part to Sedgwick's onscreen presence and representation of a culture that she helped to define. The successful screenings continued in London, Germany, France, San Diego, Denver, and Tempe, Arizona, but then the film disappeared for nearly a decade until interest in Edie Sedgwick was sparked again by the best-selling book Edie: An American Biography by George Plimpton and Jean Stein in 1982.

DVD release on 30th anniversary

In the years since its original release, Ciao! Manhattan has become a cult classic, due in large part to the film being Edie Sedgwick's last starring vehicle. [3] On July 19, 2002, exactly 30 years after its world premiere in Amsterdam, Ciao! opened at New York's Cinema Village. In October 2002, Plexifilm released a special edition DVD with additional 35mm outtake footage, rare pictures and interviews with the cast and crew of the film. [4]

Soundtrack

On April 22, 2017, Light in the Attic Records released the film's official soundtrack on their Cinewax imprint, for the occasion of Record Store Day. The first vinyl pressing was limited to 3,000 copies, and it contains the prominent songs featured in the film (by Richie Havens, John Phillips, Kim Milford, and the duo of Skip Battin and Kim Fowley), in addition to most of the incidental electronic music performed by Gino Piserchio. Before this release, the film's soundtrack never had been released in any form. A CD version of the soundtrack is also available. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edie Sedgwick</span> American model and actress (1943–1971)

Edith Minturn Sedgwick Post was an American actress, model, and socialite, who was one of Andy Warhol's superstars, starring in several of his short films during the 1960s. Her prominence led to her being dubbed an "It Girl", while Vogue magazine named her a "Youthquaker".

Brigid Emmett Berlin was an American artist and Warhol superstar.

Warhol superstars were a clique of New York City personalities promoted by the pop artist Andy Warhol during the 1960s and early 1970s. These personalities appeared in Warhol's artworks and accompanied him in his social life, epitomizing his dictum, "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes". Warhol would simply film them, and declare them "superstars".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Feldman</span> American actress

Andrea Feldman was an American actress and Warhol superstar. She committed suicide in 1972.

<i>Factory Girl</i> (2006 film) 2006 film by George Hickenlooper

Factory Girl is a 2006 American biographical film directed by George Hickenlooper. It is based on the rapid rise and fall of 1960s underground film star and socialite Edie Sedgwick, known for her association with the artist Andy Warhol.

Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann, known profesionally as Viva, is an American actress, writer and former Warhol superstar.

<i>Vinyl</i> (1965 film) 1965 American film

Vinyl is a 1965 American black-and-white film directed by Andy Warhol at The Factory. It is an early adaptation of Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, starring Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick, Ondine, and Tosh Carillo, and featuring such songs as "Nowhere to Run" by Martha and the Vandellas, "Tired of Waiting for You" by The Kinks, "The Last Time" by The Rolling Stones and "Shout" by The Isley Brothers.

Plexifilm was an independent DVD label and film production company co-founded by Gary Hustwit and Sean Anderson in 2001. Plexifilm produced original films, released films theatrically, and produced, distributed and marketed DVDs.

<i>a, A Novel</i> 1968 book by Andy Warhol

a, A Novel is a 1968 book by the American artist Andy Warhol published by Grove Press. It is a nearly word-for-word transcription of tapes recorded by Warhol and Ondine over a two-year period in 1965–1967.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul America</span> American actor

Paul Johnson, better known as Paul America, was an American actor who was a member of Andy Warhol's Superstars. He starred in one Warhol-directed film, My Hustler (1965), and also appeared in Edie Sedgwick's final film Ciao! Manhattan (1972).

Jane Holzer, is an American art collector and film producer who was previously an actress, model, and Warhol superstar. She was often known by the nickname Baby Jane Holzer. She was also known as a 1960s fashion icon.

Chuck Wein was an American promoter and manager of entertainment acts whose celebrity stemmed from his five-year (1964–1969) association with Andy Warhol and from his discovery of Edie Sedgwick who became a Warhol superstar of 1965. He was also a film director.

<i>Beauty No. 2</i> 1965 American film

Beauty No. 2 is a 1965 American avant-garde film by directed by Andy Warhol and starring Edie Sedgwick and Gino Piserchio. Chuck Wein also has a role in the film but never appears onscreen. Wein wrote the scenario and is also credited as assistant director.

Eugene "Gino" Piserchio was an American actor, composer and musician. Piserchio was noted for being an accomplished musician. He was one of the first musicians to master the Moog synthesizer.

Robert Margouleff is an American record producer, recording engineer, electronic music pioneer, audio expert, and film producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Stein</span> American author and editor

Jean Babette Stein was an American author and editor.

Beauty No. 1 is a 1965 film by Andy Warhol starring Edie Sedgwick, Kip Stagg a.k.a.Bima Stagg, and Chuck Wein.

Four Stars is a 1967 avant-garde film by Andy Warhol, consisting of 25 hours of film. In typical Warhol fashion of the period, each reel of the film is 35 minutes long, or 1200 ft. in length, and is shot in sync-sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Weisman</span> American film producer (1942–2019)

David Weisman was an American film producer, author, and graphic artist, most noted for his films Ciao! Manhattan and Kiss of the Spider Woman. He was the brother of film director Sam Weisman.

Space (1965) is an underground film directed by Andy Warhol, written by Ronald Tavel, and starring Edie Sedgwick, Gino Piserchio, Dorothy Dean, Ed Hennessey, singer-songwriter Eric Andersen, and Norman Levine. Unlike many of Warhol's other films made at The Factory, this film involved a moving camera, moving around the actors as they stood still.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Killen, Andreas. 1973 Nervous Breakdown – Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America
  2. ↑ Mazzocco, Robert. Doom at the Movies – Dancing on the Titanic The New York Review of Books, February 7, 1974
  3. ↑ The God Phone interview Archived August 20, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ↑ Ciao! Manhattan @ Plexifilm.com Archived October 6, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ↑ "V/A – Ciao! Manhattan – Ciao! Manhattan Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – Light In The Attic Records". Light In The Attic Records.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.