Taylor Mead: The Flower Thief September 18, 2008

TAYLOR MEAD: A CLOWN UNDERGROUND
Taylor Mead in person Sep 18 & 19

"If he had decided to live in Paris instead of New York, they'd have built several monuments to Taylor Mead a long time ago." - Gary Indiana

“My philosophy is from Nietzsche: minimum of effort and maximum of error. It's gotten me practically nowhere.” - Taylor Mead

Performer and poet Taylor Mead has starred in over 100 films and is a central figure in the history of underground cinema. Though best known for the films he made with Andy Warhol (including Lonesome Cowboys and Nude Restaurant), Mead has appeared in things as diverse as Saturday Night Live, Rip Torn’s staging of Hamlet and Midnight Cowboy. Now over 80 years old, Mead’s work has a mature innocence, and a celebration of (and longing for) peace and joy that is missing from so much contemporary art today. His performances often bring to mind Chaplin’s “tramp” character. He now spends much of his time writing, doing poetry readings and feeding stray animals. Mead will make his first San Francisco appearance in decades.

Thu, Sep 18, 7:30 pm
THE FLOWER THIEF
BY RON RICE
“In Ron Rice's baggy-pantsed beatnik artifact, Warhol superstar in training Mead traipses with elfin glee through a lost San Francisco of smoke-stuffed North Beach cafés, oceanside fairgrounds, and collapsed post-industrial ruins. Boinging along an improvised picaresque up and down the city's hills, Mead teases playground schoolkids, gets abducted by cowboys in the park, and has a tea party on a pile of rubble with a potbellied bathing beauty.” -Village Voice (1960, 75 min, 16mm). Screening will be followed by a discussion and poetry reading with Mead.

“The purest expression of the Beat sensibility in cinema.” - P. Adams Sitney

Official Website: http://www.ybca.org