Here’s a trailer for the new Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child doc that premiered at Sundance and will probably hit Film Forum this year. The film highlights heroin abuse, touches on racial exploitation and centers around intimate 1986 footage of Jean-Michel Basquiat, friend/designer Becky Johnson and friend/doc-director/Mike D’s wife Tamra Davis.
Variety’s verdict sets the film toward an arty, Basquiat-idolizing audience and christens it problematically as both “a tender ode from one friend to another” and “another wheel in the hype machine.” Padded heavily with usual talking heads, the centerpiece footage was shot shortly before the [in]famous artist’s death and seems worth seeing, whether or not you believe the hype. But it’s prompted by a rather obtuse defense via trailer captions: He was “my friend”! I sat on this for 20 years! Now give me ten dollars for hammering this home video into a film! If Davis really wanted to make a gift of the footage she hid in mourning for two decades, she should have just posted it to YouTube.
Yeah god forbid people take the time to put thought and effort into something instead of just regurgitating crap into the maw so that people can use it's existence as the backdrop for the presentation of their pre-existing opinions.
Point taken. It's still exploitative though. And I want to see it.
RE: stumpy…
yeah, because it's so much better to be forcefully ushered by the pre-existing opinions of a gallery of profitable talking heads. the only opinion should be the one of the artist's. and that would be loyally delivered via the original interview that supposedly provoked the film, uncut, without the posthumous conjecture of others that serve little purpose other than to market Basquiat's legend and, consequently and conveniently, the 'nobility' and necessity of the documentary, as well. hard not to join Variety and ANIMAL here in being wisely suspicious of this.
Sharing artistic History for those who think they know but dont
I think the film will give an honest look into basquiat’s life, what is real nowadays anyway? Schnabel’s depiction of basquiat cannot be seen as fair because everyone knows they had a sort of rivalry thing going on. By the look of the trailers I feel this piece will give an honest depiction of the character of basquiat, which many I feel will enjoy and be inspired from. Peace