Anyone who’s ever seen Julian Schnabel’s good but flawed film Basquiat knows where this documentary gets its name from: a news report that artist Jean – Michel Basquiat sampled this anguished line from, and turned into an artwork.
Sara Driver’s documentary, from 2018, subtitled The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat , takes a much grittier approach than the somewhat romanticised 1996 feature. After all, she was there, in the hub of New York’s nascent urban art scene,alongside her partner, fellow film maker Jim Jarmusch.
It’s got a no-nonsense, speedy pacing, working like a cut and paste eighties zine, full of fabulous creatives from that time, including Jarmusch of course, Al Diaz, Felice Rosser and Alexis Adler (whom Basquiat saved from a violent mugging) ; Fab 5 Freddy, Michael Holman and many others.
Examining the overlap between artistic disciplines and the DIY ethos of the graffiti, punk and hip hop scenes, it’s as much a snapshot of the “art as necessity for survival” New York, dreams of a better life crumbling through the recession, amid the rubble and chaos of city slums.
Basquiat, whose stories are legendary (screwing around, homelessness, heroin, graffiti rivalry and an inherent mistrust of rich galleries) is an irrepressible figure throughout, blasting industrial music on his boombox, although- maddeningly- we only see clips of him working and at The Mudd Club. He never speaks, which is a shame. Samo was his famous tag, meaning “same old”, and as great as this film is, he’s almost being silenced again, an enigma in his own life story. A pity-there’s much insight and vibrancy to savour here. For real.
Hit The North 