Thoughts on Basquiat

I went to Anthology Film Archives last Saturday and watched Basquiat, the 1996 biopic on the Haitian-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. I hadn’t seen it since my teen years, back when I romanticized late 70’s/early 80’s New York for its graffiti art scene, post-punk music, and No Wave film and art scene. I really liked the film a lot. Jeffrey Wright was fantastic as Basquiat, he really had this whole languid, loose vibe to him, creating art randomly all over the place, with a healthy distrust of people exploiting his blackness for their artistic gain. He just felt like the person, not just imitating him.

The film, directed by Julian Schnabel, was great at capturing the early 80’s look of NYC, of how rough the downtown scene looked compared to its expensive trendiness today. The film had an amazing cast of talented indie and character actors, including Parker Posey, Michael Wincott (whose art manager character irritated me for his use of the n-word to describe himself as a gay man), Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, David Bowie in a hilarious portrayal of Andy Warhol as a vacant snob who had this uptalk whine to the end of his words, Benicio Del Toro as Basquiat’s charming yet messy best friend, Gary Oldman, and others.

One of my favorite performances came from Willem Dafoe, who had a cameo as an electrician/artist in one scene. This had been the first film role I had seen of him when I was a kid, and he just had this likable, working-class vibe to him that I liked, with a rough-looking face and a cigarette-stained voice. 

I was also surprised to see Sam Rockwell in a little bit part as some random street thug that beats up Basquiat, I didn’t know he was in this film. 

Claire Forlani, as Basquiat’s girlfriend, was the worst in this film. She has largely dropped off, and I can see why, because she had no screen presence, had a flat and dull voice, and just seemed so vanilla. Parker Posey as a coolly removed art gallery owner and Courtney Love as some random party girl both had way more charisma and electricity to me, and just fit the film much more realistically that she did. 

I also must have had the soundtrack at some point, because the songs felt so familiar to me, not just that I knew them. The Pogues, Tom Waits, Public Image Ltd, etc. it just felt like music I had on tapes and CDs as a teen, it felt so close to my heart.