Warhol’s Surfer Movie Gets World Premiere
‘It’s not technically a plot spoiler when there’s zero plot,’ says the Hollywood Reporter, commenting on the world premiere at NY’s Museum of Modern Art of “San Diego Surf,” a long-unfinished feature shot in 1968 — it was Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s goofy excursion into Southern California surfing culture. ‘So it’s fair game to reveal that this long-unfinished flick is a 90-minute preamble to Taylor Mead getting a golden shower from the Factory’s pretty-boy surfer, Tom Hompertz.’ (In other words, the film’s about as family-friendly as most Warhol fare.) ‘“We middle-class people really suffer watching you surfers out there,†groans Mead, who plays a restless married man yearning to put his bourgeois golfing days behind him and acquire SoCal surf-culture status. “Can’t you just piss on us?†That watersports scene, which sounds like a sly reversal of Mitt Romney’s political philosophy, typifies the ambisexual absurdism of this piece of rescued Warholiana. More a flaky souvenir of a stoner vacation than an actual movie, the non-narrative 16mm artifact had its belated world premiere as part of MoMA’s “To Save and Project†film preservation series, ahead of a Jan. 23-28 run at the Museum.’
