Blue Movie includes dialogue about the Vietnam War, various mundane tasks and, as well, unsimulated sex, during a blissful afternoon in a New York City apartment (owned by art critic David Bourdon). The film was presented in the press as, “a film about the Vietnam War and what we can do about it.” Warhol added, “the movie is about… love, not destruction.”
Producer / director / cinematographer Andy Warhol presents an afternoon in a Manhattan apartment where Viva and Louis discuss social issues while lying in bed. Louis makes sexual advances and Viva giggles; they indulge in sexual foreplay and then intercourse. They talk about the Vietnam War, watch television, get dressed, eat, discuss Louis’s unhappy marriage, and finally take a shower, more and more aware of the presence of a camera. After more sex play in and out of the shower, Viva stares at the camera and asks, “Is it on?”
Blue Movie (stylized as blue movie; also known as Fuck) is a 1969 American film written, produced, and directed by Andy Warhol. Blue Movie, the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States, is a seminal film in the Golden Age of Porn (1969–1984), and helped inaugurate the “porno chic” phenomenon, in which porn was being publicly discussed by celebrities (like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope) and taken seriously by film critics (like Roger Ebert), in modern American culture, and later, in many other countries throughout the world.
According to Warhol, Blue Movie was a major influence in the making of Last Tango in Paris, an internationally controversial erotic drama film, starring Marlon Brando, and released a few years after Blue Movie was made. Viva and Louis Waldon, playing themselves, starred in Blue Movie.
About the Production
Andy Warhol described making Blue Movie as follows: “I’d always wanted to do a movie that was pure fucking, nothing else, the way [my film] Eat had been just eating and [my film] Sleep had been just sleeping. So in October ’68 I shot a movie of Viva having sex with Louis Waldon. I called it just Fuck.”
The film was supposedly filmed in a single three-hour session and 30 minutes was initially cut for the 140 minute version. The climactic section was shot in a 35-minute take. According to Variety magazine, the lovemaking only featured for 10 minutes. The film itself acquired a blue/green tint because Warhol used the wrong kind of film during production. He used film meant for filming night-scenes, and the sun coming through the apartment window turned the film blue.
The film had a benefit screening on June 12, 1969 at the Elgin Theater in New York City. Variety reported that the film was the “first theatrical feature to actually depict intercourse.” While initially shown at The Factory, Blue Movie was not presented to a wider audience until it opened at the New Andy Warhol Garrick Theater in New York City on July 21, 1969 with a running time of 105 minutes. The film also opened at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California.
On its opening day in New York, the film grossed a house record $3,050, with a total of $16,200 for the week. Warhol received 90% of the gross, so recovered the film’s $3,000 cost quickly. Viva, in Paris, finding that Blue Movie was getting a lot of attention, said, “Timothy Leary loved it. Gene Youngblood (an LA film critic) did too. He said I was better than Vanessa Redgrave and it was the first time a real movie star had made love on the screen. It was a real breakthrough.”
Blue Movie (1969)
Directed by: Andy Warhol
Starring: Viva, Louis Waldon
Screenplay by: Andy Warhol
Cinematography by: Andy Warhol
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Andy Warhol Films
Release Date: June 12, 1969
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