Bash Compactor: Mountain Man
The minute I heard Alejandro Jodorowsky would be visiting the Museum of Arts and Design, I knew I had to be there. His legendary filmsin particular the notorious Holy Mountain and the controversial El Topowere the first midnight movies, shrouded in a sea of pot smoke and LSD. The director is known as a mystic shaman of film. One critic wrote, His films are designed not as entertainment but as mystical, transcendental experiences. Imagine the conquest of Mexico re-enacted by reptiles, soldiers shooting innocent people as birds fly from their wounds and a wizard turning feces into gold, and you'll get a sense of his world.
Jodorowsky was making a rare visit to Columbus Circle to give a master class and show a few of his films that hadnt screened in the U.S. before. However, the reclusive cult figure was no longer on hand by the time I arrived at the party in his honor at the Hudson Hotels Library Bar. Cult figures are hard to control and they come and go as they please. Ditto for fellow cult figure and co-host Debbie Harry, who had also flown the coop.
No one was inside the so-called Library except for some hotel guests playing pool. The outdoor terrace, however, was packed to the gills. Justin Bond was standing around smoking and looking dashing. Filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell was presiding over a table of adoring sidekicks, including performer Heather Litteer. I saw artist Rob Roth chatting with performance artists Nicholas Gorham and Marti Domination. It was so crowded out there on the deck, it became difficult to move around at all. It was also very humid and hot for late September, so I went inside to order an $8 champagne-lemonade concoction.
When I returned to the festivities outside, I found a spot between Earl Dax, singer Nick Hallett and guitarist Nath Ann Carrera. Nick, do you know Im now Facebook friends with your mom? I asked. She and I are keeping tabs on you. No, shes following your double life, Hallett told me. Uh oh! Could a professor of Classics handle the sordid world of New York nightlife?
Instead, here I was, in search of the Chilean auteur who began his career in the mid-60s by inventing the Panic Movementtheatrical events meant to shock, like the four-hour show featuring the slaughter of geese, naked women covered in honey, a crucified chicken, the staged murder of a rabbi, a giant vagina and the throwing of live turtles and canned apricots into the audience by a leather-clad Jodorowsky. No wonder the filmmaker lefthe was probably looking for something really wild.