Basking In Basquiat
Half Baked. Billy Madison. Crossroads. Yes, the one with Britney Spears. This is the tail end of director Tamra Davis feature-film credits. At the top, that resumé includes videos by Tone Loc, NWA and Sonic Youth. Now, shes turned her sights to documentary to make a love letter for [her] friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Her latest release, [Basquiat: The Radiant Child], tells the rapid rise and fall of the early 80s New York painter, who at one time dated Madonna and often wore $1,000 suits only to splatter them in paint. Opening [July 21 at Film Forum](http://www.filmforum.org/films/basquiat.html), The Radiant Child has unseen footage of the painter that Davis filmed after befriending him in Los Angeles. Following his 1988 death at 27, she kept her recordings squirreled away. Only four years ago did Davis feel the time right to produce a Basquiat film without exploiting his legacy.
I think whats similar about the projects Ive worked on and this new piece is that Jean-Michel was a pop phenomenon, like many others Ive worked with, Davis says.
I was with him near the end of his life at one point, and he was deeply hurt that his friends had sold paintings he had given them. I didnt want to feel as if I contributed to that feeling, even after his death.
Dr. Suzanne Mallouk, one of Basquiats first loves and a longtime friend, saw this behavior first hand.
He gave people work that he knew would be valuable. He wanted certain friends [to have] access to that if they wanted to sell it. It was really quite a contradiction though. Because then he would almost get angry, almost feeling exploited, when they sold it, she says.
The stockpiled-centerpiece of the documentary is an intimate, 20-minute dialogue Davis filmed with the artist in the days before his death. She cut this into a short called A Conversation With Basquiat in 2006 and received encouragement based on its showings to build the film into a feature.
The result is The Radiant Child, a tale of an art-world Icarus, one burned by getting too close to the spotlight. The footage certainly doesnt feel exploitative, given the healing of time and Basquiats own personality.
He wanted to be famous. That was always at the forefront of what was motivating him, Mallouk, who is interviewed in the film, says.
I was working in a gallery in L.A. and in film school when we met. He was there a lot and we became close. I had cameras around all the time and he said, Oh gosh, you should make a movie about me, Davis says.
On that level, it feels more raw but also more pragmatic than the slick 1996 Basquiat biopic, directed by Julian Schnabel, perhaps owing to the archival collection methods, or possibly the blunt honesty of Davis other interview subjects, including Larry Gagosian, Bruno Bischofberger, Tony Shafrazi, Diego Cortez, Fab 5 Freddy, Jeffrey Deitch, Glenn OBrien, Hilton Kramer, Andy Warhol and Schnabel himself.
But, as Davis points out, hers and Schnabels are just two ways to tell a semimythic tale of a counter-culture hero.
Jean-Michel is a character, she says. Five more people could tell the story so many different ways.