aka 8 1/2 Junkies
aka I'm Waiting For The Man, Unless You're Coming To Me, In Which Case I'm The Man

If it's true that The Apartment was considered rather adult and controversial in 1960, it seems impossible that this movie is from just one year later (Letterboxd has the date wrong for some reason).

Director Shirley Clarke is a trained dancer, and it shows in how she swirls the camera around the single location setting and moves the characters around with stunning choreography. It helps defy the constant staginess that threatens to bog the movie down. The shaming of filmmakers who exploit their documentary subjects and their rubber-necking audiences is wonderful and just as relevant today as then. It presents a bucketful of transgressions and vices, yet never casts judgment on anyone but the filmmaker (who is so square that he basically sounds like a black guy doing an exaggerated impression of a square white guy).

There's Eisenstein. There's Flaherty. And then there's Clarke.

Dynamic and fresh---a living/breathing text I plan on revisiting often. Uses the self-reflexive camera to create one of the all-time great commentaries on the ethics of ethnographic documentary. Shirley was so far ahead of the curve, it's not even funny. Possibly the most progressive and audacious debut feature I've ever seen...I have so much respect for her.

An essential work from one of the finest voices in the history of American independent cinema. Take it away, Freddie.

This feels truly revolutionary considering it was made in -61. A stage play transformed into a sweaty, one-location mockumentary, which handles both its drug addict portrayal and especially the meta-level ethnological commentary so well. AND the brilliant camerawork and the lively jazz score even make it an entertaining watch in a sense! Kind of a warped (and better, sue me) version of 12 Angry Men, with very different themes of course.

reminder to self: try playing the 1st two velvet underground albums along with this to see how well they sync up

Probably would have liked this a lot more if I'd been expecting the highly artificial nature of the performances - as is I loved it so long as no one was speaking. At its worst it has the feel of dated experimental theater, but at its best it's a thrilling look at a seedy corner of American life, akin to William S. Burroughs or The Velvet Underground. I expect I'll like it more if/when I see it again.

A room full of junkies and voyeurs, that’s us!

This is a jazz performance as a theatre piece as a faux documentary as a drama, and like a jazz performance, the improvisations are always interesting, if not great. This is at its best when it's using that faux documentary structure as a stylistic tool, allowing characters to monologue directly to the camera and making the takes run unusually and realistically long through the use of hidden cuts and whip pans. Though clearly a chamber piece, the documentary shooting style and use of various perspectives and cameras enliven something that otherwise could've been fairly dull, making the most off-off-Broadway moments (I mean this in a not-great way), like the Sister Salvation section, at least interesting to watch.

Would be interesting to program this with the other movie that got banned by the New York censor board in 1961, Nude on the Moon.

Everybody wants to be a cat.

Shirley Clarke rocking the experimental fourth wall breaking stream of consciousness confessional druggy film a full two years before Gaspar Noe was even a gleam in his mother’s eye.

Shirley Clarke effortlessly makes Jack Gelber’s play feel like a documentary here, with natural performances and style that deliver a fascinating portrait of addiction. More than anything, though, was really struck by the camerawork here. Free-flowing and loose, like the jazz score that accompanies it, Clarke is able to make the single room space of the film feel like the entire world to its inhabitants. A forefather of “found footage” films—and better than all of them—The Connection is an essential.

"I believe everything that's illegal is illegal because it makes more money for more people that way."

brother cowboy is hot i get it

“I think illegal things are only illegal because it makes more people more money that way.”

***Watched on the Criterion Channel***

sometimes fun sometimes exhausting

I have trouble with movies that are like plays which end up being a lot of monologues and capital A ACTING

Damn I kinda loved this. There’s one character that veers into reefer madness territory a little, but otherwise it’s full of jazz, great performances, baller low budget found footage ‘61 style censorship fireworks. Gotta peep some other Shirley Clarke movies ASAP.

I loved it! Although I think it can be a little kooky now and then. Jerome Raphel looked uncannily like my dad which was unnerving, but I think it capitulates the beatnik movement of which his generation was a part of growing in.

Why the fuck aren’t more people talking about this movie??

The kind of play adaptation that retains a "staged" or "theatrical" feeling, not necessarily a bad thing. Some of the monologues hit, some don't. Really enjoyed the set design, especially when the camera crawled over it while the musicians played.

Shirley Clarke ❤️️

Watching this movie feels like being at an intimate black box theater production (no surprise that this is based on a play), but with a sophisticated visual language (e.g. the pacing of the editing, alternating long stagnant takes with hectic cuts). The cinematography and music are incredible. The characters are all really well developed and intriguing (especially Leach, with his suppressed sexuality, almost maternal instincts, and strive for a coherent sense of control/identity). The director character is a perfect parody of out-of-touch film nerds and artists ("I know all about Eisenstein"), the old woman of well-meaning but ignorant liberalism. The dialogue perfectly captures drug logic while also breaking the fourth wall. There is a complex undertone of racial politics and how it intersects with art ("You're telling us to act natural but we don't even own our hands anymore!"). Everyone is driven by this desperate, hopeless fear but it manifests in a variety of ways.