Lonesome Cowboys
Posted by Jared
Lonesome Cowboys (1969)
Andy Warhol
viewed 01.26.06
This was a special screening of the LGBT film fest. Kind of a gayer Brokeback Mountain. This is the second film by Warhol I've seen (The other was Restaurant, and both feature highly annoying women). I know a number of people were turned off and walked out during a few violent scenes (between this and Naked I've reached my rape scene quota for the year), many more were turned on by its randiness.
The most compelling aspect of both works, and why they are brilliant, is how they force us to look. In Restaurant Warhol achieves new vision by letting the camera run and slowly zooming out and then panning around the room. We sit for almost ten minutes looking at nothing but the glassware on a table, while listening to the chaos surrounding it. In Lonesome Cowboys a different method of examination is created through editing and beautifully composed, typically mute, portrait shots.
A couple of people I've talked to about the films complain that it's only art because Warhol did it and therefore not "real art". Few things are more basic to discovering the world of film, let alone the world around us, than teaching ourselves how to see. Warhol's use of repetition and duration break us out of our every-day habit of merely glancing at the environment we inhabit. That is his art and is altogether real (and often very funny).