Tony Conrad Movies

By 1965, Jack Smith was exhibiting versions of Normal Love, mixing his soundtracks live and often re-editing the film as it was being shown. After Smith's death, Jerry Tartaglia prepared this restored 105-minute version, which premiered in 1997. Although shot on backdated color-film stock and paced more languidly than Flaming Creatures, Normal Love again features women and cross-dressed men in an idyll of sexual anarchy. Smith filmed almost entirely outdoors, emphasizing pinks and greens in the scenery, costumes, and props, and combining textural passages with allusions to film icons such as the Mummy and the Werewolf, Maria Montez, and Busby Berkeley. The inspired finale is set atop a massive pink cake (where the dancing Cake Cuties include Andy Warhol). The Yellow Sequence, an additional 20 minutes of footage -- in which gold tones predominate and the players include Tiny Tim -- was also restored by Tartaglia as an addendum to Normal Love, and the two films are inevitably shown together under the single title. ~ Nicole Gagne, Rovi

Ron Rice's only color film, Chumlum depicts Jack Smith and some of his cast during the making of Normal Love, which includes Beverly Grant, Mario Montez, Francis Francine, and Tiny Tim. Rice offers glimpses of them in between set-ups at Normal Love's locations, as well as shots of the players lying in hammocks and rocking lazily after they were back in Rice's New York City loft. Throughout Chumlum, he utilizes superimpositions to turn his subjects into fields of texture, rhythm, and color. The title is derived from the score by composer/musician Angus MacLise, which he played on cembalo. ~ Nicole Gagne, Rovi

Shot in 1959, Scotch Tape is Jack Smith's first film -- a joyous, three-minute romp, in color, using Peter Duchin's rhumba "Carinhoso" for its soundtrack. Three young men merrily bop through the wreckage of razed buildings at the site of what would become Lincoln Center. Apparently, Scotch Tape was never edited and, instead, was cut in the camera by Smith, combining long shots and close-ups while filming mostly from overhead. The title comes from a small strip of scotch tape that was accidentally stuck on the camera and so is visible in the lower-right corner of the frame throughout the film. Note that one of the shimmying trio is Ken Jacobs, who'd begun directing Smith in 1957 with Saturday Afternoon Blood Sacrifice and Little Cobra Dance. On his own, Jacobs made such major works as Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (1969) and his multi-projector "Nervous System" series. ~ Nicole Gagne, Rovi