Synopsis
This film may be a bit too much for many people, but that's their problem.
Five lonesome cowboys get all hot and bothered at home on the range after confronting Ramona Alvarez and her nurse.
1968 Directed by Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey
Five lonesome cowboys get all hot and bothered at home on the range after confronting Ramona Alvarez and her nurse.
Μοναχικοί καουμπόις, Magányos kovbojok, ロンサム・カウボーイ, Ramona and Julian, მარტოხელა კოვბოები, Одинокие ковбои, 寂寞牛仔
This has long been my favorite film of one of my favorite directors. Watching it this time, I was reminded again how ugly and brutal it is: for a movie I often recall as a radical gay Western, it's surprisingly (and very knowingly) misogynistic, and it always portrays sexuality and the naked body as boring and alienating, never liberating. Which is all the more horrifying because Warhol intentionally casts characters who are unable to articulate the simplest thought -- because he cannot conceive of human beings with any interiority. And with all that, it's still hilarious and goofy. Taylor Meade's performance here (not acting, really; just drug-induced dandyish lisping) is one of the greatest in the history of the cinema. So much more daring, exhilarating, godawful boring, and terrifying than EASY RIDER or MIDNIGHT COWBOYS. A beautiful piece of shit -- and I mean that in the best way.
September 2022: Actor of the Month - Joe Dallesandro
Andy Warhol’s last feature film before handing the reins over to Paul Morrissey (who did the photography here and is listed as producer). Shot in 5 days on an Arizona dude ranch on a a $3,000 budget, some consider this a homoerotic camp classic. But it’s so amateurish - no script, improvised dialogue, grainy photography, poor sound quality and editing - that it frankly was a chore to get through. Warhol at various times described it as a Western satire and a take on Romeo and Juliet, but it’s really neither. What you get is a group of five cowboys - some studly, some androgynous, all polysexual - who call themselves…
This might actually be the screechiest Warhol/Morrissey film I've seen? I'm still not entirely sure if that's a good thing, but I'd still take this over most actual westerns.
The fact that this got somewhat wide distribution is very funny to me.
The WILD West
Andy, sweetie, what the fuck was that? I don't even know where to begin with Lonesome Cowboys. My best course of action is just to muscle through everything as best as I can. So, this is the second of Warhol's flicks that I've seen, last night's Vinyl becoming an instant favorite. This, on the other hand, is not that. At all. I can't bring myself to call Lonesome Cowboys terrible, but I absolutely cannot call it good by any stretch of the imagination. That being said, I do definitely lean towards liking it more than disliking it. There is a small part of me that admires Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey more or less going to buttfuck…
The fact that there aren't more movies about stoned gay cowboys being stoned gay cowboys should be considered a hate crime.
"Silence is one of the best audiences."
Title would also fit 'Brokeback Mountain' quite well.
I really, really want to rate this batshit-insane Andy Warhol western five stars. So I'm going to! Aren't movies fun? I did a lot of reading on this film afterwards, and, apparently, it's so utterly unhinged that Warhol was put on FBI surveillance for a year, and, in August 1969, it was seized by police in Atlanta, personnel at The Ansley Mall Mini Cinema were arrested, and the entire audience was searched for their identifications. That man sure did know how to provoke, huh?
"We're having a good time, right?"
don't mind me, just writing an essay on gay cowboys.
loved the way this was edited! love the way joe dallesandro looks! hated everything else!
It is difficult to know how to summarise the plot of Lonesome Cowboys. Paul Morrissey's screenplay riffs on Shakespeare but turns things on their heads: the action takes place on a ranch in modern-day Arizona not in old Verona; the lovers' names are reversed - Ramona D'Alvarez (Viva) and Julian (Tom Hompertz); Nurse is male (a scene stealing Taylor Mead); to the extent that star-crossing is an impediment, it is sexuality rather than family feuding that is the major blocker; and the assorted rowdy Montague and Capulet hangers-on have morphed into the five brothers who are the lonesome cowboys of the title (Louis Waldon. Eric Emerson, Joe Dallesandro, Julian Burrough and Allen Midgette).
What has fascinated me on each of…
Essential queer cinema -- top of the canon -- the best and most full-bodied of the Warhol/Morrissey collaborations --
Experimental camp, gorgeous tableaux of gorgeous faces, brutal sociopolitical laugh riot, runway show of excellent clothes, pre-Abercrombie body worship, genuinely transgressive, genuinely queer, gleefully edited, pure pleasure, every scene an essay and every scene a comic sendup...
Masculine aggression, gay masculinity obsession, cultural appropriation, the culture of self-centeredness, the nature of image-making, the image in fashion, diva worship...
Favorites: cowboy teaches Joe Dallesandro how to do barre exercises to put "meat on your buns," late night dialogue on lonesomeness, Viva sings Catholic hymns while telling a dude to get naked, Viva borrows "Indian" drag to impress her rapist, Viva says literally anything -- "not one of your boys has hair long enough to warrant a second look." I died. This is maybe my favorite movie.
oh wow this was bad… like unfathomably bad… i think this is the first time ive ever left a movie Angry abt my time being wasted Lollll fuck andy warhol
The glory of The Fuck
Rebellious, vindictive, ugly, hilarious, life-affirming, human cinema.
“I do everything else alone, I might as well die alone.”
Shot on a western set partially owned by John Wayne, used as a vessel to express both Warhol's desire to be accepted in Hollywood and his disappointment in not yet having been.
Telephone wires cut across shots and planes fly overhead; characters talk about the stock market and Freud. Warhol embraces the shallowness of the western genre and stretches the limits of its imagery.
“Fine excuse for a monogamist you are.”
Whether or not you enjoy the movie will likely come down to your opinion on the peculiar way Warhol and Morrissey seem to conduct their actors;…
and like... it's the greatest feeling in the world to be lonesome. it's the deepest. it tears your heart right out.