Director Lisanne Skyler on the Brillo Box her family once owned
SHORTS PROGRAM 5: BRILLO BOX (3¢ OFF) (Lisanne Skyler, 2016)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Bruno Walter Auditorium
West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Monday, October 3, $15, 6:30
Tuesday, October 4, $15, 9:15
Festival runs September 30 – October 16
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
www.brilloboxmovie.com
Brillo Box (3¢ Off) is a charming and delightful look at art, family, and popular culture, as director Lisanne Skyler turns her camera on her mother and father to explore what became a major point of contention in their marriage. In 1969, young collectors Martin and Rita Skyler purchased a yellow “Brillo Box (3¢ Off)” by Andy Warhol for $1,000 from Ivan Karp at O.K. Harris in SoHo; five years earlier, in 1964, when the Skylers got engaged, the “Brillo Boxes” sold for $200 when they were first displayed. In 1971, Martin traded the box for a drawing by Abstract Expressionist dot painter Peter Young. In 2010, the Skylers’ “Brillo Box (3¢ Off)” sold at Christie’s for $3 million. In this intimate and lighthearted documentary, Skyler traces the history of Warhol’s Brillo Boxes — which were wood copies of the original boxes found in stores, designed by Abstract Expressionist James Harvey — the provenance of the specific box her family owned, and the birth, death, and rebirth of Pop art, via interviews with her parents as well as experts in the art world. “I started out not trying to be a connoisseur or anything like that but thinking that something I enjoyed doing could also just be another way of making money grow,” her father explains. Meanwhile, her mother felt a closer connection with the art, particularly with the Brillo Box, which she encased in Plexiglas and used as a coffee table. The Skylers also bought and sold works by Jake Berthot, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Chuck Close, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Richard Serra.
Documentary follows the provenance of one specific Andy Warhol “Brillo Box”
Skyler, who has previously made such documentaries as No Loans Today and Dreamland and such fiction films as Getting to Know You and Capture the Flag, combines family photographs and home movies with archival footage of Warhol and anecdotes from curators, artists, dealers, collectors, and critics, including Jessica Todd Smith, Irving Sandler, Christie’s Laura Paulson, Kenny Schachter, Andy Warhol Museum director Eric Shiner, and John Armaly, president and CEO of Brillo/Armaly Brands. The forty-minute film, which features a playful score by Tape Waves, maintains a sweetly innocent attitude throughout while taking a quick look at how the art world has changed from the 1960s to 2010, particularly in regard to Warhol. “The world is more Warholian today than it was when he died,” art collector and dealer Daniel Wolf notes. Skyler also provides a terrific surprise at the end. An HBO film scheduled to air in 2017, Brillo Box (3¢ Off) is screening October 3 and 4 at the New York Film Festival in “Shorts Program 5: Documentaries” with Lewie Kloster’s Legal Smuggling with Christine Choy, Esteban Arrangoiz’s El Buzo, Matt Tyrnauer’s Jean Nouvel: Reflections, Ian McClerin’s Rotatio, and Mila Aung-Thwin and Van Royko’s The Vote. Several of the filmmakers and crew members will be present for Q&As, including Skyler.
Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson is a beautifully poetic, deceptively simple wonder about the beauty, poetry, and wonderful simplicity of life, an ode to the little things that make every day special and unique. Adam Driver stars as Paterson, a New Jersey Transit bus driver and poet who lives in Paterson with his girlfriend, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), who spends much of her time decorating their small, quaint house, painting black and white circles and lines on curtains, couches, dishes, walls, and even her clothing, continually creating works of art out of nearly everything she comes into contact with. The film takes place over an ordinary week for the sweet-natured couple, who are very much in love, each allowing the other the freedom to explore who they are and offering their complete support. Every morning, Paterson wakes up around 6:12, as the sunlight streaks over their sleeping bodies. He checks his Casio wristwatch to confirm the time — he doesn’t use an alarm clock, nor does he own a cell phone or a computer — then snuggles closer with Laura for a few extra minutes. He eats Cheerios out of a bowl painted by Laura with circles that match the shape of the cereal. He studies a matchbook, which becomes the starting point for his next poem. Lunchbox in hand, he walks to the Market St. garage and gets on board the 23 bus. He writes a few lines of poetry, listens to fellow bus driver Donny’s (Rizwan Manji) daily complaints, then heads out on his route through his hometown, picking up pieces of some very funny passenger conversations. For lunch he sits on a bench overlooking the Paterson Great Falls and composes more mostly non-rhyming lines in his “Secret Notebook,” which he will not show anyone but Laura. At quitting time, he walks home, checks the mail, fixes the tilted mailbox, sees what new art Laura has created, and takes their English bulldog, Marvin (Nellie, who won the Palm Dog at Cannes and passed away two weeks after shooting concluded), for a walk after dark, stopping for a beer and chatting with bar owner Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley). He then goes back home, ready to do it all over again the next day. But Paterson is no bored working-class suburbanite living out a dreary routine; he finds something new and special in every moment, from his job to his relationship to his nightly trips to the bar. Every day is different from the one before, Jarmusch celebrating those variations that make life such a joy.
“He’s a handmaiden to the gods. He’s been midwife to some of the most important people in music,” John Cameron Mitchell says at the beginning of Danny Says, Brendan Toller’s highly entertaining if scattershot documentary about Danny Fields. Born Daniel Henry Feinberg in Brooklyn in 1939, Fields graduated from the University of Pennsylvania when he was still a teenager, dropped out of Harvard Law School, and went on to one of the wildest careers in the music business. Attracted to both cutting-edge and celebrity culture, Fields was a DJ, a magazine editor, a record executive, a press agent, and a band manager, always doing things his way. “I always went against the grain,” he says in the film, which features family photographs, home movies (including scenes from his bar mitzvah), outstanding music clips, and new and archival interviews with Fields, a natural storyteller with a casual delivery, whether he’s talking about his sexual promiscuity, hanging out with Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick at the Factory, or trying to hook up Jim Morrison and Nico. Nothing is off limits as he shares tales about going to gay bars, making “Have a Marijuana” with David Peel & the Lower East Side, developing a friendship with Linda Eastman, and playing the Ramones for Lou Reed for the first time. “He had a way with words that made you want to become part of whatever he was doing,” Peel says in the film.
