Fotog film has naked truth
MATT Smith, a Brit, played against Claire Foy as the current British Majesty’s husband Philip in “The Crown.” He now plays Robert Mapplethorpe, who made homoerotic photos of the ’70s. He’s gone from Buckingham Palace to the Chelsea Hotel.
Must be the season for handsome men — Smith, Matthew McConaughey (in “Serenity”) — to film their naked bones. Erotic, iconic, sexual, S&M, frontal, rear-endal, penis closeups were in this movie. Especially timely being the showing was Valentine’s Day.
Matt, in black suit, brown shoes: “We did this in 19 days everywhere in New York. I love this town, but it was hard to film. The character was unflinching, uncompromising. Photohappy, he had a total fasci- nation in achieving what his head believed.”
Then: “The film is interesting.” Yeah, right. Interviewer Bob Cola
cello: “I met Mapplethorpe in those days. I wrote for Interview, the first magazine to publish him. Robert, going both ways, was getting his nipple pierced. When I joined the Village Voice, he called. Very ambitious, he wanted only to meet Andy Warhol.
“His taxi bill once was $50. He didn’t have that. For $50, he’d have eaten for a whole month, so we gave him the money. When he began to do sado masochistic pictures, he became famous. Balancing that S&M with flowers, he’d say, ‘Well, I like flowers.’
“An East 57th gallery started showing his work but never thought he’d become so big. Last year, LA mounted a double-exhibit for him. The money went to the Mapplethorpe Foundation.”
Matt said little. His jacket still bore the tell-tale white thread which tailors sew in back to protect the thing’s rear flap while it hangs in the store. Nobody seemed to have mentioned this to their star. Marianne
Rendón, who posed with him at the screening, stars as Patti Smith.
On-screen Matt cavorts with gentlemen. Off-screen he and girlfriend Lily
James recently cavorted in Ischia’s Hotel Regina Isabella, where Elizabeth Taylor and Burton once did their own cavorting until one night came a fight and E. Taylor flung all R. Burton’s clothes over the balcony into the pool.
Smith and James appeared to have had a cavortier visit.
While this memory in no way helps the movie, it does at least help show that I know other things.