Metrograph

Morrissey bid a bitter goodbye to Hollywood, where he’d relocated for some time with hopes of becoming a studio filmmaker, with this caustically comic send-up of the city’s burgeoning derelict-chic hardcore punk scene, starring Patrick Schoene as a masochistic agent of the East German Stasi who arrives in Los Angeles with the intention of rendezvousing with Jane Fonda, only to be plunged into the lower depths of the City of Angels when “adopted” by a community of grubby, garrulous gleaners squatting in an abandoned Masonic Temple. A savage satire of American decadence that, thanks to Morrissey’s obvious affection for his degenerate stars, might just as easily be taken as a celebration of the same.

35mm print courtesy of the Paul Morrissey Films Trust

Distributor: Vinegar Syndrome

Introduction by writer Nick Pinkerton on Saturday, September 6th