While
living in New York City,
Joe Dallesandro began his acting career in Andy Warhol movies of
the '60s and early '70s (Flesh,
Trash, Heat).
The enticement was his appearance in the buff more often than not;
it was the era for letting it all hang out, after all. But it wasn't
just his good looks and nice body that allured audiences—a
big part of his appeal was his attraction to both sexes and his
apparent comfort in walking around without threads. In fact, he
was most UNcomfortable with the dialogue—with or without clothes.
And so, it's no surprise to
discover that talking to Dallesandro is like improvising dialogue
with him in one of the Warhol movies—without the nudity, unfortunately.
In those films he rarely did much talking, and the same can be said
for my conversation with him.
When I ask about his quote on
bisexuality (which was in effect a quote about love) from the new
book Little Joe Superstar,
he replies, "You can take quotes from the book." His manner
isn't rude, but I get the impression that he can't deal with expressing
himself to a total stranger.
So
here's the quote—from the book: "I consider myself a bisexual.
It wasn't that I was sexually attracted to men PER SE, but you
know, if you do something for awhile you can acquire a taste for
it. There will be certain parts of it that you like. Though you
may not desire a relationship with a man, you may have other types
of relationships with men. See, the whole part where you put a
sexual inference between a man and another man—you see, I don't
want to have sex for sex's sake. I always come from the mindset
that there has got to be something more.
"For me," he continues,
"it's not a person telling me they love me that makes me
feel loved, because I had that. The person [his father] that loved
me beat me every fucking day. That's not love to me. Love to me
is having loving actions towards another person. Now, loving actions
could be that you pick up a person from work every day or you
show up and look for things to do with that person because you
want to spend time with them. It's not me telling you every day
that I love you that makes me love you. It's me thinking about
you throughout the day, thinking about what we'll do together,
or how I'd like to prepare a meal for us, and then how you want
to do that for me in return."
Though my preference is for
Dallesandro to emotionally expose himself to me as he did in that
statement, instead I'm doled out very short, very guarded comments.
In
today's movies, there are only few actors who will do frontal
nudity. Why do you think that hangup still exist today?
I don't know, does it exist?
OK. In the book you say the gay world
showed you that you didn't have to beat up every man you saw or
hurt people to make a point. Do you think it was because you were
willing to admit that you have a gay side?
I think it's in the story there [in the book].
OK. How was it working with Francis Ford
Coppola on The Cotton Club?
Was it a good or bad experience?
It was a good experience.
Do you feel you learned anything?
It was over 20 years ago.
Yeah, it's been a long time.
It's not that long, but it's been quite a bit of time.
The ONLY time Dallesandro opens
up is when I ask him about his transition from improvising dialogue
in movies to memorizing lines. He finds improvisation more difficult,
but "they're just two different kinds of acting," he says.
"So yeah, I prefer the latter because it's easier for me to
learn lines and deliver them than to have something come from my
head."
Was it total improvisation?
His response is obviously not
memorized. "[Director Paul Morrissey] would give us the story
idea right then and there on the set, and from that we would improvise
dialogue around the small sentence or phrase that he gave us about
what he thought the idea should go with what we were doing in front
of the camera."
Though not in depth, we discuss
the difficulty of improvising dialogue with a camera staring you
in the face. "I mean, I'm not a person who likes to chitchat
at all," affirming what I've already learned in my short phone
conversation with him, "so you can imagine having to do that
in front of a camera. Being aware that it's there, you're supposed
to feel like it's not there so that you can be more natural."
TO CONCLUDE:
Are you reading any scripts?
I read scripts all the time. But it doesn't mean anything comes
from them.
Is there anything coming up?
Nothing I can talk about.
When working in The Factory with the
Andy Warhol crowd, was there anybody there that you thought you
could get along with? [In the book he says they were "phony."]
They lived different lives than I did.
Oh, OK. I appreciate your time.
OK.
And take care.
Alright.
Bye.
Bye.
Even to the most devout fans,
Dallesandro is remembered for being a man of few words but many
physical attributes. On the phone I couldn't assess the physical
attributes circa summer of '98—but at least I got the few words.
Dallesandro now lives in California. His two sons
—one 30, the other 29—live on the East Coast.
If you want to learn more about the elusive Joe Dallesandro,
Little Joe Superstar by Michael
Ferguson
is available at bookstores or through
Companion Press, P.O. Box 2575, Laguna Hills, CA 92654.