I met him at a holiday party hosted by my acting teacher- Austin Pendelton & I figured that we might possibly become friends & he would be my entrance to Andy Warhol's Factory, another step closer to fame.
Tennessee Williams: "All art is a scandal. Life tries to be. Taylor Mead succeeds. I come close". It took a long time for any one to have any reason to think of Taylor Mead as something other than a lonely old barfly living in a squalid apartment, feeding cats & mining mumbled memories.
In fact, Mead has been at the heart of the American avant-garde and counterculture for over 6 decades. A bridge between the Beat movement & the New York art world of the 1960s, he has remained an important creative force, as a writer, a performer & a muse for filmmaker Jim Jarmusch who featured Mead affectionately in Coffee &Cigarettes (2003).
Mead was initially discovered as a poet, but he soon became a leading onscreen figure in American experimental & independent Film, as well as an important collaborator off-screen, contributing to the editing & soundtracks of the films in which he appears.
Born in 1924 to a prominent Grosse Point family, Mead grew up gay at a time when it was not just scandalous but dangerous. He was disowned by his family & he left & fled to the freedom of NYC’s bohemian circles in the 1940s where he became a fixture on the poetry scene. He relocated to San Francisco like so many The Beats. In California, Mead began a collaboration with aspiring filmmaker Ron Rice, starring role in the sensitive The Flower Thief (1960). The film’s tremendous success brought Mead to the attention of artists working in NYC experimental film & theatre. Mead began to appear onstage with major roles in plays by LeRoi Jones & Frank O'Hara, eventually landing a "contract" as one of Andy Warhol's first superstars.
Mead's raunchy & droll performances, are completely unsophisticated & sincere. He has made over 100 movies, 10 with Warhol.
Those who think American indie film began with Quentin Tarantino in the 1990s will be surprised to know that it was the1960s underground cinema that laid the groundwork of what would become the entire independent film movement.
Mead turns 87 years old today. He lives in NYC, & still performs & read poetry regularly at The Bowery Poetry Club. His latest book of poems is called A Simple Country Girl. He was the subject of a documentary- Excavating Taylor Mead, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005. The film shows him engaging in his nightly habit of feeding stray cats in an East Village cemetery after bar-hopping, & features a cameo by Jim Jarmusch, in which Jarmusch explains that once, when Mead went to Europe, he enlisted Jarmusch's brother to feed the cemetery cats in Mead's absence.
Mead is a beloved icon of the downtown NYC art scene since the 1960s. He continues to be charming, with a wry outlook & dry delivery Mead: “Warhol was a genius. Of course, Hitler was a genius, too ...".
In the mid 1970s, Gary Weis made a short film of Mead for Saturday Night Live that featured Mead talking to his cat in the kitchen of his Ludlow Street apartment on the Lower East Side. The film is titiled- Taylor Mead's Cat.
Tennessee Williams: "All art is a scandal. Life tries to be. Taylor Mead succeeds. I come close". It took a long time for any one to have any reason to think of Taylor Mead as something other than a lonely old barfly living in a squalid apartment, feeding cats & mining mumbled memories.
In fact, Mead has been at the heart of the American avant-garde and counterculture for over 6 decades. A bridge between the Beat movement & the New York art world of the 1960s, he has remained an important creative force, as a writer, a performer & a muse for filmmaker Jim Jarmusch who featured Mead affectionately in Coffee &Cigarettes (2003).
Mead was initially discovered as a poet, but he soon became a leading onscreen figure in American experimental & independent Film, as well as an important collaborator off-screen, contributing to the editing & soundtracks of the films in which he appears.
Born in 1924 to a prominent Grosse Point family, Mead grew up gay at a time when it was not just scandalous but dangerous. He was disowned by his family & he left & fled to the freedom of NYC’s bohemian circles in the 1940s where he became a fixture on the poetry scene. He relocated to San Francisco like so many The Beats. In California, Mead began a collaboration with aspiring filmmaker Ron Rice, starring role in the sensitive The Flower Thief (1960). The film’s tremendous success brought Mead to the attention of artists working in NYC experimental film & theatre. Mead began to appear onstage with major roles in plays by LeRoi Jones & Frank O'Hara, eventually landing a "contract" as one of Andy Warhol's first superstars.
Mead's raunchy & droll performances, are completely unsophisticated & sincere. He has made over 100 movies, 10 with Warhol.
Those who think American indie film began with Quentin Tarantino in the 1990s will be surprised to know that it was the1960s underground cinema that laid the groundwork of what would become the entire independent film movement.
Mead turns 87 years old today. He lives in NYC, & still performs & read poetry regularly at The Bowery Poetry Club. His latest book of poems is called A Simple Country Girl. He was the subject of a documentary- Excavating Taylor Mead, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005. The film shows him engaging in his nightly habit of feeding stray cats in an East Village cemetery after bar-hopping, & features a cameo by Jim Jarmusch, in which Jarmusch explains that once, when Mead went to Europe, he enlisted Jarmusch's brother to feed the cemetery cats in Mead's absence.
Mead is a beloved icon of the downtown NYC art scene since the 1960s. He continues to be charming, with a wry outlook & dry delivery Mead: “Warhol was a genius. Of course, Hitler was a genius, too ...".
In the mid 1970s, Gary Weis made a short film of Mead for Saturday Night Live that featured Mead talking to his cat in the kitchen of his Ludlow Street apartment on the Lower East Side. The film is titiled- Taylor Mead's Cat.
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