First he's seen as meat on a stick, a himbo lathering up in a shower that's punctuated by pip-pip-pop strobe edits shoving bits of his lummoxy body in our face. Then this guy, a guido-y wannabe biker dude, seems like more of an unconscious-hustler type (like the young dude in MY HUSTLER), gets turned loose on the Factory gang. First he becomes less than a pornographic object of desire: his meanness, his homophobic bullying, his self-satisfaction with his own unapparent cleverness all make him distasteful--the rough trade Andy brought to the party who then spoiled it for everyone. Then we get to know him better, hear him talk in depth about himself--and it's wan stuff about his job history. He comes to seem like a hurtin', hurt-dealin', profoundly unreflective guy--someone, to put it delicately, without a lot of resources. But then there are these amazing moments when the Warhol crew is struck dumb by him--either by his crude hostility or by his near-mute, cowlike perceptions that bowl them over in their childish truthfulness. And these druggy sophisticates come to seem suddenly, crashingly vulnerable too. It would be easy to hand all the credit to Paul Morrissey here; his influence is obvious (though the movie is a superior version of later, Morrissey-credited pictures like TRASH and HEAT). But in its biggest, abstractest shapes--the war-dance between looks without brains and brains without looks--it's quintessentially Warholian.
