Make Me Famous
The largely forgotten Edward Brezinski is the central figure in Brian Vincent’s documentary about New York’s Lower East Side art scene of the 1980s.
Originally entitled The Brezinski Project, Brian Vincent's film is a work which puts the spotlight on a gay painter who never attained the fame that he sought. Edward Brezinski, born in 1954, grew up in Detroit, moved for a time to San Francisco and then took his place among those artists who, living in New York, became part of the Lower East Side arts scene in the 1980s. This was the key decade in Brezinski's life for in the 1990s he headed for Europe and then virtually disappeared. Two friends would later encounter him in Berlin and glimpse him in Paris, but the only other seemingly definite news came with a report of his death in Nice in 2007. Regardless of that, rumours spread that this was a fake death and Make Me Famous ultimately takes Vincent and his co-producer Heather Spore to the south of France in the hope of obtaining clear evidence as to the accuracy or otherwise of the obituary.
There is plenty of archive footage of Brezinski but he remains in many ways an elusive figure and not only because of the mystery surrounding his later years. That presents something of a problem for a filmmaker seeking to focus on him and Vincent has solved it by making his film a portrait not just of Brezinski but of the art group to which he belonged. Doing that has enabled him to feature recollections by surviving artists, dealers, collectors and gallery owners who were also part of this scene, a whole range of them including Brezinski’s lover David McDermott. We see many examples of Brezinski's work including portraits and several self-portraits as well as many more wholly stylised paintings, but we see too what other New York artists were doing at that time. Given the youth and craziness found in this group of Bohemians, it could well be thought apt that Vincent (editor as well as director here) opts to capture the energy of that time by cutting back and forth between contributors in a decidedly lively way. Some viewers may feel that it's all a bit rushed and hectic, but the approach does suit the subject. Even if indirectly, we get an impression of Brezinski himself while also gaining insight into the group: the shared outlook and camaraderie of these artists, the way in which their fortunes were influenced by trends (as a painter Brezinski was at a disadvantage when other art forms became flavour of the month ranging from filmmaking to graffiti art) and the strains and tensions when some artists acquired a fame that eluded so many of their contemporaries – this was the age of Basquiat, Warhol, Keith Haring and David Wojnarowicz. That gay artists featured strongly in this art scene means that this retrospective portrait also includes memories of many who died of Aids.
Having approached the material using this wider group angle, it is in fact the second half of the film which, in addition to investigating what happened to Brezinski, devotes more time to such standard biopic elements as seeking out family members to comment. Ironically, it is the case that until now Brezinski’s fame, such as it is, has rested on a headline occurrence in 1989 when he ate a doughnut which was part of an exhibit by the artist Robert Gruber and was rushed to hospital because it had been treated with a resin, a dangerous preservative. A newspaper headline about it opted for ‘Sad Story of a Starving Artist’. However, it seems more likely that his action was a criticism aimed at a form of art that he disliked but which was gaining more attention than his own work. Make Me Famous is an endeavour to give him wider fame than that by bringing his genuinely individual paintings to our notice and we can now judge their value for ourselves.
Original title: The Brezinski Project.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring David McDermott, Marguerite Van Cook, James Romberger, Peter McGough, Frank Holliday, Claudia Summers, Duncan Hannah, Julie Jo Fehrle, Marcus Leatherdale, Kenny Scharf, Anina Nosei, Richard Hambleton, Eric Bogosian, Walter Robinson, Sur Rodney Sur, Patti Arbor, Robert Hawkins, William Rand, Gerald Kuklinski, Heather Spore, Brian Vincent.
Dir Brian Vincent, Pro Brian Vincent and Heather Spore, Ph Eugene McVeigh and John Sawyer, Ed Brian Vincent, Music Jeremiah Bornfield, Art Dir Julie Jo Fehrle and Eric Steding, Cos Jason Adam V.
Red Splat Productions-Red Splat-Productions.
93 mins. USA. 2021. UK Rel: 17 February 2023. No Cert.
