Hollywood Extras: One Tradition of "Avant-Garde" Film in Los Angeles

Author(s): David E. James

Source: October, Vol. 90 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 3-24
Published by: MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/779077
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 HollywoodExtras:
One Traditionof "Avant-Garde"
Filmin Los Angeles*

DAVID E. JAMES

EveryMan and everyWomanis a Star.

-Kenneth Anger (afterAleisterCrowley),
Hollywood Babylon(1975)

Postwarfilmstudiesinheritedfrommodernismvariousformsof the authentic

art/massculturebinarythatwas mostdecisivelyformulatedbyCriticalTheory.As
a consequence, when the historiographyand theory of non-commodityfilm
practices in the United States were developed in the 1960s, theyprivilegedthe
concept of an aestheticallyautonomous,formalist"avant-garde."Traced via figures
such as Hans Richterand Maya Deren primarilyfromthe European post-World
War I Surrealists,a traditionof such "avant-garde"filmswas understood to be
entirelydistinctfromthe entertainmentindustry,in formulationsthat echoed
Clement Greenberg'sanalysis of the division of art in the modern period into
"avant-garde"and "kitsch,"even thoughGreenberg'srecognitionof the historical
preconditions of their separate emergence and of the determiningpriorityof
mass culturein modernismgenerallywas not engaged.
In retrospect,we can clearlysee the conditionsthatmade the construction
of this tradition of avant-gardefilmboth possible and necessary.On the one
hand, the 1960s saw an unprecedented floweringof non-studiofilmpractices;
these reflectedthe emergenceof strongsocial movementsbased initiallyon disaf-
filiationfromthe corporatestate,the severalcrisesin the entertainment industry,
the readyavailabilityof the materialresourcesof cinema forpopular use, and the
hegemonyof the moviesin the popular imagination.On the otherhand, both the
journalisticand the academicformsoffilmcriticismthenemergingweredeveloped
primarilyin referenceto the industrialnarrative;the inadequacyof thistheoryto

* This essay derives froma talk firstgiven at the conference "Der Blick der Moderne" ("The
ModernistVision") organized by Sixpack Film in Vienna in June 1996 and furtherdeveloped while I
was a scholarat the GettyResearchInstitute,Los Angeles.

OCTOBER 90,Fall 1999,pp. 3-24. ? 1999 October

Magazine,Ltd.and Massachusetts
Institute
ofTechnology.

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 4 OCTOBER

the underground,structural,and other new formsof filmof the period made it

logical and fruitfulto adopt for filmthe general parameters of the dominant,
Greenbergianconceptualization of New York painting and sculpture,then in a
position of virtuallyglobal influence.The criticalparadigms established in this
contextwere capable of both theorizingand valorizingnon-studiofilm,and so the
overallheuristicfirstmade possible appropriateconsiderationof severalcurrents
of filmmakingwhose great aesthetic and social significancehad previouslyonly
been ignoredor derided. P. Adams Sitney'sVisionary Film(1974), the culmination
of a decade of radicallyinnovativecriticismand historiography withintheseoverall
parameters, was then a cultural interventionof great importance,not only for
American film,but also in providinga model for filmand critical practices in
othercountries.
Because the achievementsof thisbody of criticismand theoryhave been so
considerable,theynow allow us to go beyondit,not to disputeits relevanceto the
films that chieflymotivated it nor to question the historical necessity of its
formulation,but rather to sublate it, to recontain it as one vector in a more
historicallyand socially comprehensiveanalysis dominated by contrarymove-
ments. Such a reconsiderationwill enable us to reconfigurethe relation of the
various nonindustrialpracticesof filmto the industryitself,and to recongizethat
theyare produced in a fieldcomprisedof multiplepositionsmore or less close to,
moreor less distantfromstudioproduction(whichitselfis rarelyuniformor stable),
and thatinnovationsin formalprocedures,representational codes,and production
strategies circulate reciprocally through the entire field. Historically, most
nonindustrialpractices have either been determinedby the overall structureof
the industryitself,and/or been in process of gravitatingtowardit. The contrary
drive away from the industry toward autonomy has occurred mainly when
supplied by similarlyunusual social forces (as of course happened in the 1960s).
Reflectingthe strengthof Hollywood'sgravitationalpull, the traditionsof film-
making we group togetherunder the rubric of "avant-garde"have often been
self-consciousabout their industrialother and about their own otherness. And
theyhave oftenproduced themselves,not simplyas permutationsof the formal
axiomsof theirantecedentsor of the mediumitself(thoughsuch a high-modernist
tradition of course exists), but by way of more or less explicit, more or less
allegoricallydisplaced envisioningsof Hollywoodand of theirown relationshipto
it. Such an argumenthas, of course,been made before,in Laura Mulvey'sproposal
in 1975 that a "politicallyand aestheticallyavant-gardecinema is now possible,
but it can onlyexist as a counterpoint,"lforexample, and a decade laterin Paul
Arthur'ssummaryobservationthat"Hollywoodremainsthe animatingskeletonin
the avant-gardefilmcloset."2But these positionshave not been systematizedinto

1. Laura Mulvey,Visualand OtherPleasures(London: Macmillan,1989), p. 16.

2. Paul Arthur,"The Last of the Last Machine?: Avant-GardeFilm Since 1966," MillenniumFilm
Journal16/17/18 (Fall 1986), p. 70.

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Hollywood 5

a comprehensivetheoryof the avant-garde.Now,long afterpoststructuralist literary

theoryrecognized the impossibilityof categorical cultural alterityin respect to
women's,ethnic,and latelyqueer writing,and so developed a dazzlingrepertoire
of formulationsof the ways minoritygroups write simultaneouslywithinand
against the languages of the hegemony,so it remainsforus to detail the parallel
signifyin(g)practicesof cinemaswhichinevitablyfindthemselveson the margins
of or interstitial
withinthe industry.3
Referenceto these practicesshould frameany historyof U.S. nonindustrial
cinemas (a historywhich then becomes possible only as a series of differential
currentswithina totalized historyof cinema, regularlyinformingand informed
bythe industry).But theyare especiallypertinentin respectto independentcinemas
in Los Angeles, that is, in the industry'simmediate geographical penumbra,
where its power is most immediateand other possibilitiesmost precarious.Non-
studio filmmaking in Los Angeles has had a long, various, and usually
crisis-riddenhistory,reflectingthe degree to whichthe Hollywoodfilmindustry
has dominated the city'scultural life. The stars of the industryhave shone so
brightlythat the nonindustrialcinemas here have been made all but invisible.
But, hidden in the industry'sradiance, theyhave neverthelessflourished,and
commonlyfound the imaginativereconstructionof theirambiguousand unstable
position in respectto Hollywoodto be a compellingaestheticproject.They have
inscribedthe powerof Hollywoodin narrativesvariouslyof desire or hatred,even
as theirpracticeshave mobilizedthe same impulses,approachingor avoidingthe
industryas historyhas allowed. These cinemashave come intobeing as objectified
formsof the mediated self-fashioning that we inhabitantsof late capitalism all
perform;but forthem it has been a materialas well as a psychologicalnecessity.
The followingexaminationof threekeymomentsin thisgeneral historyproposes
that the reflexiveattentionto the medium itself-the concern that,since Kant,
has been recognizedas one of modernism'sfundamentalprojects-has led all but
inevitablyin Los Angeles to the considerationof the medium'sdominanthistori-
cal instantiaton,thatis, to the Hollywoodfilmindustry.

I. The Lifeand Death of 9413--A HollywoodExtra:

ThePrototypical
Avant-gardeFilm
In earlycinema, industrialmanufactureand formalexperimentationwere
one and the same-an identitythatwe now reenvisionin our readings of early
cinema as alreadyavant-garde.Not until the consolidationand rationalizationof

3. With "signifyin(g)"I invokeHenry Louis Gates's understandingof the African-American liter-

arytraditionas "double-voiced"because it has "complexdouble formalantecedents,the Westernand
the black."Henry Louis GatesJr.,TheSignifying Monkey:A TheoryofAfrican-American LiteraryCriticism
(New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1988), p. xxiv.The characteristicdouble play of repetitionand
revisionin African-American writingis structurally
parallel to qualities recentlyproposed for other
ethnic,women's,and queer writing.

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 6 OCTOBER

the studiosin the late 1910s and early'20s did the idea of a nonindustrial,artfilm
practice become fullypossible, and so the shortfilmsmade by artistsin Europe
began the traditionwe nowclassify as avant-garde.In thesame period,experimental
art filmswere also being made on the edge of Hollywood.Standard historiesof
avant-gardecinema commonlybegin withthe Cubistand Surrealistfilmsmade in
Paris in 1923-24, for example, withDudley Murphyand Fernand LUger'sBallet
Micanique (1924); but in 1920, before he went to Paris and indeed before both
Walther Ruttmann's Opus 1 and Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand's Manhatta,
Murphymade three experimentalshortsin Los Angeles, the firstof which, The
Soul oftheCypress, was a studyof his wife,Chase Harringdine,dancing througha
grove of treeson the Californiacoast.4The subsequenttraditionof experimental
filmsmade on the marginsof Hollywoodwhen "the borderlinebetween 'experi-
mental film' and 'the movies' .. . remained ill-defined"5includes Salome(Alla
Nazimova, 1922), The SalvationHunters(Josefvon Sternberg, 1925), The Last
Moment(Paul Fejos, 1928), TheBridge(Charles Vidor, 1928), The Tell-Tale Heart
(Charles Klein, 1928), and Lullaby (Borris Deutsch, 1929). This line of para-
industrialexperimentalfilmscomes to a head withthe remarkableLifeand Death
of9413-A Hollywood Extra(1928); essentiallyan amateurfilmabout the industry,
it was summaryof the firstphase of Los Angeles experimentalismin the 1920s as
well as symptomaticof the second, that of the 1930s. In it, negotiationsbetween
the avant-gardeand Hollywoodwereexplicitand multileveled.
Extrawas made bythreepeople: SlavkoVorkapich,an expatriateYugoslavian
commercialartistturned cineaste;RobertFlorey,an expatriateFrenchjournalist;
and GreggToland, an assistantcameramanat MGM.6 Shot overseveralweekends

4. See WilliamMoritz,"Americansin Paris,"in LoversofCinema:TheFirstAmerican FilmAvant-Garde

1919-1945, ed. Jan-ChristopherHorak (Madison: Universityof Wisconsin Press, 1995). Moritz gives
fulldetails of the receptionof TheSoul oftheCypress and makes a verystrongcase thatMurphy,rather
than L6ger,was the primaryauthor of BalletMecanique.For details on experimentalfilmin Hollywood
in the 1920s and '30s, see also David Curtis,Experimental Cinema(New York:Dell, 1971) and Lewis
Jacobs,"ExperimentalCinema in America,1921-47," in TheRiseoftheAmericanFilm,ed. LewisJacobs
(New York:Teachers College Press,[1947] 1968).
5. William Moritz, "Visual Music and Film-As-An-Art in California Before 1950," in TheEdge of
America:Modernist Artin CaliforniaBefore1950, ed. Paul Karlstrom(Berkeley:Universityof California
Press,1996), p. 211.
6. Accounts of the collaboration tend to polarize into Floreyand Vorkapichcamps, but it would
seem that Florey'scontributionwas primary.Brian Taves claims that Floreywas mainlyresponsible
for the film,and asserts that though Florey generouslyshared credit, Vorkapich "had no role in
eitherthe scenario or the direction. . . his contributionbeing limitedto the set design and miniature
lighting,"even though he subsequentlyfabricatedaccounts of the production to enlarge his role.
See Brian Taves, "RobertFloreyand the HollywoodAvant-Garde,"in Lovers Cinema, 116, n. 10.
of p.
Taves also claims that most of the camera workwas done by Floreyand Vorkapich,withadditional
workby Paul Ivano, and he creditsToland onlywithclose-ups (p. 98). Bozidar Zecevic
quotes a 1948
letterfromVorkapichto LewisJacobs in which he allows that the initial idea was
Florey's,but after
that the developmentwas eithershared or exclusivelyhis own,with"at least 90% of the
editing and
montage" being his-claims he supports by referenceto "the continuous unityof stylein all [his]
work. No such thing is to be found in Florey's work since '9413."' See Bozidar Zecevic, "Slavko
Vorkapich:A Hollywood Extra (1927)," Framework 21 (Summer 1983), p. 11. Taves makes no refer-

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Hollywood 7

in Vorkapich'skitchenat a cost of ninety-sevendollars, it combined live action

and special effectsto recountthe fate of an extra who hopes to make a career as
an actor,and also to sketchthe conditionsofstudioproductionand thearchitectural
fabricof the cityat large. Hollywooddehumanizesthe hopefulactor,and eventu-
allydestroyshim. He is reduced to a number (whichis writtenon his forehead),
he failsto findwork,and, hounded bycreditorsand continuallyhumiliatedbythe
stars,he sinksinto povertyand dies. Onlywhen he reaches heaven is the stigma
removedfromhis brow.
Expressionisticin itsvisualvocabularyand lighting,Extraradicallyestranged
narrativewith extensivesuperimposition,abrupt cuts, rapid and unmotivated
camera movement,and an overtlyartificialand metaphoric mise-en-scene-
though not with nondiegetic metaphor,except in one beautifulshot where the
extra'sdeath is signifiedbya pair of scissorscuttinga stripof film.Quoting earlier
experimental films (including Ballet Mecanique), it is itself unarguably an
experimentalfilm,and itwas immediatelyrecognizedas such and accommodated
into both the American and European art-film distributionsystems.But despite
its artisanalproduction,its criticalthematics,and its formalcomplexity, Extradid
not place itselfoutsideor opposed to the industryso muchas interveneproductively
in it. As well as being thematically concerned with Hollywood, it engaged
Hollywoodpracticallyin severalways.
First, the three artists were themselves Hollywood workers. Decisively
influenced by Murnau's The Last Laugh, Vorkapich had been persuaded by
Intoleranceand Chaplin's workthatcinema was "the art of the century,"7 and had
spent the decade evolvinga theoryof medium specificitydesigned to free film
fromdrama and literature.His workwas withinthe criticalline of the search for
the essentially filmic that runs throughout the avant-garde from Germaine
Dulac throughMaya Deren to Hollis Frampton,but it was designed to influence
commercialpracticeratherthan tojustifyan avant-gardeoutsideit.Appropriately,
his ideas were crystallized in a series of lectures given in Hollywood to the
American Society of Cinematographers,and published in the society'sjournal,
AmericanCinematographer. Approached by Florey at one of these lectures, he
agreed to collaborate on a filmillustratinghis principles.As well as being a jour-
nalist,Floreyhad writtenand directedindependentfilms;he had made his own
experimentalworks;and he had himselfbegun an industrycareer that included
workingas an associate directorat MGM.
Second, afterExtra,all three continued in Hollywood careers in which
experimentalism was industrialized in various ways. Florey made three more

ence to Zecevic's essay nor to Vorkapich'sletter,but earlyjournalistic accounts

(e.g., Kay Small, "He
Made a Movie for$97!" Hollywood Magazine17, no. 12 [March 23, 1928], pp. 7, 29) justifyhis position,
even though the film'smostprominentaestheticqualities followfromVorkapich'ssets and
montage
construction.
7. Barbara L. Kevles,"SlavkoVorkapichon Film as a Visual Language and as a Form of Art,"Film
Culture38 (Fall 1965), p. 20.

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The Lifeand Death of9413-A HollywoodExtra. 1928.

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Hollywood 9

shortswithoutVorkapich,thenbecame a directorof B featuresand latertelevision.

Toland's continued experimentationin lightingand compositionculminatedin
his photography for the definitive American art film, Citizen Kane (1941).
Vorkapichwas never able to secure fundingfora featureproject of his own,but
he did have two verydistinguished subsequent careers, one as an avant-garde
filmmakerboth outside the industryand in it, and one as a theoristand teacher.
In the 1940s he collaborated withJohn Hoffmanon two experimental shorts,
MoodsoftheSea (a visualizationof "Fingal'sCave") and ForestMurmurs; but before
these, in the 1930s, he directed montage interludesin approximatelytwenty-five
MGM features. Many of these are not narrative,but poetic juxtapositions of
images reminiscentof Soviet montage. Sequences like the prolonged scenes of
the ravages of war or the invasionof locusts in The GoodEarth (Sidney Franklin,
1937), for example, are essentiallyexperimental interludesin industryfeature
films.And his lecturesat the Museum of Modern Artand in such academic insti-
tutionsas the University of SouthernCaliforniaand the University of Californiaat
Los Angeles,both of which had filmschools that fed into the industry,brought
him celebritythat lasted into the 1970s. Extrawas, then, the kind of filmthat
studentsnow terma "calling-card," and it providedthe platformforthreecareers
that passed in and out throughthe industry,and allowed its makers to develop
differentformsof experimentation in a varietyof productive systems.In this
calling-cardfunction,it prefiguredthe next year's most celebrated avant-garde
film,Un chienAndalou,which served its makersin a not dissimilarfashion:Luis
Bufiuel, who became a director of more or less experimental features, and
Salvador Dali, who among other thingsbecame a designer of Surrealistdream
sequences in featurefilms(Hitchcock'sSpellbound, 1945).
Third,thoughExtrawas domesticallyproduced and thoughit was circulated
as an experimentalartfilm,it also foundcommercialdistribution.Chaplin himself
hosteditspremiereat his BeverlyHillsvillato an audience ofHollywoodluminaries
thatincluded D. W. Griffith, JesseLasky,ErnstLubitsch,Josefvon Sternberg,King
Vidor,Douglas Fairbanks,MaryPickford, and Norma Talmadge,8and his promotion
secured its distributionby the Film Booking Office,which had access to seven
hundred theatersin the U.S. and Europe.9 Such a readycommercialassimilation
suggestsa mass rather than an elite or mandarin reception,and indeed Extra's
themes had been quite popular for the previous fiveyears-not in the avant-
garde, but in the industryitself!
In 1923, in the wake of the Arbucklescandal,Hollywood (JamesCruze, 1923)
initiated a cycle of films that inverted the previously common rags-to-fame
industryformula with a storyof a small-towngirl named "Hope Drown,"who
came to Hollywood,butfailedto make her fortune.And the same yearas Extrasaw

8. Zecevic,"SlavkoVorkapich,"p. 12.
9. RichardAllen,"TheLifeandDeathof9413-A Hollywood
Extra,"Framework
21 (Summer1983), p. 12.

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10 OCTOBER

two furtherdisenchanted meditationson the actor's lot: one, ShowPeople(King

Vidor), was a romantic comedy; but in the other, von Sternberg's The Last
Command, the extra's strugglealso terminatedonlywithhis death. Nominatedas
"BestPicture"forthe veryfirstof the AcademyAwards,TheLast Command starred
EmilJanningsas a displaced czaristgeneral reduced to a bit playerin Hollywood.
He gets a role playinga czaristgeneral who,in Hollywood'sversionof the Russian
Revolution,defeatsthe Bolsheviks,but then dies of a heartattackin his moment
of fantasyvictory.And for playingsuch an extra,Janningsactuallyreceived the
rewardthat9413 so desperatelysought:he won the veryfirstAcademyAwardfor
BestActor.
Along with their vilificationof the industry,these filmsall have striking
motifsin common withExtra.All establish the metonymythat links Hollywood-
the-place and Hollywood-the-industry by visual tours of the cityand the studios,
with ShowPeople'sbeing especiallyextensive.A major turningpoint in The Last
Commandis the collapse of a railroadbridge under the weightof a train,whichis
shot using backlit models verysimilarto the cardboard cutout train that takes
9413 to heaven in Extra.Like Extra's,Cruze's Hollywood appears to have been a fan-
tasy;it featuredseventy-eight Hollywoodpersonalitiesin guest appearances, and
its rejectionof naturalismprefigurednotjust Extra'sreflexivity and stylisticinno-
vationsbut also the excess of the KennethAnger/Jack Smithvision of the movies;
it was describedin the yearof its productionas "utterinsanity.The various stars,
garbed as sheiks,licentious club-men,aristocraticroues, bathinggirls,apaches,
and the like, moved about in weird confusion through a distorted nightmare.
There was slow motion photography,reverse action and double exposure; no
sense was made at any given point"lo-my kind of movie, certainly,but thisfilm
was made in Hollywood by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation/Paramount
Pictures.
After1928, such a cynicalcontemplationof Hollywooddecadence continued
to be a major motifin American culture on all levels. In 1936 Florey himself
remade Extraas a featureat Paramount,this time calling it Hollywood Boulevard.
Otherwisein the '30s, the thememigratedto othermedia; one especiallyconspic-
uous formwas prose fiction,withTheDay oftheLocust,WhatMakesSammy Run,and
other Hollywoodnovels of the '30s and '40s writtenby embitteredscreenwriters
and otherstudiotemporaries.On a different culturallevel,thoughwithconvergent
thematics,were the "Tijuana Bibles,"pornographiccomics about the sex livesof
the stars. The tradition revivedin the industryafterthe war as various crises
precipitatedanother era of troubledself-consciousness, generatingthe reflexive
noir traditionthat runs fromSunsetBoulevard(BillyWilder,1950) to ThePlayer
(RobertAltman,1992), and so on.

10. RobertE. Sherwood, TheBestMovingPictures

of1922-23 (Boston: Small,Maynardand Company,
1923), p. 83.

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Hollywood 11

In summary,then,Extra'scritique of the exploitationof workersin the film

industryintersectsand is intertwinedwith similar critiques of Hollywood that
operate on manyculturallevels,in a varietyof cinematicforms,in othermediums,
and in both journalistic and scholarlycommentary.The parallels for the film's
formaldevices,plot motifs,special effects,and so on in earlierand later industry
filmsprohibitthe absolute segregationof experimentationor stylisticproperties
into one or the other of mutuallyexclusive spheres. And all the people who
independentlyand domesticallymade Extrawent on to professionalcareers in
which theycirculatedthroughboth core and peripheryof the industryand its
satelliteinstitutions.These interconnectionsand the overallporousnessof formal
and practicalboundarieslinkthe variouspracticesof cinema and suggestthatthe
avant-gardeshould be understood, not as completelyother, but as a series of
interstitialmovementsand impulseswithinthe hegemonyof the dominantmode
of filmproduction.TheLifeandDeathof9413is, then,the prototypeof one tradition
of the American avant-gardefilm.Though not all avant-gardefilmsare as com-
prehensivelyimbricatedin the industry, it manifestsin a cruciallyarticulateform
the interactionsbetween the different modes of productionand mutual address
betweenthemthatothersmanifestto a lesserdegree.
Even when the theoryof the autonomous avant-gardewas being developed
and when the possibilitiesof autonomyseemed greatest,the invocation of the
industryin amateur filmswas direct and often impassioned. In the period of
underground film,Kenneth Anger,Andy Warhol,Jack Smith, and the Kuchar
brotherswereall obsessed withHollywood,and even in structuralfilmthe address
was maintained in works by Ken Jacobs (Tom, Tom,The Piper's Son, 1969; The
Doctor'sDream,1978), Ernie Gehr (Eureka,1974; Rear Window, 1986-91), and even
Hollis Frampton(Gloria.!,1979). Sustainedbythe feministcritiqueof the narrative
feature,attentionto Hollywoodbegan to preoccupythe dominantline in indepen-
dent filmand video afterthe late '70s, when the lack of a position outside the
media industrieswas recognized-if not celebrated-in most theories of post-
modernism: Rea Tajiri's Historyand Memory(1991), Mark Rappaport's Rock
Hudson'sHomeMovies(1992), and Jane Cottis's and Kaucyila Brooke's Dry Kisses
Only(1990) are representativeof the centralityof thisaddress in ethnic,gay,and
lesbian identitycinemas. In Los Angeles specifically,where avant-gardeartists
have oftenbeen employedin the industryand where the border between avant-
garde and the "indie" featureis oftencrossed, or at least blurred,paraindustrial
filmsthat explicitlyaddress the industryhave been common. Dennis Hopper's
TheLast Movie(1971), JonJost'sAngelCity(1977),Julie Dash's Illusions(1983), and
GreggAraki's Long Weekend (O'Despair)(1987) are all variationson the theme of
the livesof Hollywoodextras.Here, in place of a historicalaccount of thisgenre,
I will consider the various formsof address to and interactionwithHollywoodin
two of the modes of nonindustrialfilmmakingusuallyconsidered most resistant
to and incommensuratewith the industry,most immune to its blandishments:
structuralfilmand minorityethnicfilm.

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 12 OCTOBER

II. Structural
Filmin theIndustry
Town
Structural film was supported by the institutions of Minimalist and
Conceptual art, and its major practitionerswere people with close connections
to the art world.At its two major epicenters,Vienna and New York,it reflected
quite immediatelythe local institutionswithinwhich the modernist aspiration
towardaestheticautonomyhad been framed:the heritage of the second Vienna
school of musical composition in the one case, and mid-1960s New York
Minimalism in the other. Compared to the sheer aestheticism of the Vienna
mode, structural filmin NewYorkand in the U.S. generallycontainedan admixture
of transcendental,phenomenological, and even overtlypolitical concerns; but
still,itsmostcharacteristic achievementsgeneratedaestheticeffectsand knowledge
out of the material propertiesand formal resources of the medium itself.For
example, Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967), one of the filmsthatinauguratedthe
movementin New York,consistedof a single,slow,forty-five-minute zoom across
an artist'sloft,withthe filmstockchanged periodically;so it was "about" the way
space is differently organized by lens of differentfocal length and "about" the
way differentfilm stocks registerreality.In the early '70s, the Los Angeles art
world was much smallerthan New York's,and its institutionsregisteredthe pull
of Hollywoodas well as of the New YorkInternationalSchool, so that even at its
most austere, Los Angeles Minimalismwas often colored by a glossysensuality
and/or a knowingcynicism-the workof LarryBell or Ed Ruscha, forexample.
But though the general cultural environmentcould not sustain the rigorously
self-criticalfilmpractice of Viennall or New York,structuralfilmdid resonate
here in two areas especially:withJohn Baldessari and his studentsat California
Instituteof theArts(Cal Arts),and withthemembersofa smallscreeningcollective,
Oasis Cinema.
Baldessari's workcontainsmanykindsof interactionwithcinema; his use of
movie stillsas raw materialsin his photomontages,for example, or his series of
etchingscalled Black3,based on a stillfroma movie of that name. Followinghis
experimentsin narrativesequences of still photographs in the early 1970s, he
made a seriesof filmsincludingTitle(1973) and Script(1973-77) that fragmented
narrativefilm language, isolating something like its syntacticelements, then
used predetermined structuresto recombine them. Primaryelements in film
composition-such as the numberof itemsin the profilmic,the formsof motion
theywere capable of, and eventuallymodes of characterinteraction-were sub-
jected to progressivelymore complex manipulations, eventuallyto the point
wherepartsof specificfilmswere reconstructed.In Script,the last of these works,
he had seven pairs of Cal Arts students (some of whom indeed went on to be

11. Though it should be remembered that one of Peter Kubelka's firstworks,Adebar,was an

advertisement,and that distinguished second-generationViennese structuralfilmmakerssuch as
MartinArnold have been engaged in an explicitdialogue withHollywoodfeaturefilms.

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 Extras
Hollywood 13

stars in the spectacular art world of the 1980s) reenact ten narrativefragments
selected fromfilmscripts,and then reedited the seventymini-scenesin different
ways. Three of the fragmentswere in fact fromSunsetBoulevard,so one section
of the filmconsistsof seven different versionsof the scene where Gloria Swanson
playingNorma Desmond exclaims when WilliamHolden turnshis back on her,
"I'm the greateststar of them all. No one ever leaves a star.That's what makes
one a star."
The workof Morgan Fisher,the mostaccomplished Los Angeles artistwork-
ing withinthe general parametersof structuralfilm,contains a similarlylogical
trajectory:fromfilmto the movies,fromthe medium to its dominanthistorical
instantiation. In a series of faux-instructionalfilmsincluding ProductionStills
(1970), Cue Rolls (1974), and ProjectionInstructions
(1976), he enticed wallflowers
hidden in remote corners of the studio apparatus to give up a rare dialectical
booty.Each investigating some componentof the industrialapparatus,thesewere
rigorouslycerebralprojects,thoughthe witwithwhichFishergeneratedcomplex
tensions between the industrialpractice and his own artisanal re-presentation
was oftenveryfunny.In ProductionStills,for example, he assembled a director,
sound-person, cameraman, and set-photographer,indeed a whole production
crew,witha Mitchellstudio camera on a soundstageat the UCLA filmschool.12
But insteadof takingadvantageof the fluidmobilityor otherprofessionalcapabil-
ities of the Mitchell,Fisher had the camera held motionless,focused on a small
area of wall. Meanwhilethe set photographertook Polaroid stillphotographsof
the entireproductionprocess and placed themsuccessivelyon the wall in frontof
the Mitchell,enabling it circuitouslyto document the production of the filmit
was simultaneouslyshooting.1'3
This reflexiveminimalismis exemplaryof structural film'sdeepestaspiration;
the filmis about nothingother than the conditionsof its own manufacture,that
is, about the propertiesof the two photographicsystemsthatinteractedto bring
it about. The differencesbetweenthese-still versusmotion,blackand whiteversus
color, instantdevelopingversuslab processingand so on-supply the film'sformal
ironies.Theywillalso be recognizedas displacedformsof the twoproductivemodes
of Extra:the "amateur"Polaroid systemdepicts the "professional"Mitchellcrew;
yetthe Polaroid photographsdepend on the Mitchellfortheirown reproduction
in the film.Here, the imaginaryinvestmentin Hollywood,whichin Fisher'searlier
filmshad been sublimatedinto the quasi-scientificbut fundamentallynostalgic
connoisseurshipof obsolete industryprocedures,became plain. The infatuation

12. The use of professionalequipment found at UCLA, extracurricularthoughit was in this case,
raises the issue of consideringthe studentfilmas a specificmode of filmproduction.In Los Angeles,
certainly,manyof the best and mostimportantavant-gardefilmssince CurtisHarrington'sFragment of
Seeking(1948) have been made in or around the area's filmschools,whileconverselyfilmschools have
mediatedavant-gardeinnovationsinto the industryitself.
13. For a more extended analysisof thisfilm,see David E. James,Allegories
ofCinema:American Film
in theSixties(Princeton:PrincetonUniversity Press,1989), pp. 249-53.

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14 OCTOBER

thatsustainedhis entireoeuvre openlydeclared itself,as obsessiveand integralas

anystarstruckfan's. This dependence of the avant-gardeon the industry, its posi-
tioning as an interstitial moment within Hollywood's overall hegemony, is
foregroundedin Fisher'smostcelebrated film,StandardGauge(1984), a filmthat
addresses the standardindustryfilmformat,35 mm,though it was itselfmade in
the amateur16 mm gauge.
Aftera brief scrolled-throughintroduction summarizingthe process by
which 35 mm became the industrynorm, StandardGaugere-presentsa series of
fragmentsof actual 35-mmfilm.The clips span manygenres-from fragmentsof
Academy leader to the documentaryfootage of the Hindenburgexplosion that
appeared in Bruce Conner's A Movie,fromthe art film(Godard's La Chinoise)to
Hollywood television shows (Beulah)-for Fisher's interest in them reflects
primarilyhis pleasure in the filmmaterialitselfand its images ratherthan any
concern withthe politicsof theirmanufacture.Such a re-presentationof found
footageis a common device in structuralfilm,allowinga varietyof formsof inter-
play between the qualities of the main film (the film as a whole) and the
fragmentsof other filmsthat it internallydepicts and contains. And Standard
Gaugeactivatessome quite common effectsthat revolvearound the differences
between the materialfilmobject thatwe see representedand the filmthatmakes
itavailableto us,butwhichwe do notsee. For example,itscrutinizestheinscriptions
on thefilmstrip thatorganizeitspassage throughthe printerand othercomponents
of the cinematic apparatus but which the spectatornormallynever sees, and it
contains scenes in which the scrutinizedfilmis pulled continuouslybefore the
camera so thatthe images on it are blurred.At such moments,the technological
mechanismsthat produce the illusion of motion are foregrounded;in the latter
case, forexample, the occasions when the filmstripis pulled continuouslybefore
the camera, we recognize what we see as a precise image on film,produced by
intermittent photography,of the blurredappearance of other precise images on
film, also produced byintermittent photography,when the whole systemis inter-
ruptedbya nonintermittent pass throughthe apparatus.In anotherinstance,the
filmshows us, forthe duration of many,correctlyexposed frames,a single,over-
exposed frame froma 35-mmtechnoscope film.Since we see the frame in its
materialform,ratherthan projectedthroughan anamorphiclens, the images on
it are compressedalong the horizontal.Again the representationactivatestensions
between the temporaland spatial propertiesof the two films;the visibleone that
is presentedto us and the invisibleone bymeansofwhichwe see it: anamorphic35-
mm against ordinary16-mm;visibilityof sprocketholes and sound trackagainst
theirconcealment; one frameagainst the multipleframesof its re-presentation;
and so on.
But rather than concluding here, as do parallel investigationsin the work
of Paul Sharrits, George Landow, and other New York filmmakers, these
exposes and manipulations of the material propertiesof the medium are made
to tell a story,an autobiographical narrativeof Fisher's life on the marginsof

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StandardGauge. 1984. Courtesy
ofScottMacDonald.

"'END ,.PART

........
....

. ..../ !k i ii ; il i ii ! i
i, ,? . , ,-
L.. ?.?
-.

!~

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16 OCTOBER

the industry.14 For all the pieces of filmhe re-presentsare fragmentsthat he

collected during his various sporadic engagementswithmanyformsof cinema,
as a stock-footageresearcher,as an editor, as an assistant director,even as a
stand-in actor. As well as using these fragmentsto demonstrate properties of
the mediumin conventionalstructuralfilmfashion,and pointingout the qualities
he personallyrelishes in them, he also uses them to tell the storyof his life in
Hollywood and on its edges, the life of a Hollywood extra. The single frame
mentioned above, forexample, was salvaged froma filmvariouslyknownas The
SecondComingor MessiahofEvil. While workingas an assistantdirectorfor this
film,Fisher was also givena bit part as an assistantin an art gallery,and he tells
us in the voice-over that the frame is in fact "the last frame fromone of the
takes of the shot in which I firstmake myappearance." His acting role in the
film also included a conversation with the star. But because the star always
paused before her lines, the director did not include a two-shotwith both of
them. Fisher consequently never appeared in the same shot as the star and so,
like 9413, he missed his chance forfame.
Nineneen eighty-four, the year of StandardGauge,was late for a structural
film,and its wryhumor seems to implythatit was no longer possible to feel the
theoreticalurgencyand social energythat had nourished its emergence almost
twentyyears earlier.If we read-as I do-structural filmas the occasion of the
medium'smostcrucialapproach to Adorno's proposal thatauthenticartdoes not
resolve"objectivecontradictionsin a spurious harmony,[but] expressesthe idea
of harmonynegativelyby embodyingthe contradictions,pure and uncompro-
mised, in its innermoststructure,"15 then the passing of its criticalmomentalso
suggests the passing of the antagonism to the culture industriesthat, however
unconsciously, subtended it. Instead of the critique of New York or Viennese
structuralfilmor indeed thatof Lifeand Deathof9413,Fishermobilizesa nostalgia
for the medium'spast and his own past. Almostall the eventsand anecdotes that
the pieces of filmhe presentsbringto his mind are catastrophicforindividualsor
for cinema: the search fora stock-footage shot of an execution, the arrestof the
main character in Detour in the film's last shot, the end of IB printing at
Technicolor,and an obituarynotice for the process published in the Hollywood
Reporter,are examples beyond those already mentioned. In all their desperate,
plangent beauty,the shards of filmthat bear these traces are fragmentsshored
againsthis own and the industry'sruin.

14. The entire narration for StandardGaugeis reprinted in ScreenWritings:Scriptsand Textsby

Independent ed. Scott MacDonald (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1995). In an
Filmmakers,
interviewwithMacDonald, Fisherelaborated his belief"thatwhatindependentfilmsand commercial
filmshave in common is as important,or perhaps more important,than whatdividesthem" (Morgan
Fisher,interviewby Scott MacDonald, in A CriticalCinema:InterviewsWithIndependentFilmmakers
of CaliforniaPress,1988], p. 357).
[Berkeley:University
15. Theodor Adorno,Prisms,trans.Samuel and ShierryWeber (Cambridge:MIT Press,1967),p. 32.

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Hollywood 17

A requiemforstructuralfilm,StandardGaugewas also Fisher'sfarewellto the

artisanal mode of production and to the avant-gardecinema. He has not made
anyfilmssincethen-but he has sold an optionon a scriptfora commercialfeature,
and is currently
writinganotherthathe hopes to directhimself.

III. No Movies:Projecting
theReal byRejecting
theReel
Whethercriticalor nostalgic,Extra'sand StandardGauge'snarrativesof the
failure to achieve stardom are fundamentallyallegories of class society.As the
dominantformof culturein the era of corporate capitalism,cinema reproduces
the social structuresof capitalistproductiongenerally,and obliges the ownersof
the means of production to naturalizeindustryclass relations,to resistworkers'
attemptsto secure their autonomy,and to oppose primitiveaccumulation by
potential competitors.Film playsa partin these struggles.Hollywoodfilmsabout
Hollywood present industryclass relations as intrinsic to the nature of the
medium itself,and only filmsfromoutside it may propose alternativesor chal-
lenges. Films made independentlyand on theirown behalf by industryworkers
duringlabor actions are the mostcategoricallyrecalcitrantof these; forexample,
HollywoodLockout!1946, produced by the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU)
during thatyear's strike,shows police acting on behalf of the studio ownersby
protectingscabs and beating and arrestingpickets. Films like this violate the
systemof cinema as such; theyare the fundamentalformof the Hollywoodextra
genre,and all othersare allegories of them,even though theythemselvesdo not
find a place in filmhistory.Extraand StandardGaugetell similarstoriesof class
struggle;9413's and Fisher'scareerswere both attemptsto move fromthe realm
of consumption,the sectorin which the majorityof the people are constrained,
to the realm of productionproper,and indeed to a privilegedposition in it, that
is, to become partof the cultureindustry'slabor aristocracy.And 9413's quest for
stardomreiteratesthe imaginaryself-construction we all performbetweena more
or less conscious desire for a similar apotheosis-to be like the stars of our
choice-and recognitionof its impossibility. But it also mirrorsthe challenge to
the ownersof the industrythatany independentfilmmakermustmake as she or
he attemptsto gain some control over the means of production. Seen in this
light,the aspirationof an avant-gardeartistto a position in the commercialfilm
industryis virtuallyan inevitabilityimposed by the capitalistproductivesystem
itselfin the period of its total hegemony,when othermeans of productionare no
longeror not yetpossible.
But since the ideologicalfunctionof the cultureindustry includesnaturalizing
its own specificmode of production,class contradictionswithinit are projected
onto other formsof conflict,especiallyidentitypolitics. Over the past quarter
century,as subalterngroupsconstructedin termsof ethnicor sexual identityhave
aspired to become producers rather than consumers of cinema, a recurrent
paradigmhas been produced: recognizingthattheirexploitativemisrepresentation

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18 OCTOBER

in Hollywood films reflects their exclusion from positions of power in the

Hollywoodcinema,theyhave been faced withtwoparallel systemsof choice: first,
on the level of production, the choice between creating productivesystemsof
theirown (alternativecinemas) or attemptingto secure positionsin the industry;
second, on the level of the film text, the choice between searching for the
"authentic"images,languages,or narrativesof theirown identity,or takingover
those of Hollywoodand reworking them,usingthemagainstthe grainor otherwise
disruptingthem. These issues were encounteredby ethnic groups in the period
of civilrightsagitation,but were firstdecisivelyclarifiedbyfeministfilmmakers in
the 1970s,and feministtheoreticalparadigmshavebeen subsequentlyrecapitulated
byethnic-as wellas othersexual-identity groups.
But in all cases and whateverthe specificchoices, such groups have had to
begin fromthe fact of their exclusion fromHollywood,and to constructtheir
filmmakingin a culturalfield controlledby Hollywood.Afterthe flourishingof
the feministavant-garde in the 1980s, women filmmakershave increasingly
directedtheirinterventionstowardthe industry(Sally Potter,for example), and
AfricanAmericanshave generallyfollowedthe same imperative(Charles Burnett
is prototypical).But the possibilitiesforsuch migrationacross the class positions
in capitalistculturehave been mostrestrictedformembersof identitygroupsthat
are most fullycontained in the workingclass. In Los Angeles,the ethnic group
that is most excluded fromhegemonicculturalinstitutionsand yetstillpowerful
enough to be able to mobilizeitselfculturallyhas been Chicanos.
In the late 1960s, social developmentsincludingthe civilrightsmovement,
attemptsto unionize by the Californiamigrantfarmworkers, and resistanceto the
invasion of Vietnam produced an unprecedented mobilization of Mexican-
American self-consciousnessthroughoutthe Southwest.Culturalactivitywas an
integralpart of this,takingpopular,anticommodity, streetforms-especiallyagit-
prop theaterand murals.The lattertended to be didactic,and, in theirsearchfor
an authentic heritage,preoccupied by pre-Columbianmotifs.In this milieu, in
1971, four Chicano teenagers in East Los Angeles-Harry Gamboa, Jr.,Gronk,
Patssi Valdez, and Willie Herr6n-began to collaboratein multimediaartmaking,
takingthe name Asco,the Spanish wordfornausea, whichwas not infrequently the
response theirworkgenerated.Though the fourhad in common the experience
of growingup in the barrioin a timeof heightenedpoliticalself-consciousness and
correspondingly violentpolice repression,theirindividualorientationswere quite
different, leading to different kindsof investment in art-making-andalso to con-
flicting retrospective analysis of its meaning. Overall, however, instead of
introspectively lookingto the mythicpre-Columbianpastas the siteofan authentic
nationalism,theynegotiatedthe general project of the mural and streettheater
movementsthroughthe vocabulariesof contemporarypopular cultureand youth
subcultures.
Asco's earliest collaborations included agitational performance pieces,
reminiscentof both Dada and '60s streettheater.StationsoftheCross,performed

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Hollywood 19

on ChristmasEve 1971,was a VietnamWarprotest:to drawattentionto the nausea

theyfeltas theirfriendsfromhigh school were shipped home in body bags, they
dressed in bizarrecostumesand carrieda large cross throughWhittierBoulevard
in East Los Angeles, disruptingthe Christmasshoppers. As a crowd gathered,
Asco led them to the local U.S. Marine recruitingstation,then used the cross to
block the entrance so as to preventthe enlistmentof more Chicanos. The next
year's WalkingMural, again performed on Christmas Eve and disrupting
Christmas shoppers, also directlyparodied the mural movement, then at its
height. Herr6n wore a large, uglyMasonite mask,designed to resemblea figure
froma mural thathad become bored and so leftits wall. Valdez, dressed in high-
fashion black with a skull on her back, parodied the ubiquitous Virgen de
Guadalupe. And Gronkdraped himselfin three green chiffondresses withlight-
bulbs so as to look like an upside-downChristmastree.
Amalgamating the techniques of the murals and of street theater,these
performances approached the conditions of cinema (which itself began by
amalgamating easel painting and vaudeville). And soon Asco began to make
movies.As impoverished,working-class Chicanos, theywere,of course, excluded
fromHollywood,even thoughthe Hollywoodsignwas visiblefromtheircommunity.
But theirgeographicalisolation and the peculiar,structural,culturalsegregation
of Los Angeles also excluded them from the city'savant-gardecinemas, even
when, in the mid-'70s, these were still in their most populist mode; screening
organizationslike the Pasadena Filmforumand Oasis Cinema, where theywould
have been welcomedbyAnglosengaged in similarprojects,wereunknownto Asco
members (and remained so at the time of thiswriting).Given all these formsof
exclusion, Asco could then engage the medium only in the negative. So they
began to make movieswithoutcameras or celluloid,movieswithoutaudiences or
exhibition:No Movies-worksof conceptual performanceart thatsimultaneously
engaged both the cinema and Asco's exclusionfromall its realms.16Crystallized
in 1973, the concept was essentiallya negativecategorythatcould accommodate
many specificmodes: "performancepieces, published interviews,mail art, and
media hoaxes."17But the most substantial consisted of brief scenarios, usually
prepared in advance by Gamboa and Gronk,performedin public places and so
using the cityas a set, and starringValdez, dressed in elaborate homemade cos-

16. Gronk and Gamboa were interviewedabout No Moviesin 1976; see "Interview:Gronk and
Gamboa," Chismearte 1 (Fall 1976), pp. 31-33. Gronk's phrase, "projectingthe real by rejectingthe
reel" occurs there.HarryGamboa givesan overviewofAsco in "In the CityofAngels,Chameleons,and
Phantoms:Asco, a Case Studyof Chicano Artin Urban Tones (or Asco Was a Four-MemberWord)" in
ChicanoArt: Resistanceand Affirmation, 1965-1985, ed. Richard del Castillo (Los Angeles: Wright
Gallery,UCLA, 1991), pp. 121-30. See also HarryGamboa Jr.,UrbanExile: Collected WritingsbyHarry
GamboaJr.,ed. Chon Noriega (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1998), a collection of
Gamboa's writingsthatincludes reproductionsof some of the image-textflyersthat
Noriega's account
of No Moviesemphasizes. My account of Asco generallyis much indebted to Chon
Noriega, to his
introduction to Gamboa's writingsand also to his excellent Shotin America:A History Chicano
of
Cinema,forthcoming fromUniversity of MinnesotaPress.
17. Chon Noriega, "No Introduction,"in Gamboa, UrbanExile,p. 7.

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tumes,as the main actress.Each eventwas recordedon several35-mmslides,with
one chosen as the officialrecord; when projected,like a poster,it summarized
and advertiseda movie,but one thathad no otherexistence.
The firstNo Moviewas TumorHats,performedin fall 1973. Valdez, Gronk,
and Herr6n posed in an emptytheater,wearingenormous hats made withjunk
materialsin a parodyof a fashionshow.Nextyearcame FirstSupper(After a Major
in
Riot); heavymakeup and thrift-store clothes,Asco set a dinnertable decorated
witha large nude doll, paintingsof torturedcorpses, and mirrorson a traffic
island on WhittierBoulevard,at the spot fromwhich,threeyearsbefore,police
had opened fireon an assembledcrowd.On the table,Asco prepareda celebratory
feastof freshfruitand drink,designedto encourage people to expressthemselves
publiclyand so contestthe paramilitary police occupationof thebarrio.Insteadof
servingdesert,theyperformed Instant Mural Gronk taped Patssi Valdez and a
friend, Humberto Sandoval,to a wall bya bus stop.Passersbywho offeredto help
to untanglethemwereignored,thenafteran hour,the twosimplywalkedaway.
This was followedby CruelProfit, a piece orchestratedby Gamboa in which
a
Herr6n destroyed doll, but merged,as he did so, withits identity,and A La
Mode(1977).18 A La Mode was set in a famousLos Angelesrestaurant,Philippethe
a of
Original, place symbolicimplicationssinceitseponymousFrenchDip sandwich
is one of the city'smostfamousdishes.Situatedclose to Union Station,wherethe
downtownfinancialdistrictmeets Chinatownand the barrio,Philippe'soccupies
a liminalspace wherelong-standinggeographicand social boundariesintersect.
Between the west and east sides of the city,it is one of the fewplaces where
extreme social differencescan be negotiated,where Chicanos can meet other

18. By this point, Gamboa was beginningto supplementthe 35-mmslides withsuper-8movies.

CruelProfit
was filmedin thiswayand screened at one of the earliestart-world
exhibitionsincluding
Asco,but afterthe showitwas mostlydestroyed.

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Asco.A La Mode. 1977.(Photo
? HarryGamboaJr.)

groups in amicable surroundings.For the No Movie,the Asco memberswentinto

the restaurant,ordered a cup of Philippe's famous ten-centcoffeeand a piece of
apple pie, and struckaloof poses that invokedclassic movie stills,but expressed
disdain and condescension to the restaurant's more fashionable customers.
Initiallypresentedas an on-screenprojection,the slide thatconstitutedA La Mode
was later printed and distributedas a mail-artflyer.And in a later coda to the
piece, conceptualized by Gronk as an outtake, he draped himselfwith a large
piece of canvas that he had previouslyused in a performancework,while Patssi
Valdez posed on the restauranttable.
A similarcombinationof social and territorialinfractionlaybehind threeNo
Movies written by Gamboa alone and performed in 1978 in downtown Los
Angeles, which together elaborated a melodramatic erotic narrative about a
doomed love affairbetween charactersplayed byValdez and BillyEstrada (a.k.a.
Starr) leading to their deaths. The sequence began with Search,No Seizure,in
which the two loversposed in a passionate embrace in the Second StreetTunnel
under Bunker Hill (a performance that, in fact, was interrupted by police
harassment). Moving up to the Music Center,the place where the city'sopera,
symphonyorchestra,and other haut bourgeois cultural ritualsintersectwith the
downtownfinancialestablishment,theycontinued withLa Dolce,a parodyof an
artfilm;imitatingthe scene in La DolceVitawhereMarcello Mastroianniand Anita
Ekberggo into the TreviFountain,Valdez dove into the Music Center'sown foun-
tain, and was rescued by Starrbeforeshe driftedaway.And finally, in Waiting For
the pair embraced each otherand rolled as ifdead in a suicide pact down
Tickets,
the Music Center's steps. This was a mock "Odessa Steps" sequence, whichAsco
thoughtof as a satire,ridiculingthe city'sculturalelite as, Godot-like,theywaited
in line forofficially
sanctionedculture-but also expressingtheirown despairthat
theywould neverbe admittedto the elite culturalinstitutions.
This sequence of No Movieswas conceptualizedbyGamboa as a photonovela, a
comic book illustratedwithphotographsratherthan drawings,a formto which
he was verysoon to gravitate,and indeed Asco's next movie project was under-
taken as a narrativeand shot in super-8,as well as in 35-mmstills.Sr. Tereshkova
(1974), writtenand directedby Humberto Sandoval and filmedby Gamboa, told
the storyof an old shopkeeper who is drawn into a series of dreams by a man-
nequin in his shop. In one he becomes a thiefwho robsValdez and her family;in
another he attacks Valdez; and in the last he stabs Herr6n, then chases him
throughthe streetsand tunnelsof downtownLos Angeles.When he wakes up in
fear,he is himselfpetrifiedinto a mannequin,whilethe originalmannequin rides
awayon a bicycle.Much later,Gamboa edited Sr Tereshkova withtitles,and in 1985
it was transferredto video and cablecast by Falcon Cable Television. A single-
image slide "out-take"of its performancewas separatelyappropriatedbyGronkas
a No Movieof his own thathe called SlashingPrices.
The implicationsof the No Movies'combination of protocinematicperfor-
mance and the stillphotographinto whichit was condensed come into focus in

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22 OCTOBER

contrastto the murals againstwhichtheywere initiallyconstructed.They invoke

the muralmovementproper,but theirtransience,the povertyof theirmeans,and
their aestheticization of everydaybarrio life signal a critique of the murals'
commitmentto durability,theiruse of relativelyexpensivepaint, and theirideal-
ized imagery.On the other hand, the No Movies'gesturestowardnarrativeand
spectacularization,and their amalgamation of theaterand painting,invoke the
moviesproper,even thoughtheironlyphotographicmaterializationis the single-
frame slide. As in artepoveragenerally-but also like "ImperfectCinema" in
particular-propertiesthatderivefromlimitationsin the materialresourcesavail-
able to the filmmakersare used to allegorize their political situation and also
facilitatespecificinterventions.
As singleimages,at bestmetonymic of the narratives
theyrepresent,theylack the spectacular qualities of movies,even those of the
'60s underground. But since the barrio contained neither the independent
cinemas in whichsuch moviescould be shownnor a culturein whichfilmmaking
had anysignificant currency,theyallowed some access to cinema's effectiveness,if
only in a reduced form. Asco members subsequently made public use of the
images; projecting the slides on the walls of barrio buildings,theyperformed
narrativesaround them in a manner perhaps reminiscentof the Soviet cinema
trains.Later,the stillswere used in presentationsin schools,colleges,and public
libraries.And stilllater theywere used in magazines or on flyers.Through these
methods,the initialprivate,unknowneventsweredisseminatedthroughthe com-
munityand eventuallyinto the hegemonicartworldand the media.19
As performancepieces, theyextendedthe concept of cinema and elaborated
its constituentmomentsin a waythatwas common duringthe period. The idea of
an "Expanded Cinema" summarizesthe explosion of sensoryand social extensions
of industrialnorms thathad taken place in the late 1960s,accounts of whichhad
appeared in Gene Youngblood's columns in the Los AngelesFreePress,whichwere
collected in a widelyavailable paperback in 1970, also called ExpandedCinema.
Such developmentsreflecta particularmoment in the popular imaginationof
cinema, and a host of reconceptualizationsof the ways it could be integratedin
the phenomenologyof everydaylife.Their origin lay in the perception that the
spectacular,media-saturatedpolitical events of the late '60s were collapsing the
boundarybetweenlifeand art: eventslike the police riotingof the kind recorded
in Requiem29 (1970), David Garcia's documentary about the 1970 Chicano
moratoriumagainst the VietnamWar,reiteratedthatlifein East Los Angeleswas
as unreal as anymovie.
But thisaestheticizationalso had a sourcein communityculturethatsupplied
the keyto No Movieperformance:posing. Since the pachucos and zoot-suitersof

19. Beforethe No Moviesproper,Gamboa effectedsuch a media interventionwith"Decoy Gang War

Victim."This was a single photograph,apparentlyof a dead body on the streetilluminatedby road
flares.By trickery,
he was able to get it broadcaston a commercialtelevisionnewscast,supposedlyas a
photograph of the death of the last member of two gangs that had finallysucceeded in completely
destroyingeach other.

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 Extras
Hollywood 23

the '40s, it had been common foryoung people in the barrio to dress in highly
stylizedclothesand to strikeattitudesof arrogantself-assertion(a traitthatwould
be appropriatedby corporate culturetwenty-five yearslater in Madonna's music
video "Vogue"). As fromboth directionslife became art, the beliefthat filmwas
the era's summaryworkof art made it possible forall worksto be thoughtof as
films;so HarryGamboa carried a rubberstamp,"Chicano Cinema,"thathe used
symbolicallyto deface-and so to appropriate-posters, billboards,and the like
placed in the barrio by outside interests.Conversely,the viabilityof filmas a
metaphorforall heightenedexperience allowed the popular appropriationof the
idea of Hollywoodas a vocabularyforthe reconceptualizationof everydaylife;as
AndyWarhol made clear, anyone could be a star. For Asco, the premise of the
entire No Moviesproject was able to link an infatuationwith Hollywood, their
pained awarenessthatit excluded them,and also a refusalof thatexclusion.The
constructionof single-frame,idealized self-imagesin poses appropriated from
dailylife and fromthe moviesdialecticallyarticulatesboth the affectionand the
anger,the desireand the hatred.In thiscomplexity,the No Moviesboth precede and
exceed CindySherman'sfilmstills,forexample, in which,by comparison,critical
distance is dissolved into sentimental nostalgia-a fact that reflectsthe Asco
members' reconstructionof a communal opposition to the political systemthat
comes intofocusas "Hollywood,"ratherthan simplyan individualnarcissisticself-
projectionintoit.
As well as leading to Sr.Tereshkova
and otherprojectsmore closelyresembling
avant-gardefilm,the No Moviesinteractwithcinema historyin severalways.The
overall project of Chicano self-representationreflectsthe combination of their
invisibilityor misrepresentation by Hollywood and their exclusion from its
apparatuses that is the general problematicof minorityculture in this period.
This exclusion fromboth filmand cinema had previouslypromptedthe creation
of new media available to popular access; whatevertheirheritagein the Mexican
works of the '30s, the Chicano murals of the '60s and '70s must be seen as
attempts to create an emancipatory,trulypopular culture, and so themselves
negativelydeterminedby the conditionsof the administeredpopular cultureof
the entertainmentindustry.But this industryalso supplied positive influences,
and indeed the scale and the framingof the murals themselvespartlyderived
fromHollywoodfilms,as did specificimages. More generally,the Asco collective
was parodicallymodeled on the studio mode of production,with Gamboa and
Gronk alternatelywriterand directorand Valdez the star,her costumesimitated
fromphotographsof Hollywoodstars,especiallyMarlene Dietrich.For Gronk,an
exploitationfilmhe saw as a child, Devil GirlfromMars,was crucial in directing
him towarda career as an artist;and a recurrentimage in his paintings,a woman
seen fromthe rearwhomhe calls "La Tormenta,"derivesfromIngridBergmanin
Hitchcock's Notorious.Both the spectacular basis of the No Moviesand their
amalgamation of differentmedia are clearlycinematic.And finally,as with the
entire "HollywoodExtra" traditionfromFloreyand Vorkapichto Morgan Fisher,

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 PatssiValdez the
receiving "No
first
Movie"award.1978.(Photo? Gronk.)

Asco's practice also fed back into mainstreamcinema. Gronkand Gamboa were
featuredin AgnesVarda's filmMursMurs.Manyof PatssiValdez's laterpaintings
resemble set designs, and after making installation environmentsbased on
them, she eventuallybecame a theatricalset-designer, an artisticconsultantfor
featurefilmssuch as Mi Familia,and also designerof the 1995 and 1996 awardsfor
the Latino Oscars,the BravoAwardsgivenby the NationalCouncil of La Raza. In
thispluralityof intersections, an initialinterventionin filmturnedinto an inter-
vention in cinema; the boundarybetween the medium-specific concerns of the
avant-garde and the dominant historical identification of the medium with
Hollywood was crossed on many levels.
But the No Moviescontained one finalritual that summarizesthe double
voicingsof minoritycinemas.Justas the No Moviesparody the movies,so Asco
parodied the industry'sclimactic self-definition,the Academy Awards. For a
period of severalyears,an annual award was givento the person who had made
the best No Movie.In 1974,forexample,Valdez receivedthe No MovieAwardforA
La Mode.Her No Oscar was a plasterWoolworth's cobra, spray-painted gold. In the
photo documentation of thisevent-itself a No Movie and a parody of the televised
Academy Awards shows--we can see her as a star, a
simultaneously trulypopulist
cultureheroine and a parodyof the star that9413 wanted to be, a parodyof the
starthatEmilJanningsbecame, and a parodyof the starthatFishercame so near
to being--all in a cinema thatwas inevitablymodeled on Hollywood,yetstillone
of itsprofoundestnegations.

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