All language subtitles for Jean-Michel.Basquiat.The.Radiant.Child.2010.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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You should probably
put your chair here.

OK.

Hello out there in TV land.

You have to remember, I'm just... this is
not being filmed, you have to remember.

- It's just, you know.
- Why?

OK, are we ready?

- You ready?
- Yeah.

OK.

This is high
quality film, right?

New York in the late 1970s was economically
depressed and definitely crime ridden.

Times Square was full of
junkies, prostitutes, and sex shops.

Perhaps because the city has served as
a backdrop for so many poignant films...

"Midnight Cowboy,"
"Taxi Driver"...

there existed a romantic allure of
New York City back in those days.

Downtown Manhattan became a magnet for art
students, runaways, and a lot of lost personalities.

The circumstances all came together in a rare mix where the creative and
their inspirations could live side by side in dark, dramatic splendor.

Everybody did everything.

You had a band, you were a painter, you were an
actor, you were a sculptor, a writer, you were a poet.

You just did everything.

People came here to be artists or
musicians or writers or whatever.

They could afford to live in Manhattan, and you
could also spend time doing what you wanted to do.

You didn't have to have a
regular job to be able to be an artist.

You could just, like,
say I'm a filmmaker.

And like, your first
screening, we would be there.

And you'd be a filmmaker.

Everybody lived, worked in this area around the Bowery,
and you just walked around there and you meet everybody.

Everyone would be there.

After a certain hour, downtown became a playground
for a big pool of about 500 or 600 people.

Howie Montaug quoted
the term Downtown 500...

that there were about 500 people who we all knew each other, and we
all did various forms of art and fashion, and we all kind of converged.

I started to see these oblique
pieces of poetry around the city.

A pin drops like a pungent odor.

Copyright SAMO.

Or make soup, build
a fort, set that on fire.

You see a tag in like,
the art district in Soho.

It was kind of weird, because it
wasn't like a hip hop graffiti thing.

There was something
else going on there.

It was obviously
intended for the art world.

You know, a lot of
us would talk about it.

Who was SAMO? Have
you ever met SAMO?

Oh, it's an old woman.

And it turned out that
it was Jean Michel.

Didn't you do that
with another guy?

A guy named Al Diaz.

We started doing this, uh...

the SAMO graffiti while
we were still in school.

We just wanted to do some
sort of conceptual art project.

The whole objective
in doing graffiti is fame.

Achieving in a certain status
and a certain recognition.

Like, I'm going to take control of that
space, and people are gonna know me.

Jean always wanted to be famous.

The Soho news started
printing our graffiti.

What he was doing was quite different
from what graffiti artists were doing.

What they were doing was writing their name, and
sometimes there was a painterly aspect to it.

The SAMO tags had content.

There were like poetry.

We had a hit with it.

He had made a
buzz in his own way.

He had tagged up a new area.

People were seeing it.

It is the Canal Zone, and
it's happening here and now.

If you're lost, you can find yourself
right here, right now, in the Canal Zone.

We decide that we're going to have a party,
and it was called the Canal Zone party.

Jean had heard about this party.

One of the guys came
over and said, SAMO is here.

And I was like...

I was like, really?

He's like yeah. He's here.
He wants to meet you.

I was like, wow, where?
And there he was.

SAMO.

A-M-O. Come on, you've seen it on the walls
everywhere, especially down in the Village.

This gentleman
right here is SAMO.

What did you look like then?

I shaved my head right when I left home, because
I thought it would be a good disguise, you know?

Because they wouldn't be looking for
somebody with a shaved head or something.

And Jean wrote, which of the
following symbols are omnipresent?

A, Lee Harvey Oswald,
B, Coca-Cola, et cetera.

His multi-choice
graffiti SAMO pieces.

I went up to him later on.

First thing Jean said was,
you want to start a band?

And I'm like, yeah, sure.

And we started what
became Gray that night.

And what was special about this band
was that neither Jean or I were musicians.

Michael was playing the drums like a
maniac, and Jean couldn't play the clarinet.

It blew me away.

I was like, wow.

This is the best group
I've seen, you know?

At the performance, and he was
just playing a kind of noise machine.

Jean Michel was just sort of playing and I remember
thinking, like, this is a totally cool thing.

And it also seemed like girls really liked
him, something I had yet to really experience.

Jean-Michel's first public
work is the band Gray.

I was a bartender in a sleazy dive
bar on 2nd Avenue and 5th Street.

And he would come in and he would stand against the
wall, and sometimes play the jukebox and stare at me.

And he wouldn't buy anything.

He had a big overcoat
on and dreadlocks.

It was kind of
frightening, actually.

This went on for weeks.

Eventually, one day, he came up to
the bar and sat down and ordered a drink.

And he ordered the most expensive
thing that we had, which was Remy Martin.

And I later realized that the reason he wasn't
sitting at the bar was he had no money to buy a drink.

Didn't have any money, you know?

We were still sneaking on the
trains to move around a lot, you know?

Crashing on people's
couches from here to there.

It was crazy times.

I think that's how a lot of us were living,
18, 19 year olds who had just come to New York.

You could live here wild in the
street and live hand to mouth.

I really loved the roughneck
kind of style of living.

Jean was doing it in a much more
intensely radical, bohemian style.

- And you were totally broke, right?
- Yeah.

- I was living, you know...
- From place to place.

Yeah, place to place.

So how were you,
um, surviving, then?

I just was, you know?

Just...

you just end up surviving,
you have to, I guess.

Is this in Brooklyn, or
did you go to Manhattan?

I went to Washington
Square Park.

Did you ever do, like, take
a part time job, or did you...

- how did you make money?
- No, I really didn't.

Just something really simple and dumb as how
did you have the money that you had to live on?

I used to look for money at
the Mudd Club on the floor.

Really?

Used to find it,
too, most times.

I really don't know how I
got through that, just walking

around for days and days
without sleeping, you know?

Eating cheese doodles or
whatever, just, you know?

And what were you thinking about then?
I mean, what was, like, your vision of...

It's not... this is not funny.

Cheese doodles.

What was...

Because they were
only $0.15, that's why.

Panhandling, drinking
wine with winos.

Both Jean-Michel and I are first
generation. Our parents were immigrants.

If you've decided to live a sort of counterculture
subversive lifestyle, it's very difficult to go home.

I was determined
not to go home again.

But did you think, I
could be a bum forever?

Yeah, I sort of did, yeah.

I thought I was going
to be a bum forever.

We were basically trying to
make it happen, trying to not just...

and I feel awkward saying fame, because in this
era now, it's like, you don't really want to...

who wants to be famous?

It's so, like, that
shit is whack.

But it was really very specifically
about making it happen, you know?

And like, I knew just...

he was gonna make it happen.

I heard all these stories
of that you survived on the

streets from like, having
all these different girlfriends.

- Is that true at all?
- Yeah, that was some of it, yeah.

That they helped you out a lot.

That you... you could
always stay somewhere?

At least you had
places to stay doing that.

That's some of it, yeah.

I remember this one time
walking by an art opening.

It was a Schnabel opening.

And Julian was a big star.

Darling of the art world.

He was lionized in the press.

He was the man at Mr. Chow's.

And Jean...

I'll never forget what Jean said. Jean
said, I'm gonna box with that guy one day.

I'm gonna box him one day.

He was blessed with astonishing
sophistication as a teenager.

He understood exactly
where to position himself.

At age 18, he was already
at the absolute epicenter

of the most advanced
music, art in the world.

TV Party in the past has
brought you some of the most

significant commentators
on graffiti in New York.

But tonight, we're lucky enough to have
with us, uh, probably the most language

orientated of all graffiti artists in
New York, SAMO and his associate.

- SAMO.
- SAMO. Sorry.

It's Mr. SAMO. This is
my personal secretary.

Sorry, Mr. SAMO.

Do you write something different every
time, or do you write the... you know.

I've written the same
thing before. Just...

it all depends, you know,
like, how inspired I feel.

And then he just
started coming around.

He loved working the character
generator in the control room.

He would sort of graffiti the screen
with kind of running commentary.

Before Jean had started making the paintings,
Jean began to make those postcards.

So he was just on the street selling
these cards, and he still had the mohawk.

He was wearing these
paint splattered smocks.

He was just like this spectacle.

He walked into this restaurant
where Andy Warhol and Henry.

Geldzahler were having lunch.

Andy Warhol, he was like, just
a demigod or a god or whatever.

He was our hero.

He was our everything.

He was just, like, a god, you know,
who we all were in New York for.

So he went in and he
presented himself and he

introduced himself and
offered these postcards.

And Warhol bought two or three.

I was like, what?

I said, what happened?

He was like, yeah, I just walked
up to him, man. And I was like, yeah.

Well, what did Henry
Geldzahler say?

He said it was young.

I was like, really?

He saw Andy as number one,
and he wanted to be number one.

So it was a natural thing for
him to want to be around him.

I'm sure he would have like, hung
out with Picasso, too, you know?

I went out every night,
and I think he did too.

We all kind of
went out together.

To Jean-Michel's
credit, he wanted to be an

artist, and he wanted
to be an artist of his time.

And that's how artists were
sort of presenting themselves.

Big thing about Jean was, you know, we were out
getting our groove on on the floor, dancing,

getting drink tickets, you know, putting that
smoke in the air, you know what I'm saying?

Like, it was definitely going
down in the major level.

He was a darling on the scene.

He was the prince of
the scene at the time.

He had a really incredible way of dancing,
because it was just drop dead cool.

The girls were gluing to him.

Glue, glue, glue, glue, glue.

He broke the heart
of a lot of girls.

I met him at the Mudd
Club on the dance floor.

He was kind of down and
out financially, and I'd seen his.

SAMO drawings.

So when I ran into him, I said
you should make art, you know?

You have to, you know?
And I gave him some money.

Go get some paper and go to
Canal Paint and make some things,

and I'll sell them for you, and
you can make some money.

Characteristic of
very good artists, it's a

mature, strong hand that
can only be from them.

And he had that even when
he was 18, 19 years old.

Everybody believed in him.

We all knew that
he was a brilliant kid.

He was a star when he was broke.

Elio Fiorucci had this fashion store on 59th
Street, and he loved the downtown scene.

And one day, he said, you know,
it's so interesting what's going on here.

You kids should
make a movie about it.

And so we said,
that's a good idea.

It was the story of, like, a
young artist who's struggling

to get by in the cool and
scary world of Manhattan in '81.

We decided to let him
live in our production office.

That was a way of, like, making
sure that we could find him.

We bought him the first
stretched canvas he ever

had for the purpose
of the film, and one day,

uh, we had the big
photography corner, and I said,

oh, Jean-Michel, enough
of these street things.

I teared a huge piece, and
I... we put it up, and he did it.

I don't know how
many days it took him.

It was very intricate.

It was when I first saw him draw that I
knew he was gonna be famous, you know?

He was working on "Downtown 81" at
the time, and he sold his first painting.

Glenn O'Brien had
introduced him to to Deborah Harry

and she bought
his painting for $200.

And he was thrilled
to have $200.

And he came in and asked me to
go for dinner, so we went to, um, a

Chinese restaurant on 2nd Avenue,
and he said, order whatever you want.

And, you know, the most expensive thing was
probably $10.00, but that was a really big deal.

He moved in with me
very soon after we met.

Not that I wanted him to,
but it just sort of happened.

And I really wanted him
to sleep in my bedroom.

He slept in the living room.

It was very, um,
sort of innocent.

I wanted him to start working to pay the
bills with me, because he was living with me.

So we would get in
arguments about it.

And eventually, he went to work
with a friend that was an electrician.

I was very proud of him that
he was making this effort to work.

And he, um, came home and
started to cry and said, I can't do this.

I really want to help you with the rent,
but I can't be humiliated in this way.

And we went to this rich
Park Avenue lady's apartment,

and she was treating me
like a slave, and I can't do this.

So it was... there was something
about it that was very moving to me.

And, um, so we agreed that I
would work and he would paint.

The Times Square show ended
up on the cover of The Village.

Voice as the first radical
art show of the '80s.

Anybody literally could have walked up and just said,
hey, I'm an artist. And they would let you hang work.

There was over 100 artists.

The Times Square show was
the first time that Jean-Michel

participated in an
organized real art exhibition.

I actually got Jean-Michel
and Keith in the show.

I brought them along with me,
and they made a big impact.

He painted in our
little apartment.

We didn't have a lot of money, so he would
bring home foam rubber, tin, windows, doors.

He would just find
things on the street.

No, the first paintings I made were on
windows... on windows I found on the street.

I used the window
shape as a frame.

You know what I...

just put the paint... the
painting on the glass part.

And on doors like I
found on the street.

Went up to the apartment
he shared with Suzanne.

It was one of the most arresting,
stimulating artistic experiences I ever had.

He was very
focused with his work.

The refrigerator door had
this incredible painting on it.

And then some amazing
paintings on windows, and all

these drawings strewn all
over the floor on typing paper.

There would be 20
sheets of paper on the floor,

all seemingly half
finished pieces of work.

And he would jump from
one, walk across five,

literally walk on them,
leaving sneaker prints.

We used to make the joke
that you could date his work by

the different sneakers that
he would wear over the years.

There's no artist who kind of abused
his own work physically than Jean-Michel.

He was somebody who
liked to have music on

and the television and
the big stack of books.

People talk about multitasking, but that
was part of the hard wiring of his brain.

Following the Times Square
show, Diego wanted to do it his way.

And so he put his own
show together, which was the

New York New Wave show
at PS1, which was massive.

I was still going with
Suzanne Mallouk at the

time, and she was about
to throw me out any minute.

And then Diego came through with
this show, which was just great, you know.

'81 was the PS1 show.

I was just tired of seeing white walls with
white people with white wine, you know.

The opening for that show
was the equivalent of like a

blockbuster exhibit at the
Metropolitan or the Modern.

People were literally on lined down
the block four deep to get into the show.

It was just packed.

Getting people in the
art world to pay attention

to his work wasn't
that hard, I'll tell you.

I mean, as soon as I started showing
his work to anyone, they... they loved it.

After PS1, Jean's star was at the top of the
constellation of the new emerging artists.

Annina Nosei connects
with him and gives him the

basement of her gallery
on Prince Street as a studio.

And it was a basement, but
it was a nice basement with

a skylight and gallery
assistants fawning over him.

This is a very crucial period for
Jean-Michel, because this is the

transition period from working on
the street to working in a real studio.

Very quickly thereafter, he got
his first show at Annina Nosei.

His first real public
exhibition is at Annina Nosei.

Which was a hit.

And he made
$200,000, maybe more.

Everything sold in one night.

One day there was a knock at
the door, and Jean-Michel is naked.

And he got up and answered the door,
stark naked, and it was Rene Ricard.

And he was coming to
interview him for Art Form.

My first Art Form cover story
was about Julian Schnabel.

And I knew that the next
person I wrote about had to be

totally unknown, had to be
terribly young, very ambitious.

I wanted to latch on to a
career that I could watch and

write about for a long time,
like I had with Julian Schnabel.

That piece, The Radiant
Child, was very involved

in helping Jean-Michel
in his early career.

There was an
article in Art Form.

- Rene Ricard.
- Rene Ricard.

The second I saw his
work, I got very excited.

He actually came up to talk about
the painting that we had purchased.

He drew our attention
to the snake in the corner.

It as very well done.

And he was very,
very proud of it.

Do you ever comply with the
requests to describe your work?

I never know how to really
describe it except maybe,

I don't know. I don't know
how to describe my work.

Do you feel that's important to you,
though, not to be able to describe it?

It's I guess asking so how
does your horn sound, you know?

I mean, you don't really...

I don't think he could really tell
you, you know, why he played, you

know... why he plays this at this
point in the music, or, you know, just...

you're sort of on automatic,
you know, most of the time.

Has anybody ever written anything about
your work that you think is on the ball?

Probably Robert Farris Thompson
I thought wrote the best thing.

The guy that wrote "Flash of the Spirit," which is
probably the best book I ever read on African art.

One of the best.

He had this unique
ability to access almost

everything that was in
his mind and memory bank,

channel it through his
body, and put it right

there on that rectangle
of campus or paper.

Jean...

I don't know how he got his
knowledge, but he knew so much.

So what's the first artist
work that you remember

seeing that left a really
strong impression on you?

Probably seeing the "Guernica" was probably
my favorite thing when I was a kid.

I remember my mother
drawing stuff out of the Bible like

Samson breaking the
temple down and stuff like this.

Was she a good artist?

Pretty good.

His father was fairly
affluent, middle class.

An accountant.

He dressed in like blue
blazers with brass buttons.

They lived on Pacific Street.

They owned the whole building.

So then you started doing
your own little drawings?

I thought I wanted to be a
cartoonist when I was younger, and

then I changed to painting when
I was about, you know, 15 or so.

So you're like the black
sheep of the family?

Well, I was until I
started doing well.

One of the interesting
things about this work is the

way it shoots references
to other artists he admired.

The work is full of references
to Leonardo da Vinci.

He wasn't unambitious.

Nobody could accuse
Basquiat of that.

He's talking to the great history of painting that
came before him, and he's very much aware of it.

And that's the
context of his work.

He's talking to Twombly.

He's talking to de Kooning.

He's talking to Pollock.

I always think of him as
a great artist a long time.

I put him in the highest place
like Van Gogh, like Picasso.

There's also the important fact that he's not
limiting himself to visual artists as mentors.

What books do you like?

Major ones that, you know, had
facts in them or, I guess, Mark Twain.

I like Mark Twain books a lot.

You were reading William Burroughs
when you were out here the last time.

I was gonna say Burroughs,
but I thought I'd be...

I'd sound too young,
because everybody reads.

Burroughs all the time.

But he's my favorite
living author, definitely.

The work owes a lot to the influence
of William Burroughs and John Giorno.

That school of poetry.

Jean-Michel adored William.
I mean, he was a great fan.

The Burroughs cut up technique
of slicing up, of collaging things

was a very important part of the
structure of Jean-Michel's work.

William Burroughs he
got from the surrealists.

This idea of cutting up like a page of your
own text, written on a typewriter paper.

You'd cut it in four of rive
places and then rearrange them.

And when you read across,
and amazing images arise.

And sort of this is another concept
of how you could perceive it of wisdom

arising, because a lot of it is gibberish,
you know, when you're reading.

But then all of a sudden a clear line goes
across, and that's profoundly profound.

So that's the
essence of the cut up.

And then the influence of
John Cage, vanguard jazz, Miles

Davis, Coltrane, that all of
these sounds are interesting.

He's putting in Charlie Parker
and Miles Davis and the whole

roster of jazz heroes who he
can assimilate into his pantheon.

What music do you like?

Bebop is my favorite music,
but I don't listen to it all the time.

I listen... I listen to everything, but
I'd have to say bebop is my favorite.

He had a bebop aesthetic in terms
of what he put visually on the page.

Bebop broke down melody and it
broke down harmonies in ways that hadn't

been done before, thus creating
another vocabulary for how to play jazz.

His collage technique was to
take things and blow them up.

He had the expression boom for real, an
explosion, and then you end up with fragments.

Rather than the cubist or
post cubist way of building

sections, patching things
together or quiltwork.

Jean-Michel's work
was not about a quilt.

It was about a kind of galaxy of
reality that's been, again, exploded.

So everything's equal.

It was a big loft, and
it was pretty fancy.

I was going over there three, four nights a week, and there
was a lot of other people that were always coming over.

It was really an
incredible scene.

People who knew Jean-Michel saw him hanging
out, socially active, late into the night.

So the question is,
when did he do the work?

There is an astonishing
amount of work.

He had an incredible
work ethic, incredible focus.

If people were over,
he didn't just sit and visit.

He was constantly painting,
constantly getting inspiration from

something someone had just said or
something that was on the television.

I don't know. I came the first day,
and I basically never left for months.

And I would go home, and
he would call up and ask me

to come back, because he
wanted to get to work again.

So basically it was 24 hours.

It was paintings that he came
up with his assistant Steve.

Torton, where the... the corners were
sticks sticking out like some person

wrapped these things up and just
make it quickly into a framed canvas or...

Basically, he showed me
a pile of wood... molding

wood, like the little curly
moldings, very flimsy wood.

A window chain, carpet
tacks, canvas, and he

asked me if I could
make a stretcher out of it.

So that is basically
what gave birth to those.

Terrific set of paintings.

I mean, we bought a couple, but
we should've bought every single one.

When I moved into the
Crosby Street loft, for a

while, collectors would
come over to look at the work.

And if he didn't like them... you
know, if somebody said I want a painting

with shades of red in it to match my
couch, he would become absolutely furious.

He would throw them out.

He would often pour food on
their heads from outside the window

like cereal or water or milk out
the window as they were leaving.

Jean-Michel was famously
independent of mind.

No one ever told Jean-Michel
Basquiat what to do and what not to do.

He did whatever he wanted to do.

It turned our world into a sports... like a
tennis thing, where you had your ranking.

You know, boxing. All
those metaphors with sports.

He had no qualms
about being ambitious.

He was very anxious to be number
one, and he was very concerned

that when he wasn't number one,
he was on his way up the ladder.

There was a young guy who was painting, and I should see
him, and he knew, you know, different people that I knew.

So I went down,
and... and I liked him.

And at the same time,
he was very competitive.

One day at Mr. Chow, he
said something to me, because

he always talked about
us having a boxing match.

I said, you know, you're
gonna get the boxing match

that you've been asking
for if you don't cool it.

Which is a fabulous way to start a... you
know, a friendship and a business relationship.

And it was one of the... you know,
as an art dealer, I gotta say it was

one of the most exciting things that
have happened in my business career.

I was in the waiting area at
Spago's on Sunset waiting to...

to get in at like
10:00 at night.

And Jean-Michel walked in with Rammellzee
and Fab 5 Freddy, all behind Larry Gagosian.

And the restaurant came
to a complete silence.

I mean, these three young black men, all more
handsome than the next, and just, you know, who...

I don't know if people thought that they
were in front of the newest Hollywood stars

or were about to get robbed, but at the
restaurant just came to a dead silence.

It was fantastic.

First time I met Jean-Michel Basquiat
is I was working in an art gallery while

I was going to film school, and he
came in while we were having an opening.

And he had a cassette with him, and
he asked me if I had any way to play it.

I took him to the back room,
and I had a boombox back there.

And in like five minutes, he
turned the back office into a

VIP dance area.

It was just a crazy opening.

Everybody came.

Like, by that time, the
word had kind of spread.

This guy was making, you know,
incredibly exciting, powerful work.

20 years old or whatever.

I went to the show at Gagosian.

Gallery, and it was huge.

We were utterly caught off guard by
the energy and the content of the work.

He was a phenomenon.

It was extremely well received by
players in LA, the Hollywood crew.

My recollection was they were all
basically sold by the time of the opening.

He left Annina Nosei
after just a year.

He called me up and I said,
I'll introduce you to Bruno.

Bischofberger, who had
shown an interest to me before.

Things started to change
very quickly thereafter.

He was rapidly
becoming a millionaire.

He was a guest at the time.

We would go out to
dinner, we'd go back to the

studio, and he's in this
expensive Armani suit.

He sees some painting,
and he feels compelled to

change it, and he's painting
there in his Armani suit.

He was in a loft
on Crosby Street.

There would be like piles
of money all over the place.

He was very young, and he
had never had this much money.

And I... I think it was
very awkward for him.

Do you spend it?
Do you save it?

He had bought two new
color televisions and a TAC

recording machine, and he
didn't have a bank account.

He would often hide the money around the
house, so when I would be cleaning up, I would

find thousands of dollars under the cushions
of the couch or in the pages of a book.

That's the way he was
living, and he was living high.

And whenever I would
go over to visit, there

was always 20 people
hanging around over there.

They were smoking pot.

There were tons of bottles
of very expensive wine.

Gourmet, gourmet,
gourmet delights in the

refrigerator all the time
that just go to waste.

He was able to pay
for the party for a while.

But that money will kill you if you
don't know to deal with it, you know?

I was in charge of the
production, making sure the right

food was served to the right
people and the limo was there.

Entertaining the
buyers, that was my job.

To produce his party.
And that was a party.

So what was your
first reaction when you

started selling work and
making a little money?

I don't know.

Overconfidence,
super confidence.

I was just happy that I was able to stick it out and then, you
know, and then get things I wanted, you know? Like, after...

I felt like I... like I was
right, you know what I mean?

The first really major
press about Jean-Michel

was a story in the New
York Times Magazine.

For a young African American
fine artist, it was incredible.

It was literally
rock star status.

There's this incredible
photograph of him on the cover.

You know, that's really about
Jean-Michel as a person, as a phenomenon.

And so he's propelled into
the bigger world of culture.

Jean-Michel become
gigantic celebrity.

Famous, wealthy, hanging out with celebrities,
being praised, lavish gifts and money.

Everybody wanted a piece of him.

It seems to me of all the
painters who've risen, you're

the one who gets singled out
as this kind of a personality.

But at the same
time, I sort of enjoy...

I enjoy the... I enjoy that they
think I'm a bad boy, like a threat.

Yeah.

The whole bevy
came into the picture.

And I remember saying to him,
I want you to understand what

it feels like to be famous, so
go and do what you have to do.

So it was very hard
for me, very hard.

He used to often call me Venus in
the paintings, and when he was having

an affair with Madonna, he painted
a painting of me beating up Madonna.

We did get in a
fight at the Roxy.

I'm embarrassed of that.

He was an intense
center of a cult.

He was a cult figure
of huge proportions.

Nobody knows what it's like if
you're two painters in that situation.

Nobody else was in
that situation with him.

They had a different
kind of... you know,

whether it was Fab 5
Freddy or all different...

they had a different kind
of... you know, I wasn't

his peer in that, since I
was an older guy to him.

And he always wanted
to know what I thought.

So the reason why
I made the movie...

I wanted to tell
him what I thought.

I thought I owed it to him.

$10.00 a piece. $10.00.

Oh, gee. Didn't work
very much on these.

I can give you like $5.00.

Bruno, can I borrow some money?

Andy Warhol, like most people,
was very seduced and enamored

by Jean-Michel, and I think
probably had a crush on him.

It was such a big thing for Jean
to become that close with Andy.

But he was the
master of the game.

It's great to be that tight with somebody
that we all looked up to in that way.

Are we rolling?

We're rolling?

Oh, and this is my best...

I mean, no, not the
richest artist in the world,

Jean-Michel. Jean-Michel,
what's your last name?

What's your last
name, sweetheart?

Basquiat.

Jean-Michel wanted to be
an artist in the great galleries.

Mary Boone, Leo Castelli.

But he was not an artist that
was embraced by the art world.

You know, he was considered kind of an
artist that could be on the cover of the New

York Times Magazine section, because there
was a lot of underground feel to the work.

But I think there were still a lot
of people in our world who didn't

put him on the same level as
Schnabel and Salle and people like that.

I guess he saw Julian Schnabel,
and I think they all had big

shows at the Whitney, and he
didn't have that kind of recognition.

The kind of art that was
esteemed in the mid-1970s...

minimalism, conceptualism...

didn't really allow
for much innovation.

If you just kept pushing minimal painting and
sculpture, you ended up with something academic.

The art was mostly minimal when I came up,
and it... it sort of confused me a little bit.

I thought it divided
people a little bit.

It alienated most... most
people from art, you know?

Uh-huh.

He was really a pioneer in
neo-expressionism, and so he

was breaking boundaries
just by the nature of the work.

I think people really
misunderstood.

At one point, he did a
drawing as big as this painting

here, and he wanted it to
go to a New York museum.

I said, OK, I'll donate it.

We offered it to MOMA, and
the Museum of Modern Art

came back and said, well,
he isn't worth the space.

And then we tried the Whitney,
and they'd rejected it also.

When you first see brand
new work, chances are if

it's really significant,
it will be uncomfortable

to somebody like myself,
because I am so immersed

in what painting up
until now looked like.

And with Basquiat, many art professionals
had skepticism about what he was doing

because the paintings didn't necessarily
fit their idea of a museum painting.

And yet, of course,
that's exactly what's

necessary in order to
create the art of the future.

How do you... how do you work?

Do you just start with a blank
canvas and just start painting?

I usually put a lot down on it,
and then... then I take a lot away.

And then I put some more down,
and I take some more away, you know?

So it's like a constant
editing process, usually.

What... what do people like
in your work that you are...

that you...

Got me.

There's something very direct about
Jean-Michel's work that appeals to everyone.

It doesn't just appeal to the intellectual,
but it does appeal to the intellectual.

He appealed to a lot of people
who didn't have a great knowledge

of art history, but just
looked at the work and liked it.

He wasn't schooled.

It was never
something calculated.

That's not to say that he didn't
look very closely at what he was

doing, but it wasn't something
that he was following some pattern.

It was an instinct. He
had incredible instinct.

You know, writing the word tar
five times, crossing it out four times.

He was really a once
in a generation talent.

And he had a way of making words pictorial
and making them part of a picture.

Anybody who has eyes, they can
see that he's channeling his inner child.

What's your... what's your earliest,
most vivid childhood memory?

Probably getting
hit by a car, I guess.

How did that happen?

I was playing in the street.

How old were you?

I was seven. Seven
or eight years old.

And were you... what were
you thinking when it happened?

Did you think, this is it?

It seemed very
dreamlike, seeing the car.

I mean, it was just like in the movies,
when they slow it down, you know?

When... when a car is coming
at you, it was just like that.

And did they like, take you to
the hospital and the whole thing?

Yeah, yeah. I had
operations and stuff.

The whole business.

Like certain things that happen to you
in psychology, you're arrested in time.

And he consciously and intentionally took
that idea as a painter and ran with it.

I'm going to
return to that time.

I'm gonna hold my instrument
in a way that a child would.

I'm going to draw
the way a child does.

He was also the most
advanced contemporary mind.

He was both creatures.

So I understand now that
you hobnob with the hobnobs.

And you go to this club
called Area. Is that true?

Yeah, yeah.

When you get to Area,
there's a lot of people outside.

It's a disco. It's a gallery.

And then there's a lot of
pretty people there. It's big.

It's a big, big, big
place, and it's...

it's hard to get in.

But I never had a
hard time getting in.

But... but I've heard
it was hard to get in.

I noticed quite a bit of a change in Jean
when he really started hanging out with Andy.

Jean became a little bit out of
touch with the old school fellas.

I really missed the old Jean a lot,
because I didn't want to call him,

because I knew that I was going
to get this indifference from him.

And then I'd go to his art
openings and I'd see him

hanging out in the corner
with a whole different crowd.

People that would ignore me.

Andy was kind of in love with Jean-Michel,
and what's it like being a woman with

a homosexual man and a straight men and
being the third wheel in a relationship?

That's what it was like.

I didn't visit him as much.

And I just really felt, well, you
know, I don't really belong there.

As he became such a
star in New York, I think it

became harder for him
to work in New York City.

Around that time, he realized
that he really did like Los Angeles,

and I think he also realized he
could get a lot of work done here.

The Sollares rented a studio for him in Venice,
which he had for about a year and a half.

And he made quite a
lot of art in that studio.

I used to love
watching him paint.

He didn't mind. I could sit
there and watch him paint.

And it was just beautiful
the way he painted.

I mean, it was just like, you
know, fast and elegant and...

There was a whole group of people out
here that he felt really comfortable with.

I started just hanging out with him and
filming him painting, and I probably filmed

him over two or three years just hanging
out in the studio painting with him.

What Jean would to do is he would go
out at night, and then he would come home

and basically lock himself in for two,
three days, just paint and paint and paint.

So do you have a
specific method of working?

Do you have certain
hours that you always work?

I just have to... I wish
they'd find a television.

I have to have some source material
around me, you know, to work off.

Like what?

I don't know. You know,
magazines, textbooks.

You don't mind having a lot of people
around, while you're painting, do you?

I've discovered that I think I'd rather
work alone more than anything, you know?

I used to have assistants a lot
around me, and then on days when

they wouldn't come, I would be
a lot more productive, you know?

He was going out a lot, and he
was under a lot of pressure to paint,

because he owed paintings to
his art collectors and art dealers.

And each painting that he did
had to be a masterpiece, because

now he was being criticized
in the international art world.

I think it was getting harder and
harder for him to go back and forth

from being an adventurous
20-year-old to being a serious painter.

He told me that he was starting
to use heroin at that point.

He chose to use these drugs in
order to concentrate, you know?

You know, I prefer a
cup of coffee myself, but.

Put yourself in the position.

Here is this guy that is 20, 21,
22, you know, living on the street.

And within the course of two years,
he became a really, really famous artist.

Everyone started
flocking around him.

Can you imagine how that
would be difficult to adapt to?

He kind of drifted to begin taking heroin, knowing
that everyone who messed with it gets fucked up.

Jean did want to be
this burning ember.

In modern times, there is for
sure, whether you take Jackson.

Pollock, whether you take Vincent Van
Gogh, a romance about the notion of the

artist as a person whose life is so
intense that it's more than he can bear.

And there is always the question of
is it a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy?

And I think in particular in
Basquiat's case, he identified

very consciously with these
heroes who had tragic endings.

He knew about the
mystique of the drugs.

How much of that was his only
relation taking to the next level.

So everything that happens to
you then becomes heightened.

It's hard to go back
to the real world.

There was a huge show for Jean.

It was a triumph because
he was in a show with

the then, like, hottest
contemporary artists.

I think like Schnabel and the Italian,
you know, Francesco Clemente.

And me, Jean, we came outside and we
were gonna go downtown to have dinner.

So Jean throws his
hand up, you know.

He's waiting for a cab.

And one cab, two cab, three
cab, four cab, five cabs like passed.

And Jean would sometimes get
mad, because a cab would pass.

He'd try to run up, like, try to
pull a door open, like, you fucker!

You know?

But you'd feel these moments.

Like, it was just a part of being
black and living in New York City.

Like, these things happen,
you know what I'm saying?

Of all the arrests this year,
none have received as much

public attention as that
of a young graffiti artist.

On September 15, 25 year old
Michael Stewart was arrested for

scrawling on the wall of a subway
station at 3:00 in the morning.

30 minutes later, Stewart lay
in a deep coma at Bellevue.

Hospital's emergency room.

Michael Stewart was
my friend, and very gentle,

kind of effeminate young
black man with dreads.

He was going home one night on I
train to Brooklyn, where he lived with

his parents, and he was beaten to
death by five white police officers.

13 days after his arrest,
Michael Stewart was dead.

It really affected Jean-Michel.

He thought it could have
been him, and it could've been.

To go from a place where
you're in a gallery, you're

at parties, you're in a
place where everyone knows

who the hell you are, and
is looking at you, or hoping

to do drugs with you,
hoping to get laid by you.

And to go back out in the world and
to be just this black guy walking around

looking kind of bum my to most
people's eyes, that also was a mind fuck.

It was very different for
a black artist in 1982.

Very different
situation at that time.

He was something the art
world had not seen before.

- And... and so... and you're...
- you're seen as... as some sort

of primal expressionism?

Is that...

Like an ape?

Well, uh, let's...

A primate?

Well, I don't know.

Is that... is that...

You said it. I
don't... you said it.

Well, um, you... you're...

Jean-Michel wasn't different.

He was an artist just like most
of the people at those scenes.

But color makes you
feel different, and you

know people are looking
at you a certain way.

And all these different
comments that you read about him

had all that kind of language
and coded language in it.

This never would have
happened to a white guy.

The art world, which is full of
liberal, left wing types, was feeling

that they, you know, they needed
to make a bow in that direction.

The disadvantaged
minorities and so on.

His contribution to art is so
minuscule as to be practically nil.

About your... your...

the story that you're always being
locked in the basement in order to paint.

Oh, that...

that's just, um...

it has a nasty edge
to it, you know?

I mean, I was never
locked anywhere.

I mean, if I was a white dude, they'd say artist
in residence, rather than say all that other stuff.

You know, it's shocking to even
think that it's not that long ago.

The early '80s.

I had this a lot.

Most of my reviews have
been more reviews on...

Your personality.

On my personality, yeah,
more so than my work, mostly.

How so? How do you
react to that sort of thing?

They're just racist,
most of these people.

I know it affected him strongly.

It was very tough on him.

They have this image of
me, wild man, running, you

know, wild monkey man,
whatever the fuck they say.

There's this tendency to
say, well, he's a primitive artist.

But he was a kid who grew up in
New York City in the 1970s and '80s.

What the art world did
to him reminds me of what

happens in... in various
points in black history to...

to black artists.

A, you become a representation
for white people of all black

people, because you're the
only black person they know.

The guy obviously spent a lot of
time thinking about what his place in the

world was, and what's the place of
black people and black men in the world.

It's all in all his work over
and over and over again.

He excavated the incredibly
rich history of black people.

He's had an epic view of
the history in his paintings.

He's going back to slavery. He's
going back to Robert Johnson.

He's going back to Joe Lewis.

He's got a real sense of
why he celebrates black kings,

is because the world
doesn't celebrate black kings.

And suddenly
you're a black king.

And now I'm here with
the quote, unquote "elite"

of this particular world
who controlled your value.

You're beholden to this world
to make you what you are, but

you're always aware that how
I can become cold, and what...

what am I to them?
I'm just last year's thing.

And I'm just last
year's interesting negro.

Something started
to happen to Jean.

After a while, the party
started to wear on him, too.

And he started to get a little bit more
distrustful, a little bit more paranoid.

He distrusted different situations
that he would be in sometimes, and

felt like he was being used, and
that really fucked him... fucked him up.

You know, before, you
left paintings around all the

time you leave these traces
of things that you've done.

Are you more conscious of
not doing that, or do you think...

Definitely.

Because they've
wound up in auctions.

People... yeah.

I know people who've
sold those things.

Like, everybody I know
has sold those things, yeah.

He had more money
than all of his friends.

And so that made him suspicious.

More people started surrounding
him for exploitative reasons.

So partly there was a reason to be paranoid,
and partly it was substance induced.

If you're using substances, it's
very, very hard to stay grounded.

I think he wanted to have fun.

I think he was having fun.

He wanted to have fun, and he
didn't want to get his feelings hurt.

And if he just could've had a little bit
more support in a deep sense so he didn't

feel so damn lonely and didn't feel so taken
advantage of and got so damn confused...

he just didn't have the tools to
kind of navigate the sea of shit.

He went to Hana.

And he actually went
there with his father.

I think he wanted to prove
something to his father, or

he wanted to prove his
father that he was successful.

Jean wanted his respect,
and he wanted his confirmation.

So, um, of all the places that you've
traveled to, which has been your favorite?

This is a boring answer,
but I'm hung up on Hawaii.

- Yeah?
- Yeah.

Why's that?

Because it's, um, because of the convenience
of it and the wildness of it, I guess.

Because you can buy
anything you can buy in America.

You can buy your
favorite toothpaste.

And then you can just drive
for two hours, and be, you

know, and they speak
English, I guess. I don't know.

I remember Steve Torton
once said something about you.

Steve said, you know, Jean-Michel is
so cerebral, and he lives so much in his

brain that you can put him anywhere
and it would be... it just wouldn't matter.

It's like, it's not like you're unaware
of your environment, but it just

in some way doesn't matter because
you're living in your brain and not...

I think it definitely makes a difference,
though, from here and Hawaii and all.

I mean, I think I have to learn
more and just not to work around

what's around me and just
work with what I think, I guess.

I shouldn't let what's around
me affect my work at all, I

think, and just... and just work
on whatever I want to work on.

Do you still see yourself as naive the
way you described yourself as a kid?

- Yeah.
- You don't feel like...

Because I'm... I'm always embarrassed
of... of the past. Always, you know?

I always feel like if I knew
more, I wouldn't have done that.

I mean, naive, too, in relation to this incredibly high
pressure, competitive art world that you're part of.

Do you maintain a distance from it
so that you don't get cynical about it?

I don't think the art world is a
thing with a set group of people.

They're all mercenaries trying to make as much
money as they can as fast as they can, most of them.

I always felt that LA was like a safety valve,
not that he could live his whole life here.

He was hardly gonna fit
in here year in, year out.

But I thought it was a great
place for him to work where he

didn't feel as much pressure,
and he was more relaxed to paint.

I thought when he moved
back to New York and gave

up the studio here, and
I felt it was a shift there.

Crosby Street got a little out of hand,
because everybody knew he was there.

People would constantly
be ringing the bell, or he was

only on the second floor, so
you could be like, yo, Jean.

And he kind of needed
to move away from that.

And Andy came through with
this place on Great Jones Street.

Andy love Jean-Michel
like a son, almost.

And at various times, he was
concerned about him, and I was, too.

So we sometimes
talked about that.

I hung out with him and Andy several times
during that period when they were very close.

Andy was really
giving great advice.

Andy would be like,
Jean, did you do this?

And have you spoke to your mom?

And did you blah blah blah?

He'd go through
this list of things.

And Jean would be like,
yeah, yeah, I did that.

So I was just like, OK,
oh, wow, you know?

It was strange that if you're paranoid
about people taking advantage of you,

and you think that people are
exploiting you, and all these things, that

the one friend that you can call to
be there on the lifeline to help you

out of this paranoia of your friends
taking advantage of you is Andy Warhol.

But I think that with Jean,
Andy really was there for him.

I'd never seen Andy so close with anyone,
and I'd never seen Jean so close with anyone.

This was a real...

these guys really
loved each other.

And Jean tried to do that collaboration
show with him and thought he was gonna get

some kind of approval for doing this, and
be accepted, and that it was a good thing.

Their friendship and that
relationship led to not just dabbling

and trying out a few things
together, but a large body of work.

Listening to what he had to
say was probably the most fun.

Seeing how he dealt with things.

He's really...
he's really funny.

Uh-huh.

You know, just tells
a lot of funny jokes.

I was there once when they were working,
and Andy would get mad at Jean-Michel for...

he would paint something, and
then Jean-Michel would paint over it.

And that was funny to see.

Andy was more influenced by
Jean-Michel than Jean-Michel

was influenced by Andy, because
Andy had given up drawing.

And it was Jean-Michel that got him to draw again,
and nobody could draw like Andy. It was amazing.

Yeah, we worked for a year.

Would he come up with the
idea for one and then you'd

come up with one, or how
did you do the collaboration?

He started... he would
start most of the paintings.

He would put... he'd start one
and put something very concrete

or recognizable on, like a
newspaper headline or a product logo.

And then I would sort of deface
it, and then... I would try to get him

to work some more on it, you know,
and then I would work more on it.

I would try to get him to do
at least two things, you know?

Uh-huh.

He likes to do just one hit, you know, and then...
and then have me do all the work after that, you know?

So did you have rules like you couldn't
actually paint over his stuff, or...

No, no, no. I used to paint
over his shitty stuff all the time.

Yeah.

And luckily for the world,
I suppose, they produced

a spectacular body of
work, including a very

large painting with the
Mobilgas Pegasus and a cut

of meat and a penguin
that's a true masterpiece.

He felt that if he could
align himself not only as a

friend of Andy Warhol's, but
actually painting with Andy.

Warhol, this was going to
take him to the next level... that

he would finally get the
respect that he was looking for.

It was not what he expected.

Everybody attacked
those paintings.

Jean-Michel embraced Andy at a period
and a time when Andy was not very popular.

Andy basically couldn't sell
his work very well in the '80s.

I don't know if Jean-Michel felt
bad that he let Andy down or if he

believed what the press said, that
Andy was taking advantage of him.

They said that he was Andy's
lapdog and all these kind of things.

It really hurt him.

They said he was finished.

It was the attitude.

And it was hard for
us to understand.

Andy Warhol died last week.

One week ago today, as he lay in a
hospital bed following gallbladder surgery,

Andy Warhol's heart
stopped beating.

His condition had been stable.

No one had expected him to die.

I was so shocked, because I always thought
Andy would, like, outlive all of us.

They had a falling out, and he
never had a chance to repair that.

And so I think it was
extremely painful for him.

He really went
downhill after that.

Jean was devastated, and
he was crying like hysterically.

And some friends said, yo, man, you should go
in there and talk to him, because people...

everybody that went up
to him and tried to talk to

him he just like shut
down like really abruptly.

They were like, mm.

And I was like, all right.

And I went in and I could just
tell he was grieving. It was so bad.

Early on, he wouldn't
admit that he was on drugs.

He wouldn't... he didn't
want to talk about it.

I didn't know he was
going that... that hard.

I was shocked to hear that.

I wasn't very involved in his life
in, like, the last year and a half.

And I had heard he was
doing badly with drugs.

And I went over there a
few times to check on him.

I tried to address the drugs
with him, but he would become

very angry and violent at that
point if I talked to him about

stopping using drugs.

The pressure of that artificial world
made it difficult for him to do something.

They tell me that the
drugs are killing me,

and I stop, and then
they say my art's dead.

I had just taken
a job at Nell's.

And he came in super late,
and there was a bit of a scurry.

And I didn't know who he was.

He sat at my table, and
he sort of arrogantly said,

do you want to come and
see some famous paintings?

I'm a really famous painter.

And I said, you know, super famous
people don't have to say they're famous.

And so I went over, and his lights
were off, or the electric bill wasn't paid.

I mean, there wasn't a life going
on in there and we went back

to the back of the studio, and
he started to pull out paintings.

Eventually, he pulled a couple canvas
and said, which one do you like better?

And it was the double Elvis, which I
now know was Warhol's, and I didn't then.

And I said, you should
do more like that.

I really like that.

And so he just kind of chuckled and
said, you don't know who I am, do you?

And I said, no.

And so, you know, as time went on, I
realized, like, that's why he kept me around.

Because I hadn't the slightest
clue, really, of where I was.

I was like, kind of cheerleading,
because he didn't want to do the show.

He wanted to cancel the show.

I was there like saying,
no, you can... you can do it.

A week or a few days
and suddenly the opening.

His sort of hallmark had been this incredible
detail, and that show was very stark.

But it was powerful.

Kind of more simplified.

They were more spacious and...
and ironic, and they have a different

kind of head behind them, but they
also kind of reduced him a little bit.

It was just typical
of a late artist.

It's like he was doing
late work at the age of 27.

They were very good, but they were
really kind of lose and kind of scary.

One had the words, "man dies,
man dies" all the way through it.

It was very scary, you know?

And he was like, looking
really bad, and he had the

splotches on his face,
and he did not look good.

He was a bad frame of mind, because
he thought the press was going to get him.

And he was really worried about this
article that Anthony was writing about him

for New York Magazine, and he was upset
about his relationship with his father.

He was having a
hard time with drugs.

It was all kind of
hitting him at once.

At that time, there weren't
that many people around.

Very, very few.

His gallery, a couple people.

I would say that I...

I think that he would...
he was a bit lonely.

We were having lunch at the Odeon and
Jean-Michel's dad was there with some businessmen.

So he's like, oh, that's
my dad over there.

And he went up, he popped
up, and he bounced over.

And he was with his friends, which
was us, and his dad was with his friends.

He's like, hey, Dad, how
you doing? Look, I'm...

I'm taking all my friends out to
lunch. I'm successful. Blah, blah, blah.

And Jean-Michel came back
with his tail between his legs.

His dad kind of iced him.

Just those moments where I
saw him... it just deflated him.

I've seen this with other
celebrity friends of mine.

Once they've encountered a
certain amount of success, they tend

to go back to find people that
they knew before they were famous.

He came to my 1st Street
apartment and rang the bell.

And it was the
middle of the night.

And at that point, I had a... a
new boyfriend that I was living with.

And he got up, and who is it?

Jean-Michel. Can I come in?

Is Suzanne there?
Is Suzanne there?

And he wasn't... Jonathan
was not gonna let him in.

And I said, you
have to let him in.

Maybe he's in trouble, you know?

And so I buzzed him
in, but he never came up.

And that was the last
encounter I had with him.

And he showed up to my apartment over on
1st Street, and he yelled out the window.

And he shows up with two
paintings... with a diptych.

It said, to SAMO, from SAMO.

And like a... like a creep, I turned
around and I sold those paintings.

Yeah.

When he was still alive?

He was still alive.

One of the last times I saw
him was New Year's Eve.

He was sitting by himself at a
bar looking very sad, but so sweet.

And he just smiled at me.

That image haunts me, because
there he was New Year's Eve all by

himself at this bar, the most
famous artist of his generation.

We bought the house on
Maui that he'd been to before.

The intention was
to just clean up.

And last minute, he decided he wanted to do that
on his own, because it wasn't a pretty time.

And so he went on his own.

He came back through Los Angeles, and he was totally
sober, and he wasn't doing drugs or anything.

I picked him up sitting
out on a street corner.

We ended up picking up Chinese
food, and then we drove up to the top

of Mulholland and then just sat
there in my car and ate Chinese food.

He was not in a good place.

He felt like his career
was over, and he really

knew that if he did
drugs again, he would die.

But for some reason, he
went back to New York.

The summer is a
strange, you know...

it's a motherfucker in New York.

It's hot.

It's very lonely and
empty in the summer.

I get a message on my answering machine from him
saying that he was back, and that he was... he was...

he was clean.

He was feeling great.

And he wanted to see me.

It's like that... that classic
thing about people who are...

are... they get caught.

They get caught at the oddest
of times when they... when they

die from drug... drug... drugs,
alcohol, and that kind of thing.

It was a normal day.

He and Kevin had tickets to go to Run
DMC, and he was very excited about going.

He got in a limousine
or something.

We were going high style to
the... to the... to the concert.

Went out there and said,
Kevin's on the phone.

And he was sleeping.
And so this was...

this was normal.

I went up a couple times, and he
was still in bed, resting or whatever.

So the last time that I went
up, he wasn't on the bed.

Um, and he'd
fallen on the floor.

We sprinted over to... when she said he
wouldn't wake up, we ran over to his house.

And she opened the door, and we went
upstairs, and he was laying there unconscious.

I was on the beach and
somebody came up and told me.

Told me that he'd died.

Nothing surprises
me about the success.

I mean, the only thing that surprises me
is how, even though I was fan number one

or two, how I didn't even understand how
extraordinary the vision was and talent.

So the...

now the future has arrived.

We're already 20 years later,
and we can see better now.

Jean-Michel would be
ecstatic, because the way the

game is played, Jean
played it, you know, well.

This is a song for
the genius child.

Sing it softly, for
the song is wild.

Sing it softly, as ever you can.

Let the song get out of hand.

Nobody loves a genius child.

Can you love an
eagle, tame or wild?

Wild or tame, can you love a
monster of frightening name?

Nobody loves a genius child.

Free him, and let
his soul run wild.