#Amos Poe

[unioncityblues]

Debbie Harry on the set of The Foreigner (1978)

Photographed by Fernando Natalici in East Village, New York City, New York. 1977.

[twixnmix]

Andy Warhol, Amos Poe, James Baldwin, Nicole Wisniak, Jodie Foster, and Jed Johnson at the Casino de Deauville during the Deauville American Film Festival, September 1977.

[undergroundrockpress]

1976

[christotokos]

ALPHABET CITY, 1984 DIR. AMOS POE

[dare-g]

Unmade Beds (1976)

[davidhudson]

Happy 74th, Amos Poe.

[lascitasdelashoras]

Anthony Bourdain with filmmakers Amos Poe and Jim Jarmusch

[theunderestimator-2]

Stills from Amos Poe's 1978 "The Foreigner" with the Cramps ganging up on the protagonist, Eric Mitchell, in the CBGB's bathrooms after a drunken brawl with Bryan Gregory and Miriam Linn upstairs.

dailypublic.com/: "Filmmaker Amos Poe is today considered one of the progenitors of New York’s “No Wave” movement, but back in the late 1970s he was just a guy trying to make movies about the scene he knew with minimal resources and the help of friends. The Foreigner, his second film, was made in 1978 but looks like an artifact from the early 1950s. Part of that is intentional: He’s trying to recreate the same no-budget, black-and-white crime films that inspired Godard’s Breathless. The plot is improvised around Eric Mitchell as a Eurospy who arrives in Manhattan ready for his next assignment. What that is, he doesn’t know, and his attempts to find out take him through some of the seedier back alleys of Alphabet City, way back before the era of gentrification.

Punk fans will want to see it for a CBGBs performance by the Erasers and cameos by Debbie Harry (singing a Brecht song) and the Cramps (as a gang that mugs Mitchell in the CBGB bathroom). If you’re interested in the era, it’s an invaluable time capsule."

I gotta say the bathrooms look spotless, though.

Here's the footage from that scene on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gAyT5UK6dU

(via)

[susantyrrell]

John Lurie, Susan Tyrrell and director Amos Poe in a publicity photo for Subway Riders, 1981.

[rwpohl]

the boxer, shuji terayama 1977

*

fallen angels, wong kar-wai 1995

the foreigner, amos poe 1977

[jimforce]

Throwback Extra

I have a real fondness for this movie and since this year is its fourth Anniversary I wanted to throwback to my review of it.

It’s a funky little very 80’s movie about a guy trying to get out of being a drug dealer with an awesome Nile Rodgers Soundtrack, which for some reason was never released as an album. I love the look of this movie but seriously the soundtrack is amazing.

I don’t think this is a great movie but it is a good one i really liked and have seen way too many times. Wish more people knew about it.

[gotankgo]

The Foreigner (1978)

Directed by Amos Poe

[schlock-luster-video]

On September 11, 1986, Alphabet City debuted in Colombia.

[planetoidsfun]

A touch of Debbie from Amos Poe's Unmade Beds (1976). French New Wave NY style. Better than any Godard.

[byneddiedingo]

Michael Winslow in Alphabet City (Amos Poe, 1984)

Cast: Vincent Spano, Michael Winslow, Kate Vernon, Jami Gertz, Zohra Lampert, Raymond Serra, Kenny Marino, Danny Jordano, Tom Mardirosian. Screenplay: Gregory K. Heller, Amos Poe. Cinematography: Oliver Wood. Production design: M. Nord Haggerty. Film editing: Graham Weinbren. Music: Nile Rodgers. 

In 1984, a cop show called Miami Vice revolutionized its genre with hip music and lots of style, transforming the city where it was set into a place where even wickedness looked good. In the same year, director Amos Poe tried to do something similar for the gangster movie in New York's Lower East Side with a movie called Alphabet City. He cast a 20-something actor, Vincent Spano, as Johnny, a 19-year-old sharp-dressing factotum for the mob, and sent him cruising the city streets in a limited edition Pontiac Trans Am to the music of Nile Rodgers. The movie's streets are hosed-down and shiny and the city lights are haloed by a fog filter. Johnny has a wife/partner/companion named Angie (Kate Vernon), who does abstract expressionist paintings and tends to their infant daughter in the loft where they live. He cruises about, collecting from drug dealers like Lippy (Michael Winslow) and club owners who pay the mob protection. But then the mob boss wants Johnny to torch an apartment building, which is a problem because Johnny's sister, Sophia (Jami Gertz), and his mother (Zohra Lampert) live there. We learn that Sophia is a professional party girl and Mama spends her time ironing while her slob of a boyfriend snoozes on the sofa before the TV, and Johnny has some trouble persuading them to vacate. So he decides to quit the mob and tries to persuade Angie that they should take the baby and run. Naturally, the mob sends out hit men and Johnny has to deal with them. And that's pretty much it. Spano has real presence, and Winslow creates an amusingly quirky character for Lippy, but the clichés are as pervasive as the lens-created fog that blurs the streetlights. Alphabet City is worth watching only as an example of the high '80s style that MTV made ubiquitous, but if you want to see that the reruns of Miami Vice are more worth watching.

[dare-g]

Subway Riders (1981)