Hilton Als on the Sui-Generis Films of Charles Atlas

Hilton Als Staff writer You’re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up to receive it in your in-box. Charlie Atlas was the first director to ask me to write for film. This was a long time ago—the mid-nineteen-eighties—and he was trying to complete a movie called “Ex-Romance,” which featured two of his stars, the dancer-choreographers Karole Armitage and Michael Clark. The idea was that I would write some bits to help tie the film together. It was such a flattering thing, to be hired by Charlie—because by then he was already a legend. Raised in St. Louis, he landed in New York City when he was barely out of his teens; soon, he was working with Merce Cunningham, first on lighting, but in 1974 he became Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s filmmaker-in-residence, producing an incredible array of films that revolutionized the way dance was presented in cinema. And then there were his wonderful set designs and costumes, as well. Charlie’s love of making was such a gift to me; it taught me that you didn’t need a fortune to make a movie, as long as you had interesting people to look at. And Charlie always knew the interesting people to film. In addition to Cunningham, Clark, and Armitage, he’s worked with genius figures like Leigh Bowery, Lady Bunny, Anne Iobst and Lucy Sexton, of Dancenoise—the list goes on and on. There’s never been a period when I haven’t felt buoyed by Charlie’s various creations—and, as the best movies do, his work reflects the times when, for the most part, artists had more of a D.I.Y. aesthetic. In fact, looking back, I can see now that the performers Charlie seemed most drawn to were people who created themselves out of thin air—they followed no precedent. In inventing a stellar performing self, each of Charlie’s stars fit perfectly into his vision: his sui-generis films hadn’t existed before, either. Sometimes, if you watch an Atlas short, you can hear the director laughing offscreen; so great is his delight in what a […]

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