News

Guest of Cindy Sherman

Directed by Tom Donahue

and Paul H-O

With Paul H-O

and Cindy Sherman

Classification: NA

***

For more than five years, self-described failed artist and cable access TV host Paul Hasegawa-Overacker (aka Paul H-O) had a relationship with reclusive New York art star Cindy Sherman. He then made a film about his experiences that, at best, is a gossipy first-person look at the politics of the New York art world and an ironic, outsider's take on the issues of exhibitionism and concealment in Sherman's work. At worst, it's unscrupulous, like selling your famous friend's letters on eBay.

In 1993, Paul H-O and Walter Robinson (then an editor at Art in America) started a sassy New York cable access show called Gallery Beat. They chronicled the scene dominated by such artists as Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel and Sherman as the self-styled "Beavis and Butt-head" of the art world. They were knowledgeable about art, but impudent in their style.

Schnabel (now more widely known as the filmmaker behind The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) expresses contempt for the show's trivial approach to art - a scene that establishes H-O knew his lowly place, as a barely tolerated hanger-on.

Still, through the show, he meets Sherman, and her natural shyness only increases her aura of elusiveness. Famous both for putting herself in her works and disguising herself in costumes and prosthetics, the photographer had emerged as a provocative feminist alternative to the male painters of the eighties. At the time H-O meets her, she has finished a series of photos using mannequins or mutilated dolls, possibly in response to her recently ended marriage.

And Sherman, who H-O calls "the most famous mystery girl of art," gives him access to her studio. As the footage shows, the two have a strong mutual chemistry that definitely seems based on the attraction of opposites.

The first encounter between the pushy, smarmy H-O and the giggling artist is uncomfortable to watch: Sherman, always fashionable and feminine, seems less like a major artist than a flustered schoolgirl. When the two become an item, various members of the New York art scene report their shock that the queen of the scene, courted by Hollywood celebrities and rich investors, has suddenly taken up with the goof from the cable access show.

The film offers a relatively rare opportunity to hear Sherman interviewed, to see her at work and learn something of her highly instinctive process.

We see her interacting with her Long Island parents and sister, blandly pleasant throughout. As New York Times arts critic Roberta Smith astutely observes, Sherman shows much more personality in her work than she does in person.

In 1997, Sherman made a flop horror film called Office Killer, and her Hollywood contacts add some panache to the story - stars such as Jeanne Tripplehorn, Molly Ringwald and Carol Kane weigh in on the subject of fame and relationships. As well, we see Sherman's friends Eric Bogosian (who declares the art world full of b.s.) and John Waters. And painters such as Eric Fischl and Robert Longo talk about careerism and hype.

Drama, of course, isn't drama without conflict, and the second, less salutary subject of H-O's film is about the pain of being a second banana.

As Sherman is flown about the world, celebrated and feted, her boyfriend gets tired of his lesser status. He sends an e-mail to a New Jersey radio show to complain about how hard it is to be the arm candy of a famous woman, and ends up going on the air to discuss his problem. He even starts doing a stand-up performance-art act about it, all with Sherman's support.

Warming to his theme, H-O bolsters his case with interviews of other also-ran spouses, including Ringwald's husband and Elton John's partner, film producer David Furnish. Furnish talks about how at one shindig he threw a tantrum at his terrible placement, and John had to ask Uma Thurman to relinquish her seat at the head table.

There is a last-ditch effort to tie personal grievance to art, as H-O expresses regret at the hollow, corporate-driven values of the contemporary art scene that replaced the nineties' intimacy and bustle. And the film leaves the impression that Sherman was completely supportive of her former boyfriend's efforts to market his experience with her.

But apparently she did have some completely understandable reservations. Before last year's Tribeca Film Festival, where it premiered, she issued a disclaimer about the film that bears her name: "I apologize to all those who participated, thinking they were doing me a favour in giving interviews and otherwise assisting in the fabrication of this film. Against my better judgment, it was clearly unwise to co-operate with the project at its inception."