Andrew Meyer first became known as a promising young experimental filmmaker, singled out by artists like Gregory J. Markopoulos for his lyrical small-gauge work. An Early Clue to the New Direction is one his best, starring cult actress Joy Bang, poet Rene Ricard, and early gay-rights activist Prescott Townsend, who holds forth on his “snowflake theory” of human sexuality’s myriad varieties. Like Meyer’s film, Andy Warhol’s My Hustler is a kind of underground chamber play whose characters jockey for erotic attention. The prize of this competition is studly Factory denizen Paul America, who plays a sex worker on the clock in Fire Island. Yet a victor never emerges, and after a flurry of brilliantly improvised banter the film is left unresolved. “Warhol’s films don’t have happy endings,” the art historian Douglas Crimp averred. “They don’t have endings at all. They just end.”

An Early Clue to the New Direction
Andrew Meyer, USA, 1966, 16mm, 28m

My Hustler
Andy Warhol, USA, 1965, 16mm, 79m