All language subtitles for Boom.For.Real.The.Late.Teenage.Years.Of.Jean-Michel.Basquiat.2017.720p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

Ford: One week ago, New York City...

tottered on the brink of
financial default.

The big Metropolitan city
has become obsolescent.

Decay and pollution have
brought a deterioration

in the quality of urban life.

The financial resources of the city

and the State of New York were exhausted.

Responsibility for New York City's

financial problems

is being left on the front doorstep

of the federal government...

and unless the federal government

intervenes,

New York City within a short time,

will no longer be able to pay its bills.

I can tell you...

I can tell you now...

that I am prepared to veto any bill...

that has as its purpose...

a federal bailout of New York City

to prevent a default.

There's an old saying...

the harder you try,
the luckier you get...

and I kind of like
that definition of luck.

McCormick: Because New York
had gone through

one of the most insane white flights,

neighbourhoods which were
historically low income,

totally fell apart.

One of the biggest blights would have been

the Lower East Side at that time.

Sante: Landlords were
faced with 20 percent,

30 percent, occupancy
and at some point or other,

they started figuring out that
there wasn't going to be any

new flood of occupants anytime soon,

and they might as well just
get the place burned down

for the insurance money.

Adler: It was dangerous.

Anything could happen basically.

There was no law.

People were selling drugs
right out on the street.

And it was just totally empty,
empty, empty,

empty, empty. And quiet.

From my apartment on Saint Marks
between 1st and A,

there was a polish bar
down the street

uh, where the juke box was
just completely stocked

with some Bobby Vinton records.

And, um, when they had
the door open on a warm night

you could hear Bobby Vinton
all over the streets,

that's how quiet it was.

♪ I have nobody for my own ♪

Jazz: The streets were
so intimate and so loving,

like, you could just sit on
a bench and meet somebody

who you could spend
the whole day with,

you didn't even know who they were.

And share really... secrets,
intimacies, uh, eat together,

share a joint and then meet others

on the way from one point
to another, to the park,

end up at some club or a party.

Nares: I guess the punk thing happened.

There was this very sudden shift,

um, of separation between people
who were remaining

in the old school and people
that were branching into this,

sort of new, unknown territory.

McCormick: New York's like this
insane magnet for people,

for their aspirations
and desire to reinvent themselves.

Certainly the poverty,
the crime, the danger, the...

all those, uh, seductive aspects
that would fit in

with a generation
kind of coming of age

with a lot of neolism,
the no future generation.

Sante: We wanted turbulence,
you know, we wanted risk,

um, we wanted danger,

and we wanted to play to a crowd,
frankly.

There were a couple of years,
it seemed, when everybody

knew everybody and everybody
was doing everything.

Everything came together.

Monforton: Upstairs at
the Mudd Club

at the end of the night were filmmakers,
artists,

there were musicians

and interested in what
each other were up to,

uh, finding tremendous overlap.

Sante: Meanwhile the downtown
art scene

people were opening themselves up

to other cultures.

Foye: A lot of traditional hierarchies
had broken down.

African American cultures,

urban culture was
entering into the art world.

Cortez: I mean for forward thinking people

the age of the...

of the white male was already over.

I guess he was always...

around, as we all were
from one club to another.

He was definitely everywhere I went,

like he would be there, right.

You know, you'd be at Tier 3,
you'd be at CBGB's,

you'd be at Mudd Club,
he'd be at all the art openings

and he'd always be quiet.

Jarmusch: And he was striking
once you met him,

it's like you knew him, he was...
you couldn't... he was indelible.

You and me, and we're walking,
a nice little romantic walk.

Out of nowhere Jean came running up

and was talking to us and like,

"Hey Jim, hey, oh you're Sara,
what are you guys doing here?"

And then he just disappeared
and you said something like,

"Well, wow that was strange,"

and I said "Yeah, I think
...you know, he's just like that,"

and then he came running
toward us from having gone

around the block with
a large red flower

in his hand that he'd
obviously stolen

from some market,
and he ran back up to us

and gave you the flower,
and he said something like,

"You're beautiful,"
or something and then whoosh

he was gone again.

But he was always trying
to steal all the girls.

Diaz: When I first met him...

I guess just a few months short of 16...

he was living on the street,
you know, he'd run away.

The Earl and the Albert,
like they were really

sleazed out hotels
and he would end up

staying there with God knows who.

He had a great way of
expressing himself, so,

he was really language oriented,
and I guess I was too.

And we kind of
...kind of connected on that level.

So we came up with this thing,
SAMO, you know,

this is the same old shit.
I mean, it was...

it was a logo, you know, SAMO,
copyright, dot dot dot.

Me being a graffiti artist,
I thought

it would be a great idea
to start writing it

on the walls.

The first ones were,
"SAMO is coming,"

or "SAMO 4 U," dot dot dot.

Jazz: You would see, like,
"SAMO as an antidote

to blah blah blah,"

and then you'd see a
broken bottle, you'd see...

you know, just the environment
of the city around it,

his work was a texture
like the crystals in the ground.

I saw his writing on the street

before I ever met him,
and I loved them instantly.

One didn't know who SAMO was,
but his work

was extraordinarily memorable
because frankly,

there was a lot of graffiti
around at that time.

Freddy: I remembered...

theVillage Voicepiece on SAMO,
which is like incredible,

like you know,
for anybody that did anything

connected to graffiti
to get any kind of relatively positive

exposure was a revelation.

Diaz: After the Voice article,
Jean did actually jump on that.

Decided he wanted to be
the face for SAMO.

I was kind of, um, bitter about it.

Scharf: All of a sudden
Al was gone

and then I found out
they had a falling out...

Jean's not letting Al write
SAMO anymore

and I never really understood,
um, what that was all about,

but pretty much didn't
see Al again after that.

Diaz: He kept it going
in a different kind of thing,

he started writing, like,
his musings

and these little poems.

Scharf: His work was just
...it was odd,

it was very conceptual,
it was very curious,

it was... it was almost alien.

You saw it once and you remembered it.

Monforton: I mean it wasn't,
like, your name

or some kind of beautifully
crafted piece,

it was, uh, something to consider.

You know you took a minute,
you read it...

and you contemplated that.

Jarmusch: "The whole livery
line bow like this,

with the big money all
crushed into these feet."

Fitzgibbon: You know, plush,
safe, I think, you go like...

what the hell is that?

Several of the SAMO quotes

would be attacking kind of
people trying to play

the art game with their parents’ money,

exposing people trying to be bohemian

on their parents’ dime,

whereas we were really scuffling
and trying to make ends meet.

I had these shows, you know,
and film shows

and art exhibitions at
5 Bleeker Store

and suddenly there would
be all these, like,

SAMO tags outside. I was like,
"Who's doing that?"

Cortez: Not on trains,
not in the subways,

not around the town, they were just

specifically close to Soho
which was an art neighbourhood.

He just wanted to get attention
from the art world

more than the general people
on the street.

His approach to the art world,
at first was,

he'd be this gadfly.
He was adding his asterisk,

you know, he was adding
his unanswerable... answer,

you know, um,

and that had to do with his ambition

but also his, kind of,
impishness, you know,

um, and also his sense of
being an outsider too.

Yes, you saw SAMO,
and it was really different

but you were noticing a lot of stuff

so it was part of a conversation happening.

Graffiti had had such a profound impact

on the consciousness of New York,
so to be an artist

in New York then, you couldn’t help

but be, uh, informed by it.

Scharf: The graffiti kids,
they had a huge impact,

it was a whole worldview,

uh, that I found incredibly inspiring,

I still do.

Freddy: Nothing about
graffiti was celebrated.

It was the scourge of the
city at that time, it was hated.

I mean it was a blight to a great extend

but there was a lot of creative energy

within that blight,
which people didn’t take the time

to look at and examine.

Wait a minute,
there's something developing here,

that’s a real creative expressive form.

Freddy: And Lee is just
the Leonardo da Vinci

of subway spray-painting.

Well over 100 whole cars.

To paint one of those cars
you have to imagine, you know,

you have an eight,
ten hour window of time

to be able to go to a place,
you know,

be very vulnerable for that.

But the results the next day was fantastic.

You know, when that train arrived,

you felt like you arrived with it.

When I met Fab 5 Freddy,
he caught up to me in my school,

basically asked the teacher to ask me
to step out of the room.

I thought he was a cop,

I thought he was an
undercover police officer coming

to apprehend me, you know,
he was the first one that

I experienced as a person
that came on as a fan.

Fred was very well-versed
about the art world

and art movements
and he even actually tried

to bring the group into conversations

having to do with reflecting on the arts,

on the outside art world.

I had known about the
beginnings of rap music

and DJ culture before any of this was known

as hip-hop, and I thought,

this is a part of a whole cultural picture.

The music, this kind of
painting that we're doing

and breakdancing, which
would typically go along

with the rap music, I felt
was one important thing

that if we could showcase together

and put a frame around it,
it would make everything else

we're doing, look good.

It didn’t take long for
me to realize, yeah he’s...

he’s trying to make comparisons, you know,

like the Italian futurists
were moved by World War I.

You know the horrors of that and the
Industrial Revolution.

I mean, you know, the city
was burning down, literally.

I remember going to the Bronx
and seeing the hues of orange

in the sky and the murder rate
was at the highest point ever.

And then to go back into the sanctuary

and the quietness of the subway yards

while hearing the gunshots right outside
the subway yards,

somebody's life is ending
right now and I'm painting.

It was a weird feeling.

There was a sense of urgency.

We were painting in rapid session

because we didn't want to get killed

and people thought the
crime wave was conducive

with what was going on on the trains,

the subway painting.

You know, these young people
are opening the floodgates

to a wave of crime,
couldn't be... more wrong.

There were no other options

on the plate and if you was

a very creative person and you was immersed

in this...
this city that was falling apart, you know,

it was a miracle that we were...
we took that vehicle

and we made it into a
conceptual work of art.

I knew that I was working with...
with other artists

and I was creating art and, uh,

that’s what kept my... my candle lit.

You know, it was a
movement for the times...

but I knew that Jean...
was not one of the writers.

He was never really a graffiti artist,
you know,

I mean, he was not part of the culture,
you know.

I mean, there was a way we dressed

or how we spoke, he wasn’t part of that.

Well graffiti, I mean,
anyone that's scribbling something

on the wall, it becomes graffiti,

you know, being black, and writing words,

he's tagged as a graffiti artist,

but that was his canvas, you know,
he didn't really have

a place to live,
so if he wanted to create something

he'd put it outside on the wall, right?

Fitzgibbon: I was coming down Ludlow

and I ran into him and he goes, "Oh,

Coleen, do you have a place to stay?"

and I was like,
"Ah, not really but if you want to crash

on our floor, I've got...
you know my boyfriend is there,"

and he was like,
"Oh, you have boyfriend?"

I was like, "Yeah." He goes, "Oh..."

"No thanks," you know.

Monforton: He needed a place to stay

and he was cute, right?
And he was also, um,

so charismatic and interesting,
that he was magnetic.

It was hard to... not want to be around.

I mean I have vivid memories
of us sitting on my stoop.

We would often be
sitting there smoking joints,

it was right next door to a...
a flat tires fix joint,

a lot of the old signage which was largely,

I think Puerto Ricans and
Dominican establishments

in the neighbourhood,
there was a lot going on there

in the Puerto Rican culture.

Jorge Brandon, you know,
the Teatro Ambulante,

spewed poetry like on a
soap box right on the street.

I mean, he would do funny things,

like he would get up and take off,

like he went to the Mudd Club

and danced to like Sex Machine
and then came back.

He was famous for going into the bathroom,

the girls bathroom at
Club 57 and creating havoc.

Everybody was crazy about him,

you know, I mean it wasn't just me...

everyone.

But I was well aware I
was never the only one.

♪ I'm a young barracuda
Swimming in the deep blue sea ♪

Adler: When I met him,

I went to a club and we partied all night.

- Dancing and stuff...
- And dancing, you know,

- which is what we did.
- Yeah.

♪ ...Baby and I’m starved
For some of your love ♪

After leaving,
and I was joking around

and I said, "Oh, here's our ride,"

and I pretend to open this car door,

real fancy car door, and the door opens,

so I was like, "Oh my gosh,"
and I closed it right away.

And then these two guys,
Italian guys come out at us

and go, "What were you
doing in our friend's car?"

And we’re like,
"Nothing. Nothing,"

and this guy throws me to the ground.

One of the guys, like,
did like that with a knife,

like at my stomach, like swung,
and I like, you know,

moved back like that.

I remember Jean coming out

and coming upon this scene

and, sort of, going after these guys

and sticking up for
us, and then we ran off.

Rosser: Yeah.

People always didn't have a place to stay.

"So, where you staying tonight?"
"Well, I don't know,"

so, "Well, you can stay here."

I went to bed, so I guess he found a place

to sleep and he slept there and
so then he started to stay

from time to time.
Alexis was living with me,

and I had a small room in the front,

and she was living with
me in that small room,

so Jean would crash in the living room.

You know people would come by, you know,

it was like this fluid thing,
my friend Jennifer and stuff.

If I had been out all
night I'd ring her bell

maybe four or five o’clock in the morning,

pray to God she'd let me in,
and she usually did,

and I would get the couch.

Jean was having issues at home,

Jennifer was having issues at home,

you know, but they could come to my house
and we could just

listen to music and hang out,

and no one would be judging them.

Jazz: Jean-Michel took
Felice's couch from me,

I felt like that couch was mine

and it led to some rivalry between us.

We would just argue and chase each other

around her apartment,
she'd have to separate us.

I think we were actually
reliving our own experience

with siblings at home...

something that was very,
very warm and familiar

about him to me,
like a brother or a cousin

and that's how we worked that out.
We loved each other,

I mean we shared everything,
clothes, food, money.

We were family.

Rosser: You know Jean loved, like,
industrial music,

like, um, you know, Test Dept,

and Einstürzende Neubauten and whatever.

Boom boom, boom boom.

And you know everyone
used to carry boomboxes, right,

so, everything else was carrying

The Message or Grandmaster Flash

and Jean was carrying,
like, industrial noise.

So he used to come into my building

at three o'clock in the
morning to stay there,

blaring this industrial beat box
and my super, Mr. Galzavez,

he'd come out and say,
"You motherfucker,

turn that shit off, it's three o'clock

in the morning. Fuck you,"

and Jean used to say, "Fuck you!"

So, you know, I started to get
a little more uptight, you know,

and, uh, with the late-night scenes

and the late-night arguments
and it started to become me

and them, you know like me in the back room

and then...

Alexis and Jean, you know,
in the front room,

and like Jennifer trying to
find a place to be,

so I told Alexis you have to go.

Adler: Felice and I had that argument,

we moved out of the house and... her house

and we didn’t speak

which was huge for us
’cause we always speak.

Rosser: I'd still see Jean everywhere,

I'd still see Alexis everywhere.

We all were going to see the same bands,
you know,

and if there’s only like,
40 people in the audience,

you know, and you're like hating someone

who's there, I mean that's no fun, is it?

So, you know, we just...

we just became friends again.

And so I found this gold coat,
and I just thought

it was the coolest thing,
and I knew she would love it

because anyone would love it.
It's a great coat, you know.

You know, I was wearing this gold lamé coat

down the street,
feeling really good,

brought it home.

The next morning I wake up
and it's painted...

and it's painted really beautifully.

Rosser: Jean had painted all over it.

I was like, "Oh, that's cool,"
you know, so it was great,

it was like we all three
became friends again.

Adler: I found this place on 12th Street...

and it was his first stable home,

the first place he had a key to.

Jean was about 18 and I was about 22.

I never felt that he was my boyfriend

but we did have sex,
we enjoyed each other’s company

on a lot of fronts.

He was discovering his own art form,

having this apartment allowed
him some possibility

of working on that, developing it.

The walls and floor were his canvas.

In the living room there was this turntable

and his art.

Yeah, I remember him fiddling.

Obviously, I didn't...

you know, it wasn't him
with a brush and easel,

it was just him crazy gluing
something onto something else.

Jean would be making art
the way we'd be smoking pot,

you know we're having conversation,

it was just like...

it was just part of the stream
of things that were going on

in that house.

Adler: Anything could be brought up

from the street and
take on a life of its own

at the hands of Jean.

They all did that.

You know, I mean, you know,
Jean-Michel did that,

Keith was doing that,
we were all hauling stuff out

from the trash that was interesting

and modifying it, and doing things to it,

and going into abandon lots
and creating little...

ephemeral, kind of installations.

And I guess he was
doing all this writing too.

Sante: Jean's writing and my
writing at that time

had an awful lot of overlap,

you know, probably
...I don’t know, we were reading

William Burroughs and
crime novels, you know.

The important thing
about Jean is he’s not just

a great visual artist, he's a great writer,

and the words are as
important as the visuals

and this was a period when Jean was,

uh, exploring the words, the writing.

Sante: "Set, desk, Andy talking into
red tape recorder on desk.

Institutional drab office with some objects

that indicate home.

I was having cold sweat nightmares

about being chased,
so I became an alcoholic

and now I'm an engineer.

I retired at an early age
to avoid embarrassment.

Two stops later, I'm plagued by
not having any money

to go into diners and spread a rap

as thin as margarine.
I become good at petty crime.

Now in the zenith of my life with
my television best friends

and six months down on my instalments.

I think back to those times
and a smile comes to my face.

I’m scared to look at my x-rays.

Priest: You should never have lived.

Andy: Yeah, maybe
not. It’s really hot in here.

You think I can get a ginger ale?

Priest: You really
gonna push it aren't you?

Like some fat executive
with a big expense account,

eating Rolaids like candy.

Andy:

I'm running out of Brillo

and I don't have any cucumbers left.

Priest: All you can
think about is yourself.

Andy: This is my last day alive."

Fade to black.

Sante: This is poetry, you know,

it's kind of got a narrative form,

it resembles crime novels and crime movies,

but he's using it like poetry,
he's chopping it up

like Burroughs, you know.

Cortez: You know, they call
graffiti artists, writers...

but are they poets?

Yes and no. Are they writers?
Yes and no.

It's a different type of writing,

it's more like what we say
in the news media

as sound bites,
because originally,

they were made for places
where trains would go by,

you'd have to see them in a flash,

read them really quickly...

so they had to have a quick eidetic bite.

Quiñones: I was taught by virtue
of what the group

and what the movement was that
it had to be just for

the enclosed group,
but I had exhausted everything

that you could do in the underground,

and I thought it was a time
to turn the chapter.

It was the first of its kind,

it was the first full handball court mural,

created by someone from the subways.

I did it on my own,

uh, under the cover of darkness

again in an eight-ten hour window.

The neighbourhood was
completely blown away

and the school was totally blown away.

All the students were at those windows

for two to three weeks.

It was such a monumental feat
that even other artists

were in awe that it was done.

They felt the vulnerable state that I felt.

How was he able to apply this imagery

with this little bit of time
on a non-moving object

in front of everyone’s eyes
and I think people needed to go

and do these visitation rights
and even Keith was like,

"Wow, how'd you do it?"

I was like, "You just get a ladder."

And that was the point of time
where I had arrived

as an artist.

I felt something different
from the subways.

The subways are sort of like very
intrusive you know,

they came to the audience,
but here we are at a wall

where people came to the wall,

and they had to, um,
now question themselves

why they were at that wall
and what was it that kept them

at that wall, and pretty much
instigated thoughts

about art and placement and
where should art be.

Uh, this is now the running legs
that this movement deserves.

This is my proclamation that
this is an art.

This is an art form

and if you’re gonna point
fingers at me,

I’ll stay around long enough

to keep the light on for you
when you do come to your senses.

Because the art world had no sense

of what was going on.

It wasn’t common to bring out
your thoughts about it

because it was such a young movement

and it was so radical and so fleeting.

McCormick: Soho, a lot of those galleries,

kind of, had their stable of artists.

They weren't actively looking
for not just... not new artists,

but for a whole different project.

Sante: You know Leo Castelli,
Ileana Sonnabend,

you'd pass these places and occasionally,
you know,

you might still be interested
in some of those old artists,

you know.

Might still want to go see
a Rosenquist

or a Rauschenberg show,
so you'd go in,

but the galleries just seemed like...

they were like banks or something.

We'd followed this modernist thing,

and Soho kind of left us
with minimalism at that point.

Sante: People were making art
with index cards

and Polaroid photographs
and writing on walls and...

and it did get to be a little academic.

McCormick: It wasn’t just graffiti

that was being ignored by the art world,

but young artists in general.

In many ways, uh, the eruption
of graffiti inspired

a lot of younger artists to take control

over that situation on their own terms,

and form their own groups, their own gangs,
like COLAB,

which was more, uh,
inspired by the ’70s DIY of punk rock.

One, two, three, four!

Scharf: We were part of the street,

the street was, what was happening,

so, don’t wait around for some gallery

to show interest in you, just do it.

Fitzgibbon: COLAB was this group of
40 to 60 downtown artists

all around the same age,

and everybody wanted to do something

as a group, have shows, have magazines,

have live cable television shows.

People were like really sort of angry

at the galleries and
the establishment of the art

so because of that we sort of went,

okay well, we'll do this collective

and we'll show ourselves and we'll
show other people

that don’t get shown.

We didn’t have to wait to be
appointed or anointed

to be in the art world,
we could just be the art world.

The artists wanted to make something that

was a statement politically
about the time of being,

sort of, everyone
who was disenfranchised.

Soho could have the old left

and you could have
Lucy Lippard and Hans Haacke,

and people like that getting together

and talking about their
field trips to Nicaragua

and the march of, kind of, uh,
Imperial America.

The rest of us were kind of going

but I just stepped over a
body to get here,

where is the actual address

about what's going on in New York.

They kind of just went
forward with their ideologies

or projects and their aesthetics,

but they couldn’t quite fathom
the real slippage, uh,

in terms of cultural traction
that was happening.

Sante: The immediacy of the art
that was going on downtown,

the... you know,
the COLAB stuff, all their theme shows,

that was alive.

Fitzgibbon: Diego said I want to do
this Batman show,

he had a lot of people come
and bring Batman stuff.

There was this little kid
and he had all these like

really tiny like little drawings
and they were really great,

very like... stick figures and I think

that's when Jean-Michel really
started coming in more

to look at the art.

He would just come in
and look at the artwork

and then asked me questions about,
"Who did this,

who did that?"

You could tell he was like,
"This is good, this is not."

You know, like, really
well informed, right?

Knew his history, knew
his political history...

and it's interesting that he
didn’t bring in any drawings

for it, because it was...
the shows were open, right,

he could’ve brought stuff
in to any of those shows.

I think also Jean-Michel, saw like yes,

it's very political,
but also these people are not

making any money,
and they're not getting anywhere,

right?

♪ ...Thumping into my
gut Soldier soldier... ♪

McCormick: One of
the first really powerful,

important gestures
COLAB created was in 1979.

They took over a building on the south side

of Delancey Street, with the idea that...

why are we dealing with homelessness,

why are we dealing with
people not having anything

proper to live and survive in,
when we have all these buildings

that are empty?

And the show opened basically,
New Year’s Eve...

and come New Year’s Day 1980,
the police shut down the show.

There were figures like
Joseph Boyce, going,

"No, you cannot do this,
you can't shut artists

out of the ability
to show their work.

You can't shut down these
voices of dissent and activism."

It became a big news story
and in many ways

a lot of other artists who
weren't as familiar

with what COLAB was trying to do
became attracted to them,

to that kind of energy to what
they could manifest.

It’s gradually gotten bigger,

but you know, not at a huge scale,

you know the crossover finally
got started for COLAB.

Certainly it was not lost
on Jean-Michel.

We had, uh, bumped into each other

on the street one day and we
just ended up hanging out

for the rest of the day,
and dropping some acid

and staying up all night on the street.

At one point, he did turn to me
and say that

he knew that he was
gonna be very famous.

"I'm gonna be...
I'm gonna be a superstar.

I'm gonna be famous.
I'm gonna be a famous artist,"

and we used to be like,
"Okay Jean, you know, cool,"

you know.

Sante: Being ambitious
in terms of your art

was what we all had in common.

It was sort of about being a rock star

even if you didn't play an instrument.

Basquiat is like, pretty ambitious,
right,

I mean, he always would go
where somebody

was doing something and want to,
sort of be part of it,

without saying he wanted to be part of it.

It is theCanal Zone and it’s
happening here and now.

If you're lost, you can find yourself

right here, right now in theCanal Zone.

One day, looking in theVillage Voice,

I noticed this little blurb
that was about Fabulous 5.

They would come to your space

and do giant graffiti burners for a fee.

Well, I decided, let me call this guy up,

I'd never met Fab 5 Freddy before,

I called him and we talk about doing events

and projects and what came up
was this idea of doing a party

in which we would show
the work of the Fab 5,

the graffiti artists, where
what would later be called

hip-hop, street, you
know, graffiti art world,

would meet the downtown,
fine art world of New York.

There was one person that came uninvited

was Jean-Michel Basquiat.

I was well aware of the punk rock scene

at the time and so people
that were close to punk

and also new wave were
doing interesting things

to themselves visually like with the hair,

and so when I saw Jean-Michel
it was clear, like,

he was connected to that sensibility.

That's how I remember,
uh, meeting him

at thisCanal Zone,
uh, party on Canal Street.

Holman: He shows up,
sees these giant pieces

by the Fabulous 5 and says,
"I want to do a piece too,"

and all of a sudden, we're like,
"Woah, this is SAMO."

Everyone knew SAMO's pieces,
these genius pieces of poetry,

I mean all these brilliant SAMO tags

and poems.

But nobody knew who it was,
it was a mystery.

He understands already
at this point that

he wants to be a famous artist,

he already knows how to
be a famous artist,

he showed up at that party
as part of his to do list

to become a famous artist.

He knew to show up at this party.

And then when he saw the video cameras,

he knew he had to be on video,
and this is a time

when we really weren't doing
a lot of video interviewing.

SAMO, S-A-M-O, come on,
you've seen it on the walls,

especially down in the village.

This gentleman right here is SAMO.

Soon after the interview, you know,
I sought Jean out,

because I didn't know who he was,
I'd never met him,

never really even said hello to him
before the interview.

He goes, "Do you want to start a band?"

And I'm like, "Yeah!"
And that's how Gray started.

So the Canal Zone party was
super important at the time.

It was the first time that
SAMO was revealed,

Jean-Michel and I started our band Gray,

it was also the first time hip-hop
was experienced

by the downtown art scene.

You know, so it was people like myself
and Fab 5 Freddy

bringing these artists downtown
and then rubbing shoulders

with the downtown art scene artists

like Jean-Michel Basquiat
and everybody else.

Um, uh, really put...
really helped put hip-hop on the map.

♪ Party people, party people ♪

♪ Can y’all get funky? Just hit me ♪

♪ Just taste the funk and hit me ♪

♪ Just get on down and hit me ♪

♪ Bambaataa’s gettin’
So funky, now, hit me ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

As the idea of hip-hop now
is becoming a thing

amongst the downtown world,
these people

are all partying together.

I had met all the key players
in the rap music scene

from the Bronx, Bambaataa, Flash,
Grand Wizard Theodore,

Busy Bee and all these guys.

When I curated the exhibit at
the Mudd Club, "Beyond Words"

I got a bunch of them to come and perform.

This was like a graffiti based,
rooted and inspired exhibit that

I curated in the third floor of
the Mudd Club.

And people came out the woodwork
and a lot of people were like,

"Oh my God, I love this new energy,

all this new music."

Afrika Bambaataa was excited to come
and play for a different

kind of audience, young, white,
new-wave, punk rock kids.

Those experiences, Bam says, inspired him

to make "Planet Rock"
which is a record that

changed the whole face of dance music.

I was turning Jean on to the, like,
early hip-hop party tapes,

this is before rap records
really are coming out.

The Cold Crush Brothers,
Grandmaster Flash and the guys,

you know, this is from
street parties in the Bronx.

We were becoming closer friends and we,
you know,

really connected with music,
I mean, I'm telling him,

like, hey man, you know this
guy Max Roach

who’s this noted drummer
from the bebop scene

is my godfather.

I grew up listening to this music
all the time,

in fact, I had just brought
one of my first jazz records,

"Jazz at Massey Hall"
and I'm turning Jean on,

and we're playing this
music really loud and dancing

and laughing and making art.

Charlie Parker and Dizzy
had been having a little beef

when they played this particular show,

and so Charlie Parker
introduces the song,

he goes, "I'd like to
play a tune written

by my worthy constituent
Mr. Dizzy Gillespie,

I sincerely hope you do enjoy,
Salt Peanuts."

When each one of these guys,
Charlie Parker

and Dizzy Gillespie takes their solo,

they're playing at blistering speed

each trying to outdo each other.

So it was like

they were having a battle

with their instruments,
which I found, like fascinating,

and it was similar to what early rappers

and early DJs, they would battle as well,

like who's the best, like, in their craft,

and I remember explaining that to Jean,

Jean was really excited
about those stories,

he was like,
"Wow man, tell me more, tell me more."

It must have been not more than
a few weeks later,

I went by to visit Jean
and he was really absorbing

all of this bebop music.

Obviously Jean was very aware that artists

were gonna be in bands and musicians
wanted to make art

and, you know,
I mean Jim was in The Del-Byzanteens,

you know, and James Nares was...
was in The Contortions.

Nares: The way we made music was the same

as the way we made films,
which was just, you know,

pick up the camera and do it,
pick up the guitar and do it.

A lot of people were looking
for a way out and noise...

and oblivion and drugs... were...

completely in line
with everything else we were doing.

O'Brien: I think when I first heard Gray

they were still called Test Pattern.

It had this sort of quiet
at the center of it...

in the same way that,
like Miles Davis'

like earliest electric stuff did.

It just seemed really futuristic...

and homemade at the same time.

It just had a free jazz feel.

Holman: Jean was clearly
the leader of the band,

and again keep in mind,
I'm like five years older

than he is, right.
I mean I’m supposed to be

the wiser one.
I mean no, that's not the case.

It was certainly democratic in that,
you know,

the way we wrote music,
and in many other things.

I actually was in charge
of our stage set and design.

I saw them play a bunch of places,

like one university

and Mudd Club was kind of the
most memorable

’cause they actually built like a crazy,
sort of,

Russian constructivist set.

Freddy: I remember they built this
like metal frame on stage

and Jean I think was in a box
and he came up

out of this box and...

Holman: I had this idea to...

create this ignorant geodesic dome,

made out of scaffolding and
lumber and garbage,

in which I put all my drums and me.

And all you could see from the
audience was my head.

Above me, Wayne Clifford
and Vince Gallo,

strapped in at 45 degree angles
inside this jungle gym.

And then Nick Taylor is
so high up in the set design,

all you could see was him
from the knees down.

Jean shows up at sound check
and the thing's built.

He turns around and walks right out.

Five minutes later, Jean returns
with this shipping crate

with Chinese characters written on it,
walks up to the stage,

tosses this wooden cube onto the stage,

Jean scrunches his body up
and squeezes his body

into this cube, he pulls his
little wasp synthesizer

in with him, and his clarinet and
looks out at me and smiles.

And I realized that in five minutes,

without knowing what we were doing,

he goes out into the streets,
into the alleys

around the Mudd Club and finds
this wooden crate...

that not only works perfectly
with the design...

but has made him the
centre of attention.

And I was like,
"You motherfucker."

Freddy: I remember David Byrne
being there,

and Chris and Debbie Harry
from Blondie,

it was like people came out the
woodwork to see them play,

it was really exciting.

The Mudd Club was incredible.

And I think that’s where the art world

got its running legs, you know,
there was a whole new attitude

and atmosphere being ushered
into the art world

via through those clubs.

McCormick: If we think 1979, 1980,
you have two clubs

in particular that aren't just places

where artists go, they're kind of
clubhouses.

And they come up with a, kind of,
groupthink,

in their own way.

One would be Club 57

and the other would be
the Mudd Club.

McCormick: They're quite similar,

and quite different. Club 57 was,
okay we're gonna create

a miniature golf course...

in the bar and then we're gonna
give it a reggae theme

and it will be the
putt-putt golf course.

Scharf: It was an
incredibly exciting space,

every single night was a
completely different theme.

♪ Can I have a taste of your ice cream? ♪

The Club 57 regulars,
I'd say we were a lot more obnoxious.

We'd be on psychedelics,
bouncing around the walls,

screaming.

Even though Jean would hang out there,

I think he had a little like,
"You guys are

a little too silly for me."

He didn't really take part
in our shenanigans.

♪ Can I lick the crumbs from your table ♪

♪ No ♪

But eventually, most of the Club 57 kids

were hired to work at...

at the Mudd Club.

♪ No, mind your own business ♪

The Mudd Club was cool, it was way hipper,

a lot of great bands played there.

Quiñones: The B-52s, Talking Heads,

and James White and the Blacks,
and all those cats playing,

you know, it’s like,
"Oh, whoa, what a smorgasbord

of all these different temperatures."

McCormick: The most,
kind of, interesting people

of that generation,

kind of acting the
coolest that they could.

You could say the difference was,

everyone at Club 57
was taking mushrooms

and everyone at Mudd Club
was taking heroin.

Pot, coke...

Quaaludes. You couldn’t go to
the after after after hours

clubs unless you had had some
coke somewhere along the line,

I mean...

it was just... it was...

everywhere.

Fitzgibbon: The sort of downsides was...

of running a club is that the Mafia

started moving in.

There was a period where
there's lots of free coke

and then suddenly it all disappeared

and then it was replaced
by this other white substance,

which they offered for free for,
like, maybe a month,

a couple months.

If downtown had been gutted
of its economic base

there were hardly any businesses left.

There was one

incredibly lucrative... -

...uh, thriving business which
was cocaine and heroin.

With cocaine,
you had a fair amount of denial,

people thinking that it just
made them more successful,

and heroin with a whole...
well, maybe self-denial,

but a whole lot of, uh,
mythologies attached to it.

Jazz: Heroin, heroin, heroin, heroin.

William Burroughs Naked Lunch.

It was definitely considered
a rite of passage

for a lot of the young guys who
thought it would give them

some type of a...

pathway into a deeper creativity

and there were so many people
that people admired

who had done heroin that,
it was part of the culture.

McCormick: And it wasn’t just the artists

who were doing drugs.

In our neighbourhood if you like,
kind of, stayed up all night

and you were coming home
in the early hours

in the morning you would see already

the big heroin spots, lines of town cars

because it was all the Wall Street people

getting their heroin before
they went to work.

Jazz: Isolation with a vengeance,

it's like the valley of death.

The paraphernalia associated with it,

it was so medical.

It should’ve been clinically

administered in a hospital setting,

there was no joy to it.

Quiñones: You know I'm still in wonder
of why people escape

while they're escaping.

I was very happy to be painting,
’cause I felt like

I was doing something really fantastic.

Why would I want to be in another headspace

to not experience this in its rawness?

It just was very foreign to me,
and I saw a lot of lives

being taken right before my eyes.

You know some of these venues
were celebrated

because of the drugs that they
had inside of them,

and people still remember them
to this day,

but when you think about it,
they were actually little igloos

where people went
and destroyed their lives.

Field: He was intelligent...

you know he came to
conclusions based on...

his philosophies,
most people don’t have any philosophies,

they're just walking around.

And you know he was thinking
up all these angles...

correctly.

He was giving himself
these different brands,

"I’m no longer SAMO, SAMO is dead."

And then, you know,
when he did the clothes

he called it Man Made.

He was clever.

As he might have said,
"I can paint clothes for you,

I could paint on clothes,"
and I might have said,

"All right, paint on clothes,
that sounds like an idea."

Scharf: When Jean had his
painted sweatshirts

in the windows of Pat Fields store

on 8th Street and I
remember looking at them

going, "Who's gonna buy these?"
’Cause they just looked so...

fucked up.

The aesthetic was so... rough.

I don't know if they sold at the time,

but I do remember the impression

that I had from looking at them.

Field: At that point I had ordered

these paper jumpsuits.

I said, "You could paint on these,

I have... I can get a
bunch of these for you."

♪ ...Baby, jukebox baby... ♪

I personally found it inspiring...

entertaining, interesting...

and I responded to it because
it wasn't, like,

mass-produced stuff.

McCormick: Beyond the gallery system,

artists were looking at other ways of,
kind of,

inserting their art into
public consciousness.

The shop windows had been this,
kind of, other voice

going on in our culture, especially
with Bonwit Teller,

where you have Salvador Dali
working there

as far back as the ’30s,
and certainly

with the early Johns and
Rauschenberg through Warhol.

I think what Basquiat understood
was the nature of public space.

He was really interested in how
he could get his art out

into this public place in a way that,
uh,

could have durability and autonomy.

There was another, uh,
wonderful artist working

at the same time in the
East Village,

Greer Lankton, and she was doing all
the windows for Einsteins.

Field: It might have been his suggestion

to have a show in my store,

but whatever it was, it was a good idea

and it happened.

Before he had any gallery or
anything like that,

and he came in with about seven pieces,

there was a men's suit jacket,
then there was a typewriter,

and there was, I don't know,
some other electrical,

electronic thing.
And I said to him,

"Okay, if people want to buy them,

how much do you want for them?"

And he was like,
"Well, this one 10,000

and that one 20,000,"
and I was like, "Jean-Michel..."

"I don't think...
I think that's a little bit high."

But he said, "No," and I said,
"Fine, you want the 10,000,

I'll say 10,000, it's your deal."

But that was Jean-Michel.

We took the show down,
I had somebody working for me

at the time, and he called Jean-Michel

and he said,
"I'm getting a new apartment

and if I could have them in my house,

all my friends can come and see them,"

and so on and so forth,
and after two months

or three months, whatever,
he didn't pay his rent.

They padlocked his apartment
and they threw all the contents

in the dumpster.

I was like...

"Oh, my God."

Monforton: He was at that
time into Man Made,

’cause he had a coat on that was
sort of abstract painted

and it had Man Made with a copyright.

He took me one time to Soho
because he had postcards

he wanted to sell.

Actually me, Keith and Jean were
making these colour Xerox,

um, collages, postcards.

There was that store,
Rocks In Your Head, they had

my colour Xerox postcards,
they had Jean-Michel's.

Holman: He's really playing
a lot with collage and Xeroxing

and that collage work would oftentimes

necessitate him going to copy shops

and that almighty colour copier.

It was a big part of his visual voice.

Sante: Xerox machines had been around

in general circulation since
the late ’60s,

but they were really terrible
until around the mid-70s.

Suddenly they start being able
to reproduce on plain paper

with a fair amount of detail.

Suddenly xerography made

the whole band flyer revolution possible,

and associated forms of art,
and zines, you know,

zines started happening
around the same time.

You know a lot of people were using
collage work downtown

in the... in the punk days,
so he was inspired by that.

Nares: These experiments
with the photocopier,

which became a large part
of the paintings,

when he slaps the photocopied
images all over,

glue them on.

One time he came in and he said,
"Oh, Andy Warhol

bought one of my postcards,"
and we were like, "Wow, man,

that's great."
We were so happy for him.

Scharf: I was like,
"What? You actually talked to him,

and you actually sold something to him?"

It was like a very pivotal point,

like you made that connection to,
like, our hero.

Everyone was in some way...

brought to the city by...

the kind of visage of their heroes.

You couldn’t deny that we'd
all heard about The Factory

and we'd all read Andy’s books
and things like that.

This is fundamental to that generation

because Warhol, by that time,
by the art world standards,

he was so passé and so tacky,
he was considered pretty low

at that point in his career.

Kenny Scharf and Keith Herring
and Jean-Michel Basquiat

and... and a whole generation of people,

Andy was still their hero.

I found Andy Warhol to be
like a really exciting artist

because he worked in these
different mediums.

Andy was surrounded by music
and he was working in film

and doing all these different things that

I saw that they are interrelated.

He seemed to be having really
a lot of fun and a good time

while making art.

Jean-Michel would agree because
he was a favourite

of ours, we'd both talk about all his...

the things that he was doing.

He represented... uh,

what an artist could be.

The creative process is transferable.

It doesn't need to be...

I’m a visual artist...

she's a writer, he's a musician...

they make films.

The creative process,
it can cover the whole shebang of it.

The thing that Jean and I
were both in agreement on,

is, like the Malcolm X quote,
"By any means necessary,"

Jean had a copy of that poster
I remember at his house

and I... and I went out and bought one too.

You know Jean was like,
"Yo, whether it's music,

whether it's acting, film,
painting, it's gonna happen,

we're gonna do whatever,"

and I was like, "Yes, absolutely."

That was I think... part of that was

the Warhol influence, that you could work

in these different mediums
and it was all good.

Hi, and welcome to TVParty,
the TV show

that's a cocktail party but which could be

a political party.

Thank you very much.

Oh!

There he is, standing in the back,

Jean de New Orleans.

Freddy: What had been happening was,
um, through both of our

relationship with Glenn O'Brien,

Glenn was also one the
editors of High Times Magazine

and Glenn was like, "Hey man,
I'm gonna write a story

about what you guys are doing,"

and that story focused on myself,

Lee Quiñones and Jean-Michel.

The issue had just come out
and Jean said, "Yeah man, um,

come by my house tomorrow."

This was Alexis' apartment
that Jean was crashing at.

It was one of those classic
New York things

where you have to yell up
’cause there’s no doorbell

working on the building.

"Yo, Jean, Jean-Michel, SAMO,"
and Jean woke up.

He put the key in a sock, and balled it up

and threw it out.

He had a few sketchbooks,
scribble scrabble,

paint splattered everywhere,
and here's this magazine

and Jean had a copy and there's photos

of me and Lee, and talking about
what we were doing

and the scene that we were kind
of helping create.

I was just really excited and
Jean was like, "Yeah man,

it's a good thing, man, but...
but it's just one article man,

it's just one article."
I remember going like, "Wow!"

Like he was so, like, confident that,
"Yeah, there'll be more."

And I remember the thing
that really struck me was,

on the door of the refrigerator
it said, "grape jelly,"

He's like, "Yeah man, I just did...

I just did that man,
I think it's still wet."

And I was like,
"Grape jelly?"

It looked like somebody had
literally taken grape jelly

and smeared it and like smeared it

with his fingers, it was just so funny.

It was strange to me because
it had nothing to do

with style, he was like the anti-style.

And at that time I would never want my work

to drip and he was
like into letting it drip.

He was into letting art be itself

and that’s why his work was very,
you know, crude

and maybe childlike in some ways because,
you know,

when a child is drawing, there's no...

there's no holdings, you know,
you're not being held back

by anything, you're just going by...

spirit of the moment...

and that in itself made for speed,
rapidness.

We were painting in rapid session

because we didn't want to get caught,

but Jean was doing it because he felt

and probably knew that he only
had a limited amount

of time and in that urgent moment

in his life I don't think he knew

he was gonna die, but I think the passing

of the moment was very frightening
to him.

To not have an idea to get created,

you know life and... and art is
very fleeting

and, uh, he was very much afraid of that

and I think that's what kept his
wheels turning

faster than everybody else.

Holman: He pretty much abandoned that...
that collage style

at least within the context
of the baseball cards,

Pez cards, to go deeper
into a drawing style

in which now he's going back
and incorporating

figurative work in with this text.

Kliment: So he was moving from words
into something

that was pictorial and you really see that

evolution as you look at those things

on pieces of paper, they seem like
they’re writing,

but, uh, slowly but surely,
they're turning into images.

Sur: I think it’s very interesting,

his association between language and,
you know, media

and television and radio and what
you hear and music,

and that was all integrated and collaged

into this visual
representation of something.

Most of his stuff comes from cartoons

and bad movies and a lot of his stuff

is kind of spoofing textbooks.

My chemistry and biology books,
he studied those,

you can definitely see the
chemical compounds,

graphs... and charts.

Cortez: He always was sampling

anything with diagrams or...
or pictures.

He would, uh,
lift and make them his own.

The thing about Jean-Michel
was taking things

from everywhere and if they move you,

they become part of you, and then you can

put them back out. He's like a filter.

It was like living in a gallery
and it was constantly changing,

it was always exciting to wake up
in the morning

and see what had happened.

Jazz: Alexis' refrigerator door
was a Basquiat,

I think her bathroom door
was a Basquiat.

He was definitely developing his
language and his symbols.

It was pretty amazing to see
him becoming the artist

that he... he did become.

Diego showed me some of his drawings,

by ’79, like towards the
Times Square Show.

Freddy: Diego Cortez was like a curator

who had this new wave connection.

He got it, Diego, so he worked with Jean,
I know.

Cortez: Well, I met him, maybe in
1979 or something.

He told me about doing graffiti
on the streets and uh,

I never saw the SAMO graffiti

for months and months and months.

Finally after knowing him just
socially at the Mudd Club,

I ran into one of those
graffiti works,

then I made a little meeting with him,

said I wanted to work with him.

I mean the first time I saw his graffiti,

I said to him, you know, literally...

I mean, it's like a scene out
of a bad movie,

I said, "You know,

you're going to be as big as Andy Warhol."

Monforton: I think he probably
spotted him

early on as very important
and someone to promote

and watch.

I think that he probably
made the connection

between Jean and Henry.

Diego was a pivotal character
in all of this, absolutely.

Diego, you know, it was him that took me

to the Times Square Show, uh,
because he knew the people

at COLAB that organized the show.

Do you suffer from agoraphobia?

So do I.

To be or not to be,
another night around the palace

of exotic landlordism or going out...

to the Times Square extravaganza,
on 41st Street.

♪ There’s a new sun
Rising up angry in the sky ♪

♪ There’s a new voice
Crying we’re not afraid to die ♪

♪ Let the old world make believe ♪

♪ It’s blind and deaf and dumb ♪

Nineteen eighty,
there was this big exhibit,

it was the front-page
Village Voice cover story,

the first radical art show of the ’80s.

The Times Square Show
was kind of the first survey

of... of the underground.

It actually opened June 1st,
1980 and it went seven days

a week, 24 hours a day, in an
abandoned massage parlor.

Well, they called it a massage
parlor back then,

but essentially that was a whorehouse.

Art everywhere,

Jane Dickson, a number of
other artists were involved.

Fitzgibbon: There must’ve been 75 artists

in the show, including performance artists

and filmmakers.

Jarmusch: Charlie Ahearn,
Freddy Brathwaite and Lee

came up with the idea to make
Charlie Ahearn's film

Wild Style, while they were hanging out

at the Times Square Show.

It starred Lee Quiñones.

Fitzgibbon: Jeffrey Deitch showed up,

Barbara Gladstone showed up,
Brooke Alexander showed up,

they were all gallery dealers.
A lot of people got started

in the Times Square Show that basically,

hadn’t had galleries before.

And that’s where I met Keith...

and Kenny.

About a week after that, that’s when Keith

started his chalk drawings in the subway.

So for Keith, that made a huge impact,

meeting Freddy and Lee.

Quiñones: Jean made a piece,
he had to install something

on the walls.

Scharf: I do remember a painting
that he just whipped out

on a wall somewhere and you know,

like everything he did,
it just had this amazing energy

that would emanate from the lines.

Jarmusch: I remember a write-up

in Art in America about
the Times Square Show

and they mentioned SAMO
and they were really impressed

with this painting he had done on the wall.

He goes yet through another
transformation in which,

now he's using oil stick,
using crayon on, uh,

different forms of art paper,
but he’s maintaining

and holding onto that childlike hand,

which I think personally,
I mean this is just coming from me,

is... is his signature.

Freddy: So after the
Times Square Show had happened,

Diego was determined to do his own show

which would happen a year later,

called, New York New Wave,
which would feature myself, Lee,

and several other people
that had came from

the subway graffiti world,
as well as a lot of photography

and other paintings,
and it was a huge blockbuster

exhibit. The line was massive
to get into this exhibit.

Nares: The first artwork I saw of his

was in the show that
Diego put together at P.S. 1,

when it was...

beginning to become what he did.

There were shows like
little pictures of a car crash.

Sur: Jean-Michel with his work...

had an effect on everybody that saw it,

particularly the artists.

Nares: The writing,
and the visuals,

he had figured out how
to bring it all together.

I mean we'd already...
none of us were surprised,

I mean he was the one person
that all the artists

were talking about as
being really interesting

and really great and doing all this stuff.

O'Brien: That’s where the first,
you know, big Basquiat publicity

came from ’cause his stuff looked so great.

Yeah, that first show was, what...

put him suddenly into...

orbit.

Jarmusch: I remember I saw
Jean at an after-party

and he was sitting at a bar,
I remember him saying,

"What's your next movie,
what's your next movie idea,

what's it gonna be?"
And I was like, "I'm not sure,

I have a few ideas." And he said,

"If you want to hang out
sometime and just talk

about your ideas or tell them to me, man,

I'd love that, you know,
I love just hearing ideas,

you know, I'd love to know
what you're thinking."

Said, "Man, maybe you
can hang out sometime."

And then immediately he was...
shortly thereafter,

swarmed by a bunch of people.

Cortez: From mid 1980
through spring of 1981

or summer of 1981,
his works were mostly small

and then the work started to be larger.

Foye: Henry Geldzahler went down
to a studio that Jean-Michel had

just at the entry of the Brooklyn Bridge,

and he'd made the first painting
that he ever made really,

um, and Henry went to the studio,
he saw it,

he bought it for 500 dollars,
brought it home,

he had it hanging in his apartment

and he was giving me a
lecture that this guy was as good

as early Rauschenberg.

Now, I mean, here’s an artist...
he’s... it’s his first painting,

he’s only made it the day before,

Henry’s already bought it,
he’s got a hanging in his house

next to David Hockney
and Ellsworth Kelly

and Jasper Johns and...
and I didn’t argue with him

because he clearly was.

You just knew it,
I mean Jean just had it.

And then at a certain point,
he just took off

and you knew he was not coming back.

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

♪ Forever ♪

I'm so honoured to have known him at all,
you know.

What an example
of a real artist,

a true investigator,
of visual ideas

and language too,
for sure, and music.

♪ Keep them dreams burnin’ forever ♪

♪ Oh, dream baby dream ♪

The first time I saw his work
in a museum was, um, accidental.

And I'm drifting, daydreaming,
not really caring

about the work around me,
and the next thing you know

there's two Basquiat's
in this small room,

and everything starts
spinning around me

and once I got past that shock of seeing

someone who I considered a dude
from the street,

I realized that I was in the presence

of the most vivid
representation of an era.

I was really proud of how he disrupted

the whole damn thing. It was just radical.

♪ Forever ♪

Rosser: When they talk about
Leonardo da Vinci

and when they talk about
Willem de Kooning,

and when they talk about
Jackson Pollock

and when they talk about Titian,

and talk about whoever,
they will also mention

Jean-Michel Basquiat
and in a world

where black people are not
celebrated or supported,

the art world, right, he did it,
he did it, he blew the roof off

that sucker and you
have to love him,

the power of that,
and the possibilities for you.

I tell my son always,
you know he was like my son,

he's laughing, funny,
joking, you know...

he's not so different than you,
what can you do?

♪ Oh, ya keep that flame burnin’ ♪

♪ Mm-hm ♪

♪ Yeah, you gotta keep that flame burnin’
forever baby ♪

♪ Ohh-ho ♪

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

♪ Yeah come on baby keep
them dreams burnin’ ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

♪ Forever ♪

♪ And ever ♪

♪ Forever ♪

♪ And ever ♪

♪ Oh, dream baby dream ♪

♪ Yeah it’s the dreams
That keep you free baby ♪

♪ Yeah, you gotta make
Them dreams come true ♪

♪ Oh, keep them dreams burnin’ baby ♪

♪ Yea-eah keep them
Dreams burnin’ forever ♪

♪ Oh, dream baby, dream
baby, dream baby, dream baby ♪

♪ Dream baby, dream baby, dream baby-eah ♪

♪ Forever ♪

♪ And ever ♪

♪ Forever ♪

♪ And ever ♪

♪ Oh, dream baby dream ♪

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

♪ Oh, dream baby dream ♪

♪ Oh, dream baby dream ♪

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

♪ Yeah I see that smiling face now baby ♪

♪ Yeah you got the idea now ♪

♪ Yeah it’s the dreams you know ♪

♪ Yeah it makes you free baby ♪

♪ Yeah you gotta make it happen
You know, yeah I know you are ♪

♪ I see that smile ♪

♪ Oh babe ♪

♪ Oh, dream baby dream ♪

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

♪ Oh, dream baby dream ♪