Heat (1972 film)

Heat is a 1972 American comedy drama film written and directed by Paul Morrissey, produced by Andy Warhol, and starring Joe Dallesandro, Sylvia Miles and Andrea Feldman. The film was conceived by Warhol as a parody of the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. It is the final installment of the "Paul Morrissey Trilogy" produced by Warhol, following Flesh (1968) and Trash (1970).

The film depicts the life of a former child actor, who has become a male prostitute. He has an affair with a former starlet who tries to revive his acting career. Since she is a former actress herself, her assistance is useless to him.

Plot
Joey Davis is an unemployed former child star who supports himself as a hustler in Los Angeles. Joey uses sex to get his landlady to reduce his rent, then seduces Sally Todd, a former Hollywood starlet.

Sally tries to help Joey revive his career but her status as a mediocre ex-actress proves to be quite useless. Sally's psychotic daughter, Jessica, further complicates the relationship between Sally and the cynical, emotionally numb Joey.

Cast

 * Joe Dallesandro as Joey Davis
 * Sylvia Miles as Sally Todd
 * Andrea Feldman as Jessica
 * Pat Ast as Lydia, the motel owner
 * Ray Vestal as Ray, the producer
 * Lester Persky as Sidney
 * Eric Emerson as Eric
 * Gary Kaznocha as Gary
 * Harold Stevenson as Harold (credited as Harold Childe)
 * John Hallowell as Gossip columnist
 * Pat Parlemon as Girl by the pool
 * Bonnie Walder as Bonnie

Release
The film was shown at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. The film was also screened at the New York Film Festival on October 5, 1972, before opening the following day at New York's Festival Theatre and then expanding to the Waverly Theatre in Greenwich Village and the Rialto Theatre in Times Square on October 11.

Reception
The film was well received at Cannes and the New York Film Festival screening was standing-room only and was received by a generally enthusiastic crowd however three people walked out, with one lady claiming "It's the most disgusting thing I have ever seen" and referring to the films of the era "Make them, make them, just don't show them to anybody."

At a panel discussion following the New York Film Festival screening, Otto Preminger called it "depressingly entertaining". After previously ignoring most Warhol films, the New York Daily News reviewed the film, with Kathleen Carroll awarding it three stars. The advert for the film was censored in the Daily News with a t-shirt painted on Dallesandro and a bra strap on Miles.

Andrea Feldman, who had a much larger role than in previous Warhol films, died shortly before the film was released, jumping from the fourteenth floor of her parents' apartment. Her performance garnered positive reviews, with Judith Crist, writing in New York magazine, "The most striking performance, in large part non-performance, comes from the late Andrea Feldman, as the flat-voiced, freaked-out daughter, a mass of psychotic confusion, infantile and heart-breaking."

The film grossed $28,000 in its first week.