Heat

By Tom Keogh

The 1971 Heat was an early entry in filmmaker Paul Morrissey's tenure as the official director of movies coming out of Andy Warhol's so-called Factory. (Morrissey took the reins from Warhol himself, after the artist had made a number of celebrated underground films.) Factory star Joe Dallesandro plays the William Holden part in what is essentially an unofficial remake of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. As a former child star named Little Joe, Dallesandro's on-the-skids actor is bedding anyone who he thinks can help his career. Going nowhere, he becomes involved with an aging former star (Sylvia Miles), and while their relationship doesn't do much for his aspirations it contributes to Morrissey's unvarnished portrait of Hollywood hustling that certainly falls below the radar of Wilder's classic. Not a great film but a distinctive and memorable one, Heat extends Morrissey's fascination with the tawdry and humiliating fate of most big dreams, and is more poignant than most of the director's later work.

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