The late video artist Nelson Sullivan captured this laugh-out-loud funny moment of backstage mayhem at Atlanta’s 688 Club on February 28 1986. It’s probably one of the two or three most sublime (non-musical) moments caught on tape of the Butthole Surfers in their lysergic prime (when the drugs were still working for them and not against them). It’s right up there with the “Bed In” interviews seen on the classic Blind Eyes See release. I’ve had a copy of this video, that Nelson gave me himself, just a few months after it was shot. This is a classic, trust me on this one. I’ve posted it here before, but in case you missed it then, well, don’t make that same mistake this time… Not unless you want to miss Gibby drawing a dick on a mural of Thor, finding “Lewis & Clark” and… much, much… more.

Here’s something that you have to know to be able to make maximum sense out of what’s going on here: Nelson—who had been invited to the show by then-drummer, Cabbage (Kytha Gernatt)—was behind the camera obviously. However, what you can’t see is that he was attired in an outlandish outfit comprised of red, white and blue plaid matching bell-bottom pants, vest and cap. It was truly an ensemble that “Rerun” from What’s Happening!! would have been ashamed to wear out of the house. The sight of Nelson—who was probably 37 at the time, but who came off a bit older—in this getup was perplexing to say the least, under any circumstances or in any setting, yes, even backstage at a Butthole Surfers’ concert. 

So when you hear Gibby point at the camera and explain “Look at this dude, man!” or “What a dude!” he’s referring to the guy behind the camera, who was far, far freakier than anyone else in the room that night.
 

 
More of Nelson Sullivan’s unique videos of NYC nightlife in the 1980s can be seen at the 5 Ninth Ave Project on YouTube.

 
A series of decaying wood and steel structures extending into the Hudson River along the West Side Highway from Christopher Street up to Chelsea, the piers were popular gay cruising spots back in the 1970s. The vibe was open, loose and sexy.

The years between Stonewall and the advent of Aids were a period of sexual freedom and celebration in the West Village and the piers were at the center of a scene that in retrospect seems bittersweet.

Nelson Sullivan’s “The Piers in New York City in 1976” is a short 8mm clip which captures a transitional time between hope and harsher realities.

Until his fatal heart attack in 1987, Nelson Sullivan spent much of his life documenting the Manhattan downtown scene of the the 1970s and 80s. You can see his work at the 5 Ninth Avenue Project on Youtube. It’s a treasure trove of videos, including Lady Bunny, RuPaul, Larry Tee, Michael Alig and the Club Kids, Sylvia Miles, Michael Musto, Albert Crudo, John Sex, the Pyramid Club, the Limelight and Palladium.
 

 
Nelson Sullivan was a highly talented and prolific videographer, who documented New York’s art, club and youth scene of the 1980s. His filming style was fluid, raw and breathless, with jump-cuts and in-camera editing, all fabulously complimented the city’s dynamism, as it focussed on luminaries Keith Haring, Michael Alig, John Sex and RuPaul.

Just as he was about to produce his own cable TV show, Sullivan died of a heart attack in 1989. It was a sad demise to such a genuine talent

Back in December 1988, Sullivan filmed Quentin Crisp at the Flaunt It Club.

The Flaunt It Club was another brilliant publicity stunt created by Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey to promote their disco act The Fabulous Pop Tarts. It was was presented every Sunday night at LImelight NYC and gave other aspiring performers the chance to appear alongside established personalities in a talk show format broadcast, broadcast later that week on Manhattan public access television. Quentin Crisp was the celebrity guest this night, and the event was documented on video by Nelson Sullivan. Robert Coddington edited this from Nelson’s original videotape.

The brilliant Fenton Bailey once pitched a documentary on Nelson, where he described “Nelson’s epic canvas of Downtown” as an:

“...anthropological documentary that takes us beneath the fashionable surface and shows us the reality.

The reality is that Downtown is a tribe, a loose-knit collection of cultural refugees socially bonded by their rather anti-social ambition to make it. Although not an apple-pie Main Street nuclear family, it is an extended family much like a chorus line. Indeed Nelson’s work shows us, in addition to the glorious highs when the show goes on, the individual lows when its all over, the lonely moments of vulnerability. He was able to do this because most of those he filmed were his friends who trusted him, and who - given that Nelson’s camera went wherever he went and was for at least ten years as natural an extension of his body as his arms or legs - simply forgot that the camera was there.

And so the most captivating and poignant part of Nelson’s work is not the famous who have emerged from Downtown, but the people who are left behind and who strive in vain for the limelight. One of them himself, Nelson filmed the wannabees, the never-will-bees and the has-beens. While he captured the glorious orgy of self-invention of those seeking fame and fortune, he also captured the price it often exacted, the despair and self-destruction that followed repeated frustration and failure.

This is Sullivan’s film of Quentin Crisp at the Flaunt It Club, which reveals a delightfully at ease Mr. Crisp, enjoying the company of NY’s young things.

DM’s Richard Metzger writes about Nelson Sullivan here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Inside Quentin Crisp’s Apartment

Quentin Crisp on Gay Kiss-In

Nelson Sullivan Pioneering Chronicler of NYC Nightlife in the 1980s

 
Part 2 of Quentin Crisp at the Flaunt It Club, after the jump…
 

Nelson Sullivan with his faithful companion, Blackout.
 
I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening conversing with a brilliant historian and a delightful guy by the name of Robert Coddington. Robert is an accomplished Queer studies scholar and archivist for the late Nelson Sullivan, a video artist who captured hundreds, and maybe thousands of hours of NYC’s nightclub and drag scene during the 1980s. Wigstock, Limelight, Michael Alig and the club kids, the drag scene at Boy Bar, the infamous “outlaw party” at the Times Square McDonalds immortalized in Party Monster, the Pyramid Club, early Dee-lite performances… I could go on and on. Nelson documented it all, a permanent fixture on the club scene with his ever-present camera: If Nelson wasn’t there videotaping the action, you knew you at the wrong party.

I knew Nelson, and when I was 21, in 1986, I rented a room for about six months in the ramshackle house he leased at 5 Ninth Avenue, smackdab in the middle of New York’s now trendy meatpacking district. (Today it’s all about high fashion and boutique hotels, but back then, it was patrolled by tranny hookers and smelled like… rotting carcasses). Nelson’s house was a whirlwind, creative environment complete with a very colorful cast of characters. When I moved out, soon after Ru Paul, Larry Tee and Lahoma Van Zandt made their move to New York from Atlanta and moved in to 5 Ninth Ave. It was that kind of place.

Nelson Sullivan created an ultra important historical archive that has yet to be recognized in this country—which is a real shame—although it has been exhibited in many places outside of the US on a museum level. Not to be deterred, Robert Coddington and Dick Richards (Nelson’s friend since childhood) have put together a growing online video archive called The 5 Ninth Ave. Project on YouTube. You can visit the archive here.

Below, club kids at one of Susanne Bartsch’s parties at Bentley’s. Note Leigh Bowery snorting amyl nitrate:
 

 
The most fabulous and glamorous drag queen of all, International Chrysis, performing at Boy Bar on St. Mark’s Place sometime in the mid-80s with Perfidia and Cody Ravioli
 

 
More video of NYC nightlife in the 1980s after the jump…