Mario Montez and Eliot Cukor in Normal Love.
New York: np, 1963. Black and white silver gelatin print. 10 x 8
in. Slight curling and creasing at top corners; else near fine. Captioned “Mario Montez / Jack Smith’s NORMAL LOVE / Eliot Cukor / photo by Bob Adler” at bottom of recto in unknown hand. Item #6280
Photograph of Mario Montez and Eliot Cukor by Bob Adler, from the filming of Jack Smith’s Normal Love. Shot in the summer and autumn of 1963 and first screened in 1964, the film was the assumed follow-up to Flaming Creatures, although Smith never completed an edit or screened the same version twice.
The film’s production brought together a large section of New York’s percolating 1960s avant-garde. The first film Andy Warhol shot was of Smith filming Normal Love (later seized by the NYPD and now lost). Jonas Mekas paid for the film stock, and the cast included Mario Montez, Tiny Tim, Eliot Cukor, Tony Conrad, Diane di Prima, Beverly Grant, and John Vaccaro. While shooting the film, Smith gave Mario Montez (formerly René Rivera) his new name, after the languid B movie star Maria Montez.
Sold