An Infamous Artist of the 1980s Gets His Moment in the Spotlight

In the early 1980s, Lower Manhattan was bubbling over with talent, energy and angst. This fertile ground birthed bold-faced names such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, alongside other figures less well-known by the general public yet still beloved by the art world cognoscenti.

Because this time was (blessedly) free of social media, finding out about its players is less straightforward than it looks. Still, enterprising actors-turned-filmmakers Brian Vincent (director) and his wife, Heather Spore (producer), have created an immersive exploration of those halcyon days with their documentary Make Me Famous.

The idea for the project came from an ultimate light-bulb moment: While Spore was on Broadway performing in Wicked, Vincent met a waiter named Lenny Kisko, who collected the work of relatively unknown painter Edward Brezinski, whose proximity to the era intrigued Vincent. Initially intending to turn the project into a play, the duo dove into research about their subject beginning in 2012.
"The era itself was a fascination for us," he explains. "We thought we could try and find someone from this era and go about it from a different point of view — someone who had a large impact but didn't get famous, and we happened to pick just the right guy. He was a super mysterious artist who disappeared. We found some video of a performance [at his gallery] on YouTube and reached out to the guy who made it, and he said, 'I have 100 hours of never-seen footage.'"

This treasure trove led to a two-year window of research, and Vincent read at least 50 books about the time. He also began wooing the cagey players of the art world, interviewing Kenny Scharf, David McDermott, Peter McGough and Eric Bogosian for their take on Brezinski.

Once they won their subjects' trust, Vincent and Spore were surprised at how vivid everyone's memories of the time remained, particularly when it came to Brezinski, a fractious character who irritated and enchanted in equal measure.  Everyone they spoke to remained wildly curious about their colleague’s fate after all these years. Perhaps most notorious for eating a doughnut sculpture by Robert Gober right off the plinth in the Paula Cooper Gallery, Brezinski hungered to reach the success of his friends and peers yet never achieved it. When he disappeared in the early '90s, rumors and sightings abounded, but no one really knew what happened to him until the filmmakers dug up his fate, an ending they had no idea of when they began the project.

"[Using him as a subject] is a way to insert the audience into an immersive experience we want to be a part of," Vincent says. "We were mesmerized by the New York they told us about and lived in. Bogosian told us when they got together and performed for each other, it wasn't as much about the money as it was about who could be the most creative and would rise to the top, but nobody thought they'd get famous from it. We tried to get out of the way of the story and let the people tell their side."
"The thing that made this era special is New York was on the brink of ruin, basically," adds Spore, a native of Keller, Texas. "It was gritty; it was derelict. That means that artists could afford to live there. They were living in these $300-a-month hovels. They were able to live out their bohemian fantasies, which is also what made it special. It became so popular that people from Soho came down to see what was happening, and that's how Basquiat got discovered, and Keith Haring and Madonna."

Because the couple had no clue how to create a film from scratch, they taught themselves the things they didn't know from YouTube videos and took on editing, distribution and promotion, with a few grants along the way. Premiering at the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival in 2021, Famous ran on the festival circuit before being introduced into independent theaters. Vincent and Spore continue to roll things out grassroots style, with a limited run at Violet Crown Cinema in Dallas through April 3.

Telling more than just Brezinski's story, Famous serves as a rich document of the rise and fall of the East Village/Lower East Side scene. An entire generation of talent was decimated by the AIDS epidemic and business school types like Jeff Koons, who arrived to dominate the end of the go-go '80s.

Neophytes when they began, the couple was bitten by the filmmaker bug. They are working on a movie about James Dean's time in New York during the 1950s (another period with its own level of romance and nostalgia). However, they reserve an abiding affection for the subject of their first movie, which they hope any viewer curious about the art world will share.

"Edward had a lot of foibles. He didn't say the right thing or do the right thing, but that's a quirk of being an artist," says Spore. "People who see the film are creative types who really relate to Edward. He's this everyman artist guy who really represents them. (The film) helps you get to the heart of what it's like to be an artist."

Brian Vincent and Heather Spore will be on hand for an intro and Q&A to Make Me Famous Sunday, March 30, at 6:40pm at Violet Crown, 3699 McKinney Ave.