Andy Warhol doesn’t really deserve his reputation as a boring, self-indulgent filmmaker, but this recently restored movie about the JFK assassination makes it seem justified. Warhol regulars (Ondine as LBJ, Ingrid Superstar as his first lady, “Looney Bird”) and a bevy of banana-eating Factory boys reenact the shooting and surrounding events indoors. While the assassination replays in Bruce Conner’s Report (1965) capture the event’s traumatic impact, the repetitions here seem like sterile maneuvering of empty shells, and the ugly compositions and grating zooms don’t help. The project was never finished or released, and the posthumous debut of these two reels, selected from nine that were shot, suggests that Warhol was more selective than most people think. 66 min.
