Willard Maas

"Willard Maas"' (b. 24 June 1906 - 2 January 1971) was an American experimental filmmaker and poet.

He was the husband of filmmaker Marie Menken. They achieved some renown in New York City's modern art world of the 1940s through the 1960s, both for their experimental films and for their salons, which brought together artists, writers, filmmakers and intellectuals. [http://www.eai.org/eai/tape.jsp?itemID=8361] According to their associate, Andy Warhol, "Willard and Marie were the last of the great bohemians. They wrote and filmed and drank -- their friends called them "scholarly drunks" -- and were involved with all the modern poets." [http://www.eai.org/eai/tape.jsp?itemID=8361]

Willard Maas befriended Norman McLaren and for many years urged Norman to make a film of the Narcissus myth before making his own version of a film with the same name (Narcissis) circa 1957-1958.

Mc Claren eventually succumbs to Mass' will and make his version of "Narcissus" in 1983. Interestingly, McLaren was on the panel of judges at Brussels when "Maas' "Narcissus" was judged.

Maas's 1956 film "Narcissus," stars Judith Malina (credited as Jody Malin) and Julian Beck, members of The Living Theatre, both of whom perform voice-overs for the film.

It is alleged that Maas performed fellatio on DeVeren Bookwalter for Andy Warhol's short film "Blow Job" (1963), although Warhol claimed otherwise in his memoir "" (1980).

There are other accounts to the contrary, as Gerard Malanga indicates the off-screen person giving the blow job was poet WILLARD MAAS. (see outside link Worholstars.org 1964)

In the 1960s, Maas was a faculty member at Wagner College and an organizer of the New York City Writer's Conference there where Edward Albee was a writer in residence.

He and Menken may have been a significant part of the inspiration for the characters of George and Martha in Edward Albee's 1962 play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Private life

Willard Maas and Marie Menken had an ongoing relationship with Norman McLaren, apparently stemming from his stay in New York between 1942 and 1943.

Whether this "relationship" was a result of any physical encounter with Willard is unknown, but just the same, it was an affair. A closer examination of all the Menken/Maas letters/materials, many of which are located at the University of Texas in Austin as well as the materials on deposit/loan, in Trust, located at the Anthology Film Archives in New York, is in order.

Willard was known by his peers for his being outrageous and loud, as well as being a practical joker. He loved to be the center of attention - no matter what! One such practical joke led to his having a permanent falling out with Andy Warhol.

Not long after the 1968 shooting, while Andy was still on the mend from a bullet wound, a party was being hosted at The Factory. Willard Maas showed up stinking drunk. As no one paid much attention to him; he walked up to Andy. He pulled out a revolver and stuck it into Warhol's ribs, while hollering "stick em up!" This was the joke.

At that moment, Andy almost fainted. It turned out to be a plastic toy gun in Willard's hand.

Willard Maas laughed uncontrollably as Andy had him ejected from the factory. Warhol banished him from the Factory and the inner circle of friends forevermore.

After this Maas mishap/banishment, Willard considered Andy his arch-enemy and continued to drink heavily as an anesthetic aid that helped dull the pain of the ejection/rejection he received from the Warhol camp.

Not much is known as to how this Willard Maas atrocity affected Marie Menken's relationship with Warhol, as it was Marie that taught Warhol how to use film as an art medium in the first place.

Marie was a Fag Hag, as she supported and aided Willard in all his relationships and bad habits, as well as those of all his homosexual friends.Fact|date=August 2008

Marie was more of a mother to Willard than a wife, as she was the bread winner. She was the only one in the relationship that held a steady job (at Time Magazine).Fact|date=August 2008

Near the end of Willard's life, Marie, upon her return from work, often times found him on the floor of their penthouse apartment, drunk and dying from an overdose of barbiturates. He as usual, being morose, was sucking his thumb while crying like a baby as he incoherently mumbled about Andy Warhol's rejection of him. Marie had him hospitalized several times for this condition.Fact|date=August 2008

Oddly and ironically, Willard outlived Marie by three or four days. She died on December 29, 1970. Upon learning of Marie's death, he was inept, incompetent and too distraught to make funeral arrangements for his wife. In order to be true to his own character, Willard, in an attempt to upstage Marie Menken having departed life without him, he ordered Adel (Marie's sister who lived in the same building in a down stairs apartment), to purchase two bottles of hard liquor. He did this every day non-stop until the morning of January 2, 1971, when Adele Menken found Willard in the apartment alone and dead; two empty bottles laying next to his body, having drank himself to death. - Poetic justice, suicide or bad timing? No one seemed to know or care much about the corpse. The looter (his illegitimate son) was more interested in looting the Picasso and other works of art, rather than films & letters that were left behind. (By the way, Willard's body was cremated.)

Willard (when alive) also had a habit of tape recording (on a reel to reel) many of his verbally abusive drunken rants, as an aid to his remembering many decadent thoughts (that he might otherwise forget) so that he might employ them at it at some future date as inspiration in a "new film" that would perhaps upstage Warhol's homo-popularity.

In one such rant, (he had many), Willard bragged to Adele, while he verbally berated and attempted a character assassination of his wife Marie, he boasted about how he relished in taking drugs such as amphetamines, so that he could endlessly imbibe in hard spirits without passing out.

He rants on, as he states that he most enjoyed the experience of taking LSD as well as his providing it to adolescent "boys." He clearly states that everything is planned and scripted. Willard indicates that everything conspired by him is to be a preparatory encounter; merely an interlude - induction to homosexuality, as some sort of an initiation or rite of passage to unsuspecting children. Willard, a sexual fagin within this rant, held himself out to be the Supreme Homo-Sexual Being. In spite of his self-belief in being indestructible, he had several times contracted syphilis as a result of his lifestyle.Fact|date=September 2008

Recently there has been discovered many tapes, films, letters and family photos. These items were in the private collection of the Menken and Menkevich estates. These "new" unknown materials have been deposited, held in trust, at the Anthology Film Archives so they can be studied by scholars or others qualified to research such. Other papers, letters and art work are yet still held privately by family members.

The Willard Maas Papers, a collection of approximately 500 letters, manuscripts, page proofs, photographs, drawings, play scripts, and film scripts from the period 1931-1967, is housed at Brown University. [http://dl.lib.brown.edu/collatoz/info.php?id=214]

Films

As director

*1943 - "Geography of the Body" (with Marie Menken)
*1955 - "The Mechanics of Love" (with Ben Moore)
*1950s (no date) - "Image in the Snow"
*1956 - "Narcissus" (a film poem by Ben Moore and Willard Maas)
*1966 - "Andy Warhol's Silver Flotations"
*1967 - "Orgia"

As actor

*1964 - "Blow Job" (1964) (directed by Andy Warhol)

External links

*imdb name|id=0531004|name=Willard Maas
* http://www.warholstars.org/chron/1964.html