Three or 4 years in the past, director Julius Onah posted on social media that he was making a movie known as Samo Lives. Al Diaz noticed it and thought, Right here we go once more. “It’s known as Samo Lives. Do you perceive what that suggests?” Diaz requested. “Samo wasn’t his nickname. Samo was greater than only a phrase for ‘usual shit.’ Samo was the last word inside joke. Let’s get that basically understood.”
Diaz, now 66, is the opposite half of some of the influential inventive partnerships in downtown New York historical past—the graffiti duo that turned the launchpad for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s meteoric rise to artwork world stardom. With out Samo, there seemingly would have been no Basquiat as we all know him. And with out Al Diaz, there would have been no Samo.
As filming of Samo Lives was nearing completion, Diaz spoke with Observer at size about Basquiat, Samo and Hollywood. Seated on a bench amid his newest present of downtown expressionist artwork at Van Der Plas Gallery, the Decrease East Facet gallery that represents him, Diaz was considerate and measured as he thought-about how Hollywood writes, or rewrites, historical past. He mentioned that whereas Onah and actor Danny Ramirez (solid to play Diaz within the movie) met with him, they didn’t carry him on board as a guide and haven’t revealed how he and Samo might be portrayed.
In September, Samo Lives was filming in Tompkins Sq. Park, simply blocks from the general public housing advanced the place Diaz grew up. As cameras rolled on a scene with Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Basquiat and Antony Starr as Andy Warhol, Diaz appeared to take a measure of the undertaking. “They mentioned this was going to be concerning the origins of Basquiat or one thing. The origins of Basquiat? I don’t suppose so. I imply, to start with, they’ve Andy Warhol hanging out in Tompkins Sq. Park. When did that ever occur?”
Manufacturing wrapped in October, with Jeffrey Wright—who famously performed Basquiat in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 biopic—becoming a member of the solid alongside Dane DeHaan, Kathryn Newton and others. The movie marks the primary time Basquiat’s story might be informed by a Black director, with Onah stating that “the complexity and richness of his expertise as an artist and little one of the African diaspora has but to be dramatized within the method it deserves.”
To grasp what’s at stake for Diaz and the historical past of downtown artwork, you want to perceive what Samo really was—not the mythology, however the actuality. And on this level, Diaz is unequivocal. “There’s a actual lack of know-how of what Samo was,” he mentioned. The oversimplified model—the one which’s been repeated in numerous articles and documentaries—is that Samo stands for ‘usual shit.’
Right here’s the actual origin story, as Diaz tells it: In 1977, Basquiat and Diaz started going to a pal’s place in Tribeca to smoke weed along with her mother and father. After some time, this turned routine, and the duo referred to it as “doing the samo,” for “usual shit.” The phrase turned a part of the native teenage vernacular. The conceptual leap got here in January 1978, after Basquiat wrote a satirical brief story for the highschool newspaper they based, the Basement Blues Press, a few man promoting religions out of a kiosk. Up on the market on this kiosk was a “guilt-free do no matter you need now, pay later” faith known as Samo.
Diaz, who had been a longtime graffiti author since 1971 underneath the tag BOMB-1, prompt beginning a graffiti marketing campaign round Samo. They started writing slogans on public partitions:
“Samo as a substitute 2 God”… “Samo 4 the so-called avant-garde”… “Samo as an finish 2 mind-wash faith, bogus philosophies & nowhere politics.”
“We have been writing on the streets on a regular basis, and our messages have been getting increasingly refined and philosophical,” Diaz mentioned. They unfold the Samo gospel throughout Tribeca, Soho, the West Village, Chinatown and the East Village. By December 1978, when the Village Voice printed an exposé revealing the artists behind Samo (paying them $50 every for an interview), their hype marketing campaign had already succeeded spectacularly. Diaz mentioned he felt the joke had run its course, however Basquiat needed to make use of Samo’s quarter-hour of fame to advertise his artwork profession. He did, and shortly, Basquiat was the toast of the artwork world.
Which brings us again to Samo Lives. Diaz reached out to Onah and the 2 met up in a decrease Manhattan diner to debate the undertaking. He additionally met with Harrison and Ramirez, however the talks ended when Diaz requested to be paid as a guide on the movie. “They by no means answered me about consulting. I didn’t get any name again with a response. After which the subsequent factor I do know, they have been simply taking pictures,” he mentioned.
Diaz insists his frustration isn’t about cash, although economics are little doubt a part of it. It’s actually about accuracy. About who controls the narrative when that narrative is essentially a few collaboration that lives on solely via one surviving accomplice.
If the movie’s premise celebrates Basquiat’s true origins, it might appear to hinge on a traditionally correct portrayal of Samo. And Samo can’t be precisely portrayed with out Diaz. “In the event that they have been doing a traditionally right factor, they might have needed any person who may steer them the appropriate approach,” he argues. When Diaz went to his copyright lawyer to see if he may block the movie’s use of the Samo title, he realized he couldn’t forestall its use in a movie—solely on business merchandise. “I do have some copyright privilege, however apparently not relating to movie.”
And the title itself is deceptive, Diaz argues. “In the event that they’re calling it Samo Lives, that refers to a totally completely different factor than the profession of Jean-Michel Basquiat after Samo, proper? It sounds prefer it focuses on one side of what he did. And that was a factor that he and I did collectively.” He added that he suspects the filmmakers “simply seized on that phrase. It’s very superficial… It simply appears like they don’t actually know what the historical past of the factor was.”
Julian Schnabel’s 1996 movie Basquiat used composite characters—amalgamations of actual individuals compressed into fictional stand-ins. Benicio Del Toro portrayed Basquiat’s finest pal, a Diaz-like character, however hardly a real illustration of the Samo partnership. Diaz known as that movie “an honest work of fiction.” Samo Lives may very well be heading in an analogous route. “It’s a Hollywood manufacturing, so it’ll in all probability have some bullshit added to it to make the story sellable, no matter Hollywood requires. I don’t have nice expectations.”
What would a traditionally right Basquiat movie appear to be? “The truth that there’s already a biopic that’s a piece of fiction is sufficient,” Diaz argues. “You may’t fiction it once more. The reply to that movie can be to do one thing that’s really traditionally right.”
However there’s a deeper challenge at play: the tendency to airbrush Basquiat’s collaborators out of the image, to simplify a fancy net of downtown relationships right into a lone genius narrative. On the identical time, Diaz is candid about why he and Basquiat ultimately parted methods: “Jean-Michel was not a very good pal. I grew up within the initiatives, the place you needed to rely in your buddies. You be taught who your pals are. That’s a distinct worth system than somebody who goes via buddies each three years. That was his sample. That’s his pal historical past.”
One other persistent false impression is that Basquiat was a graffiti artist. “As it’s, he’s mislabeled as a graffiti artist… Samo was not tagging. We have been making social commentary. We have been trying to write for anyone to learn it, not only for different graffiti writers.” Historically, graffiti is “an insular subculture. This isn’t to your mother. That is to your buddies. In Samo, we have been doing it for individuals, together with mothers. Samo had nothing to do with the graffiti subculture. It received painted with that brush later.”
After the Village Voice article revealed their identities, Basquiat “ran with it. He was like, ‘I’m the man, I’m the man.’” Diaz acknowledges there’s no understanding what would have turn out to be of him with out that increase. “That’s the factor that made him, however he might need discovered different methods to construct his profession. He was sensible and excellent at self-promotion.”
Samo Lives stays in post-production with no introduced launch date, and Diaz continues making artwork on his personal phrases. He not too long ago closed a solo exhibition at One Artwork House on Warren Road, that includes new work and sculptures. It’s the type of regular, unglamorous work that doesn’t match Hollywood’s narrative of the tortured genius burning vibrant and quick.
Maybe the actual legacy of Samo shouldn’t be merely as a stepping stone to fame, however as a discrete second of inventive collaboration that challenged the commodification of the avant-garde. As Diaz wrote within the unique Samo pamphlets: “Samo as an finish 2 mass produced individuality.”
The irony, in fact, is that Hollywood is now mass-producing Samo itself—turning a punk rock critique of the artwork world right into a marketable biopic title with out the enter of the person who created it. “Samo was all about hype. About making a model out of skinny air and selling it to the plenty. And it was very profitable. I assume it’s not shocking that it’s now being consumed by Hollywood hype,” Diaz mentioned. Forty-seven years after the partnership final prowled the streets of Decrease Manhattan, Samo has a lifetime of its personal—simply not the one Diaz imagined when he and a 17-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat first picked up spray paint cans and determined to promote the world a faith.
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