Obscene

Daniel O’Connor and Neil Ortenberg
(97’, USA)
***^1/2

Barney Rosset, erstwhile owner of Grove Press—whose marketing strategy in the ’50s and ’60s was to publish controversial literature by William S. Burroughs, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Jean Genet and others—has had a wonderful life, and this documentary by Daniel O’Connor and Neil Ortenberg is an appropriate paean to the vitality and pugnacity of its subject. Aside from the usual anecdotes from a bevy of intellectuals and artists, including Betty “I was throwing the best orgies in New York” Dodson, Gore Vidal, poet Jim Carroll, and the increasingly ubiquitous doc-talker John Waters, Obscene gets to the heart of the anti-establishment mood of Grove. Roy Kuhlman’s iconic, jazzy design work for the publishing company comes alive in a series of colourful montage sequences; vintage footage, some of it taken by Rosset himself, makes the film endearingly—if a tad narcissistically—personable. (DB)

Originally published September 2007

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