In a genre crowded with self-styled mavericks and eccentrics,
Larry Wessel manages to stand head and shoulders above
other documentary filmmakers.
Figuratively and literally.
An underground documentary filmmaker
whose work has received accolades
from such subcultural luminaries as Anton LaVey, Russ
Kick, Adam Parfrey, Nick Bougas, and Peter Sotos; not
to mention praise from publications such as Juxtapoz,
Film Threat, Flipside, and Shock Cinema to name just a
few. A member of the UNPOP ART movement, Wessel’s
graphic UNPOP collages (which incorporate pornography,
diseased flesh, and pastel abstraction), have appeared
in publications such as Hustler, Answer Me!, Chic and Malefact and have been
exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. over the last three decades. Larry’s
controversial “performance art” has proven to be so ‘provocative’ that
it once resulted in the director of a major arts organization losing his job
and having his institution’s NEA funding revoked.
As engaging in conversation as he is jovial, Larry Wessel
is a big guy who knows how to have big fun, and is, naturally,
an avid drinker. Brian Clark caught up with Wessel at
Denver’s Lion’s Lair Lounge while he was in town
filming a documentary about fellow UNPOP Artist, Boyd Rice.
MDM: While you
were making your bullfighting documentary, Taurobolium,
you spent a lot of time in Tijuana, Mexico—and
I understand that you eventually ended up getting very
caught-up in the whole culture around bullfighting—any
good Mexican drinking stories to share?
LW: Drinking when you’re in Mexico just comes second
nature to you. You have to drink when you’re in
Mexico; that’s where the tequila is, that’s
where the Mexican beer is, it’s a great vacation
for booze, in Tijuana. The best place to drink, I’ve
found, is the red light district that they have. The red
light district has all these different names, it’s
called the Colonia Cuahuila, as a lot of locals call it,
but it’s also known as the Zona Norte. It’s
a place that’s off the beaten path, where the tourists
don’t go—they’re afraid to go there—and
it’s really a shame, because there was a time in
history when Tijuana was nothing but one big whorehouse,
basically; the first building ever built there was a whorehouse-cantina.
It was a place where you could go to drink and fuck, and
basically the whole town became synonymous with drinking
and fucking, and then a bullring was introduced, and a
church eventually. So you could go to church in the morning,
go to a bullfight in the afternoon, and then in the evening
drink, and then fuck. So it was this wonderful place where
all of this stuff came together—and really cheaply
too.
So, the best places that I’ve found to drink are these cantinas, which
are a combination of whorehouses and bars—you can’t beat it. I haven’t
found anything like this in America. Supposedly, there are these dime-a-dance
places, I’ve heard about in downtown L.A., that I’ve never been
to, and places like that—but in Tijuana, there’s this whole district,
and it’s so incredible because every single clubhouse or cantina is like
a whorehouse-bar. They’re just wonderful, because you walk in, they’re
blasting Mexican music, and you immediately go to the bar and get a can of ice
cold Tecate beer, and there are big bowls of limes, and the deal is you basically
go there, you get some limes, you get your tequila shots and your beers and
you sit back and drink and look around and choose who your sex-partner is going
to be that night. And it’s just so enjoyable because you’re drinking,
you’ve probably already had dinner—a really nice dinner—you’re
relaxing, drinking, just soaking-up the atmosphere of all these beautiful women
basically parading in front of you, waiting for you to make eye contact with
them, to have them come to your table. All the time they’re constantly
trying to sit down with you and have a drink, and you can just reject them,
and there’s no hurt feelings; it’s just that she’s not the
one for you. So it’s basically pussy that comes to you with very little
effort on your part. It’s just a wonderful setup. The whole Mexican cantina
thing in Tijuana is, to me, a drinker’s paradise. That’s the life.
The most enjoyable way to have a drink is in one of these kinds of places.
MDM: You do make it sound very appealing.
LW: Yeah, in fact, when I was shooting
the bull-fighting documentary and stuff, I didn’t even think about
stuff like this. I was so obsessed with bulls and that
aspect of Mexican culture, that I didn’t really
think too much about fucking prostitutes or visiting
these cantinas. It was only after I had an assignment
from Hustler magazine to do an illustration for an article
about these bordellos—these cantinas—that
I found out about it. So I read the article that I was
supposed to illustrate and that’s how I realized
that these places existed. I actually felt kind of stupid, ‘cause
I could have been doing this all along, and really been
having a good time!
People make such a big deal about screwing whores, but
to me, if you have a condom on your cock, it’s just a piece of cake, there’s no worries.
I never worried. I’m a very proud whorefucker. I really am. With whores,
I like the honesty of the whole thing, the whole arrangement—it’s
pure. You’re paying for a service, and she does the professional job,
and you end-up with a happy ending, and chances are—if she’s a good
one—she’ll have a smoke with you afterwards, and you’ll exchange
pleasantries, and that’s it. You’re feeling pretty chipper, you
might go to the cantina, have another drink, relax a bit more. So it all just
works out so well. You just feel like John Huston or Ernest Hemingway or Sam
Peckinpah—all these whoremongers who just loved Mexico and henhouses and
fucking whores all the time. I’m really in love with that stuff, Mexican
culture in general, actually. I love the music and the women and the booze and
the whole trip, the bullfighting, everything. It’s a great place to drink,
really drink.
MDM: What’s your favorite
drink?
LW: My favorite drink is the Castaway.*
This cocktail was actually invented by a friend of mine
who calls himself Beach Bum Barry—he wrote a really good cocktail
book called Beach Bum Barry’s Grog Log, which I
highly recommend to connoisseurs of fine drink—it’s
like a grimoire—it’s like a magical textbook
into a world of incredible intoxication. Every recipe—most
every recipe in it—is a tightly-guarded secret
that Barry was able to unveil, through his own research
and love of old books, and also through connections who
would talk to old bartenders; talk them out of really
old recipes that were top-secret. Anyway, he basically
put his spin on some of these recipes, he’d change
them up a little bit, give them a new name, and then
dedicate them to the original, as well as tell you what
the original name of the drink was, and where it was
served, ‘cause it was usually served at a particular
bar, in a particular part of the world. I think the Castaway
was originally served at this restaurant called Dorian’s
Red Hand in New York, and was originally called the Jamaican
Dust.
MDM: Is it like a tropical, rum-based
Tiki-drink?
LW: Yeah, it is. They’re so delicious—but
the thing with mixed drinks in general, rum drinks especially,
is that they kind of creep up on you. You have to be a
little careful, sip them slow, because they will do their
work. Before you know it you’re just seeing double
and you’re worried about how you’re going
to drive home and that kind of shit. Actually, that’s
not really much of an issue for me, as bars are a thing
that I don’t really do hardly anymore, unless it’s
like tonight; I’m with a group of friends and it’s
the thing to do. But normally I drink at home. A thing
that Charles Bukowski would always say is that even though
he writes about all the bars and everything, when he got
older, it was just like “Fuck all that shit, I’ll
just drink at home.” So that’s basically what
he did in the end, the last 20 years or so.
MDM: It’s
cheaper.
LW: It’s cheaper, it’s easier, and you don’t
have to deal with people (laughs).
MDM: So, what got you started drinking?
LW: Well, my father was always a drinker,
for one thing, and my grandfather once told me as a child
to never trust anybody who doesn’t drink, smoke, and cuss… (laughs)
these are all elements of somebody who at least has the
beginnings of being a ‘good’ person!
MDM: How old were you when you had your first drink?
LW: Probably 11 or 12, something like that. I remember
not really liking it initially, but just kind of accepting
it just because my dad did it all the time, so I had
to try it. I don’t remember really taking too much
of a liking to drinking until high school. That’s
when the real shit hit the fan, in high school. I remember
one time when I was a teenager, I went to a wedding,
and I was underage, but they served me drinks, and this
girl had this beautiful-looking, light, pure white drink
that looked like snow. It was beautiful and I asked her
for a sip, and I loved the taste of it. I said, “What’s
this called?” and she said “It’s called
a Chi-Chi.” It was coconut milk and pineapple juice
and vodka, all blended with ice, I guess the equivalent
of a Slurpee at 7-11, or the way they make margaritas
sometimes when they’ll blend them up so they’re
really, really thick.
MDM: Like fluffy, or whipped, almost.
LW: Yeah, but man, it would knock you
out with all the vodka they put in it though. It was like
a killer drink. So I had a couple of those and I was feeling
pretty groovy for a 16-year-old, I was really in heaven.
So I said, “Man,
when I turn 21, the first bar I walk into I’m gonna
ask for a Chi-Chi.” So, when I turned 21, I walked
into a bar and I ordered a Chi-Chi and I didn’t
realize it but I was walking into this cop bar in Hermosa
Beach, it’s now called The Hermosa Saloon; it was
where all the cops went. I had no idea it was this kind
of roughneck bar and I asked the bartender for a Chi-Chi,
and he looks at me like I had just shit on his shoe or
something. He gave me this really mad look and he repeated “A
Chi-Chi?” He says, “We don’t serve
foo-foo drinks!” and I thought, “Oh my god,
I just ordered a foo-foo drink—Jesus Christ!” I
was really upset. “You know,” I said, “Actually,
I’ll just have a scotch on the rocks,” I
think that was what I ordered. I knew they’d have
that, so I just drank that, I was content with it.
MDM: Tell me about the first time you got really drunk.
LW: The first time I really got drunk,
was when I was 16 years old. I had joined the drama department,
because the drama teacher really, really liked me and
said that I should be involved in drama. So I joined the
drama group not knowing that these guys were the most
decadent people on campus. They’d have these cast parties
that were just like drunken orgies, essentially, and
at one of these, I got just completely drunk to the point
of throwing up. I drank a whole lot, and I remember the
sensation of walking to my car and being drunk, and just
the whole conundrum of, “Am I going to be able
to drive home?” And I remember having a real hard
time even putting my key in the lock on the car door.
Somehow, I made it home that night. Another, similar
experience I had in high school was resultant from mixing
Hawaiian punch with gin; I went to this party, and I
was wearing sunglasses, and there was this loud music
playing, and I just started dancing after drinking this
big bottle of gin mixed with Hawaiian punch—and
at a certain point I stopped dancing and the whole room
just seemed to be tilting back and forth like a ship.
It was exactly like being on a ship. And I very slowly,
carefully, tried to make my way to the front door ‘cause
I knew I was going to be violently ill. I opened the
door and walked onto the front lawn of this person’s
place that was having the party, and it was really cold
and damp that night… and I just started vomiting,
and I was vomiting this bright red Hawaiian Punch vomit.
It looked like blood—it was coming out, hitting
the green grass, and steam was rising up off the grass,
and it just kept coming out. The steam kept rising, the
barf just kept coming up, and I thought I was just going
to die—it was just really, really bad. I think
that was the first really, really bad drunk that I had.
I was 16, maybe 17, I guess.
MDM: I suppose everybody has to experience that kind
of stuff in high school.
LW: Yeah…but there was this one night—this
is jumping ahead a few years—I would guess I was
going to college, toward the later years. I was probably
19 and had started drinking Black Russians. That was my
drink of choice: Black and White Russians. I just loved
that taste of that Kahlua and the cream and the vodka
in a white Russian. So this particular night I was out
with my girlfriend and we had a fight—a really bad
fight—and I just felt like, “I just have to
get drunk.” So, I went to this bar. It wasn’t
just a bar, it was a jazz club called The Lighthouse.
I used to be a trumpet-player, and this guy Freddy Hubbard
was playing trumpet; he just happened to be playing trumpet
that night, I wasn’t a big fan of his or anything,
but being a trumpet-player, I was interested. So I go
there to get drunk and watch this guy play this hard bop
on his trumpet. While I’m there, I’m ordering
Black Russians—I was drinking them black that night—I
just wanted one after the other. I was drinking them just
like I was really thirsty; sucking them down, then ordering
another one, immediately. I must have drank maybe ten
or eleven of them, and the bartender didn’t stop
me either, which is really weird, ‘cause I was getting
really fucked-up. I was even buying drinks for Freddy
when he took a break; I remember buying him a drink, and
then I let him buy me a drink, because the only way he’d
let me buy him a drink is if he bought me one in return.
I remember that night I ended up waking-up and throwing-up
in bed all over myself. I was so intoxicated I couldn’t
even get out of bed and go to the bathroom. I just sprung
up and started heaving. I was living with my folks at
the time, and my mother remembers hearing me laughing
and throwing up in my bed—I think she actually helped
me clean up the mess and everything ‘cause it was
just horrible.
MDM: Christ.
LW: Yeah (laughs), and later, I remember
one night I went to a punk rock show—I used to wear a priest collar
and people would call me Father Larry cause I’d
always wear a priest collar—and one night I was
with all these punks in a car full of empty beer cans;
everybody was drinking, and we get pulled over by the
cops—this is in Hollywood, just before we got to
the club—so, maybe half the people in the car were
underage, and it was just a fucking nightmare. The cop
looks in there, he can see all the beers and everything,
and he says, “OK, empty them out,” and he
got everybody to empty out the beer into the street and
everything. And then, he looks at me with the priest
collar—I was behind the wheel of the car—and
he goes, “Does your Monseigneur know you’re
out tonight?” I didn’t know if he was trying
to crack a joke, so I said, “Oh, he knows.” And
then he’s just shaking his head and frowning… but
then he gets a call to go to some more serious crime
or whatever, and he says, “OK, just knock off what
you’re doing and I’ll let you all go tonight,
I’ve got something more important to take care
of,” and he just took off and let us go.
MDM: That’s
great. I always heard you referred to as Father Larry
and I never knew why that was.
LW: It was that,
and one night I opened up a manila envelope sent to me
from a P.O. Box in San Francisco and discovered that Anton
Szandor LaVey had appointed me to the office of Priest
of the Church of Satan, so that really legitimized the
whole ‘father’ thing,
which I thought was quite thrilling!
—Interview by Brian Clark
For more info on Larry Wessel, or to purchase his films,
visit: www.unpopart.org
*The Castaway
3 ounces unsweetened pineapple juice
3/4 ounce Kahlua,
1 1/2 ounces gold Jamaican rum.
Shake well with ice cubes. Strain into a 10 ounce Pilsner
glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with maraschino
cherry and pineapple wedge stuck on rim of glass.
