Lights and shadows

Photos (l-r) Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Halston, Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger by Dustin Pittman in New York After Dark (Rizzoli) at Eerdmans Photo: Anne Katrin Titze, featuring work by Dustin Pittman

In the second instalment of our conversation with renowned photographer Dustin Pittman and music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, we start out with the New York music scene at CBGB and Hurrah, then go on to Andy Warhol superstars Candy Darling, Taylor Mead, Jackie Curtis, Sylvia Miles (in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy), Lana Jokel, and Bob Colacello. Dustin also had a distinguished career working with directors such as Alan J Pakula on The Sterile Cuckoo (starring Liza Minnelli), Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (Sean Connery, Kevin Costner), Miloš Forman’s Ragtime (Brad Dourif, Elizabeth McGovern), and is seen at a party with Bernadette Peters in James Ivory’s adaptation of Tama Janowitz’s The Slaves Of New York.

Dustin Pittman (in Edie Sedgwick T-shirt) with Ed Bahlman and Anne-Katrin Titze on a casting for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: “Jerry Schatzberg sent them ten minutes of The Panic in Needle Park and that clinched the deal for Al Pacino.”

We talk about Dustin’s friendship with Martin Scorsese and photographer/director Jerry Schatzberg, Faye Dunaway in Puzzle Of A Downfall Child, and touch upon Dustin’s designer friendships, including Giorgio di Sant' Angelo, Stephen Burrows, Fernando Sánchez, Ronald Clyne, and Halston, plus his friends in Paris, Claude Montana, Jean Paul Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa, Karl Lagerfeld, and actor Giancarlo Giannini. Plus so much more.

From New York City, Dustin Pittman joined us on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on the personal backstory for some of the photographs in New York After Dark and his life in the fast lane.

Ed Bahlman: When did you go to Hurrah? Before it became a music venue?

Dustin Pittman: Yeah, I was. I was at Robert Boykin's place, you know Robert?

EB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

DP: I was lucky because I hung around with all different tribes, all different communities, designers, music, fashion, social causes. I just moved around. I grew with them. They were all different. It was wonderful. I lived across from CBGB for two years during the height of CBGB, right before Blondie hit. I would go in and hang out for a while, and then just move on to other clubs. I didn't really hang out there for seven hours, I was bored, you know, and even though it was great seeing people, but I go and say hello, stick around for about an hour and a half, two hours. Listen to a couple of bands, take some pictures, and leave.

EB: Are you in touch with Meryl, the videographer there? Do you have a contact for her?

DP: I don't have her contact, but I know a lot of people did videos there. I have a lot of videos, too, and a lot of 16 mm film of the Warhol people from the early Seventies that I haven't really digitised yet and got out yet. It's unbelievable my archives. I have a beautiful, beautiful colour film of Candy Darling, singing in 1971 My Funny Valentine and it's gorgeous. Or Jackie Curtis rehearsing for the famed Vain Victory: the Vicissitudes of the Damned in 1970 in her loft above the Yiddish Theater on Second Avenue across from Slugger Ann’s, her grandmother's place.

Dustin Pittman’s New York After Dark books under the Christmas tree at Eerdmans Fourth Annual Holiday Bazaar Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

I have these videos, but I haven't released them yet. I did a lot of movies with Taylor Mead and Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling and Sylvia. My friends had a beautiful house in 37 acres of land in Bridgehampton in the early Seventies, and I was friends with Sylvia Miles and Taylor Mead, right after Sylvia did Midnight Cowboy. We would hang around all the time, and we'd go out to Bridgehampton with Taylor and make films. I was going to Visual Arts at the time, and whatever equipment was there we used, you know, we made lemonade from lemons.

That was my model. You know what I mean, like cinema verité underground films. People don't know that term today, but at one time there was an underground. Now, you got to dig deep for the underground. I'd like to think my book has a really nice flow to it, where you can really sit down at night and curl up and just go through it like a storybook, and it's almost like comfort food where you remember a time that's gone. The venues are gone. Some, a lot of the people are gone. Sadly. The vibe is gone. You can't recreate that vibe anymore. People create Studio 54 at a party, but it's not the same Studio. I tell people that it was a whole package deal, the culture, the vibe.

EB: Crossover, the crossover! No separation of disciplines. Everything mixed together.

DP: Yeah. Everyone. Everything. Fit. Together.

EB: Everybody knew everybody. Did you know Lana Jokel, the editor and filmmaker? She had a house out in Bridgehampton.

DP: Yeah, we used to go out almost every other weekend and stay. It was a community. It was not only the Warhol people. Maybe sometime Bob Colacello, but the thing is, you had people like Terry Southern. You had Larry Rivers. You had a lot of artists out there, Ruth Kligman. It was all free, loose. People dropped in, people dropped out. You picked up a camera.

Liza Minnelli on the phone in Alan J Pakula’s The Sterile Cuckoo

When I'm photographing something, you have to develop a trust. You have to have a sense of integrity and trust them and respect them, as well as they respect and trust you. And so it is very important to be in a relationship with somebody where you could actually sit down with somebody and talk to them for three hours, and I wouldn't even bring up my camera. It wasn't about photographing them. It's about getting to know them.

Anne-Katrin Titze: You have a lot of marvellous photographs of Halston.

DP: Oh, thank you. Yeah.

AKT: Who never looks the same in his gestures, the body language.

DP: Yeah, the body language, the body language is there. Halston was larger than life. Halston was just incredible. I spent a lot of time with him. I knew Halston way back when. Who introduced me to Halston were the designers Giorgio di Sant' Angelo and Stephen Burrows and Fernando Sánchez, and a designer called Ronald Clyne. They introduced me to Halston way back when when he was on Madison Avenue and we hit it off right away. We would go out to parties, do all these crazy things. And meanwhile he was doing incredible stuff. But Halston and I knew each other all through the years, just like Liza.

Dustin’s daughter Skyler Pittman with Jean Stone and Dustin Pittman at the opening reception for New York After Dark at Eerdmans Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

AKT: How did you meet Liza?

DP: I met Liza when she was 17 years old, 18 years old. We worked on The Sterile Cuckoo together, Alan J Pakula was the director. What happened was, I was living up in the Adirondacks where I was born and raised, and the thing is Paramount Pictures came to the Adirondacks to shoot The Sterile Cuckoo, and they brought all the trailers and all the crew and everybody, and at that time in 1969, 1968 you didn't have bouncers or PR people.

When Liza wasn't shooting a scene and you had lunch breaks you could sit on the grass upstate in the cow pastures and have lunch with Liza, and she and Peter Allen, her husband at the time, would come up, and we’d sit down and chat.

AKT: All the great Liza Minnelli photos in your book! We mentioned already the Vreeland and the Betty Ford ones, and there is one in the book with her father. Again, I noticed the hands. But this time it felt as if there were more of a distance with her father than with Betty Ford, or with Vreeland.

DP: Yeah, it was tough. I mean, you know, Liza. I know Liza for years, and we go drop in and out of each other's life, from the Halston days to Sterile Cuckoo to later on, to Liza with a Z, all these different times I spent a lot of time with her. I may have all different pictures of Liza, but those pictures, it's funny because her father, Vincente married. I forget her name, and I don't know if they got along that well or not.

So like it was kind of an edgy thing in a way, you know, with that. But she got along with her father. She loved her father. I would witness them in loving conversation. I think her father really respected her; she really took care of her father. I mean her father was older then, you know, and her father was a genius, a great director.

AKT: I agree. Talking of Hollywood and movie stars, Claudette Colbert is in the book.

Faye Dunaway in Jerry Schatzberg’s Puzzle Of A Downfall Child

DP: The Met balls at the time weren't like the Met balls now. There wasn't a red carpet. And all these Paparazzi. It wasn't like that. You were really free roaming. I could sit down with Jackie O, because I knew her, her son John. Jackie O knew me, and she respected my work because I wasn't like one of these Paparazzi guys in your face with cameras.

There were those moments with people like Catherine Deneuve and Claudette Colbert, and early designers like Pauline Trigère. I love those people. I mean, I would chat for hours with them and I would learn so much from them. It was amazing, even to go into the Chelsea Hotel and see Norman Norell, who lived in the Chelsea. There was Charles James.

AKT: Oh, you met Charles James at the Chelsea?

DP: They all lived in the Chelsea, not just the Warhol people. I was attracted to all kinds of talent.

AKT: Do you have photos of Charles James?

DP: Yeah, I do, yeah. Way back when I was going to Visual Arts, the first year of Visual Arts, my friend was working as an intern with Charles James at the Chelsea, and he would bring me up to the Chelsea, and I didn't know who Charles James was at the time, to be honest with you. It's 1970, and when I saw his work it was incredible. And then I dived into his history. Amazing. I mean, like I, you know the history of fashion like Balenciaga, and you know Chanel and Schiaparelli, I mean is incredible.

Photographer Bob Gruen with music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman at the opening reception for New York After Dark Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

I really believe spiritually, that I was born with a DNA to smell out talent, creative talent. My friends in Paris were Claude Montana, Jean Paul Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa. It was just magical to go in their ateliers, and the early Karl Lagerfeld, when he worked for Chloé, or actors like Giancarlo Giannini, people like that they were wonderful.

EB: Gaultier was great, he was also involved in the music scene. With New Order.

DP: I knew him. I know him now, but in the early Eighties, boy they were flying, Azzedine, Gaultier and Claude Montana, I mean they were just flying. Just amazing, Thierry Mugler, what a crew to hang around with! Come on! They were like amazing. Anything they touched turned to gold. And in New York, too, the New York crew, like the Calvin Klein crew, was amazing, Perry Ellis, like all these people are incredible.

Bill Blass, Jeffrey Beene, incredible designers! It was just incredible to be able to work with them and to go into their showrooms and to go in their design rooms. I would go and what was magic to me was their mood boards. Their mood boards were amazing because their mood boards were all the things they loved, a collection of their treasures.

AKT: That would make a fantastic book! The different designers’ boards and sketches!

DP: Oh, yeah, I have a lot of mood boards of Calvin. I remember.

AKT: You should seriously think about a mood board book. People would love it.

DP: Yeah. Like the design boards, you know, with Halston, with Joe Eula, the illustrator. Incredible designs on the boards. Incredible sketches, or Kenneth Paul Block, or going into Halston and seeing Frances Stein, who was Calvin Klein's muse. She'd come in, I’d be at Calvin's at the design room, and she would be holding this little chip, this paint chip that she found on the street, and she says, Calvin, look at this colour! It was like an oxidised colour, and she said, we should, you should do a collection with this colour, and he did.

Nona Hendryx performing at Hurrah with Patti LaBelle and Sarah Dash at the show, June 5, 1978 Photo: Ed Bahlman

AKT: The picture you have from 1981 with all the models at Calvin Klein - anybody who wants to know what Eighties hair for women looked like, this is the only picture they need. You see all the variations.

DP: Oh, man! That was one big picture here, that's for sure. That's funny, because I was friends with most of them. I would say, although everyone of those models I worked with individually, commercially, editorial. I worked with them all, so they knew me. I used to go to Calvin’s in Fire Island and stay in his house in Central Park West. But the thing is, that shot we put together - we talked about lemonade or lemons. Not that the supermodels are lemons, but the thing is, we put that shot together in ten minutes.

I mean, I had my lights ready. There's only like two, three lights on it, but I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but there was a miracle about it. It was so funny when the girls, when the supermodels, you know, Jerry Hall, Iman, Gia, everybody's in that, Kim Alexis. You name it. But the thing is when I set up that shot it didn't take much to set up the shot, because the supermodels knew exactly what position they wanted to be, and where they wanted to be in the shot. And so it was like a puzzle and everybody was ready all of a sudden. I turn around and everybody's there all ready to be shot.

Martin Scorsese’s installation at the America: An Anthology of Fashion Costume Institute exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

AKT: They know how to make it happen.

DP: They know exactly, I mean professionals, that's what it is. It's like the early days of Hollywood, you know, Gloria Swanson and Marlene Dietrich. They knew where their key light was, they knew how to milk the light. And that's why I used to tell my models, look for your key light! Learn your lighting, milk the light, work that light because there's a reason for it.

AKT: Light and shadow! Three points that were brought up during our conversation come together in the following. Did you see Martin Scorsese's Frank Lloyd Wright installation with Charles James dresses at The Met’s Costume Institute?

DP: No, I didn't. When was that?

AKT: That was during the In America: An Anthology of Fashion exhibit at the Costume Institute, where filmmakers staged rooms.

DP: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what, I did see that and I know Charles James, of course you know. But but the thing is I was just with Martin about six months ago. I love him. He's incredible, just incredible. I saw that show, that whole show, and there was so much to see. It was all encompassing, and everything was so beautiful that it needed a repeat and a repeat and a repeat visit.

AKT: Yeah, true. It was.

Sean Connery and Kevin Costner in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables

DP: Yeah, it was just too much to take in. I think I did it twice and even the little detail stuff was just amazing.

AKT: I was thinking about that when we talked about Charles James before. And in one installation suddenly there’s everything I love. There's Frank Lloyd Wright, and there's Martin Scorsese staging a funeral in Charles James gowns with Film Noir flair and shadows. It was just so spectacular.

DP: I like Martin. Also one of my other favourite directors who I worked with is Brian De Palma. I loved him, too, and I worked on The Untouchables. And also I love Miloš Forman. I worked on Ragtime. I worked on Splash with Daryl Hannah. I did some different things that were all different styles of photography. The first film was Alan J Pakula's first film.

And it was wonderful to work with him. I mean, it was literally the scene where Liza Minnelli is on that telephone. It's a 10-minute monologue. It's the first scene we shot of the movie. It was pouring rain. Out we went into this abandoned warehouse, and the construction crew set up a staircase and a landline telephone, a pay telephone.

Dustin Pittman New York After Dark at Eerdmans Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

It was Liza's first scene, the first scene in the movie, and Liza had to do a 10-minute monologue where she's talking on the pay telephone to her boyfriend who's breaking up with her. And it's nonstop. I'm literally less than three feet away from her doing this monologue. No break. I think she did two takes, maybe three takes with Alan, and it just blew my mind to watch that at my age, my first experience in the film industry. That 10-minute monologue? That was the reason why she was nominated for an Oscar for The Sterile Cuckoo.

I mean, it's so weird. One of my closest friends - I respect this photographer, Jerry Schatzberg. I love Jerry Schatzberg. Not too many people know who he is, but he’s incredible. He did Panic in Needle Park, Faye Dunaway. He's photographed everything, you know, and everybody. But the thing is he did Panic in Needle Park way back in the Seventies with Al Pacino.

Jerry told me when they did that movie, when Al Pacino was casting for The Godfather at Paramount Pictures, nobody wanted Al Pacino, but Francis Ford Coppola, he begged him. He tried and tried, and tried, and Al Pacino would do these, take after take of screen tests for Paramount Pictures and they had said, no, no, no, we don't want Al Pacino. So what happened was Al Pacino got in touch with Jerry Schatzberg and Jerry Schatzberg sent them ten minutes of The Panic in Needle Park and that clinched the deal for Al Pacino.

AKT: Didn’t Schatzberg do that film where Faye Dunaway is a former model, staying in a remote house in the dunes?

DP: Up the Down Staircase?

DJ Julio bottom left at the New York After Dark opening reception Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

AKT: No, it’s a different movie. She is having a nervous breakdown. She is living by the sea.

DP: Or was that William Klein of Polly who was Polly? Something..

AKT: No, not Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? It was Puzzle of a Downfall Child!

DP: Yeah, he did. I'm sure he did it with Faye Dunaway, because they were lovers. They were going out, you know. He didn't do the famous Terry O’Neill shot, you know, with the Oscar around the swimming pool. That was a great shot!

AKT: It is fantastic.

DP: Now, that's an unguarded moment. And, believe me, I know Faye, and it's very difficult to be able to set up that whole shot, and it took less than ten minutes. It was the night after and she was just sitting there, just ready to go to bed, and the Oscar’s on the table, and the pool’s behind, and all these newspapers, with all the reviews are there, and what a perfect moment. I mean, talk about something that's spiritual. That's a spiritual moment. Yeah. Those shots are hard to come by, and natural, too. It looks natural. But total setup.

EB: Before we go, I have to bring up James Ivory. On the couch in Slaves Of New York at the party, that's you, the one with the police bag?

Merchant Ivory

DP: Yeah. That's me. Yeah, that's where Bernadette Peters answers the door and welcomes me to the party, and then I'm sitting on the bed with what's his name? Steve. Yeah, that's me. I just saw James Ivory about a month ago in Saugerties. He's outside of Saugerties. I think he's outside of Hudson, New York. Because I have a place in the Hudson Valley, too. But the thing is, it's so funny, I just ran into him. He just did a lecture here. I missed it because I had a book signing, but he had a lecture at the Met or somewhere and I really wanted to go so bad because we did Slaves of New York, you know, with Tama Janowitz and I was there on the set all the time.

EB: Who's seated on the couch to the right of Bernadette?

DP: I forget the person's name. But there was a lot of cool people in that movie. That was a fun movie to do. And it's really weird that James Ivory picked that movie to do. You know, Merchant Ivory are known for the classics. I mean, they're beautiful films. And all of a sudden he comes to New York. He wants to do downtown New York with people being like Stephen Sprouse. That was a crazy moment. That was a crazy day. It was great days and nights, like 1987 or something.

EB: Did you see the Merchant Ivory documentary [directed by Stephen Soucy]?

DP: I never saw it. I wish I did. I have a subscription to Criterion. So I'll probably, you know, definitely watch that. But I love Merchant Ivory movies, their really incredible visions. And talk about spiritual films, just every movement and body language, every movement. They’re really really masters of attention to detail. And they certainly knew their light and shadows. That's for sure.

Read what Dustin Pittman had to say on New York After Dark, Gloria Swanson, Iggy Pop, Liza Minnelli, Lou Reed, Halston, Mick Jagger, Lucy Sante, and more with Ed Bahlman.

Eerdmans Fourth Annual Holiday Bazaar runs through Saturday, December 21.