“Life has its tricks. Its oddities.”

– Jackie Demaistre

Someone is hungover*

“Ein Psychogramm zweier ungewöhnlicher, aber auch extrem unterschiedlicher Frauen. Die eine, reich, exzentrisch, ihre Gefühle maskenhaft verbergend, trinkt sich bewusst zu Tode. Sie ist der Fall, der in der Statistik nicht erscheint, weil entweder zu Hause unter Valium gehalten oder unter Verschluss in einer Privatklinik. Die andere ist arm und trinkt sich unbewusst zu Tode. Sie erscheint in der normalen Statistik als Typ der haltlosen Trinkerin”

– U.O., via

An eccentric woman simply named Sie (Tabea Blumenschein), takes a one-way trip to West Berlin. Accompanied by her alter ego, a homeless alcoholic, and commented on by a Greek choir consisting of Soziale Frage (Social Question), Exakte Statistik (Exact Statistics), and Gesunder Menschenverstand (Common Sense), she drinks herself to death.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

“Twenty-three years of living with nothing but gutter hypes and junkies!”

– Florrie Fisher

Good, or bad, fortune on the day Wheel of Fortune premiered in 1975.

– How much did you win?

– 500,000 in less than an hour. It's immoral, but no more than anything else. No more than poverty or ugliness.

“Oh keiner macht's wie du, Wie du so traut sich's keiner, So wie du”

– DAF – El Que (Gold und Liebe (1981)

“We'll go back to Nice tomorrow. The Bay of Angels brings us luck.”

– Jean Fournier

“Nur ein leichtfertig Knechtlein, dem es gleichgültig war, regne oder sonnenscheine es in der Ernte, wenn nur das Jahr umging und der Lohn kam und zu jeder Essenszeit das Essen auf den Tisch, griff zum Löffel und berichtete Christine, daß noch keine Buche gepflanzet sei und alles gehe, als ob sie verhext wären.”

– Jeremias Gotthelf, Die schwarze Spinne (1842)

Someone mentions getting sober.

“When I get myself – cleaned up and straightened out, I'm going down and get a ship and I'm going to wind up in South Sea islands. That's where I wanna go!”

28 is no age to die, regardless if your name is Susan Superstar or Edie Sedgwick. But it happened, right during the wrap-up of Ciao Manhattan. Edie was gone, just like that, snuffed like so many of the other #Warhol Superstars. What did remain was footage, so much abandoned footage shot in the 60s when those stars were shining at their brightest. That footage, set in glitzy black-and-white Manhattan, is where Edie and Paul America race around town on amphetamine. Or see a doctor to get shots of some sorts.

“Speed is the ultimate, all-time high. That first rush. Wow! Just that burning, searing, soaring sense of perfection.”

– Susan

And there's colour footage too. Susan, topless, semi-(un)consciously dragged around the floor of her empty pool-turned-Superstar-temple. She babbles, drinks, dances around in her panties. And she ODs. Like Edie would even before this movie had seen the light of day.

 

They snuff so fast, these bright Superstars.