VII - Amos Poe || Boy Scout Magazine

As one of the leading figures of the No Wave Cinema Movement (1976-1985) which developed out the New York East Village music and art community, Amos Poe is considered one of the world's first punk filmmakers. Contemporaries of the time included Jim Jarmusch, Eric Mitchell, Beth B and Scott B, Vivienne Dick, John Lurie, Becky Johnston, James Nares and Nick Zedd who embraced the artistic sensibilities of the avant-garde, French New Wave, and B-Movie genres. In 1975, Poe collaborated with artist Ivan Kral (bassist of The Patti Smith Group) to create The Blank Generation, which includes early performances of Iggy Pop, Blondie, Patti Smith, Television, Richard Hell and the Heartbreakers, The Ramones, Talking Heads, and Wayne County. Beginning in 1976, Poe experimented with the theme of alienating modernity amid new environments in his next three films, Unmade Beds, (1976) The Foreigner, (1978) and Subway Riders (1981). Unmade Beds is an homage to Godard's Breathless while The Foreigner, starring Eric Mitchell and Debbie Harry, shares sensibilities with Jim Jarmusch's Permanent Vacation and Susan Seidelman's Smithereens. Poe was also the director of the Public-access television cable TV show TV Party hosted by Glenn O'Brien and Blondie’s Chris Stein. Widely and wildly admired as a filmmaker, writer and producer, The New York Times has called Amos Poe a “pioneering indie filmmaker.” One of the first punk filmmakers and Eddie Cockrell of The American Film Institute summed it up in a nutshell: “Amos Poe is not afraid to simultaneously challenge and move an audience. Seldom, if ever, in American cinema has a sensibility of such avant garde and seemingly pessimistic tastes produced films of such compassion and reflection.” Boy Scout talked to Poe about culture, cockroaches and Nat King Cole.