Beat poet, actor, and Warhol friend Taylor Mead died on Wednesday in Colorado at the age of 88.
The film critic J. Hoberman called Mr. Mead “the first underground movie star.” The film historian P. Adams Sitney called one of Mr. Mead’s earliest films, “The Flower Thief” (1960), “the purest expression of the Beat sensibility in cinema.”
“The Flower Thief,” directed by Ron Rice, stars Mr. Mead as a bedraggled mystic wandering the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco with open-mouthed wonder. He carries with him his three prized possessions: a stolen gardenia, an American flag and a teddy bear.
Check out the following clip shot by Craig Highberger in which Mead talks about Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn, Max's Kansas City and getting beat up (and rejected by the hospital) for being gay in the 60's.
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…
