Downtown 81

Jean Michel Basquiat was 19 years old when he was cast in Downtown 81. His twentieth birthday came during the shooting of the film. Basquiat was already a notorious member of the downtown art scene, known for his witty, omnipresent "Samo" graffiti, his unique band Gray, and his general creativity and stylishness. He was a painter without a studio, making art with whatever was at hand, sweatshirts, refrigerators, doors and discarded wood. Around this time he met Glenn O’Brien, who was working on an article about graffiti. They became friends and Glenn wrote the main part for Jean Michel. During filming, the young artist lived in the production office, where he had his first real studio space. In 1981, Basquiat was one of the art stars of the "New York New Wave Show" at PS1 Institute for Art, where he exhibited several paintings. It was the beginning of a meteoric rise, and within a year he was one of the hottest artists in the world.

The film is not a documentary, but presents a slightly exaggerated, romantic and magical version of the reality of the time. The entire cast is composed of the movers and shakers on the downtown scene. In 1981, business problems interrupted the completion of post-production, and parts of the film were lost in Europe. Finally after much searching, the missing materials were located in 1998. Post production was begun in 1999 and finished in 2000, supervised by Maripol and Glenn O’Brien.