Review: 'Make Me Famous' A Breezily Chaotic Portrait of Gay Painter Ed Brezinsky

Director Brian Vincent's documentary "Make Me Famous," about gay painter Ed Brezinski is a tempest of a film that sends names, images, and anecdotes flying at the viewer in a breathless confusion. What emerges is a narrative pointillism that offers an intriguing, if incomplete, portrait of an artist whose drive and talent didn't give him what he most desired... at least, not within his life time.

The story veers from its putative subject to any number of other early '80s New York artists (Wojnarowicz, Basquiat, Haring) and the art scene itself as it shifts from focus to focus (installations to filmmaking top painting; finally, though, it's Ed Brezinski – his life, his work, his ambitions, and the mystery around his death, in 2007 – that anchors the film and brings it fully circle.

Assembled from archival video and contemporary interviews with the artists and gallerists who knew him, "Make Me Famous" presents us with enough clues about Brezinski that we get an idea of the shape of the man and his life: He drank, and he made paintings that addressed his drinking; he yearned for fame, but went about it in a fumbling, off-putting manner; he was capable of channeling "artistic tantrums," as one interviewee puts it, onto the canvas, but his tantrums could also manifest in other ways, as when he hurled a glass of red wine onto gallerist Annina Nosei, or snatched up a chemically-preserved donut from an installation by Robert Gober and devoured it, an act that sent him to the hospital and resulted in mocking headlines ("Sad Story of a Starving Artist"). A fully dimensional portrait never emerges, leaving Brezinski something of a mystery... perhaps aptly so, considering how murky the circumstances are surrounding his death, in Cannes, in 2007. (The filmmakers, determined to sort out fact from fiction, head to France late in the movie to determine whether Brezinsky is, in fact, dead.)

A more vibrant picture of the East Village art scene from the 1980s does come into focus, though – one that surveys a memory of cheap flats, constant partying, an atmosphere of creative ferment, and – once the AIDS crisis hit – tragedy, loss, and the cynical hypocrisy of those in power, and the art world's response to it.

Why was Ed Brezinski? A man whose tastes and worldview lagged a century behind? A man from a (seemingly) troubled family history? A man who greeted astonishing coincidences in an offhand, casual manner? All of this and more, it would seem. But certainly not, we are told, a businessman capable of parlaying his work into recognition and rewards.

At least now he's getting his due, somewhat, in this fast-paced, breezily chaotic picture.

Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.

This story is part of our special report: "OUTshine 2022". Want to read more? Here's the full list.