"collude" = "create cutting-edge work with an avant-garde artist"

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Sat May 11 18:28:48 UTC 2013


The opening sentence of the NYTimes's obituary of
"Taylor Mead, Bohemian And Actor", by Douglas
Martin, as printed on May 10, 2013 (B17, NY edition; B15, N.E. edition).

"Taylor Mead, a poet, actor and exuberant
bohemian who colluded with Andy Warhol in the
1960s to nurture a new approach to making movies
— sometimes spontaneously, always inexpensively
(hand-held 16-millimeter cameras sufficed) and
brashly experimental (one film consisted of an
hourlong shot of Mr. Mead’s bare posterior) — died on Wednesday in Colorado."

In the rest of the article, I didn't observe
anything illegal or unethicial ... unless one
wants to count two films exhibiting Mr. Taylor's
bare derrière.  (See below for more about the rear unguarded.)

The OED2 does complete its sense 1 for "collude"
with "to act in play merely" [no, not barely],
but I can't associate "collude" with mere playacting.

Changed to "collaborated" on-line.

Concerning the rear -- The obituary includes the following two paragraphs:

"Mr. Mead played Tarzan, edited the film and
handled the sound. On screen, his sarong kept
falling off while climbing trees, prompting a
critic to say that he really did not want to see
any more two-hour films of Mr. Mead’s derrière.

"Warhol wrote a letter to The Village Voice
saying that after searching “the vast Warhol
archives,” he could find no two-hour film of Mr.
Mead’s behind. “We are rectifying [sic] this
undersight [sic],” he said, and soon made what
would become a little-seen cult classic, the
title describing in three words precisely what
the critic did not want to see (though the
coarser Anglo-Saxon term was used instead of the French)."

Is Mr. Morgan being coy, or does the NYTimes ban "ass"?

Joel

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