It was the spring of 1964. I had just brought out a new issue of Film Culture magazine. There were stacks of it at 414 Park: Avenue South, in Manhattan . Park Avenue sounds very rich. But this was Park Avenue South, 28th Street Not ricb at all. It was a tax i driver luncheonette area. The Belmore cafeteria was just across the street. . 414 P.A.S. was my apanmentl1oft; .FilmMakers' Cooperative office; Film Culture magazine office; and a hangout of underground film-makers, poets, people in trans it. Bob Kaufman, Barbara Rubin , Christo, Salvador Dali, Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, Corso, George Maciunas, Warhol, Jack Smith - you cou ld find them there. The only private place that was still left for myself was in the very back, where my editing table stood. 1 slept under the editing table while the parties were going. In any case, a new issue of Film Culture was out and I had asked John Palmer, a young film-maker, age 18, who had just arrived from Boston and had settled down in New York, or. rather, in my loft. To help to carry bags full of magazines to the post office. The nearest post office was in the Empire State Building. As we were carrying our heavy loads, the Empire State Building was our Star of Bethlehem: it was always there, in front of us. leading us … Suddenly we both stopped. We had to stop to admire the Empire State Building. I don' t remember who said it, John or myself, or both of us at the same time: 175 "Isn' t it great? This is a perfect Andy Warhol movie!"
"Why don't you tell that to Andy," 1 said. I had just introduced him to Andy and he was helping now at the Factory with some daily work.
"I will," he said.
Next day he calls me.
"Andy is very excited about filming Empire.
Can you help us? We need a camera that could run for many hours,"
"O.K.: I said. I rented an Arri and got a 101 of film. Saturday July zs" we gathered in the Rockefeller Foundation' s office . It was run by Henry Romney, a friend of Andy. And there we were, on the 41st floor of the Time-Life building. I set up the camera and frame d the Empire State Building. It was 8pm, early evening. Andy was there to check framing. He peeked through the viewer, and said: "It looks great, go ahead." I pushed the button and the camera start ed. We had a lot of beer and some crackers. So we all - some six ofus - Andy, John Palmer, Romney, Gerard Malanga, my girlfriend Marie, and mysel f we relaxed and settled down for a long evening and into the night. It was not so relaxing for me, though, since I had to keep track of the rolls and had to change the film every 30 minutes and had to reload the magazines . But we all had a good time. The prem iere of Empire had to wait for almost a year. The filming was done, and we felt that that was it. We knew what it was, what it would look like, why see it? In addition, it was a very, very busy period of the Sixties, we kept doing new 176 things, and we had no time to look at what we did yesterday. Ahead, ahead we moved! So it was only March 6th , 1965 that Empire was first screened. The premiere took place at the City Hall Cinema. an old movie house at the bottom of Manhattan that was about to be tom down, J had rented it for the Film-Makers' Cinematheque screenings. Some 200 people came, but they trickled out, one by one. Still even many hours later there were. At least fifty people, with beer and sandwiches, and everybody had a great time. Andy was there too. This past July, on its thirtieth anniversary. I saw it aga in at Anthology. We had some fifty people. Five or seven stayed to the end. The film looked grea ter than ever. Even today, thirty years later, it remains one of the most radical aesthetic statements in cinema. The film begins very quietly. Yes, almost nothing happens in it - meaning, nothing in the usual. conventional movie watching sense. Some lights, film scratches. The film keep s running, time goes, the anticipation begins to mount: what will come next, maybe nothing will ever come. I 'had completely forgotten what happens in the film. 1 was sitting there full of anticipation of the unknown: Suppose nothing will happen...An hour later, suddenly: an ecstatic moment! The whole Empire lights up! What a moment! What a visual ecstasy! The audience bursts into applause...
Later, six or so hours later. when all the lights suddenly go out amazingly, Empire is still there! It' s all burned deep into our retinal memory, by no, 177 we still see all those lights, even in the darkness of the night...
Later I was thinking, why did we. that day. With John Palmer. why did we look at Empire State Building and say: Ah, this is an Andy Warhol movie!
Already in 1964 Andy had established himself as celebrator of publicly recognizable, iconic images, images that everybody saw every day and which had become imprinted in our minds, in our. eyes. Andy was attracted by such images. Be they people - Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Onassis, Mao, Elvis Presley - or objects such as Electric Chair, Empire - he was. attracted by these images of mythic proportions. Not to make money with them, no: he didn't need any money. He was obsessed by images. Like the 54th Street discotheque. He had to be there. It was also a mythic place. Not to dance: I never saw him dancing. He, actually, seldom even went inside: most of the time he remain ed in the lobby. with his Polaroid camera, snapping, snapping. He had to record these Beautiful People. He was the perfect Watcher or Gazer. Not a voyeur, really, but a seeing and recording eye . ' 1 think. it was during the winter of 1962-63 that one day I met Andy on the Second Avenue , in lower Manhattan . He asked me where I was going. I said I was going to a laMonte Young concert. He said, he will join me. So we went. LaMonte played one of those very, very long pieces, four or six hours-long variations on a single note . Andy sat through the entire piece. Andy was already doing serial pictures. repetitions of the same image. Stretching time. Jackson MacLow had already written his script/note about filming a tree for twenty-four hours. It was all in the air, the Empire. Andy was no amateur artist. He was very up-to-date with what was happening in the arts. One could say that Empire was his conversation with other avant-garde artists of his day. 1t was a conversation with minimalists, conceptualists, real-time artists 'and, at the same time, an aesthetic celebration of reality. As such, it will never date, it will always remain alive and unique.

BY JONAS MEKAS