Booking a 36-minute blow job

Pub date February 10, 2009
Writersfbg
SectionSex Blog

By Johnny Ray Huston. From this week’s “Speed Reading” on SFBG.

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ANDY WARHOL: BLOW JOB

By Peter Gidal

Afterall Books

86 pages

$16

It’s too easy, really, to say that an 86-page appreciation of Andy Warhol’s Blow Job is the critical equivalent of the film’s title. One potentially funny — though also provocative — aspect of Blow Job is its 36-minute length, a span of time that would make any jawbone, even a purely imaginary one, ache. As filmmaker and writer Peter Gidal points out, that time span is partially achieved through projection — like Warhol’s screen tests, Blow Job is presented at the silent-film speed of 18 frames per second, though it was shot at 24 or 25 frames per second.

Blow Job — sped up to its shooting time