Synopsis
Some
Warhol scholars date the
Kiss films from November/December 1963. However,
Warhol probably started shooting them much earlier – around August 1963 and continued to shoot them through the end of 1964, if not beyond. According to
Warhol in
Popism, they were still doing
Kiss movies in the summer of 1964 when Gerard Malanga and
Mark Lancaster did one – in August 1964. According to
Bob Colacello, the idea for
Kiss – close-ups of couples kissing each other for three minutes each – came from the old Hayes Office regulation forbidding actors in movies from touching lips for more than three seconds.
Warhol also produced a silkscreen called
The Kiss, based on a film still from the Hollywood horror classic
Dracula (1931) of Bela Lugosi biting the neck of his co-star,
Helen Chandler. The silkscreen was done on November 22, 1963. Amy Taubin, who would later become the film critic for the
Village Voice, first saw some of the
Kiss films in 1963 at the Grammercy Arts Theatre on West 27th Street. At this time the
Kiss series of films was called
The Andy Warhol Serial "because it was shown in weekly four minute installments."
