Scotch Tape

Jack Smith’s first released movie is an apparently edited-in-camera 100-foot roll of Kodachrome II shot in 1959, using Ken Jacobs’s 16mm Bell & Howell at one of Jacobs’s Star Spangled to Death locations. Smith chose to name his movie after the dirty piece of stickum that had wedged itself inside the camera gate and was consequently printed throughout in the upper right corner of the frame. For a three-minute film, Scotch Tape carries considerable conceptual weight. The title anticipates Andy Warhol’s go-with-the-flow acceptance of cinematic ‘mistakes,’ even as it draws the viewer’s attention to the perceptual tension between the film’s actual surface and its represented depth. Scotch Tape’s audio accompaniment was created, some three years later, by Tony Conrad, who, on Smith’s instructions, cut Peter Duchin’s rhumba, Carinhoso, to match the footage. The resultant sync event, Conrad recalled, had a decisive effect on his own life, inspiring him to become a filmmaker. Flaming Creatures aside, Scotch Tape would be Smith’s only completed film – placed in distribution with the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in 1962 and subsequently included in Anthology Film Archives’ Essential Cinema.

J. Hoberman / Live Film! Jack Smith!