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In Depth
"I've had as much trouble learning to love someone, I guess, as Louie has had learning to be loved, without it throwing him off balance completely."
— Herbert Huncke
— from Huncke and Louis, © 1998 LakiVazakas
Shot in Hi-8 between 1993 and 1997, Huncke and Louis chronicles the turbulent friendship between Beat storyteller Herbert Huncke and photographer Louis Cartwright, who was murdered in New York's East Village in June of 1994. Huncke reveals his resilience by continuing to write and to share his picaresque tales up until his death, at the age of 81, in August of 1996.
My name is Laki Vazakas and I met Herbert Huncke in 1989 through my friend James Rasin (a screenwriter, he co-wrote with Jack Walls "Somebody's Sins" a script about Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith), who had met Herbert in Roger and Irvyne Richards' wonderful Rare Book Room on Greenwich Ave. From the jump I found Huncke fascinating. While his legendary storytelling talents were more than intact, he was more interested in what was happening contemporaneously in New York and the world at large than in regurgitating tales of Times Square in the forties. It was precisely this inquisitiveness that I came to respect most, for Huncke's mind never grew old, his tributaries of exploration into the human condition never ceased flowing. The fact that Herbert was an autodidact only increased my admiration for him.
Soonafter, I discovered Huncke's straightforward yet compelling writing, which emanated from the direct, nonjudgemental essence of the man. Both on the page and in person, it was obvious that Herbert possessed hard-earned insights into human nature. And yet he was capable of exquisite empathy, mainly because he had "been there". Most of all, Huncke had a unique integrity that I found refreshing.
I was told by friends that Herbert was protective of his longtime friend and roommate Louis Cartwright, but I was finally introduced to Louie and we hit it off quite well. The three of us got better acquainted during the filming of The Burning Ghat, a short film by my friends James Rasin and Jerry Poynton (who is now executor of the Huncke Estate).
After spending some time with Louie, it became apparent that he was, to some extent, living in Huncke's shadow and was having difficulty finding his own identity. Louie had taken many photos over the years (several appear in Huncke's The Evening Sun Turned Crimson and Guilty of Everything), but he seemed to be searching for his own voice. Occasionally, he would read to me one of his poems, which revealed a natural knack for word-play and surreal turns of phrase. But in typically self-deprecating manner, Louie joked that his writing would become "dumpster poetry".
Although I had videotaped some of Huncke's readings in the late 80s and early 90s, my concerted effort to document his life with Louis Cartwright did not commence until the fall of 1993 when they were living on 7th street between C and D in New York's East Village. So the first part of my video reveals the domestic life of these old friends, as they bicker, joke and share stories.
This relatively stable period ended in January of 1994, when Huncke slipped and fell on the ice, breaking his shoulder. He ended up spending ten days in Cabrini hospital; in addition to his broken shoulder, he had an ornery case of pneumonia. After his hospital stay, Herbert convalesced in the Chelsea Hotel with his friends Jason Pilarski and Taketo Shimada. While Huncke recovered, Louie lost his ballast and began a descent into addiction and paranoia, fueled by his fear that the old man would die and leave him alone. The basement apartment they had shared became a full-blown drug den with people coming and going at all hours of the night. I recorded much of Louie's disintegration, as he seemed to welcome my presence. He tried to articulate his dread and confusion, and I believe he was glad that I was there to listen. I offered to help Louie, to get him into detox or down to welfare, but he seemed resigned to his fate. There was no halting the momentum of his disintegration.
In the spring of '94, as the threat of eviction (rent had not been paid in many months) loomed, Louie continued his downward spiral, indifferent to the comings and goings of junkies and prostitutes, some of whom would give him drugs in exchange for a place to crash. At this point, Louie's behavior fluctuated wildly: one minute he would tell me that his constant shooting up was killing him, the next he would be carousing with whomever had stumbled in off the street. Huncke was in no shape to intervene in this bad scene, and contact between the two friends became less and less frequent.
Louie was evicted from the 7th street apartment on May 25, 1994 and spent his last days on the streets and in the Bowery Missions. I was with him the night before the eviction and he seemed oblivious to the chaos surrounding him, interested less in where he would be going in the morning than in getting one more shot of coke. Moreover, he seemed to welcome the threat of violence that was hanging over him as an opportunity for release. He seemed to sense that his time was up.
Louis Cartwright was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant in the early morning hours of June 6, 1994. A few hours after his murder, Jeremiah Newton, James Rasin, Dimitri Mugianis and I went to the police station to learn of Louie's violent demise. The cops seemed to be going through the motions, perplexed that anyone would be interested in the fate of a street person. After answering the cops' questions, we had the unimaginably grim task of having to wake Huncke out of a deep sleep to inform him that his friend and close companion of the past 25 years had been murdered.
Dimitri broke the tragic news as gently as possible to the old man, who was profoundly distraught. As the day progressed and more friends came by, we began to tell anecdotes about Louie and our grief was transformed by our mutual affection for our departed friend. We shared our good thoughts with Huncke. I have much of that day on tape, and it is quite moving to look at, to re-experience how our sadness, and concern for one another, unfolded and evolved.
Thanks to the efforts of Jeremiah Newton, Louie was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens, on a humid summer day. Huncke, understandably, was too distraught to attend the funeral. Members of Louie's family were also unable to attend.
Later that summer, Herbert relocated to the Chelsea Hotel, where he would spend his final two years. He revealed his resilience by continuing to write, to share his midnight stories, to give readings. He traveled to Belgium where he recorded a CD, then went on a reading tour that brought him to Hamburg and London. Back home, Huncke seemed rejuvenated by the Chelsea's "karma circuit". This period of creativity and eventual physical decline comprises the final part of my video.
Along with James Rasin, Wylie Nash and Tim Moran, I was with Herbert in his room in Beth Israel the night before he passed away. The doctors had given the old man a super-human dose of morphine to numb the pain of his failing heart and lungs. But he whispered above the lull of the drug, "Tomorrow night we're all gonna get together, talk amongst ourselves. Have a pow-wow."
Much has been made of the lost, underground America that went with Huncke when he died. But Herbert was so generous with his storytelling, his history, his feelings, that his secret, shadowy America will never be completely gone. He selflessly passed it on, and many are grateful.
I am on the verge of completing this video and will announce screenings in New York and at various festivals shortly. In the meantime, I highly recommend checking out The Herbert Huncke Reader, edited by my friend Ben Schafer. This handsome book is a wonderful tribute to Huncke.
"I want to see what makes the world tick, naturally. God, I've spent so many years grinding it out, the least I can do is is to try to look for something along the way. I'm amazed. If I was just to sit down, for example, and speak of just a few of the things I've seen that I'm sure people would have by-passed, that wouldn't have meant anything to people. But off-hand, the thought comes through my mind right now of a scene along a country highway where there were mountains in the distance and the sky alive with white rolling clouds, and fields of yellow flowers. All of those things touched me in some way."
— Herbert Huncke
— from Huncke and Louis, © 1998 LakiVazakas
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