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 Jacob’s 16mm Bell & Howell at one of Jacob’s Star Spangled to Death locations – the rubble-strewn site of the future Lincoln Center on Manhattan’s west side. Despite its brevity, Scotch Tape anticipates the epic quality of Smith’s subsequent films and theater pieces. The alternation of long shots and close-ups suggests considerable elapsed time between each set-up. Jacobs, who appears in the film, frantically dancing and mugging along with another Star Spangled to Death performer Jerry Sims, proposed that Smith call his film “Reveling in the Dumps” and even drew titles. Instead, Smith chose to name his movie after the dirty piece of stickum that had wedged out 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 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 n distribution with the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in 1962 and subsequently included in Anthology Film Archives’ Essential Cinema. (J. Hoberman )