There he created a series of scruffy, deeply personal, short Super 8mm and 16mm films in which he combined darkly sinister images to explore the manner in which the individual is constrained by society.
[3] Rising from the ashes of a bankrupt and destitute 1970's Manhattan, and reacting to the modernist aesthetic of 1960's avant-garde film, No Wave filmmakers like Mitchell embraced their brand of DIY vanguard moviemaking.
Much like the No Wave music of the period (from which the movement garnered its label), Mitchell pillaged the nascent East Village art scene for co-conspirators like Lydia Lunch, James Chance, Debbie Harry, Richard Hell, Patti Astor, Vincent Gallo, John Lurie, Steve Buscemi, Nan Goldin, Cookie Mueller and many others.
[4] Mitchell's influential stylist neo-film noir films were showcased at Colab's New Cinema on Astor Place and at punk rock venues like the Mudd Club, CBGB and Tier 3.
Indeed, Kidnapped was inspired by Vinyl (1965), a black-and-white experimental film directed by Warhol at The Factory starring Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick and Ondine - an early adaptation of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange.
Coolly, they talk with each other (often reading directly off the script that has been taped to the wall) and dance and fight with each other as the no wave music of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks plays on the stereo within the movie set.
The film's co-star is a glamour-ridden jaded starlet named Monica, played by Jennifer Miro, who in actuality was a member of the San Francisco punk rock band The Nuns.
Cameo performances are given by Patti Astor, Rene Ricard, James Nares, Scott Wardell, John Lurie (of the Lounge Lizards) and Arto Lindsay (of the seminal no wave band DNA).
[10] Made for $25,000 (considered by no-wave standards a big budget), written in two days and created in three weeks,[9] Underground U.S.A. featured Patti Astor as Vicky, an aging actress who still thinks of herself as young and attractive and, in her vulnerability, falls for a hustler named Victor (played by Mitchell).
Even with cinematography by Tom DiCillo, sound by Jim Jarmusch, editing by J.P. Roland-Levy and the authentic locations of the Lower East Side art scene, the film was not a huge commercial success, but did succeed in bringing in a whole new audience to No Wave Cinema.
[10] It challenged both commercial movie making and the avant-garde with a style that combined amateur enthusiasm with sophisticated visual know-how and a sharp sense of social and political observation diametrically opposite of the staid formalism of the experimental film establishment.