[3] Additionally, between 1966 and 1967, he managed the Velvet Underground and Nico and co-conceived and named Warhol's traveling multi-media Happening the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

[4][5] In 1969, alongside Warhol and publisher John Wilcock, Morrissey launched the print magazine Interview hiring its longtime editor Bob Colacello in autumn 1970.

[12] Simultaneously, Morrissey began making his own short, silent 16mm comedies, including Mary Martin Does It (1962), Taylor Mead Dances (1963), and Like Sleep (1964).

[13][12] Introduced by poet and filmmaker Gerard Malanga, he first met Andy Warhol in June 1965 at the Astor Place Playhouse, where Morrissey was having a retrospective of his work.

Factory in July 1965 and featuring Edie Sedgwick, Danny Fields, Donald Lyons (a friend of Morrissey's from his Fordham University days), and folk singer Eric Andersen.

[14][15] While filming a scene in John Wilcock's Manhattan apartment for Warhol's 25-hour movie Four Stars, Morrissey first met Joe Dallesandro, who had friends who lived in the same building.

Produced for $4,000 by Warhol and starring Dallesandro, Maurice Braddell, Geri Miller, Geraldine Smith, Patti D'Arbanville, Louis Waldon, Jackie Curtis, and Candy Darling, the film was a box-office hit in West Germany, with over 3 million tickets sold.

[25][26] Returning to New York City in the early 1980s, Morrissey began a collaboration with playwright and screenwriter Alan Bowne, directing a film version of his 1981 play Forty Deuce (1982) starring Orson Bean and Kevin Bacon.

[27] Morrissey worked again with Bowne on the screenplays for Mixed Blood (1985) and Spike of Bensonhurst (1988), completing a trilogy of films taking a satirical, empathetic look at the political, social and moral decay of New York City and its outer boroughs during the Ed Koch years.