3. Sleep (1964)
Andy Warhol spent a large chunk of his life doing things that are pretty much insane, and
Sleep - which has been toted as a bonafide excuse for insomnia - is one of those insane things. The movie, which runs at an epic length of 321 minute, simply consists of a singular shot of Warhol's friend John Giorno as he, uh, sleeps. I mean, if I had proposed that idea whilst at film school, I'd likely be driven to quit by the sound of my peers' collective laughter. When Warhol does it, everyone's all, like, "Oh, Andy. That's so original and great." I'm not bitter. Anyway,
Sleep marked one of Warhol's first forays into filmmaking, and was apparently his attempt to make an "anti-film." I've got a few questions: why did he make it 321 minutes, exactly? Why that length of time? Why not 322, or 456? And, c'mon, has anybody actually sat through this thing without fast forwarding it? Is there a human being out there who has watched
Sleep in its entirety? Answers on a postcard. Warhol's next film, of course, was
Empire, which ran at 8 hours, and exists, presumably, to with the world at large.