La Jolla: Museum to screen Warhol’s rarely seen ‘San Diego Surf’

In 1968, Andy Warhol and his Factory gang -- Viva, Joe Dallesandro, Taylor Mead and others -- came to the beach in La Jolla to make a movie. Warhol and Paul Morrissey shot the 16-millimeter film “San Diego Surf,” and about a month later Warhol was shot and severely wounded after he returned to New York.

The film was never released -- until recently. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City showed it twice last year, and now the La Jolla site of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego will hold the West Coast premiere of the movie March 15.

The film had been partially edited at the time and editing was completed by Morrissey decades later in a commission from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts. (The New York Times questions whether this is a Warhol film since Morrissey did so much of the editing.)

So what’s the movie about? “Its loose narrative concerns an unhappily married couple (Taylor Mead and Viva) that rent their beach house to a group of surfers,” says a museum statement.

The screening starts with a happy hour at 4:30 p.m. and a chance to see Warhol and Morrissey at work on the film in footage shot by Lee Pratt of La Jolla. The film will be screened at 5:30 p.m.

Tickets cost $8 for general admission, $5 for students and seniors.

Contact: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego-La Jolla,

Mary.Forgione@latimes.com
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