Rolling Stone
December 6, 1970

“TRASH”

By Michael Goodwin

Trash        Trash is a masterpiece. A brilliant, funny, tragic, moving film..... The film is all-inclusive, embracing the totality of the American ambience in a series of archetypes that are no less horrifyingly accurate for being funny......

        Joe Dallesandro is the hero, and the film follows him through a series of picaresque encounters with various women in his continuing, and unsuccessful attempt to get an erection. Since he shoots heroin, his sex life has been less than satisfactory (although it doesn’t bother him - nothing bothers him - it’s the women who seem to sweat it).

        A silicone topless dancer with a remote control light show; a rich acid head; Holly Woodlawn; (Joe’s old lady, played in drag by a great female impersonator); a middle-class plastic lady played by Jane Forth; Holly’s pregnant sister --- they all try to ball him him, and they all fail. In the process , Holly shoots up a high school kid from Yonkers (whom she picks up in front of the Fillmore East) and blows him. Joe takes a bath, Holly masturbates with a beer bottle, Joe shoots up for various people, Joe and Holly try to get on welfare and don’t make it, etc. a day or two in the life.....

        One is tempted to deal with Trash in the terms of Pilgrim’s Progress, Moby Dick, Naked Lunch, or some other parable of American consciousness, because it has succeeded where Hopper and Antonioni (among many others) have failed: creating an image that will contain 1970 America. Joe, as an impotent junkie, speaks directly to the point, whereas Billy and Captain America, or Antonioni’s exploding Technicolor dream house, seem in comparison to be hardly more than symbolic Crackerjack prizes intended to get the “youth market” into the theater. Easy Rider and Blow-Up will be quaint period-pieces in 20 years; Trash, I believe, will be even more interesting then than it is now.

        Joe Dallesandro carries the weight for nearly all the other characters in the film. Moving passively through a series of sexual encounters, he takes on the sins of his would-be partners in a way that is very Christ-like; indeed, the scene where he is thrown naked into a hallway (Jane Forth and her husband think Joe has OD’d on heroin, and don’t want a dead body lying around their apartment) is unmistakably reminiscent of the deposition from the cross. Joe manages to raise his head and look around him. “Shit”, he mutters. It seems like the only appropriate comment under the circumstances.

        Trash doesn’t paint a pretty picture, but that’s the way it is. The final sequence in the film would be heart-breaking if it wasn’t so funny; Holly feigns pregnancy by stuffing a pillow into her dress, and an eligibility worker (wearing a peace symbol) comes by to check them out for welfare. Joe has agreed to kick his habit if they can get on welfare, but the eligibility worker explains that they can’t get on welfare because Joe is a narcotics addict. If Joe got into a Methadone program they could get welfare, he says, but the Methadone program has a months-long waiting list. However, the eligibility worker offers to get them on welfare anyway if Holly will give him her silver Ruby Keeler pumps so he can make lamps out of them.

  • “But they’re my only shoes”, she says.
  • “You can buy new ones with the welfare money”, says the eligibility worker.
  • “Fuck you”, says Holly, and throws him out.
  • “What’ll we do now”, asks Holly.
  • “Oh, the same as we did before”, says Joe.
  • “Joe, let me suck your cock”, says Holly.

And that’s where we came in, more or less.