Interview

Joe Dallesandro, a.k.a. “Little Joe,” was the greatest of the Warhol Superstars—the only one to really break out of the film underground and have a career in cinema. You could have credited Joe’s success to his looks, but you couldn’t discount his cool attitude. And although he’s probably loath to admit it, Joe could also act—he just acted like he couldn’t.

Joe did his first bit in Warhol’s The Loves of Ondine (1968), after accidentally walking onto the set and getting cast on the spot. He appeared in other Warhol films, including Lonesome Cowboys (1968). When Paul Morrissey began to direct Warhol’s films, Joe starred in almost every one—Flesh (1968), Trash (1970), Heat (1972), Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), and Andy Warhol’s Dracula (1974).

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Joe later moved to Italy, where he starred in European art and action films, working with directors such as Louis Malle, Serge Gainsbourg, and Jacques Rivette. He also led a rather wild life there. Then, after the death of his brother Bobby, who had worked for Andy Warhol as a chauffeur, Joe moved back to the U.S. in the 1980s and worked on a variety of Hollywood films and TV series, from Francis Ford Coppola’s TheCotton Club (1984) to Miami Vice, even appearing in John Waters’s Cry-Baby (1990).

I knew Joe at Warhol’s Factory, where, between films, he’d answer phones and sort of lurk menacingly in case Andy felt insecure. He was a hip but quiet guy with a twinkle in his eye. I always thought Joe had it together on an inscrutable, deep level. He was definitely mysterious. And he had obviously been around. In Flesh, he played a male hustler, and Lou Reed was talking about Joe when he sang “Little Joe never once gave it away/Everybody had to pay and pay . . .” But if Joe was ever really a hustler, he hustled well enough to make it as a movie star who, according to John Waters, “forever changed male sexuality in cinema.”

I always felt a connection to Joe. We were two Warhol scenesters who liked girls. Also, he filled the jeans on the outside of The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers album, while I filled the briefs inside—our secret connection. Today I can’t watch Josh Holloway, who plays Sawyer on the hit TV show Lost, without thinking he got his sexy act from Joe. Joe was a hunk, but a profoundly cool and utterly ambiguous hunk, who could be sweet, mean, blasé, threatening—whatever the moment called for. He didn’t care who loved him, young or old, male or female. He didn’t judge people. He was a creature of the 21st century, arrived early.

Now Joe is the subject of Little Joe, a wonderful documentary produced by his adopted daughter, Vedra Mehagian Dallesandro, and directed by Nicole Haeusser, which tells Joe’s story, from juvenile delinquent to Warhol superstar to European action hunk to junkie to Hollywoodcharacter actor to charming grandpa living in Hollywood and available for the right part. The film, which was the surprise hit of the Berlin Film Festival, really captures Joe with all his low-key charm. He may have started out as a wild creature, but today Joe is a kind of casual philosopher who really gets it. Joe has often played the wise guy, but here he is a literal wise guy. Here’s a bit from a monologue toward the end of the film: “I think it was because I didn’t have major hang-ups about my body when I was young, and I was so casual about nudity onscreen, that people got caught up looking at the surface. I know what it means to be judged on appearances. I’m a lot smarter than I appear to be. People would tell me I was beautiful, but I never knew what to do with that information. It didn’t register.

I never really thought of myself as a good-looking man. I’m short, I’m stocky—I don’t know where good looks come in. I know beauty when I see it. All I can say is that I had a few good photographs taken where I look better than I do in real life. Beauty is fun. It has a place. But don’t mistake it for self-worth. If you have to be beautiful, do beautiful things for someone other than yourself.”