Filmmaker and actor Sara Driver

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

Director Sara Driver refined her craft during New York's indie filmmaker boom in the late 1970s-1990s. Her directorial debut came in 1981 with You are Not I, a film about a young woman who escapes a mental institution during the chaos of a pileup. We revisit our conversation with Driver from 2018 where she discussed her docmentary, Boom For Real. It tells the story of a young Jean-Michel Basquiat and the New York arts community around him. Sara currently appears in Jim Jarmusch's latest zombie flick, The Dead Don't Die.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jessie Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:13.7	It's Bullseye.
0:14.7	When my guest Sarah Driver and I spoke in 2018, she just directed a new documentary called
0:27.2	Boom for Real, the late teenage years of Xiaomi Shell Basquiat.
0:31.3	The movie shows a side of one of the great 20th century artists that isn't often seen.
0:35.9	A savvy young upstart painting on the walls all over Manhattan's Lowery's side.
0:41.2	Sarah Driver, an artist herself, lived and worked in the same art community that propelled
0:46.3	Basquiat to start it.
0:47.8	And because of that, Boom for Real kind of tells two stories.
0:51.2	There's Basquiat who shows up in archival footage but never speaks.
0:55.4	And there's New York City.
0:57.0	The 4-9-11, before Reagan, before the real estate boom.
1:01.2	Boom for Real strikes a careful balance between nostalgia and danger, between nuance and
1:06.6	hero worship.
1:08.0	Let's take a listen to a little bit of the movie.
1:09.7	In this clip, we'll hear from Alexis Adler, photographer, now an embryologist.
1:15.2	In the early 80s, she was a good friend of Basquiat.
1:17.9	Together, they'd go to concerts at local clubs in New York.
1:21.0	At the time, Basquiat was trying to find a place to live.
1:24.5	I found this place on 12th Street.
1:28.2	And this is first stable home, the first place he had a key to.
1:33.2	Sean was about 18 and I was about 22.
	...

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