Released in selected American cinemas on this day (22 April) in 1988: shock-o-rama faux documentary Mondo New York. Tagline: “Somewhere between uptown and downtown, heaven and hell, dusk and dawn, lies … Mondo New York.” Seeing this one was a rite of passage when I was at university (I must have seen it at the ByTowne or the Mayfair cinema in Ottawa). I haven’t revisited Mondo New York in decades, but I’m sure the something-to-offend-everyone moments have aged like an avocado. (The LA Times concluded “To call this movie trash doesn’t do it justice”. Apparently, Mondo New York was released on Blu-ray in 2023). But at the time, my bible was The Village Voice – especially Michael Musto’s nightlife column and I grasped the opportunity to finally to see the crème de la crème of boldface NYC performance artists (like Joey Arias, Ann Magnuson, Karen Finley, John Sex, Dean Johnson and Phoebe Legere) onscreen. For their segments alone, Mondo New York is a valuable time capsule. (Especially considering Sex and Johnson are long dead now). Fittingly, the first person we see is scowling No Wave death kitten Lydia Lunch, wrapped in black leather (pictured), who provided the introduction: “Welcome to Mondo New York. Home to outcasts, misfits, losers, perverts, lunatics, gangsters, pranksters, outlaws, neurotics, psychotics, maniacs, brainiacs, hippies, yippies, yuppies, junkies, flunkies, monkeys, all trying to claw their way to the top of the trash heap, all screaming me, me, me. I want my fame, my fortune, my lousy 15 minutes, my what the fuck whatever it is. You want it, we got it! It’s Mondo New York …” Within months of seeing Lunch in Mondo New York, I journeyed to a punk club in Montreal (Les Foufounes Électriques) to interview her for my university newspaper.
