Flesh (1968 film)

Flesh, also known as Andy Warhol's Flesh, is a 1968 underground film directed by Paul Morrissey and produced by Andy Warhol.

Shot on location in New York City, the film centers on Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro, a male hustler who drifts through a single day in Manhattan, navigating clients, lovers, and the emotional detachment required to survive on the margins. With its explicit treatment of sexuality, casual nudity, and unvarnished portrayal of urban life, Flesh helped redefine the boundaries between avant-garde cinema and mainstream cultural taboo at the end of the 1960s. The film signaled Morrissey's emergence as the dominant creative force behind Warhol's filmmaking, and Warhol superstars Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling both made their film debuts

Widely controversial and censored upon release, yet commercially successful, Flesh became one of Warhol's most influential films, establishing Dallesandro as an icon of queer and countercultural cinema and inaugurating a loose trilogy—followed by Trash (1970) and Heat (1972)—that brought the aesthetics of the New York underground into broader public view.