CarnalNation

In Begging Naked Karen Gehres documents her friend Elise, a painter and sculptor and former Times Square stripper, as she succumbs to mental illness and homelessness. What struck me most about this little gem of a film was that it isn't just another journalistic investigation of a crazy artist, but a beautiful, selfless call to save a friend's life and art, rather than a calling card for the filmmaker. (Even the photo montage of Elise through the years at the end, which also sums up in title cards that most of her creations were salvaged and reside in a Brooklyn warehouse, that she's been living in Central Park since her eviction five years ago—and that she continues to work on her art—is astounding in its compassion and humility.) I spoke with director Gehres a few weeks before the award-winning doc's latest screening at the Women Make Waves Film Festival in Taipei.

Lauren Wissot: When Elise was working in the sex industry she was part of a family—one as dysfunctional as the blood relatives she was fleeing, but a family nonetheless. What Giuliani's gentrification robbed her of was that crucial sense of community. She became isolated. She literally lost her mind from the lack of social contact. I remember reading a New York Times Magazine article awhile back that questioned whether isolating prisoners constitutes torture since inevitably after just a few months they start to go crazy. It's been documented that their brains physiologically change! Elise had psychological problems before, but she seemed to go through a form of emotional torture after the closing of Show World. She seems to be living collateral damage of Giuliani's policies. Did you make this connection right away or did it unfold slowly through the lens?

Director Karen Gehres

Karen Gehres: When Elise went back into the sex industry and started stripping at Show World she was about 34 years old. So she knew what she was getting into, but I also think it gave her a false sense of security. I think she thought she could handle all of the situations she found herself in daily. She worked five days a week, paid taxes and had created a routine. She would do her 20-minute shows five times a day and part of her routine was painting onstage. She found a way to incorporate her art into her job.

She managed for quite awhile to balance her work at Show World and her outside life. But the constant grind of getting up onstage and exposing herself to all kinds of characters began to wear on her. She told me that she started dropping acid before going onstage each night. It wasn't long before her paranoia and conspiracy theories started to surface.

Elise was still going to work and had people she socialized with every day. She was still attached to the rest of the world by going to work and having her routine. When Show World was shut and Elise lost her job it did cut off a vital social link. After that things really began to spiral. It was easy to see the connection between the closing of Show World and Elise becoming more isolated. I was friends with Elise many years before we ever began taping. So the changes in Elise, for me, were easy to detect.

LW: Elise says she could have gotten a regular job but she chose to do what she did because it gave her financial control. I think this speaks to a lot of women in the sex biz. "Most of the people in the industry have kids to feed," Elise also notes. You even interview Ron Kuby, the civil rights lawyer, who gives a history of the sex industry in Times Square pre and during Giuliani's crackdown. He reminds us that the zoning regulations and the closing of the sex businesses was a cornerstone of Giuliani's mayoral campaigns. After Show World closes Elise says, "I like dancing and I miss it. A lot." What's heartbreaking is that Giuliani's economic policies literally took away Elise and many other of these women's economic freedom. Do you see Begging Naked as making a sort of political feminist statement as well?