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Patti Astor is a Actor and Story American born on 1 january 1950

Patti Astor

Patti Astor
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Nationality USA
Birth 1 january 1950 (74 years)

Patti Astor (born ca. 1950) is an American performer who was a key actress in New York City underground films of the 1970s, and the East Village art scene of the 1980s, and involved in the early popularizing of hip hop.

Biography

Patti Astor grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio where she was a charter member of the Cincinnati Civic Ballet. Her adventurous spirit however took her to New York City at the age of eighteen (in 1968) to Barnard College but she soon dropped out to take a leadership role in the anti-Vietnam war group SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). She spent two and a half years as a young revolutionary. At the end of that war she traveled the United States and Europe with her dance act, A Diamond As Big As The Ritz.




Music
Returning to New York in 1975 Astor was in the midst of the storm in New York's legendary East Village, from punk rock at CBGB's, the new wave at the Mudd Club and independent films such as Underground U.S.A. (1980) with directors such as Jim Jarmusch and Eric Mitchell.


Actress
Astor had studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute. A queen of the downtown scene, she appeared in over a dozen experimental and low-budget films. Her entry into this genre was Amos Poe’s underground "Unmade Beds" (1976), a black and white 16mm remake of Godard’s Breathless which she acted in alongside filmmaker Eric Mitchell, Blondie singer Debbie Harry, and artist Duncan Hannah. She also appeared in such low-budget and low-audience films as Rome '78, The Long Island Four, and Snakewoman. Perhaps the most rememberd of these was Eric Mitchell's Underground U.S.A (1980), which she starred in alongside poet Rene Ricard, but none of these films were commercially successful. Her best known roles was as Virginia, the roving reporter, in Charles Ahearn's legendary hip-hop epic, Wild Style. Virginia in Wild Style is a blonde bombshell who encounters the rap and graffiti culture uptown, and introduces it to the downtown art world, a role Patti went on to perform in real life.

These films are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Wild Style was voted "one of the ten best rock and roll movies of all time".)


Gallery owner
Astor went on to co-found the FUN Gallery in early 1981 with partner Bill Stelling. This tenement storefront gallery, was the first of the 1980s East Village galleries, and specialized in showing graffiti artists, like Fab 5 Freddy, LEE (Quinones), Zephyr, Dondi, Lady Pink, and Futura 2000. It also gave important shows to Kenny Scharf (in 1981), Jean-Michel Basquiat (November 1982), and Keith Haring (February, 1983), artists with a street background who showed elsewhere. For a while the mix of worlds was unique, with the FUN crew of downtown artists and hipsters, beat-boys, rock, movie and rap stars mixing with both neighborhood kids and the official art world: museum directors, art historians and uptown collectors in their mink coats and limos. The gallery closed in 1985, by which time many other East Village galleries had opened, the interest in graffiti painters in the art world has subsided, and rents in the East Village were rising dramatically.


Current
After closing FUN, Patti then moved to Hollywood where she acted in, wrote and produced Get Tux'd starring Ice-T in one of his first movie roles and the crowd-pleaser Assault of The Killer Bimbos awarded by People magazine "Trash Pick of The Week".

Usually with

Source : Wikidata

Filmography of Patti Astor (4 films)

Display filmography as list

Actress

Assault of the Killer Bimbos, 1h25
Origin USA
Genres Thriller, Comedy, Horror comedy, Action, Horror, Crime
Themes Comedy horror films
Actors Elizabeth Kaitan, Nick Cassavetes, Griffin O'Neal, Mike Muscat, Patti Astor, Eddie Deezen
Roles Poodles
Rating47% 2.3603552.3603552.3603552.3603552.360355
Two go-go dancers, Lulu (Elizabeth Kaitan) and Peaches (Christina Whitaker), are framed for the murder of their employer by the real killer, sleazy gangster Vinnie (Mike Muscat). Picking up waitress Darlene (Tammie Souza) along the way, the three are involved in wild car chases with cops as they head south to cross the border into Mexico, where they unexpectedly encounter Vinnie in a fleabag Mexican motel.
Forever, Lulu, 1h25
Directed by Amos Kollek
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Comedy, Crime
Actors Hanna Schygulla, Debbie Harry, Paul Gleason, Alec Baldwin, Beatrice Pons, Annie Golden
Roles Mary Anne Zlutnik
Rating42% 2.1303652.1303652.1303652.1303652.130365
Une jeune femme allemande, nommée Elaine Hines, déménage à New-York dans le but de devenir écrivain. Elaine se retrouve mêlée dans un groupe de gangsters et entraînée dans une série d'aventures...
Wild Style
Wild Style (1983)
, 1h22
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Documentary, Musical
Themes Dance films, Films about music and musicians, Hip hop films, Musical films
Actors Patti Astor
Roles Virginia
Rating69% 3.4915653.4915653.4915653.4915653.491565
Wild Style takes place in early '80s New York and centers around graffiti artist Zoro (played by Lee Quiñones) and his encounters with an uptown journalist named Virginia (played by Patti Astor). More so than its story, however, the film is notable for featuring several prominent figures from early hip hop culture such as Busy Bee Starski, Fab Five Freddy, The Cold Crush Brothers, and Grandmaster Flash. Throughout the movie there are scenes depicting activities common in the early days of hip hop. These include MCing, turntablism, graffiti, and B-boying. The film demonstrates the interconnections between music, dance, and art in the development of hip hop culture.
Underground U.S.A., 1h25
Origin USA
Genres Drama
Actors Patti Astor, Rene Ricard, Jackie Curtis, Taylor Mead, Tom Wright, Cookie Mueller
Roles Vickie
Rating52% 2.6410952.6410952.6410952.6410952.641095
An older woman (Astor) looks for love with younger men in a take-off of Sunset Boulevard (1950). Punk musicians kidnap Mudd Club owner Steve Mass.

Scriptwriter

Assault of the Killer Bimbos, 1h25
Origin USA
Genres Thriller, Comedy, Horror comedy, Action, Horror, Crime
Themes Comedy horror films
Actors Elizabeth Kaitan, Nick Cassavetes, Griffin O'Neal, Mike Muscat, Patti Astor, Eddie Deezen
Roles Story
Rating47% 2.3603552.3603552.3603552.3603552.360355
Two go-go dancers, Lulu (Elizabeth Kaitan) and Peaches (Christina Whitaker), are framed for the murder of their employer by the real killer, sleazy gangster Vinnie (Mike Muscat). Picking up waitress Darlene (Tammie Souza) along the way, the three are involved in wild car chases with cops as they head south to cross the border into Mexico, where they unexpectedly encounter Vinnie in a fleabag Mexican motel.