The idea of a nude restaurant where the clientele and wait staff are composed of various members of Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd such as Taylor Mead and Viva wearing little more than skimpy black briefs may not sound like the most appetizing destination for dining. Yet, as a film, The Nude Restaurant (1967) is a lively, frequently hilarious and occasionally despairing communiqué from the underground for those who have always avoided or dismissed the experimental cinema of Andy Warhol as something boring and interminable based on seeing snippets of 1963’s Sleep (a 321 minute static camera study of John Giorno asleep in bed) or 1964’s Empire (a 485 minute single shot portrait of the Empire State Building from dusk until approximately 3 am) or just reading about them.  Continue reading →