Early underground film audiences were tiny and mostly uncomprehending

Evidence

Recalling the Bleecker screening in Film Culture, Ken Kelman had a somewhat different impression: … When the first show was over, a clique, a claque of six or so, back on the west side [of the auditorium] applauded amid the numb and blind. Amid the tame, I halted, oppressed by their inertia, paused, vacillated, considered for two beats of silence or three, before I clapped solo and thus no doubt branded myself a clappy pervert, a crap happy degenerate, slobbering sadist or even, perhaps, Jack Smith. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 431

Categorization

• XREF: Contrast between the rapturous Markopoulos account of the premiere and Kelman’s tiny-audience account suggests mythical retrospection about underground film — relevant to testing claims about how scenes actually built their reputations.