Rubin’s casting list reveals avant-garde and pop celebrity were being merged into one scene

Evidence

That her “desired stars” included the Beatles, Dylan, and the Rolling Stones, as well as Kenneth Anger, Joan Baez, James Baldwin, Brigitte Bardot, Lenny Bruce, Marlon Brando, William Burroughs, Richard Burton, John Cale, Ray Charles, Ornette Coleman, Bette Davis, Salvador Dalí, Marlene Dietrich, Diane di Prima, Walt Disney, Marianne Faithfull, Fellini, Janet Fink (later Janis Ian), Greta Garbo, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg, Flo and Ken Jacobs, Jasper Johns, LeRoi Jones, Sophia Loren, Norman Mailer, Groucho Marx, Marcello Mastroianni, Martha and the Vandellas, Jonas Mekas, Mario Montez, Jeanne Moreau, Picasso, Elvis Presley, Lou Reed, Soupy Sales, the Shangri-Las, Frank Sinatra, Harry Smith (who would also design the movie’s “Fairy City”), Jack Smith, Ronnie Tavel, Elizabeth Taylor, Tiny Tim, Tuesday Weld, and Andy Warhol, conveys her state of mind. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 722

Categorization

• CANDY: The absurd celebrity roll-call — Greta Garbo, Soupy Sales, Tiny Tim, and Walt Disney in one film cast — is a fun, tweetable list.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core thesis: this flat celebrity egalitarianism is the cultural symptom of a scene-leveling that also flattened the distinction between artistic and commercial value — compare the boundary-annihilating logic in Communication as Culture.