"Begging Naked" labor of love, sex work, art
BY MARLI GUZZETTA INDEPENDENT ARTS EDITOR
"Elise wanted to talk, and she never wanted to stop."

From left: One of Elise's paintings and several of her handmade dolls.

So begins Karen Gehres description of the nine years she spent documenting her friend, Elise - an artistically gifted woman who turned her first trick as a teen runaway before bumping like a pinball against the bright lights and bells and whistles of New York's sex industry, eventually sliding into the dark pocket of mental illness and homelessness. Premiering at the Nantucket Film Festival, it's Gehres first film.

"It's been a totally draining experience, because it's so close. I would never make a movie about a homeless person I met on the street. I wouldn't make a movie about stripping. It was an exercise," Gehres said. "Elise wanted to tell her story, about her past as a runway, and I was just starting to use the camera. As things began to snowball, I couldn't quit. Ever. Even though many times I wanted to."

The two met over a decade ago, when Gehres, also a painter, was working at an art supply store in the East Village, where Elise would purchase the paints she used on stage at a strip club, where her act involved painting rich and graphic images of the dancers and the customers while performing her strip.

"It was complicated stuff done in 20 minutes," Gehres said.

At the time, Elise was working at Show World, a Times Square venue that went bust when Giuliani wiped the area clean of the sex trades. Elise lost her job and quickly went from being a tax-paying erotic dancer who used LSD to an unemployed tenant facing eviction.

"I did everything to stop that eviction. We went to court many times, begging the judge. … But with the eviction coming, she didn't want to hear it," said Gehres, who said it was about this time that Elise began losing her grip on reality. She thought a family was going to save her, because she was the Swanson TV Dinner heiress."

At no point did Gehres want to be an objective documentarian.

"I don't think you can be objective. I don't know if I'd want to, especially with her story. You're watching this friend age drastically and basically lose her mind. … And I can't just talk to her and nod and get out of there as fast as I can, the way people do," Gehres said. "I still talk to her as if she's the friend that I met. I still say, 'This isn't real. This isn't happening. This family isn't coming for you.' I just wanted my old friend back."

Elise wound up on the street - and Gehres followed with her camera, followed for years, listening to Elise tell her stories, many of which, Gehres said, were "hilarious" - like her recounting of a trip taken with one of her customers, a married minister, where Elise would paint the rainforest, or her tale of a regular who brought a magnifying glass to the strip club and one day caught a glimpse of something that made his eyes go wide as moonpies in the magnifier.

"If you see the movie, she's really, really funny. You get attached to her because of her sense of humor," Gehres said. "I think that she's such an amazing character. She's a very charismatic person. You can't just dismiss her as a crazy woman, an ex-prostitute or an ex-junkie She's many, many things - intelligent and unbelievably talented and also a great friend, very loyal. People get very attached to her and can't stop thinking about her."

Today Elise is still in Central Park, according to Gehres. At the age of 41, Elise is still constantly creating art, including baskets out of telephone wire and clothing from donated materials. In addition to painting, she also makes dolls, jewelry and sculpture. "She can do anything, it doesn't matter what the medium is," said Gehres, who is keeping all of Elise's works in storage and acts as a broker for Elise's work, returning all of her profits in cash, because Elise refuses to get a bank account. (You can see some of Elise's works at http://web.mac.com/kgehres.)

In following Elise, Gehres strengthened her own artistic muscle.

Gehres said the film isn't making any political point. "I'm not taking a pro-sex work standpoint or blaming anything on the Disneyfication of Times Square," she said. "I'm just showing how one thing effects another."

She is speaking, it seems, of herself as well as of Elise.

"I needed to have this film happen, because for many, many years, it was just Elise and me, going over the footage - going over it and over it and over it. It was a very intense, kind of horrible process. But I couldn't stop until this thing got out for people to

see." I
When: Thurs., June 14, 2:30 p.m.
and Sun., June 17, noon
Where: Starlight Café
Cost: $12; Buy tickets at the door
For more on the film, go to
www.beggingnaked.com.