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Every movie mentioned in Patti Smith’s ‘Just Kids’

Sun 23 February 2025 21:45, UK

When Patti Smith moved to New York, her whole life changed. Meeting Robert Mapplethorpe by chance in a friend’s former apartment, the pair soon became soulmates, their relationship moving between romantic and platonic. It was more than that, though – Smith saw it as “an alchemical connection,” as she once described in Robert Mapplethorpe: The Archive. She became a legendary poet and punk musician, he became a groundbreaking photographer; what happened in the years before, during, and after the heady days of the ‘60s and ‘70s is well described in her book Just Kids.

With enticing and deeply personal prose, Smith explores her experiences of falling in love, becoming an artist, meeting famous figures, and navigating the creative depths of New York (often with little money), resulting in a gorgeous and sometimes emotional memoir. One of the features of Smith’s writing style is her frequent references to other pop culture artefacts – poets, singers, models, artists, authors, composers, albums, and films.

Interestingly, Smith often refers to movies when describing outfits, drawing connections between certain pieces of clothing and actors who wore them well in iconic movies. For Smith, her interest seemed closely linked to European arthouse cinema, citing films like Breathless, Bande à part, Blow-Up, and Performance. “My uniform for Scribner’s was taken from Anna Karina in Bande à part: dark sweater, plaid skirt, black tights, and flats,” she writes.

In another chapter, she tells readers, “I approached dressing like an extra preparing for a shot in a French New Wave film. I had a few looks, such as a striped boatneck shirt and a red throat scarf like Yves Montand in Wages of Fear, a Left Bank beat look with green tights and red ballet slippers, or my take on Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face, with her long black sweater, black tights, white socks, and black Capezios.”

Despite the fact that Mapplethorpe wasn’t massively into films, Smith highlights several crucial cinematic memories tied to the artist, like his affinity for Midnight Cowboy. “It was unusual for Robert to go to a movie, but he took this film to heart. ‘It’s about a cowboy stud on 42nd Street,’ he wrote me, and called it a ‘masterpiece.’ He felt a deep identification with the hero, infusing the idea of the hustler into his work, and then into his life.’“Hustler-hustler-hustler. I guess that’s what I’m about.’”

Smith and Mapplethorpe mingled with Andy Warhol and the various artists, models, and actors that he associated with, although she wasn’t a massive fan of the iconic pop artist’s style. In Just Kids, she remembers watching the rushes for Trash, starring Joe Dallesandro, writing, “It was the first time we had been invited, and Robert was filled with anticipation. I was not moved by the movie; perhaps it wasn’t French enough for me.”

Discover the full list of movies Smith mentions in Just Kids below.