Andy Warhol said, "I'd always wanted to do a movie that was pure fucking, nothing else, the way Eat had been just eating and Sleep had been just sleeping. So in October '68 I shot a movie of Viva having sex with Louis Waldon. I called it just 'Fuck'." "Fuck" was shot in October 1968 at David Bourdon's apartment in Greenwich Village. Although Viva and Louis Waldon do have intercourse in the film, they spend much of the time talking about the war in Vietnam, cooking food and taking a shower. The blue tint of the film was not planned but actually was the result of an error. Warhol had used tungsten (indoor) film but there was sunlight streaming into Bourdon's apartment, resulting in the blue tint.
The movie was seized by the New York City police on 31 July 1969 and the Garrick Theatre's staff were arrested. On September 18th, the New York Criminal Court ruled that it was obscene and fined the theater's manager $250.00. Warhol reacted by publishing the film as a book through Grove Press. The book contained all of the film dialogue accompanied by stills from the film.
The film includes a 33-minute take (Viva's and Louis' love scene).
"Fuck" was shown only at Warhol's Factory until 1969, when all four reels that were shot were shown at a benefit for "Film Culture" magazine at the Elgin Cinema on 12 June 1969. Then on 21 July 1969, Warhol put it into the New Andy Warhol Garrick Theatre where "Lonesome Cowboys" had been playing but was dying "pretty quickly". It was a shortened version (only the last three reels lasting approximately 100 minutes) and renamed "Blue Movie" to avoid the censors.
According to "Variety," the show-business trade paper, the movie made three times what it cost in the first week of being shown.
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