Warning: NSFW AT ALL

Speaking of Helen Mirren, are you hip to this?




Here's the thing: the trailer IS the movie. Here's a little recap from (ahem) Men's Vogue:

The Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli often appears in his own videos, usually in modest roles, like the debauched Roman emperor Caligula in Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's 'Caligula,' the sleeper hit of the 2005 Venice Biennale and the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and the centerpiece of his recent show at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. In this five-minute trailer for a nonexistent movie, Vezzoli used Hollywood production values and an onslaught of star turns—Benicio del Toro, Helen Mirren, Michelle Phillips, Karen Black, Courtney Love—to both send up and pay homage to the original movie while simultaneously evoking the decline of Rome, the decadence of Hollywood, and the futility of modern-day imperialist politics. (In one outrageous scene, Mirren, trailed by two naked boys on a leash, makes regal pronouncements in front of, ahem, a white house.) Only after the convincingly professional trailer—tricked out with a ponderous voice-over and in-your-face graphics—has ended and the credits have rolled does Love appear, also as Caligula (or, perhaps, as another alter ego of the artist), in a loose black toga, laughing wildly.

The original 1979 Caligula, written by Vidal and produced by Bob Guccione of Penthouse fame, was disowned, at one time or another, by nearly all involved: Vidal and Guccione battled on the set; then Guccione fired the director, Tinto Brass, and inserted reams of hard-core sex. "I was fascinated by this project that, for me, was a metaphor for creative conflict," Vezzoli says of the Guccione-Vidal dust-up. "On the one side, you have a pornographer turned producer. On the other, the greatest living writer." It seemed like the perfect vehicle for a trailer. "Trailers are a shrunken form of narrative," he says. "But in the case of a trailer for a movie that doesn't exist, it's like reflecting a vacuum. And sometimes that's what Hollywood is about." Naturally, Vidal approved of the venture, and agreed to appear, telling Vezzoli, "I'll be your Suetonius"—a sly reference to the learned Roman who wrote, among other lost masterpieces, Lives of Famous Whores. Almost invariably, visitors at the Whitney Biennial seemed pleasurably startled by Caligula (and by Love's surprise appearance, just when they were gathering their belongings), and they tended to stick around for repeat viewings.

In the early nineties, while he was still at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in London, Vezzoli set himself apart from headline-grabbing young Brits like Damien Hirst (famous for suspending sharks in tanks of formaldehyde) by spending weeks at a time embroidering, turning the prostitutes' calling cards he found in London phone booths into quaint samplers: "Oooh! I'd love some hanky-panky!" or, "I'm hot and horny—Give me a call." He went on to use embroidery ("the kind of technique you do ducks with") to examine Hollywood legends like Marlene Dietrich.

Vezzoli himself possesses big-screen charm; he uses letters and flowers to persuade movie stars to work for free. In fact, charm may be his real medium: As with Christo, whose Wrapped Reichstag and Central Park Gates are a testament to fund-raising and political consensus building, Vezzoli's elaborate productions would not exist without his ability to charm. Actresses like Catherine Deneuve and Jeanne Moreau—both of whom appeared in his Comizi di Non Amore ("Non-Love Meetings"), a send-up of cheesy TV dating shows—sign on quickly, because European actresses, Vezzoli says, are artists. But approaching Courtney Love, known more for her breakdowns than for her considerable acting talents, to play the surprise role in Caligula was a more daunting task. "We get on the phone in this conference call and I'm so scared my heart is beating," Vezzoli remembers. "She doesn't know who I am, of course. And I explain about Caligula, and she says, 'Oh, I've seen Caligula—the Guccione version—150 times.' And then she says, 'Who else is in it?' And I say, 'Helen Mirren.'?"Apparently, Vezzoli's instinct for star placement was yet again on the money. "I'm going to do it," Love told him. "With Helen Mirren, I would even do a remake of Showgirls." Let's hope Vezzoli takes the hint.