Stéphane Sednaoui | Take a Walk on the Wild Side / 2005

 the glam world in which they always imagined themselves

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stéphane Sednaoui (director) Take a Walk on the Wild Side / 2005 [4.10 minutes]

 

Since it was not common in the early 1970s to promote new songs through videos, professional photographer and video director Stéphane Sednaoui felt it necessary, thankfully, to create a fully realized chic video at 4.10 minute far flashier than even the standard music video, outside of the Bollywood-like celebrations of Lil Nas X and Todrick Hall, to accompany Lou Reed’s Take a Walk on the Wild Side in 2005. Everything about this is quite glamorous, with quick visions of the Warhol studio figures and colorful ad-like spins through the song’s lyrics that make these queers as stunningly gorgeous as they might have wished themselves to be.

     The sound is meticulous, and the varying segments need little explanation since they fully reveal the lyrics.

     While Reed sings the first stanzas about Holly Woodlawn—

 

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.

Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.

Plucked her eyebrows on the way

Shaved her legs and then he was a she

She says, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

Said, "Hey honey, take a walk on the wild side”—

 

we see her do precisely that, shave her legs, paint her lips with lipstick, hitchhike into a life “on the wild side.”

Candy came from out on the island

In the backroom, she was everybody's darlin'

But she never lost her head

Even when she was givin' head

She says, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

Said, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

     The splashy ad-like portrayals of our celebrities continues with my favorite, Joe Dellesandro.

 

Little Joe never once gave it away

Everybody had to pay and pay

A hustle here and a hustle there

New York City is the place where they said

"Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

I said, "Hey Joe, take a walk on the wild side"

     The director provides us with no shots of Joe Campbell, finishing out instead with Jackie Curtis and the three women again.

 

Jackie is just speedin' away

Thought she was James Dean for a day

Then I guess she had to crash

Valium would have helped that bash

She said, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

I said, "Hey honey, take a walk on the wild side"

    If Reed’s gravely-voiced rendition is not quite in keeping with the slick artistic shots of Sednaoui’s images, they nonetheless reveal what the lyrics are proclaiming: when you take a walk on the wild side you sell your soul to the devil of commercial notions of style and beauty, underneath of which you have little identity left.

     The nameless “colored girls” sing out the true meaninglessness of their existence.

 

Los Angeles, May 30, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2025).

 

Sheila Graber and her students Fiona, Louise, and Valerie | Walk on the Wild Side / 1975 [music video]

school girl’s tribute

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sheila Graber and her students Fiona, Louise, and Valerie (directors and animators) Walk on the Wild Side / 1975 [4.45 minutes] [music video]

 

Today, I doubt that what teacher and famed Paddington animator Sheila Graber accomplished with her students in the British King George School would even be permitted; certainly not in the US.

    Not only encouraging her your female charges in the school’s Cine Animation Club, but helping them to accomplish it, Graber allowed students Fiona, Louise, and Valerie to visually reinterpret the racy lyrics of the then popular song.

    Most of what her students proffer as “animation” are basically pin-up like pictures of the various celebrities, although there is a wonderful film clip of Candy Darling.

 

     And Little Joe Dellasandro is portrayed in cartoon form as just that, a young boy demanding money for his sexual actions.

  

      But the best of their images are those of “the colored girls” who sing the wonderful refrain:

                “And the colored girls go                      

                  Do-do-do, do-o, do-do-do

                  Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do

                  Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do

                  Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do

                  Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do

                  Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do

                  Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do

                  Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do, do”

     The girls award themselves their own X certificate and declare their work censored, while suggesting that perhaps the wild side to which the lyrics keep referring are perhaps limited only to New York City. Touché.

     Too bad the musical quality to this video is so very poor.

 

Los Angeles, May 30, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2026).

 

Douglas Messerli | Lou Reed’s Queer Walk [Introduction]

lou reed’s queer walk

by Douglas Messerli

 

Rock musician Lou Reed released the song “Walk on the Wild Side” on his second album Transformer in 1972. David Bowie and Mike Ronson produced the record and with the song “Perfect Day,” released it a double-sided record that received enormous coverage on radio becoming his biggest hit and identifying song. The single made it on the 100 chart to number 16 in 1973.

    The song, whose title was inspired by Nelson Algren’s novel of 1956, A Walk on the Wild Side, features five figures, most of them perceived as Andy Warhol’s “superstars,” featured in his and Morrisey’s films and photos: transgender actors Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling, actor and drag queen Jackie Curtis, male hustler Joe Dellasandro, and the gay “sugar plum fairy” (drug dealer) who acted in Warhol’s My Hustler, Joe Campbell, who previously had been Harvey Milk’s partner. 

  

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     The film’s major focus is on how they transformed themselves by “walking on the wild side” as transgender figures and male hustlers into drugs, prostitution, and oral sex, all subjects that were considered very risqué at the time of the recording’s release. And today, given the rise of negative reaction to transgender individuals, US citizens of today might find this work even more disturbing if not shocking.

     RCA provided radio stations with a slightly censored version of tape in 1972, deleting the reference to oral sex and omitting the line “colored girls,” changing it to “and the girls.” Yet most radio stations of the day determined to play the uncensored version.

     The song was inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.

     In 1975 teacher Sheila Graber at King George School with her Cine Animation Club made an animated version of the song on video. The crude work that she and her students created is still a delight today.

     In 2005, French photographer and video artist Stéphane Sedanoui made a video of the song featuring glamorous and rather sophisticated 10-minute movie featuring four of the five figures. Sedanoui had previously directed videos for Massive Attack, Bjork, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Madonna, Tina Turner and several others.

 

Los Angeles, May 30, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2026).