Sal Salandra’s textile art examines details of life that often remain hidden. It’s meant to break the perception, he says, that topics like sex, homosexuality, and kink should not be presented so publicly.
Few would disagree that his erotic scenes are provocative — a truck stop bathroom complete with bare-bottomed men and penises drawn on the wall and an interpretation of “The Last Supper” that bears similarities to an all-male orgy, for example.
“We eat. We breathe. We have sex. What is the big thing about keeping all this in a closet and hidden?” the East Hampton artist wondered in a recent interview. “My work is trying to show people it’s just another part of our lives; there’s nothing nasty or naughty or anything like that. It’s just life, and if people are happy doing something, then go for it.”
Mr. Salandra’s work may not be the proverbial cup of tea for some, but Lucio Castro, a writer and director of films, drank it up. Now, Mr. Salandra and his art have inspired a central character in Mr. Castro’s latest film, “Drunken Noodles,” which made its world premiere on May 18 at the Cannes Film Festival.
The magazine Variety called the film “a breezy, summery ode to casual sex and embroidered erotica.” And Mr. Salandra himself called it “incredible” to be enshrined on the big screen in this way.
“I sit there and think to myself, ‘I can’t believe this is all happening.’ It’s very difficult for me to wrap my head around this, that so much has gone on with my art,” he said, sipping coffee on his secluded deck in the Northwest Woods two days before he was to leave for Cannes. “People will see this all over the world and know my art. I’m Italian and emotional, so I might end up crying in the theater.”
Portraying the artist in the film is Dr. Ezriel (Ed) Kornel, the very neurosurgeon “who assured Ronald Reagan after the 1981 assassination attempt that he was still alive,” according to press materials for the film. Dr. Kornel, who resides in Wainscott, Bedford (Westchester County), and New York City, splits his time between acting and practicing medicine. More and more these days, he said he finds himself longing to spend more time on the former than the latter (with assurances to his patients that his head is still very much in the surgical game).
“I have a dual passion for sure,” Dr. Kornel said. “The recognition of my passion for acting came on considerably later than my medical passion. Initially I was very interested in music professionally — I’m a violinist and had seriously considering becoming a conductor, but I chickened out. But my father and grandfather were both physicians. Medicine was always in my life, and I never questioned whether I could do that.”
These two men came from vastly different walks of life. Mr. Salandra had a Catholic upbringing in New Jersey and cut hair as a barber in New York for almost 50 years. Dr. Kornel was born in Israel, grew up in Alabama, and was often accused of having a “Yankee accent” before he’d ever had a chance to acquire one in New York.
Now, they are inextricably linked through the film — and through the friendship that resulted.
“He came over and brought his violin and played music as I was sewing. It was so wonderful,” Mr. Salandra said. “It’s interesting when we talk. We have a lot to say to each other. He’s so educated and brilliant with surgery, and I’ve had no education, but we just communicate so easily.”
They didn’t know each other before the film, but it turned out they had some mutual acquaintances in the art world. “We’ve become very good friends. He’s a lovely man,” Dr. Kornel said.
Plus, with their graying but distinguished beards, they look like they could be cousins.
“Drunken Noodles” follows a young art student during two transformative summers that take him through “a series of unexpected intimate encounters,” according to the film’s IMDB description.
It prominently features Mr. Salandra’s “thread paintings,” in which he uses brightly colored string and thread on fabric to create his art stories. He compares it to the way painters use brushstrokes and color. These scenes start out as pencil sketches before he threads his needle and gets to work sewing and embroidering. Just don’t call it “needlepoint.”
“I’ve created my own type of stitching that lends itself to the actual piece I’m painting,” he said. “Clothes might need to have a long drape, so I can put in a long drape stitch, compared to the short and boxy needle stitch. Needlepoint restricts everything into a square look. I like to have a more natural look.”
He is self-taught. “People say, ‘You use so much color and brightness in your paintings,’ ” Mr. Salandra said. “I feel a lot of the brightness and color comes from being in an Italian family of seven children, and we were quite poor, but we were very rich with the color of Italian life around us.”
Ten of his paintings are featured in “Drunken Noodles.” But what Mr. Salandra would really love is the chance for people to view them up close.
“The threads add life to it. They add dimension and texture,” he said. “In a picture you lose a lot of the dimension. You get a sense of what it’s about, but if you see them in person, you’ll really know.”
One of his pieces features an erotic take on the classic Mona Lisa painting, “with a paddle hanging out of the frame of the painting and a door between them and three men with their butts beat,” Mr. Salandra said. But his work doesn’t address sex only. He also makes much tamer thread paintings in tribute to movies he likes, such as “The Wizard of Oz.”
The feedback he gets from people point to liberation. “The word I hear from people is that it releases them into allowing them to be who they are. That’s what my paintings are about. Be who you are, not what society or a church or whatever wants you to be.”
For Dr. Kornel, it’s not just about medicine and acting. He also writes poetry and is thinking about publishing a collection of poems. Two of them have inspired songs by the noted French composer Johan Farjot, also a friend of the doctor.
While Mr. Salandra uses physical threads, Dr. Kornel uses them figuratively — the common threads between practicing medicine and acting.
“I develop a personal relationship with my patients because I care about them and want to know about them and want them to know that I care about them,” he said. “And that emotional connection — you have to have that in acting, too. You have to be able to connect emotionally with the other actors. That’s where there’s a real similarity — the human connection.”
“Drunken Noodles” has been picked up for distribution in the United States by Strand Releasing, adding to a catalogue that already features some 300 “auteur-driven” films — including some by Jean-Luc Godard, Aki Kaurismäki, and Terence Davies.
