Taylor Mead, an elderly bent figure strolling around Manhattan in his shabby coat and woolly hat, talking to cats, fumbling his money in a cheap supermarket, could be just another New York eccentric. But stand him up in front of an audience and the irreverent mischief, the vibrancy, is still there, bringing back the days when he was a powerful force, actor, writer, muse, in the underground culture of 50s and 60s America. This film sets out to ‘excavate ‘ him, literally almost, from the murky detritus of many decades in his apartment, and out of the memories of his friends. Recently on screen again in the final, movingly elegiac section of Jim Jarmusch's Coffee & Cigarettes entitled Champagne, where the talk is of the good times of life, Meads has had a late revival, that has allowed a new generation to appreciate his fine, subtle acting talents and puckish humour.

The word barfly could have been invented for him, but a barfly at once sharp and gentle, outrageous and thoughtful. He's as charming and forbearing as you like with a keen young blonde who's cornered him at a party, obviously trotting out the same old questions he's been asked a million times over, then shakes his head in rueful weariness at the camera afterwards. We see old home movies of his privileged early years at Grosse Point, a bright and jaunty child, then his early underground work, the sly smile still recognisable in the slender, impish young man he used to be. And all the time he talks. He's full of frank stories about Warhol and the Factory and all that jazz, and gossip about actor friends (including a rather startling fact about Montgomery Clift!). We follow him around Manhattan, shopping, disposing of a dead cat (not recommended), and watch him sifting through all his accumulated stuff turned up by the New York health people doing out his flat in search of infestation, some fascinating, some fetid.

In the end the film's in the can, and his apartment is clean and bare and healthy, the ‘stuff' all put in black plastic bags, most of it chucked away. But his irrepressible nature is as strong as ever. It's a film made with great affection and respect, a portrait of a one-off who has lived his life just he wanted to, despite the constraints of the time, and will continue to do so. Growing old gracefully and disgracefully at once, seedy apartment and all, we could all do worse than face an old age like Taylor Mead's.