Impact Addict Videos (1987)

Performance artist and UT art professor David Leslie (whose New York performance, in which viewers were offered $1,000 to knock out the artist, was mentioned in the Feb. 23 "News of the Weird") is known ­ for obvious reasons ­ as the Impact Addict. A former UT sculpture student who later moved to New York and switched to performance art, Leslie has been called by The New York Times the "Evel Knievel of performance art." Celebrated indie actor/filmmaker Larry Fessenden (Bad Habits) filmed some of Leslie's shows. Four short videos are compiled here in a sampler of performance artist and thrill-seeker Leslie's death-defying feats in the streets and clubs of Manhattan. Included: "Impact Addict," "Chinatown," "Mismatch," and "Kung Fu Fighting."