“Make Me Famous” is a playful documentary about the New York Lower East Side art scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s, structured as a biography and appreciation of one of the signature characters of that era.

Filmmaker Brian Vincent, a peripheral part of this “New Wave” era, tells us the story of Edward Brezinski via archival footage and a parade of anecdotes from his contemporaries, the famous and the less famous. Thanks to their differing appreciations of the man, the film is both celebratory and bitchy, championing Brezinski at one moment, dismissing him as a narcissistic “boob” and worse in others.

The man doesn’t even merit his own Wikipedia page, but here he is, the embodiment not only of his “scene” but of the “neo expressionist” art of his day.

Vincent and co-writer/filmmaker Heather Spore give us a biography firmly-anchored in its context, a mostly-ruined East (Greenwich) Village of flops, tenements and dumpy, “low-rent storefront galleries” which was the anti-Soho of its day.

Keith Haring and (neo-expressionist) Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnabel were the art stars of that era. But down in the East Village, Brezinski and “shadow” artist Richard Hambleton and James Romberger, David McDermott and others were “living in garbage,” making art and holding openings, “manic” to “make it,” and pooling their efforts in group shows in the hope of surfing a self-branded “New Wave” in art that might mimic the New Wave in music.

Through interviews with the survivors of that scene — a model, art critics, “gallerists,” artists and collectors, Vincent takes us back to those days and the poses of the poseurs who made it, most of them 70ish dandies and artsy fashion statements to this day.

The milieu — struggle and poverty and AIDS and deaths by overdose or suicide — is summoned back to life, as is the role of villains of that time — Ronald and Nancy Reagan — skewered by satiric portraits by Brezinski and others because of the not-so-benign neglect they brought to AIDS.

Poverty made Brezinski and the rest “pure, just by default,” one of them remembers. We see it for ourselves in short films, home videos and the like of gallery openings, parties, clubs and artist-in-his (almost entirely men) element footage of Brezinski himself.

The mercurial, faddish nature of art trends is mocked — “What’s next? Oh, minimalism again?” — as dealers and collectors collectively abandoned painting, came back for “stencils” (pre-dating Banksy by a decade), embraced the realistic “replacement” art installations of Robert Gober, only to have painting come back with a vengeance in Soho and further south, in the East Village.

 Brzezinski, who fiddled with the spelling of his name (of course), made the scene by making “a scene,” infamously eating one of Gober’s “Realistic” donut sculpltures as a stunt, only to realize how toxic the damned things were. It was an incident destined, perhaps even calculated, to make it into the man’s obituary.

Vincent lets interview subjects dig themselves into pretentious holes, allows them to skewer each other and this or that critic or gallery owner only to let the gallery owner give her side of a feud or his take on who didn’t “make it” and why.

And Vincent’s film turns into a sizzle reel for a Netflix series or feature film remake as he and Spore investigate the mysterious circumstances of the struggling artist’s death. Yes, they all dream of “faking” their deaths to drive up their asking prices.

Even though they’re older, now, and dressed to the nines for their appearances on camera (most of them), even though that Capote-esque pixie McDermott lives in a manor house in rural Ireland, there’s still something punk rock about this crowd, with more than a hint of the punks who sold out. We called them “New Wave,” too.

It makes for a fun if sometimes shambolic (a few anecdotes ramble on) remembrance of a time and an artist who symbolized it. And if the filmmakers didn’t buy up a few Brezinskis before releasing this, that’s on them.

Rating: unrated, drug and sexual content

Cast: Edward Brezinski, Duncan Hannah, Peter McGough, James Romberger, Marguerite Van Cook, David McDermott, Eric Bogosian, Richard Hambleton, Marcus Leatherdale, Patti Astor, Kenny Scharf, Annina Nosei, Claudia Summers, Walter Robinson

Credits: Directed by Brian Vincent, scripted by Heather Spore and Brian Vincent. A Red Splat release.

Running time: 1:32