Andy Warhol's Factory People: Welcome to the Silver Factory, Speeding into the Future, and Your Fifteen Minutes Are Up

by Catherine O'Sullivan Shorr

Overview

Based on the television documentary: A three-part oral history of the Pop Art sensation’s inner circle and their dazzling world of art, drugs, and drama.
 
Featuring a new introduction by the author, special to this collection, this three-part companion volume to Emmy Award–winning Catherine O’Sullivan Shorr’s documentary Andy Warhol’s Factory People is an unprecedented exposé of an exhilarating and tumultuous time in the 1960s New York City art world—told by the artists, actors, writers, musicians, and hangers-on who populated and defined the Factory. “Different [in] its avowed bottom-up approach: Warhol as a function of his followers is the idea. This time . . . it’s the interviews that tell the tale” (Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times).
 
Welcome to the Silver Factory: In 1962, frustrated with advertising work, Warhol sets up his legendary studio in an abandoned hat factory on Manhattan’s 47th Street. The “Silver Factory” quickly becomes the hub of Warhol’s creative endeavors—the space where he constantly works while an ever-changing cast of characters and muses passes through with their own contributions.
 
Speeding into the Future: In a peak period from 1965 through 1966, Warhol creates the notion of the “It Girl” with ingenuous debutante Edie Sedgwick; discovers Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground, and Nico, the gorgeous chanteuse who becomes his next “It Girl”; and directs—with Paul Morrissey—his most commercially successful film, the art house classic, Chelsea Girls.
 
Your Fifteen Minutes Are Up: By 1967, it seems that the Factory has outlived its fifteen minutes of fame. Superstars like Edie Sedgwick fall victim to drugs. Factory denizens have falling-outs with Warhol, as do the Velvet Underground, who are also caught up in disputes of their own. Into the chaos comes radical feminist Valerie Solanas, who shoots Warhol and seriously injures him. He survives—barely—but the artist, and his art, are forever changed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504055994
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	09/18/2018
Series:	Andy Warhol's Factory People
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	795
File size:	55 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Catherine O’Sullivan Shorr is an award-winning writer, film and sound editor, and documentary filmmaker. She earned an Emmy Award for her editorial work on the TV movie The Day After for ABC, and an Oscar nomination, along with Richard Shorr, for their contributions to the feature film Die Hard. Her motion picture credits also include: Prizzi’s Honor, Predator, A Soldier’s Story, and the César Award–winning film Farinelli. O’Sullivan Shorr’s stories and articles have been published in newspapers and journals both in the United States and abroad, including the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the New York Press. She attended St. Lawrence University and the Universidad de las Américas in Mexico City. O’Sullivan Shorr splits her time between Paris and Los Angeles, and she writes in Siesta Key, Florida.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

WELCOME TO THE SILVER FACTORY

I don't have any favorite color. I decided ... silver was the only thing around.

— Andy Warhol

The Factory ... It's something that you can't recreate, as when we were making films there, with the actual people there. As when we were making art, with the actual people there ... Imagine living and working in a place like that!

— Billy Name: Warhol Photographer, Factory Foreman & 'Gatekeeper'

The Silver Factory was considered the first Factory, which Billy Name decorated with tin foil and where all the notoriety first started. Sure, there was amphetamine, but the craziness also energized everybody.

— Vincent Fremont: Founding Director, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

I'm buried alive in museums, Cinematheques and foundations. And with the Andy Warhol Foundation, we have wonderful movies with great character, even almost a plot, but the museums show twelve hours of the Empire State Building and no one comes to the other movies.

— Taylor Mead (1924–2013): Underground Poet, "The First" Underground Star

I was born Isabelle Collin-Dufresne, and I became Ultra Violet in 1963 when I met Andy Warhol. Then I turned totally violet, from my toes to the tip of my hair. And to this day, what's amazing, I'm aging, but my hair is naturally turning violet. It's all natural ... Maybe it's a miracle!

— Ultra Violet (1935–2014): Artist, Socialite, Warhol Superstar

I'm a cult star! I'm a cult star, because when I was with Warhol in New York, I was probably the only person there who was also very good, who thought she was going to be an actress, not just a 'star.' I got very, very strange roles because of it.

— Mary Woronov: Writer, Artist, Actress, Warhol Superstar

Andy and Serendipity became connected very early. We opened in 1954, down in the basement, and he just stumbled down with a portfolio of rejects. I was waiting for him with open arms.

— Stephen Bruce: Restaurant Proprietor, Serendipity III

I just felt the paintings were not interesting. They seemed to be spoofing all kinds of things. You weren't really sure what he was going to do.

— Leo Castelli (1907–1999): Famed Art Dealer and Gallery Owner, on Warhol's early promise

Andy would do incredible things when I'd do a film. He'd say "Look at the camera, and don't blink your eyes."

— Baby Jane Holzer: Warhol Star, Girl of the Year, 1964

Oh, it's so true to life. It's not even acting! It's just so candid, like the camera isn't there at all, like Andy says.

— Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971): Warhol Icon, Girl of the Year, 1965

Andy was Edie's introduction to New York. She became 'Girl of the Year' in about six minutes, and everyone wrote about her style and her leather rhinoceros and her short hair and giant earrings in the midst of all the evil and squalor. She was the princess amongst queens. And so we loved her.

— Danny Fields: Edie Sedgwick confidant, Music Entrepreneur (The Ramones)

Andy came and wanted to see the exact spot where Freddie Herko had fallen. He looked up at the window and said, "Gee, if Edie kills herself I hope she lets us know so we can film it."

— Robert Heide: Playwright, Warhol Confidant

Andy said, "And what do you do?" And my father beamed proudly and said, "I just sprung her from jail." Andy's eyes grew wide. "Really! Tell me all about it."

— Bibbe Hansen: Youngest member of Warhol Family

Andy wanted me to join the Factory. They were starting to make movies. No script. Nobody knew what to do. Andy looked like he was lost. I said, "Oh boy, I can't work with these people." But (actor) Allen Midgette said, "Come on! He wants you."

— Louis Waldon (1934–2013): Actor, Artist, Warhol Star

The Warhol thing was never who I was. I mean, a lot of people now, because I impersonated Andy and that whole jazz, they actually believe I looked like him, and they believe that I am just like him probably. Except that I don't have money.

— Allen Midgette: Actor, Warhol Star

The Velvet Underground would play the music and I would go through my routines, which I had mapped out for each song. I was very energetic in those days. I loved.

— Gerard Malanga: Warhol Factory 'Prime Minister,' Poet

They had been thrown out of a place in the Village on 3rd Street, the Café Bizarre, because people couldn't dance to their music.

— Nico (1938–1988): Singer, Warhol Icon, Velvet Underground Star

Oh, The Café Bizarre, that's how lame it was. Can you imagine playing at the Café Bizarre? The only bizarre thing about it was that it existed.

— Lou Reed (1942–2013): Rock legend, Founder of 'The Velvet Underground'

Andy just said, "Write about whatever you want." The Velvets did songs about heroin and bondage and forbidden subjects, brilliant stuff that we weren't hearing at all!

—'Leee' Black Childers (1945–2014): Factory Acolyte, Photographer, Music Mgr. (David Bowie)

Chelsea Girls was asked to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Andy invited me, Susan, Nico, Ultra Violet ... They didn't show the film — they said it was too dirty!

— David Croland: Publisher, LID Magazine, young member of Warhol Family

When 'Chelsea Girls' happened, it would just be outrageous. You see, you'd do anything, thinking that it would never come out, that it would just go in a box.

— Brigid Berlin: Warhol Muse, Movie Character, and Confidante

That's when he was permitting people to improvise. It did not come out of thin air, there was already the background — the passion was there for cinema. Andy came in during that very exciting period. And he got the bug.

— Jonas Mekas: Founder, Film-Makers' Cooperative, Anthology Film Archives

We were all drama queens. The Silver Factory was the place to throw out tantrums, show our outfits — just blossom. We only got a hundred dollars as salary, but no one noticed that. I mean, to suddenly become a star. You were a star!

— Ivy Nicholson: Warhol Superstar

Andy was a user. Andy was a homosexual. He was not a 'woman lover.' He was a woman 'be friender' and a woman manipulator. Andy had a mother fixation. Andy had a Madonna fixation. But Andy didn't love women.

— Nat Finkelstein (1933–2009): Photojournalist, Black Star Agency, Warhol Chronicler, 1964–67

Do you know what my opinion is of Andy? I think he's the Queen of Pop art!

— Viva: Artist, Warhol Superstar

Andy Warhol tries to say nothing and succeeds. Other filmmakers try to say a great deal, but some uninitiated viewers might find them confusing. Either way, it's a long way from Hollywood.

— David Dugan: CBS Newsman, 1965

I spent years in Paris as a poet and a painter. Then I came to New York and went to Max's Kansas City ... I found a Fellini movie. Because I would be taking so many pictures of the same favorite subjects — Taylor, Viva, Eric, Andrea, Ondine, Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn — they didn't believe I had film in the camera.

— Anton Perich: Photographer, Filmmaker, Painter

So we went to Max's Kansas City, and Jackie (Curtis) devised this plan: "Why don't we just sign Andy Warhol's name, and order steak and lobster and wine?" And Andy got all the bills.

— Holly Woodlawn: Drag Queen, Warhol Superstar, 'Flesh,' 'Trash'

We all went out to this restaurant in the Village. When the check came, nobody had any money. Holly said, "Wait a minute; I'll be right back," and she went down the street and did a couple of blow jobs. That's how we paid the bill.

— Geraldine Smith: Warhol Star, 'Flesh,' 'Trash'

These pioneer female impersonators had such a hard time, making very little money, if they made any at all.

— Paul Morrissey: Filmmaker, Warhol Co- Director

There were strange people moving about (Warhol's) circles. He himself was mostly an observer, not so much a participant as a man who watched and recorded them.

— Ivan Karp (1926–2012): Former Castelli Assistant, Longtime Warhol Art Dealer

I think Andy Warhol's imagery and consistency has made him one of the leaders in the Pop art field. Whether that's enough, I'm not sure.

— Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994): Curator, contemporary art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC Cultural Affairs Commissioner

Oh, Henry, do you think social imagery is going to come in? You know, like Bob Dylan singing his funny songs?

— Andy Warhol

Warhol is a cultural figure, but not an artist.

— Bob Dylan

The Factory, from the moment it opened its doors, was the most intelligent art commune in the world. It was, on a very high level, a think tank, a communal artistic gathering place.

— Victor Bockris: Biographer, 'Warhol,' 'The Velvet Underground'

We were all people who had this divine will driving us, saying, "Art! Art! Art! You just have to create, create, create!" It doesn't matter what you do; if you paint or dance, or make music, use everything! In New York, in the Village, you are free to create.

— Billy Name

CHAPTER 2

BEYOND THE BEAT GENERATION

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness ...

— From 'Howl,' by Allen Ginsberg

Historians would agree that Warhol's Factory and its groundbreaking openness would never have come into existence without those rebels of the late fifties, commonly referred to back then as 'Beatniks'— a title they hated, with some justification. According to Warhol biographers, most of whom get their facts and dates straight but have some conflicting views, "Andy Warhol was influenced by the Beats," and he was also "not even remotely interested" in those scruffy poets, writers and irredeemable reprobates that populated downtown New York. Well, as Warhol once proclaimed: "Everybody is right, and everybody is wrong." He was obviously influenced by the manic consumerism of early sixties' Madison Avenue and its 'Mad Men'— he was emphatically one of them. But he also seemed fascinated by the Beat philosophy. As is commonly known, the Beats were rather vociferous in questioning values held dear to America in the fifties. If one discounts those pesky McCarthy years when members of the creative community ('Commies' for short) were burned at the stake, life was still a Norman Rockwell painting. Then, Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' was published, though with some sexually explicit passages removed, and the Beats became a byword for rebellion. By the time William Burroughs got 'The Naked Lunch' published in Paris, the little run-down Latin Quarter hotel where he wrote it (fondly nicknamed 'The Beat Hotel' by Gregory Corso), had become a magnet for Beat writers, artists, and existential wanderers searching for the same freedom.

The French, naturally, living in Paris, the city of the enlightened, would lay claim to The Beat Generation (le jazz hot!), Land they still do. So, our producers had suggested we do a series to prove it, and quickly, because "Merde, there aren't that many left." Well, I heartily agreed, and wanted to focus a bit on the extraordinary women of the Beat era, like the accomplished Diane di Prima ('Memoirs of a Beatnik,' 'Loba') Carolyn Cassady, loyal wife of Neal, muse and lover of Kerouac. But sadly, the boys disagreed, and (sorry) Beat a hasty retreat ...

* * *

Those Beats who did choose to tough it out in America, like Allen Ginsberg, would escape to Paris, Mexico or Marrakesh. 'Howl' was a literary hit, but Ginsberg was still arrested for referring, in worshipful gay abandon, to the smoldering sexuality of Marlon Brando's motorcyclist in 'The Wild One' (1953). Ginsberg's version of the "best minds" of his generation, "who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists and screamed with joy," were less than welcome in fifties America. I was a kid, and intrigued by Ginsberg's poetry, but certainly felt the alienation, reading 'condemned' literature with a flashlight ... Many creative originals just up and left the country altogether. Others, like Jonas Mekas, arrived from obscure parts of Europe like Lithuania, and fit right in. Warhol, also with roots in Eastern Europe, had much in common with Mekas, but in 1959, while Warhol was trying to break into the rarified art world, Mekas was already an established underground filmmaker ...

* * *

Jonas Mekas: When we came to New York back then, the whole cinema horizon was open; you could see everything! The classics, the past, the present, the experimental. It was so rich that we immersed ourselves completely and immediately into it. There was no way back — we were in it! That was the beginning. But later, when I was arrested for showing (Jean) Genet's 'Un Chant d'Amour,' and Jack Smith's 'Flaming Creatures,' those court cases would affect licensing of all films. Then Lenny Bruce, his trial had to do more with freedom of speech. He contributed to eliminating censorship in cinema in America. So I was not just doing the obscenity trial for the underground. No! I did it in the first place for myself. If I want to show some films, why not? They are innocent films. I just did the right thing, no courage needed — to share with people what you like. That is what I did then, and I do the same now. If I see something that I like, I have to share with others.

* * *

While we worked on 'Factory People,' Jonas Mekas shared with us his extraordinary VHS tapes, a compilation of home movies that he and brother Adolfas began shooting almost from the moment they landed in New York (He'd borrowed money to buy his first Bolex 16mm two weeks after his arrival in 1949). We studied hours of remarkable footage from the Beat era to the decades beyond, including 'Walden,' 'Lost, Lost, Lost,' and 'Notes on Andy's Factory.' Jonas and his trusty camera were a major, ubiquitous Village presence, as was grizzly bearded Zen Buddha Billy Name, who still strongly resembles a benign Beat/Biker, wearing his trademark sunglasses, leather, and lots of silver. Billy knew why he and his friends gravitated to Greenwich Village: "It was a miserable period not just for gays, but let's say living people."

Billy Name: During the Beat era, the Bohemian Greenwich Village was TheVillage. It was the Café Figaro, which was the coffee shop to hang out in. Washington Square Park was filled with bongo drum players. All of the clubs had jazz musicians who did heroin and smoked marijuana, and you could hang out with these people and just groove. So, Ginsberg and Corso and Burroughs and the whole clique were the equivalent to the art culture what Marlon Brando and James Dean, the rebels, were to the film culture. And in the authentic cultural world, the kings were the poets.

* * *

When Billy talked about the fabled Village, he transported me right back to my own feckless, well-spent youth, slumped in smoky jazz clubs drinking cheap wine and wearing black tights, turtleneck and hoop earrings. Uptight upstate New York, ugly poodle skirts and bubble hair had become but a dim miserable memory. History (and history-in-the-making) was an open door on every corner, inviting the lonely misfit to feel at home. I found a rambling railroad flat on Gay (!) Street complete with bathtub in the kitchen and cockroaches with college degrees. My quiet little street connected to Christopher, the Promised Land for pioneer gays from all over the disunited states of America. Here was one of the safest, most exciting places for a girl to live. It was, as Billy would say with a big smile, "The Village." You knew your neighbors, be they artists, musicians or poets, aspiring or famous, who had come there to "Create, create, create!" ... Billy's longtime friend, charming playwright Bob Heide, who lived on Christopher Street and is still there, wrote his own treatise on the foibles of unconventional love, ('The Bed'). At The Kettle of Fish, which seemed to have always been around (since 1950), Heide would hang out with Ginsberg and Warhol, but social convention still decreed that gays be 'invisible in plain sight,' and this interdiction persisted into the sixties ...

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• The Graying of the Silver Factory
• Welcome to the Silver Factory
  • Title Page
  • Dedication
  • Introduction
  • Welcome to the silver factory
  • Beyond the beat generation
  • In the beginning, andy created…
  • All tomorrow’s parties
  • Back to work
  • The triangle
  • Andy makes movies… the silent era
  • Silver family
• Speeding into the Future
  • Title Page
  • Epigraph
  • Factory family introductions
  • The sixties in new york city
  • Factory life
  • Dylan visits the factory
  • Factory sex life
  • Andy makes a movie… every two weeks
  • Edie sedgwick… silver girl
  • The velvet underground and nico… silver goddess
  • “Chelsea girls”… and boys
  • Trilogy… films! books! music!
• Your Fifteen Minutes Are Up
  • Title Page
  • Dedication
  • Epigraph
  • Factory family introductions
  • Factory life… late sixties
  • Out of control
  • Out of money
  • On imitating warhol, by allen midgette
  • On imitating andy warhol’s art
  • Welcome to max’s kansas city
  • Queens & superstars
  • All the lovely ladies
  • I shot andy warhol
  • Silver factory finale
• About the Author
• Copyright Page