I, a Man

United States

1967

99 Min

Color, Black and White

English

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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DIR Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey

CAST Tom Baker, Nico, Valerie Solanas, Ingrid Superstar, Ultra Violet, Ivy Nicholson, Bettina Coffin, Cynthia May, Stephanie Graves

Synopsis

The idea for I, a Man came from a suggestion by Maury Maura, the owner of the Hudson Theater in the Times Square area where a new version of My Hustler was playing. This particular version of My Hustler included 13 extra minutes of sexually explicit footage at the request of the theatre in order to capitalize on the sexploitation market. Maury wanted another sexually explicit film to show after My Hustler finished its run and suggested something like I, a Woman, a Swedish film about a nymphomanic that had successfully toured the art-house circuit in early 1967. (FAW29)

Nico had agreed to be in the film as long as she could do it with Jim Morrison who she had a crush on. Morrison agreed to it, but his manager vetoed the idea and Nico, instead, showed up with Hollywood actor, Tom Baker, who was a friend of Jim Morrison’s from L.A. (POP228) Andy had been spending a lot of time with Nico but he never had the same rapport with her as his other female stars. While most other Factory regulars were on speed, Nico liked heroin. She was also a star in her own right and not as dependent on Andy as the others. (L&D273)

I, a Man follows Tom as he sees six different women in one day in New York, “having sex with some, talking with some, fighting with some.” (LD228) One of these women were Ivy Nicholson, a model who had been hanging out at the Factory since 1964 and, like many of his other stars, had developed an obsession for Andy and thought that “she might be able to secure her fame and fortune not just by working with Andy but by marrying him,” similar to Andrea Feldman who, in later years, would proclaim herself to be Andy’s wife. Ivy’s irratic behaviour included throwing a cup of coffee in Ondine’s face and even shitting in the Factory elevator. (L&D260) In 1968, after Valerie Solanas shot Andy, Ivy threatened to kill herself if he died. –warholstars.org/filmch/man.html

Director

Andy Warhol

American pop artist Andy Warhol became a pop icon himself, symbolizing the wild decadence of the “beautiful people” of the 1970s. Born Andrew Warhola in Pennsylvania, he studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology before designing advertisements for women’s shoes. After gaining notoriety for his pop-art renditions of things such as Campbell’s Soup cans and silk screens of Marilyn Monroe, Warhol began making experimental films during the early ‘60s. Most of his early works were little more than passive chronicles of the ordinary. For example, in the film Sleep, he simple recorded a man sleeping for several hours. Such endeavors were heralded as groundbreaking by other experimental filmmakers, but the public and most critics generally regarded them as wastes of film, and their time. Still, Warhol continued making these plotless films until he eventually began adding crude soundtracks and sketchy scripts. Many of these films are filled with his “players”: the beautiful people, “freaks… read more

American pop artist Andy Warhol became a pop icon himself, symbolizing the wild decadence of the “beautiful people” of the 1970s. Born Andrew Warhola in Pennsylvania, he studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology before designing advertisements for women’s shoes. After gaining notoriety for his pop-art renditions of things such as Campbell’s Soup cans and silk screens of Marilyn Monroe, Warhol began making experimental films during the early ‘60s. Most of his early works were little more than passive chronicles of the ordinary. For example, in the film Sleep, he simple recorded a man sleeping for several hours. Such endeavors were heralded as groundbreaking by other experimental filmmakers, but the public and most critics generally regarded them as wastes of film, and their time. Still, Warhol continued making these plotless films until he eventually began adding crude soundtracks and sketchy scripts. Many of these films are filled with his “players”: the beautiful people, “freaks,” and wealthy dilettantes that constantly surrounded the artist and his “Factory,” an art studio he founded in 1962. His films became a form of cinéma vérité, a voyeur’s delight of strange people doing equally strange things. Some of the players Warhol turned into underground celebrities included Candy Darling, Viva, Holly Woodlawn, and Ingrid Superstar. Simply playing versions of themselves, they left the viewer to decide if they were, in fact, real people or simply fantastical figures. Many of Warhol’s films were centered on sex and death, and the sex in his films was often explicit and transcended traditional gender boundaries. In 1968, Warhol was wounded by a disgruntled Factory reject, an incident which inspired the 1996 movie I Shot Andy Warhol. While healing, he began to withdraw from filmmaking, closed the Factory, and turned the reins of his operation over to filmmakers such as Paul Morrissey, who helped make subsequent movies more commercially accessible. Morrissey was behind Warhol’s best known films Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, both of which were shot while in Rome in 1973. Although Warhol never fully recovered from the attempt on his life and had stopped making films, he did continue his voyeurism of the strange lives of his illustrious friends via the Polaroid camera he carried with him until he died in 1987 from complications following surgery. –allmovie guide

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Paul Morrissey

Paul Morrissey (born February 23, 1938, New York City) is an American film director, best-known for his association with Andy Warhol.

Morrissey attended Ampleforth College and Fordham University, both Roman Catholic schools, and later served in the United States Army. A political conservative and self-described “right-winger”, who has publicly protested against what he perceives as immorality and “anti-Catholicism”, Morrissey’s long-term collaboration with the low-keyed, apparently apolitical Warhol was viewed by many as “a successful mismatch”, although both men did share some traits, i.e. both were practising Catholics from “ethnic” backgrounds (Warhol was of Slovakian descent and Morrissey is of Irish descent).[citation needed]

Morrissey’s bold, avant-garde direction in filmmaking is often attributed to his relationship with Warhol and The Factory, although Morrissey claimed in his memoir, Factory Days, that this is not the case. —Wikipedia