I understand his work.
Is it even possible to be a “fan?”
My experience has been that generally, the shorter films are superior to the features. The features can become, well, rather arduous. That being said, “Chelsea Girls” is excellent very much worth seeing, despite the run time. I’d love to get my hands on “Poor Little Rich Girl”…
If any body lives in or around Pittsburgh, The Andy Warhol Museum (big surprise), screens his films regularly, and gets my strong recommendation.
Never have gotten the Warhol hype.
JUST DON’T GET IT
Plexifilm just released a really gorgeous looking dvd set…
http://www.plexifilm.com/title.php?id=35
extremely expensive, but beautifully put together.
cool.
My experience has been that Warhol’s films are a lot like his art — the idea is often more interesting and important than the work itself. That said, I though there were some great moments in THE CHELSEA GIRLS, and nearly everything he did is fascinating as a document of its time and place. I’d like to see more thinks like that 13 MOST BEAUTIFUL set — unless you can catch a screening, the Warhol films only circulate on crummy looking bootlegs and both the movies and the folks interested in them deserve better.
I got good copies from raro video from Italy. they released almost all his films.
He was great, and echo that the idea of his work is more powerful than witnessing it….
The films that Paul Morrisey did that were marketed under Warhol’s name are great movies though, specifically Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula. I’ve seen Trash, and need to see Flesh and Heat.
Not a fan of Warhol’s stuff. I walked out of a rare, but scratched-to-buggery print of “The Chelsea Girls”. But Paul Morrisey’s stuff, for it’s camp, gory and over acted excesses is always worth a look.
Yes, he’s great. I saw a couple of great Warhol documentaries lately. But the first Warhol movie I saw was Harlot. It was ingenious, because making a film myself, it has been difficult. He did voice overs over some people acting, in order to not get too tricky about mics and the sound. Brilliant and phenomenal. His pop-art is good too.
I don’t like Warhol much, but people around him and influenced by him created some good stuff. The Velvet Underground and Paul Morrissey for example
I like Edie too. But part of the reason Andy distanced himself from her (besides the fact that she ran out of money), was bc she was getting too much into drugs. She should have been a better business woman and stayed clean.
I never got what was so great about Edie other than the fact that she was hot.
Andy was talented and did some cool stuff, but I don’t think of him as a hero or anything, he was just a good artist who people often accuse of being overrated because he created more hype for his art than it deserved… which… may have been the point? I don’t want to get all deep and shit defending Andy Warhol, though, because it’s not like I think he was amazing. I just enjoy some of his work and appreciate a small (not all) amount of the fuss he so often caused.
I’ve never actually seen any of his movies, though. I’ve always assumed they were bad, but I should check some out sometime.
Well, David, I think that’s the point — there wasn’t anything great about Edie other than that she was hot. She was a doll from a legendarily rich family who entered New York in the 1960s and never got out alive. She was there to be used. Warhol famously said that he hoped when Edie commits suicide, she would let him film it. She didn’t, but the film “Ciao, Manhattan!” comes close.
The book Edie tells the whole story, and it is fascinating: a Great Gatsby for the 1960s.
Someone upthread said the idea was the thing in Warhol’s films and I think that’s it. I saw “Chelsea Girls” in a theater, which is the only way to see it, with two projectors running side by side. It’s not great filmmaking, but it is a fascinating document if, like me, you’re a hardcore Velvet Underground fan or you’ve grown up reading about The Factory and always wished you were there. Your mileage may vary, as they say — a lot of it is just dull improv, with Warhol denizens who have apparently been thrown in front of the camera and told to be interesting. Some of it is pure endless agonizing self-indulgence. If you’re the kind of fetishist who can spend an afternoon watching Nico trim her hair, well, knock yourself out.
I definitely think his films are a worthy aspect to study. They represent a distinct side of him, so for anyone wanting a mastery of understanding Warhol, his films are essential. And he’s important enough to warrant study.
I am a huge VU fan and enjoy Nico solo as well, but, I have to say that description of Chelsea Girls doesn’t sound very appealing to me. I’ll take the song at seven minutes instead of a feature length movie. I find it hard to believe that The Factory was all it was romanticized to be. I would have been all about seeing this movie when I was 13 or so, though.
The idea that Warhol’s Superstars were famous for nothing is one I don’t subscribe too. Paris Hilton is like an anemic brainless wonder compared to Edie, or Brigid or Ingrid or any of the Warhol women. Ondine was immensely creative as an actor, as was Rene Ricard. Not to mention Taylor Mead. These people took very seriously the idea that living every day was a constant performance, a constant self-invention. And I find them interesting. Warhol had an eye for this kind of person, which you could find everywhere in New York at that time. He had such a good eye for the genuinely offbeat that he ended up getting shot by one of his proteges (the hated Valerie Solanis). There is a total philosophy behind Warhol’s work, he was, along with Godard, probably the last innovator to formally expand what cinema was capable of.
Gaspar Noe use’d his tecnics in his movie Irreversible, too shock the people, in the cinema
Julian, Irreversible is nothing like a Warhol film. Warhol’s films are often fun, with a sense of humor. And where they aren’t focusing on fun/funny people, they are exercises in static contemplation, like Empire or Sleep.
I didn’t mean the scripts, I mena the visualtion, the colors, the lights, what you see at the begining of Irreversible is the same like the concerts of Velvet Underground
Most Warhol films are in black and white and they are very un-flashy, plus the camera almost never moves. There’s no similarity in look. The Velvet Underground were geniuses who were very subtle in their way. Noe is just trading in secondhand alienation and ultraviolence for its own sake. I’m sorry but I see absolutely no connection.
The secuence of the lights, high lights, are like violents, and there are in the movie, the begining of the movie, and is similar than the velvet underground concerts, and the visual images.
I’m not talking about the arguments or the scripts, I’m talking about the visualation.
I would love for Criterion to take these on. The films are unquestionably important and deserve to be available as widely as possible—even though some, like Chelsea Girls, really are meant to be in art specific contexts. They also ask different things than narrative films. For instance, boredom is seen as a valid kind of sensation worth exploring.
I have never seen his work…can somebody please tell me where to find?
I have several of his films (as well as Paul Morrissey’s). I was just recently thinking, how perfect some of his more obscure films would be as an Eclipse set. The only actual Warhol movie that might warrant a CC release might be “Chelsea Girls.” However he has a whopping number of really good (or, interesting) films that would be ideal as an upcoming Eclipse set. “Empire,” “Sleep,” and “Blow Job” to name 3, but they could really pile it on. Either that, or a 2-3 disc CC release of all his short films would be really cool.
Surprising this hasn’t happened yet. The only films available at the moment are his Flesh, Heat, Trash trilogy and the Frankenstein/Dracula films. All his (Warhol’s) actually directed films have just gone out of print in the USA but are widely available in Europe and Asia. Odd…
Fuck Warhol, but the Velvet Underground is one of the greatest things recorded.
I can see releasing Chelsea Girls but is there really an audience for Empire? It’s 456 minute long take of the Empire State building. Insominiacs?
My career as a writer begins with Andy as my first published work was an interview I did with him at the Silver Factory back in 1965. It ran in “Film Culture” and you can find it in the collection of Warhol interviews “I’ll be Your Mirror.”
Being that I was on the avant-garde film scene in new York thoughout the 60’s I saw Andy quite a lot, until the shooting. By then he’d oved from the old factory to the new office at Herald Square. I always found him a total delight. Edie was delightful too, until drugs sapped her strength.
The Big Myth about Any and Edie is that he “ruined” her. She was doomed from the start as her father — who had driven two of her brothers to suicide — had raped her as a child. She was a big deal in Boston long before Andy met her. There was a whole Boston-to-New York thing going on then. Gerad would come to town looking for girls and scoop up the best ones for the Factory. That’s how Mary Woronov got there. Mary was (and still is) brilliant and self-posessed. She knew right away what the Facotr was about and didn’t have starry-eyed dreams of it “making her.” She felt she was simply one of an artist’s tools — whic9h she was. She learned a lot and went on to other things. Edie went on too, but the drugs, and destructive affairs with Bobby Neuweth and Paul America were no help.
When she was up and running she could charm the birds out of the fucking trees. She was delightful and witty. When she walked into a room all eyes turned towards her. But it sadly didn’t last.
“The Chelsea Girls” is great and so is “My Hustler” (which stars Harvey Milk’s old boy toy Joe Campbell aka. The Sugar Plum Fairy) “Horse” (his first and best western), “Vinyl” (his take on “A Clockwork Orange”) and most important of all “**** (Four Stars)” — the 25 hour movie shown once and one only in December 1967.
I saw it.
So thats the Sugar Plum Fairy from Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side. Thanks for sharing your first-hand wisdom with us, David.
That’s what I’ve read about Edie, that she was molested by her super-rich father. At a garden party once, he made her and her sister pose naked as sphinxes; they had to remain perfectly still and on display through the entire party. So the fact that she ended up doing a lot of “nude films” is sadly no surprise.
Mary Woronov is a scream in Chelsea Girls. Doesn’t she play Hanoi Hannah? She went on to work with Paul Bartel and she even had a cool cameo in Black Widow, as the diving instructor. And of course Rock n Roll High School.
The guy and girl who come into Midnight Cowboy and recruit Joe Buck for the underground party are supposed to be Paul Morrissey and Viva from the Factory — or are they Paul Morrissey and Viva? I forget if they played themselves or not.
M.
Anyone a fan of his film work?
Trash or artistic??
Should Criterion bother with his films?
I haven’t seen all his films but based on the few that I have seen, I’m cool with him. I digged I a man and The hustler. Vinyl was alright. I am dying to see Fuck.