director
Mary Harron
screenwriters
Mary Harron
Daniel Minahan
producers
Tom Kalin
Christine Vachon
cinematographer
Ellen Kuras
music
John Cale
editor
Keith Reamer
cast
Lili Taylor (Valerie Solanas)
Jared Harris (Andy Warhol)
Martha Plimpton (Stevie)
Lothaire Bluteau (Maurice Girodias)
Anna Thompson (Iris)
Peter Friedman (Alan Burke)
Tahnee Welch (Viva)
Jamie Harrold (Jackie Curtis)
Donovan Leitch (Gerard Malanga)
Michael Imperioli (Ondine)
Reg Rodgers (Paul Morrisey)
Stephen Dorff (Candy Darling)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 103m
u.s.
release: May 1, 1996
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other mary
harron films
reviewed on this website:
- american
psycho
see also:
- basquiat
|
Should
we begin with the obvious quote from the man himself -- that
in the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes?
Of course, one of the fastest ways to fame is to shoot someone
famous. On June 3, 1968, at the height of Andy Warhol's fame
(some would say infamy), a previously obscure woman named Valerie
Solanas shot him at close range three times, nearly killing him.
For cultural observers, this and Altamont drew the curtain on
the Dionysian bash of the '60s.
I Shot Andy Warhol, the erratically paced but generally
provocative film by Mary Harron, isn't only about the angry loner
Valerie Solanas (Lili Taylor) -- though it does work well as
a neutral biography. Harron's great theme -- what makes the movie
linger in the mind -- is the chasm between reality and artifice,
between Solanas' relentless man-hating and Warhol's kitschy Pop
philosophy, between raw emotion and empty posing.
Solanas was undeniably intelligent, and just as undeniably unhinged.
Harron and co-writer Daniel Minahan touch on Solanas' early life
(molestation, prostitution) and then place her in the druggy
New York scene of 1966. A hustler and writer of feminist pamphlets
(the SCUM Manifesto, which remains essential, hyperbolic
reading), Solanas meets drag queen Candy Darling (a striking
performance by Stephen Dorff), who is her ticket into the notorious
Warhol Factory.
As Jared Harris (son of Richard) plays Warhol, he's as noncommittal
as Solanas is committed. There's a fine moment when both of them,
attending one of Warhol's freak-out parties, sit on a couch,
detached from the excess. Solanas wants Warhol to produce a play
she's written, but it's too extreme even for him, and he blows
her off. Perhaps her worst crime in Warhol's eyes is that she
has no style, by which I mean no kitschiness about herself; Solanas
gives off obsessive vibes that mark her as unhip -- and, eventually,
dangerous.
Lili Taylor is usually a lovable actress -- she was a fountain
of warmth in Dogfight -- and here she plays a consciously
antagonistic woman, yet she still conveys warmth. Until she becomes
homicidal, Solanas is actually pretty good company -- lively
and fiercely direct. Taylor plays her with an abrupt, no-nonsense
humor that, oddly, weakens the film itself: Anyone this funny
and engaging, however extreme her ideas, would have gotten some
meaningful attention.
I Shot Andy Warhol gets a little slow and artsy during
the Warhol party scenes. (Look again at Midnight Cowboy,
whose endless party sequence -- featuring actual Warhol hangers-on
-- is its only major flaw.) Artistically, though, this is defensible
because we share Solanas' boredom with the "scene."
Harron doesn't condemn it, but she doesn't glamorize it either.
Andy Warhol tried to redefine art as something trendy and unserious.
The bubble of his artifice would burst against the sharp edges
of Valerie Solanas, who was as serious as a loaded gun. I
Shot Andy Warhol itself straddles the line between serious
and unserious. It's best understood as a twisted Warholian love
story: Valerie and Andy, wallflowers at the druggy prom night
of the Love Era, a match made in Pop Art hell. |