I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews (15 page)
Read I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews Online
Authors: Kenneth Goldsmith
I use the split screen because there’s two movies going at one time. Mmmm-gousch. Am I coming through clear and clear? Right now we are at the Mad Hatter enjoying a peaceful breakfast
. . .
Oh, I use the double screen to keep the audience . . . no, to capture the audiences attention like they have two things going at one time . . . once. So they would put audience uptight and get them confused. I keep double screens–I don’t know–why do I keep double screens? Well, there’s many things going on–to capture the audience’s attention. Am I coming through clear and clear? So people can freak out on two things at once. To have two things going at once to have two things going at once . . . to have two things going at once
.
Why do I use color and black & white? Color and black and white? That clashes. Great–I mean color and black and white over another. I mean a color movie over a black and white movie or a black & white movie over a color movie. I mean, it’s just so fantastic it looks like Poltergeists over Poltergeists in different colors and patterns and intricate divisions and, uhh–what was that word? I just had it on the tip of my tongue but I forgot it. . . I forgot the word. When it comes up, I’ll let you know
.
I use superstars in my movies so they can be superstars, portray their spontaneous–uhh–talents on the screen. I don’t know. Who is my favorite superstar? My favorite superstar is Ingrid Superstar. Isn’t your favorite superstar Ingrid Superstar, or do you like International Velvet? My favorite superstar is Ingrid Superstar because, because, because she’s just her. She’s a real person; she’s not phony. She’s just her. She’s a real person. She says and does whatever she happens to feel like doing and saying at the time. And the only time she acts phony is when she feels like being a phony. She’s 5′8″ she weighs 116; she has big brown eyes; brownish-blondish hair (the blonde is in the front of her head); and she’s slim, wears about size 9/10 dress; and she’s got a crooked mouth and a stray dog face sometimes and she keeps on going up and down through life’s euphorics. Hahaha, mmm-gousch. Fried eggs and my fried eggs
–
oh, no, you mean my runny eggs. Oh no I dont have runny eggs
.
Oh, wow–she’s got such a high ego right now, man. Like it’s zooming and flying up to the galaxies
.
Oh, about Ingrid and the
Chelsea Girls?
She was nothing but a piece of trash–she looked like a piece of trash, but she looks so much better right now. She feels so much better right now, too, since she stopped and switched. But she had Red Cheek Apple juice . . . Red Cheek Apple juice. . .. She used to do with what she had–Red Cheek Apple Juice
.
I think the
Chelsea Girls
is a different type movie from the others I’ve seen
.
Q: Why do you let your camera run for the time it runs?
A: Well, this way I can catch people being themselves instead of setting up a scene and shooting it and letting people act out parts that were written because it’s better to act naturally than act like someone else because you really get a better picture of people being themselves instead of trying to act like they’re themselves.
Q: Why did you use 10 minutes of script in the movie?
A: Well, the whole thing could be summed up in just 10 minutes of script, in fact in just a few words. Should I sum it up? Why is
Chelsea Girls
art? Well, first of all, it was made by an artist, and, second, that would come out as art. Also,
Chelsea Girls
is an experimental film which deals in human emotion and human life, which anything to do with the human person, I feel is all right.
Q: Are all the people degenerates in the movie?
A: Not all the people-just 99.9% of them. Who did I like best in the movie? I liked Pope Ondine best. Ingrid in the movie I think is very funny.
Q: What was the greatest influence on your work?
A: People themselves and their ideas. Actually, there are no other films similar except
Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
and
Tom Jones
. If I were going to make
Chelsea Girls
in the South, first of all, I think I’d call it
Southern Belles
. And as Pope Ondine I’d probably use Gugliana Magaduna, and as Ingrid, Babette La Rod. As the fat pill pusher and dope addict I would probably use my father. I would probably use the Hud of Dothan Motor Inn in Dothan, Alabama. It’s the swingingest hotel in the South. Not necessarily a lot of degenerates–a lot of bands stay there, a lot of whores, wrestlers, and a lot of people like that. You might say it’s all the degenerates, yes. Uhhh. I think drugs wouldn’t be such a good subject to use in South Alabama, really. Liquor, since South Alabama’s completely dry. Yes, I do come from the South. These other Yankees don’t know that I’m from the South, so they don’t bother me, but the South has a feeling toward the human person that the North doesn’t have and its many more of a humane person living in the North.
Q: Do you have a lot of Southern themes in your paintings?
A: Yes, of course. I have a lot of Southern themes in my paintings. Flowers and Liz Taylor and bananas, which all the monkeys down there eat. Yes, I have used negroes in my painting. The negroes are a vital part of the South. In fact, if it weren’t for the colored people in the South, my father’s refrigerator factory would close down.
Q: Do you advocate everybody using drugs?
A: Certainly I would advocate everybody using drugs, but only the drugs that are given by prescription.
JIM PALTRIDGE
1966
The Daily Califomian
, October 10, 1967
In the spring of 1966, Michael Kalmen and Jim Paltridge, both students at the University of California at Berkeley, attended a showing of Andy Warhol movies. They were so impressed that, out of the blue, they decided to call Andy in New York and invite him to attend a party that they were going to be throwing in the Bay Area. Kalmen left a message with Warhol’s answering service telling him that “Clark Kent” had called. A few days later, Kalmen received a call back from Warhol, claiming to be on LSD; whereupon Warhol began reading him tourist brochure descriptions ofBryce Canyon at length. Finally, they began conversing and Kalmen told Warhol of his impending plans to move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in screenwriting. Warhol informed him that he and his performance troupe, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable–which included Factory regulars as well as the rock band The Velvet Underground–were going to be in Los Angeles playing a month-long gig at a club called The Trip.
When Kalmen arrived in Los Angeles, he called Warhol, who was staying at an imitation-medieval stone structure in the Hollywood Hills called The Castle, where many rock stars put up their entourages at $500 a week. The Trip suddenly closed during their run, thus stranding the band at The Castle without a car. Jim Paltridge, on his way to Mexico, met Kalmen in LA and the two of them, both with cars, became default drivers for Warhol during this tense and bored time. Kalmen recalled the ennui at The Castle: “I opened the front door–the house was empty of furniture–and I looked into the living room. There was Mary Woronov, spinning around and around to Ike and Tina Turner’s ‘River Deep Mountain High.’ Nico was out in the garden feeding rabbits” Visitors to the Castle found the atmosphere eerie and extremely uptight as Lou Reed was looking for a way out of his contract with Warhol. During their visit, Andy had a show of his silver pillows at Los Angeles s Ferus Gallery. It was his third show there.
Paltridge was the Arts & Entertainment editor for The Daily Californian, a L/C Berkeley campus daily with a readership of 40,000, and decided that he would chronicle his and Kalmens experience for the paper. Kalmen recalled: “We were in the Andy Warhol group, but not of the Andy Warhol group,” thus giving Paltridge enough editorial objectivity to accomplish his goal
Paltridge found Warhol charming. “He was a lot of fun to be with. There wasnt a lot he wanted to talk about. He didnt want to be interviewed but if you wanted to hang out, that was fine” During their time together, Andy was carrying his tape recorder everywhere and frequently gave it to Kalmen, saying “It doesnt matter what you record. Just record everything.”
During their stay at The Castle, the group received a call from Bill Graham, proprietor of the Fillmore West concert hall in San Francisco, inviting them to perform, where this interview concludes. Kalmen says “It was the only offer they had and took Graham up on his offer.” According to Warhol biographer Victor Bockris, “By then tempers were so frayed that the hardcore New York contingent could no longer hide their contempt for the West Coast scene, typified by Reed’s description of it as a ‘tedious untalented lie,’ and the grating sarcasm of [Paul] Morrissey asking [Bill] Graham why the West Coast bands didnt take heroin since ‘that’s what all really good musicians take.’ . . . Graham exploded, screaming ‘You disgusting germs! Here we are trying to clean everything up and you come out here with your disgusting minds and whips!’“ (Bockris, 251).
Kalmens attempt at screenwriting failed and the pair ended up back in San Francisco where, a few months later, they were invited by Warhol to attend the Bay Area premiere of Chelsea Girls. After the movie was over, they went back to the hotel where the group was staying. Kalmen remembers: “It was pandemonium. People were running through the halls naked and there were pills galore. Andy was usually washing out his socks but he had a great big bag of pharmaceutical-type pills: libriums, valiums, uppers, downers.”
In 1968, after Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas, Kalmen sent him a telegram in the hospital, but afterward, they didnt see Andy with the same intensity as they had in 1966. However, Warhol later told Jim Paltridge that his interview was one of the best articles about him that he had ever read.
Michael Kalmen passed away in June of 2003.
–KG
From the marble bathroom floor up: black boots, black suede leather pants, black belt with a steel buckle, dark blue tee-shirt with small white and red stripes, very light bubble-gum pink face, dark prescription glasses, silver-rinsed hair. Action: a thin hand with the same bubblegum pink skin holds a cordless electric razor that shaves a few silver whiskers from the chin of Andy Warhol, pop artist, sunshine superman, underground movie-maker, and serene king teenybopper. Andy goes into the bedroom and takes a black suede leather motorcycle jacket and a copy of
Vogue
off the bed. Andy Warhol’s bed is very messy. Fashion magazines,
Los Angeles Times, Variety
, photographs are under and in it, taking their rightful place in Andy’s sleeping and waking hours. Andy goes down a long spiral staircase.
Andy is in Los Angeles with the Velvet Underground, an ensemble that consists of the Velvets proper,–drums, electric guitars, electric violin–Nico, beautiful, strange Scandinavian presence who played Nico in “La Doce Vita,” and Gerard and Mary, the Whip Dancers.
At night: on stage, the Velvets, Nico, the Whip Dancers (whips, black belts, pelvises, Gerard with and without shirt and beads), strobe lights, Andy’s movies are the parts of a giant hypnotic machine called the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. This machine spins an endless cable of steel sound. Johnny Cale may or may not be an Indian, has a tall thin face, long black hair parted in the middle, has an electric violin under his chin, plays tall, thin and very shrill sounds on it. Gerard kneels in front of the strobe light, writhes, offers his whip. Mary writhes, twists her whip around Gerard, cracks her whip, bumps, grinds, grinds her Levi covered pelvis. The black leather belt with a steel buckle sits right on top of her hips, and it too bumps, it grinds, exceeding fine.
Andy’s movies! Above the static-writhing dancers, teenyboppers, Velvets, whippers, are three or four screens with Nico writ large, staring, crying, Gerard lifting weights, huge kisses, grainy white and black pictures of Edie Sedgwick feeling Gerard’s muscles, languid whipping, terrifying fast whipping.
Mary has her whip twisted around Gerard in the strobe lights, starlets and studlets in fluffy sweaters, up-tight teenies are dancing, and Nico, blond on blond in a white wool pants suit steps into the spotlight and says, “The song is, Tm Not a Young Man Anymore,’”
Scene: One o’clock in the afternoon, Hollywood Hills. Andy is coming down the spiral staircase of this big Hollywood-Spanish castle where the Velvets are staying. The Velvets have already risen, eaten, and are passing the time, listening to electronic music, writing poems, dispersing to various parts of the castle and grounds, reading, bopping. There is plenty of time to pass because the Trip, the Sunset Strip nightclub where the Velvets are appearing, has been closed. No one seems to know why. Andy is having a grapefruit and a diet pill for breakfast. Paul, a kind of business manager, arranger, treasurer for the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, is talking on the phone on one of the frequent interminable business calls. He hangs up
.
Paul: The education TV station in Boston wants you to introduce their series of campy movies. They offered five hundred dollars for you alone, but I told them you’d charge fifteen hundred. It’ll take a day. They’ll pay transportation and hotel.
ANDY: (
drawling slightly, the tone color of his voice like the silvered color of his hair
) Oh, did you see Nico on television yesterday? She was beautiful.
PAUL: What shall I tell the man from Boston when he calls back?
ANDY: Oh. I have to have Nico or one of the Velvets on with me. Tell him I’ll have Nico with me.
PAUL: Five hundred for Nico?
ANDY: Yeah, she’ll talk for me.
MARY (
whip dancer
): Some aluminum company sent you this, this ad. They want you to do something to it or even just sign it, and they’ll pay two thousand. (
The ad then lies all day on the table, unsigned. The next day it was under the two volumes of the Los Angeles telephone directory, then somebody threw it away.
)
The phone rings. Paul answers it
.
PAUL: (
hands over the receiver
) Andy, it’s long distance from Montreal.
ANDY: Who is in Montreal, Paul?
PAUL: Somebody wants to know if you want to go to a champagne and strawberry Montreal.
ANDY: Oh, wow, everybody is always calling me up to ask me to parties somewhere.
PAUL: (
into the phone
) I’m sorry, but Mr. Warhol never goes anywhere without Nico and the Velvets. You’d have to fly all ten of us out there . . . yeah . . . well, thanks anyway.
JIM: Andy, I have a car. Do you want to go somewhere?
ANDY: Oh, wow, you have a car! Oh, I want to go somewhere.
JIM: Do you want to see the Kienholz exhibit at the L.A. County Museum?
ANDY: (
vaguely
) Oh, yeah.
JIM: Do you want to go to Forest Lawn?
ANDY: (
looking more vaguely at the smog
) What is there to see at Forest Lawn?
JIM: Alan Ladd’s grave.
ANDY: (
wicked smile
) Oh, really?
Television cameramen arrive and professionally examine the lighting conditions in the vast throne room of the castle, which is bare except for a velvet throne
.
ANDY: Where’s Nico?
VELVET: She was looking at the rabbits about half an hour ago.
VELVET: I think she’s in the garden.
Scene: Castle roof, three o’clock in the afternoon. Light blue sky above, smog below. Andy is sitting between Gerard–blue Levis, light blue shirt with ruffled sleeves, dark blue beads, hunting knife–and Nico–straight almost white blond hair, white pants suit, shy smile. The Velvets are arranged in the background, Johnny Cale with a cheap violin (not his). In the far background, Patrick, ex-child star, ex-protege of Lenny Bruce, seventeen, permanent resident of the castle, emerges from his net hammock, comes out into sunlight and writhes in a lace shawl
.
TV REPORTER: (
who looks like a TV reporter with a razor haircut, blue shirt and summer suit
) We’re talking today with Andy Warhol, the famous pop artist and underground movie-maker. Mr. Warhol is in Los Angeles with his show, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, featuring Nico, the Velvet Underground, and Mary Woronov and Gerard Malanga, Whip Dancers. Mr. Warhol, how did you get the idea for your show?
ANDY: (
faint, pleasant smile
)
NICO: (
shyly, her protuberant lower lip glistening
) He likes us.
GERARD: (
holding the knife up to his lips
) The Velvets. The Velvet Underground.
TV REPORTER: Andy, what kind of a following do you and your friends have?
ANDY: (
looking at Nico, his thin bubble-gum pink fingers caressing his lips
)
GERARD: You mean who is following us?
ANDY: (
softly, amused
) The F.B.I.?
TV REPORTER: Andy, as a kind of leader of youth (
Andy smiles
), do you feel any responsibility toward them?
ANDY: Oh . . . I. . . .
GERARD: I don’t think anyone is following us, and if they are. . . . Well, we just do what we like, and if someone wants to follow, I guess it’s not our responsibility.
TV REPORTER: Thank you.
Everyone goes down the spiral staircase again
.
JIM: Paul, I’ve got a car, do you want to go somewhere?
PAUL: (
twisting his head around to Jim
) Thanks, but I’ve got to see if the Trip is going to open again tonight.
Jim: (twisting his head around to Andy) Andy, do you want to go somewhere?
ANDY: Oh, yeah, I want to go to the Ferus.
Scene: Santa Monica Avenue, dark blue station wagon. In the back seat, Gerard, Andy, Somebody. In the front seat, Jim (at the wheel), and Clark Kent (“of the
Daily Planet”).
Andy is reading the
Los Angeles Times.
CLARK: Andy, did you ever get a copy of the review in the
Sunday Times?
ANDY: Oh, that terrible one?
CLARK: I thought you’d like a real terrible review like that.
ANDY: Oh, sometimes I do. I think people will come if there is a really terrible one.
Clark: We went to see the Kienholz exhibit yesterday. Have you seen it?
ANDY: No.
CLARK: Do you want to go today?
ANDY: Oh, I don’t think I really like him.
JIM: Why don’t you?
ANDY: I don’t know, he seems kind of moral to me.
CLARK: Why?
ANDY: I don’t think he really likes the things he does like he doesn’t really like–greasy hamburgers. He has a painting of mine. We traded. I gave him, really beautiful painting, but I don’t remember what I got. I think I sold it.