Your Fifteen Minutes Are Up

by Catherine O'Sullivan Shorr

Overview

The conclusion of the uncensored oral history that sheds light on the infamous final years of Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory.

The late 1960s brought seismic shifts to Andy Warhol and life at the Silver Factory. The hub of his avant-garde scene shifted from the Factory on Manhattan’s 47th Street to the downtown bar Max’s Kansas City; new stars like drag queens Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn, and Candy Darling began to replace Warhol’s old favorites; and a shocking act of violence left him paranoid and mistrusting of even his closest friends. Told by the actors, artists, writers, and hangers-on who populated and defined the Factory, Your Fifteen Minutes Are Up is an unprecedented exposé of these tumultuous times.
 
By 1967, it seemed to many that the Factory had outlived its fifteen minutes of fame. Superstars like Edie Sedgwick, who had reached the height of stardom only the year before, were now running out of money and falling victim to drug addiction. Some Factory dwellers had falling-outs with Warhol, while others, like Lou Reed and John Cale of the Velvet Underground, got caught up in disputes of their own. When radical feminist Valerie Solanas shot and nearly killed Warhol, the artist had already relocated to the White Factory in Union Square, leading to further rifts within the group. Intimate interviews with scene insiders and candid photos from Billy Name portray the true stories behind the legends and mystique of the Silver Factory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504010535
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	08/04/2015
Series:	Andy Warhol's Factory People , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	72
File size:	18 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

Your 15 Minutes Are Up

Andy Warhol's Factory People

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By Catherine O'Sullivan Shorr

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Copyright © 2015 Catherine O'Sullivan Shorr
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1053-5

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CHAPTER 1

FACTORY LIFE ... LATE SIXTIES

Andy, what is the most difficult thing for you?

— Victor Bockris

Getting through the day.

— Andy Warhol

Victor Bockris: Billy Name put it really well in my biography of Andy: "To be in the Factory you must be able to stand up in front of those people and take it, you had to have confidence in yourself. Your self-image has to be really strong." Because you were going to be put to the test, constantly. Your ego is being attacked, constantly. Can you take it, can you stand it. Are you really one of us?

Nat Finkelstein: And here was this permissive father image — again, kindergarten leader image — who gave them a place to play. These people were really very, very bright, and they could really inflict hurt. And they inflicted hurt to the extent that Danny Williams, who was his lover, committed suicide. Danny was the person who set up the light shows, who did the strobe lighting, but once Morrissey and that group learned how to do it, he knew he was expendable.

* * *

Photojournalist Nat Finkelstein, who took photographs of the Factory folk from 1964 until 1967, was considered for a while to be the 'court' photographer, present for the special 'state' occasions that Warhol wanted publicized, such as the meetings with Marcel Duchamp and Bob Dylan. As Nat told us, his first impression of the Factory was: "My God, people here are crazy! The music is great, the art is fantastic! This is really the rotten underbelly of the American bourgeoisie." Nat was also looking for love, but had to settle for sex ...

* * *

Nat Finkelstein: They were vicious people. There was no "peace and love" there. They weren't there to help. Help or utilize? Andy utilized them, but who would you think they would help? Okay, maybe I'm an outlaw, but we have this thing: "You use your friends but you don't abuse them." They abused. As for Gerard, he got a royal screwing, and in some sort of ways I can understand why he stole, because he was stolen from, but he shouldn't have done it to me, because I was his friend.

Gerard Malanga: There was a lot of talent out there that could be utilized in terms of just being helpful, or being creative, helpful to Andy's work. You'd catch Andy and me silk screening; you'd catch Billy playing opera records and talking to Ondine, and some friends seated on the couch chatting away.

'Leee' Black Childers: So I got to where I was going there every day. Sometimes I would get little jobs from Andy, photographic jobs that he would pay me for. And there was a guy at the Chelsea Hotel that, whenever the check was from Andy Warhol, he'd give you an extra twenty-five dollars if he could buy it, because he wanted the autographs. Andy couldn't lose, because he would write us a check, but it never got cashed, so Andy wasn't out the money. And we got our money and twenty-five dollars extra for a check we would have just lost or peed on. I don't know what the guy at the Chelsea Hotel ever did, but he was doing a big business in Andy Warhol checks.

Billy Name: He valued people if they could participate in the creation of something that was going to impact people, but it will be known as a Warhol work ... we had this case of Coca-Cola small bottles and their wooden cases. So one night, I took them all out, put them on the floor and sprayed them silver, and just left them there for Andy to see when he came in the next day. I would always do surprises like that for him. We were talking about this idea of using them as perfume bottles, and having a line of 'parfum,' and it would be called "Your-In" by Andy Warhol. So we got some cheap cologne, and then filled the Coke bottles and got those little rubber stoppers with the rubber sealers, and we made these bottles of ... 'urine' (laughs). I think they're collectable, but the thing is that the cologne inside of the bottles made the paint drip and come off on whoever was wearing it, so they were like a fiasco, but a fantastic idea! Your-In.

* * *

Billy Name, the omnipresent Factory foreman and essential gatekeeper, lived in the Factory. He thus was able to chronicle with his camera literally everything going on during and after hours, making him, according to Victor Bockris, "One of the great photographers of the sixties in terms of capturing the atmosphere of that scene."

* * *

Ivy Nicholson: Billy Name's photos are more like paintings. There is something so magical about them. He wasn't obvious. He was almost invisible, and now I see all these photos he was taking. "Where were you Billy? Were you hanging from the ceiling?" His photos just shine. The lighting is like silver, very strange. Billy had all these people to photograph. Lucky for him; his models were always there. Each one of us had our own dramatic personalities, even though I wasn't really into the drugs thing.

Ultra Violet: I don't know if it was my background, but I always knew that drugs were dangerous. Andy and the whole group, they were willing to give you drugs, they thought it was okay. They each had their own thing. Taylor Mead was on Quaalude, and still is. Andy wanted to lose weight at one time, and he was given a pill (Obetrol). He said it worked, so he took a bit more, and a bit more, then more. But the dog was not on drugs, and the cat was not on drugs. And I was not on drugs!

* * *

Ultra Violet, health food aficionada extraordinaire, never intentionally took so much as an aspirin, but as she mentioned earlier, there was that interlude when we all readily accepted our Doctor Feelgood's needle of 'vitamin elixir' as the source of eternal energy. It seemed to be healthy, if not exactly nutritious, since one forgot to eat for days. We were astounded when the good doctor was arrested! He was addicted himself, after all, and believed in his product, so there you were. We all wound up in rehab of one form or another, which I wrote about for an organic health and lifestyle magazine, as one does ...

Mary Woronov: With Warhol, you always look for a niche that's different from the rest. My niche was not to be this stoned, fabulous star who is just teetering on the border of, you know, death. Which was mostly Edie Sedgwick and a couple of others. No, mine was different. I did not want to be feminine. I acted like a guy, and I fitted really well with all the guys who were being very feminine. With Warhol it was like a circus. You had to think of something to be effective, so that was my thing ... Well, that and drugs.

* * *

Mary Woronov fared better than many of her Factory friends, because she was flat out told by her doctor that she had "no liver left," and promptly quit. Mary may have lost her liver, but she never lost her looks or her mind, like so many of the others. So, the murderous Amazon we all loved in 'Eating Raoul' will no doubt outlive everyone. Interesting, that the word 'liver' kind of goes with the verb 'to live' ... Louis Waldon was another Factoryite adept at survival. Having a good sense of humor helped ...

* * *

Louis Waldon: Andy said, "Let's go, I'll buy everybody dinner." Okay, everybody is happy about that. We go in, and as we're approaching the bar he says, "Louis, we can't go in. We don't have enough women. They won't let gay people come into this bar." I said, "Andy, they're gonna let you in here." He knew the owner! But Andy hid his homosexuality, for a long time. It was not until the seventies that Andy started coming out. He used to hold hands under the table at Max's Kansas City with his boyfriends, but he wouldn't announce it. They were all nervous about it, except Billy Name — Billy and his Silver Factory, all those rolls of tin foil. He never wanted anything, never lived off you. He was always successful with himself, always on the scene, always happy when I'd come up to the Factory. But when I left, when I didn't take over, and Paul took over, he was angry.

Billy Name: In the late years, Paul Morrissey started cutting out people from coming around, like Ondine, because Andy had shot so many reels with Ondine that were nothing. All the money from Andy's painting was going into developing these reels, but it's like panning for gold, attempting to cull a few nuggets. So it didn't work, Andy's wanting to be a powerful impresario. You need capital, and Andy was so far out there that investors were fearful.

Andy Warhol

You know it's art when the check clears.

Billy Name: I remember an actual bomb casing which we had in the Factor y for some reason — Andy sprayed it silver, so it was posing as a Warhol sculpture (laugh). And the New York Post ran a contest to name something about a Warhol thing and he would "win" the bomb. This guy who won it just sold it at auction for I don't know how many hundred thousand dollars.

* * *

According to Billy, Warhol despised the New York Times for its shoddy treatment of him, but enjoyed the attention of the New York Post. While the Times was tartly questioning his talent as an artist and mocking his motley clique of subculture Superstars, the Post — New York's answer to the tabloids — would give him an audience, maybe not the one he wanted, since they were (and still are) notorious for their gruesome and titillating tales of city mayhem.

* * *

Brigid Berlin: Andy used to sit every day on the windowsill with The Post. He'd say (mimicking), "Briiiiig, this would be a good movie." I said, "Andy, the problem is you'll never get to Hollywood because there's no beginning, there's no middle, and no end." And he could never seem to get that. He thought dialogue was more important.

Jonas Mekas: The scripts came in, and they became more and more complex. After 'Chelsea Girls,' some producers approached Andy and thought that maybe he's ready for something that could play for wider audiences. There was a lot of press of course, and he made three or four films. But they didn't work, because they were no longer Andy's films. They didn't have much action, or anything else attractive enough to be booked across the country, even on a small scale.

David Croland: After 'Chelsea Girls,' Andy did a big film called 'Four Stars,' which was a group of films all put together. That was very long, too. I did one called 'Three Boys and A Girl in Bed,' which was me and two other guys and Susan (Bottomly) in bed. I said, "What are we supposed to do?" Andy said, "Just get in bed, come on, just do it; it's going to be fun." We kept our underpants on; at least I did ... The best film was called 'Makeup' — forty minutes of me telling Susan how great she was, which is what I did in real life. Andy kept saying, "Oh just ignore him." Susan did this elaborate makeup. She looked like she was thirty, and she was seventeen. But the people who kept filming were not afraid of the camera. They loved it. Those girls loved being filmed.

Robert Heide: I had been walking down 4th Street. Someone was cleaning up a mess, and I saw all this blood and big chunks of white, what must have been brain. I was so out of it that I thought, "Oh, that must be somebody I know," and kept on walking. Apparently what happened was that Freddie (Herko) took some LSD and did a ballet leap out the window ... So, Andy came, and wanted to see the exact spot where he had fallen. We walked over to 5 Cornelius Street, and he looked up at the window and said, "Gee, if Edie kills herself I hope she lets us know, so we can film it."

Andy Warhol: I don't think of myself as evil, just realistic.

* * *

Bob Heide had been telling us lots of funny stories about life with Warhol. This was not one of them. But he was quick not to lay any blame at Warhol's feet, brain-splattered though they were. We used sepia-toned archive footage to follow them through the fabled Greenwich Village of the sixties, remembering why the downtown underground art scene had once seemed a world of infinite possibility ... Freddie Herko was a talented gay misfit, too campy and outrageous to appeal to the legitimate Broadway Theater. Of Herko, Warhol wrote: "The people I loved were the ones like Freddie, the leftovers of show business, turned down at auditions all over town. They were too gifted to lead regular lives, but also too unsure of themselves to ever become real professionals."

* * *

Gerard Malanga: Andy was not getting great press. He was getting a lot of negative press about his art as well as on the movies, even though the press coverage on the movies was more interesting than on the art. Pop art was still very much favorite day in a way. Things that we took for common could be art, like a Marilyn photo.

David Croland: Andy came to our apartment and said, "Oh, this is a Christmas gift for you and Susan." It was a Marilyn Monroe, a big one. He signed it, and I said, "Oh, what should we do with this?" Paul (Morrissey) said, "Just tack it up over your fireplace. It's a poster." So I did, right in front of Andy. He didn't say anything. He just, well, it was the only time I had ever seen him react. We took it all over Europe with us, just rolled this 'poster' up. Andy also did a beautiful drawing of me with hearts on it. That was stolen immediately by the speed freaks that were around. Andy knew who had taken my drawing but didn't want to confront him. He was always giving art away, to everyone, yet people were stealing his work left and right. That was sad, being generous to people and have them steal from you.

CHAPTER 2

OUT OF CONTROL

Everybody should be nice to everybody.

— Andy Warhol

Victor Bockris: The third period, '67, '68, marks the end of the Silver Factory. Things did get out of control. One of the main signs of this is the number of shootings. There were three or four gun incidents before Andy was actually shot.

* * *

As early as 1964, Warhol had witnessed a shooting in the Factory. Dorothy Podber, a performance artist and amphetamine-fuelled friend of Factory foreman Billy Name came to the Factory costumed in black leather, sunglasses and a gun snapped to a holster on her hips. According to Billy, Warhol told her he was busy shooting a picture. So, she asked if she could shoot a picture, too. Warhol said he "didn't mind," so she whipped out the pistol and took aim at a Marilyn portrait, one of several stacked against a wall.

* * *

Billy Name: Dorothy was the spirit of the 'Underground from Hell' — anarchistic Dada. Dorothy came into the Factory one day with her gun, and actually shot the Marilyn Monroe paintings ...

* * *

When she shot Marilyn through the forehead, the bullet passed through all of the paintings. Warhol begged Billy, "Please don't let Dorothy come over again." They later became known as the 'Shot Marilyns.' They all sold ... In a similar incident, Allen Midgette, who had had 'creative differences' before with some of his rather unpredictable female co-stars, told us of another witch he worked with by the name of Orion, one of the A-Head 'Mole' people. (She went by another, similar name, but in the interest of saving us from yet another lawsuit from a lunatic, we will use the name 'Orion'). As a favor to her friend Billy Name, 'Orion' finally accepted Warhol and Morrissey's offer to star in a movie. With Maria Callas singing at top volume, Paul decided Orion and Allen, who were both on LSD, should fight or have sex to liven things up. So Orion picked up a handy machete hanging on the wall (wow!) and smacked the chandelier, scattering glass shards all over Warhol, who simply stood there, white-faced and frozen with fear, as ever ... Taylor Mead had yet another violent tale from his own Cold Case files, and as long as we ordered him a scotch and water — "to sooth the cords" — he was happy to divulge it.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Your 15 Minutes Are Up by Catherine O'Sullivan Shorr. Copyright © 2015 Catherine O'Sullivan Shorr. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• 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