The Andy Warhol Diaries

Some people are apparently mad that they weren't consulted.

I just saw this in a "coming this week" email and I'll take a look. I blissfully read the whole thing in the 1990s and it may be time to start the book again. It's one of those books from which you remember so much, yet want to return to years after you first read it.

Just read the book. It's over 800 pages long, one decade in his life, basically. It's fascinating.

I agree that his diaries are fascinating. Not only for the name dropping.

Looking forward to this as I also was obsessed with the DIARIES back in the 1990s. Amazing to see how much Andy understood and foresaw about the nature of celebrity way back then. Between this miniseries and the new play opening in London and soon on Broadway called THE COLLABORATION, about Andy's encounters with Basquiat, it looks like there will be a Warhol renaissance.

I've just begun the series....episode 2 (about Jed Johnson) affected something in me....damn that boy was naturally gorgeous and not at all vain. All he wanted was to be appreciated. Very saddening.

My take on the guy is that he is cruel and evil. Like a whole piece of his brain had never developed. The part that makes one a full human.

I think Andy began a downward spiral after his wig was ripped off his head by some cunt at a booksigning. He was mortified. The bookstore's reps asked him if he wanted to cancel the signing and he said no. He continued it with the hood of his parka covering his head. I really think the shock of that incident set in motion a visceral signal to just shut down.

It's weird that even though that wig seems so obvious now, I didn't realize he wore one until a few years ago.

I loved the index of the diaries that Spy magazine published. It was thorough and accurate, but it also had a little edge, with entries like:

Smith, Rex; penis of

And

Minnelli, Liza; tacky furnishings of

Were there any big scandalous revelations in the book?

Jed Johnson died in the TWA plane crash over Long Island in '96. He sure was a beauty.

Was Warhol autistic? He seemed to be and despite being gay, he seemed asexual and more attracted to aesthetic than physical forms. His films were really Paul Morrissey's work hence all the sexuality.

What a mixed blessing -- AW's Diaries but... Ryan Murphy. All I can say is, thank god it's a documentary and we won't have to put up with (too many of) his stultifying, Glee-esque casting and trademark plastic, facile, single-note reconstitutions of eras,cicons, and Zeitgeists he seems incapable of grasping with any semblance of nuance.

*^icons

Barely relevant, but there’s some old Andy Warhol movie where a guy keeps saying, “I oughta give you the old up yours.” I saw it about 20 years ago and as a result I like to call anal sex “the old up yours” but I can’t actually say it to anyone lest they think I’m insane.

r13 that's addressed in the series. Andy's asexual persona was basically because of the times, and was just for his public image. He was actually sexually active and had boyfriends but in those days that really couldn't be a part of his public persona.

If he were still alive he would love the kartrashians and Madonnas IG/ plastic surgery mess. He loved artifice, spectacle, and “glamour.” He wouldn’t have time to make any art with all the streaming of shows available now. I think he would also be a constant texter and selfie taker and would never look up from his phone. He really did seem like an agent of the future.

Very bitchy, very fun. He recorded every cent he spent after getting caught in the IRS' crosshair

Who was the guy he filmed getting a blowjob, did he ever say?

Is there a part for me? Since I didn't get the Funny Girl gig on Broadway, I've got some free time. Call me, Ryan!

R20 DeVeren Bookwalter (uncredited)

Wait, So the video was of two "straight" actors giving/getting a blowjob?

R23 All that's shown in the video is the receiver's face as he's getting blown. You don't even see the body, or anybody else. The legend behind it is that Warhol had five young boys doing the job(s), and all or some may or may not have shown up. At the time, it wasn't specified, but it's considered a groundbreaking gay-film moment. Bookwalter, oddly enough, was married (to a woman) and has a son called Wilder. Bookwalter died of "stomach cancer" in the 1980s.

I’m the one who has posted before that answered phones at the Factory for a summer unpaid job/internship in college. (Summer ‘85. Yes I’m old).

Jed was the sweetest of them all. To everyone. Brigid Berlin and I still talk. She cracked me up.

But in the diaries, my favorite quote of all was from some nurse that checked him in when he had the gall bladder surgery (after which they let him walk home and wherein he died crossing the street). She was one of the few “no name” people quoted in the book. She said “in all my years of nursing, he was the only patient who knew his Medicare number by heart and recited it to me off the top of his head”. That sort of says everything about him.

I never liked Warhol personally, but his diaries are side achingly funny.

"Brigid Berlin and I still talk."

Are you clairvoyant? She dead...

I can't help but wonder how will the "Killed some moths" scene will look.

^ Oh, dearing myself now for not proofreading r28 before posting.

Warhol introduced the beauty of Little Joe to us. So Warhol gets a thumbs up for that.

Just watched the first 2 episodes of the series which starts slow but becomes very engaging and thorough. Very well produced, Ryan!

But I was very surprised to hear about the sexual relationship of Jed Johnson and Andy. I'd always assumed it was just a deep friendship but several contemporaries, including Jed's surviving twin brother (who was even better looking) say they were in love and had sex. I can't imagine though.....Andy was grotesquely unappealing physically and emotionally and, obviously, Jed could have easily done much better. Yes, I'm shallow.

I didn't get it either Jed was young and beautiful and by all accounts a lovely person. Andy was much older, unattractive and very weird. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

What’s next? Murphy goes back to the Edie Sedgwick years?

R25 Brigid’s been dead for a while so no more chats for you.

Andy was spectacularly unattractive. The pockmarked skin, the lack of hair. I love how he would refer to getting camera ready before he went out for the night (EVERY NIGHT) as “glueing.” Literally, glueing on his wig but also powdering that face and dressing. It became his euphemism for getting ready.

I love that the series ignores all the Factory stuff, for the most part. We've seen all that shit a million times. I didn't know almost everything this series covers. It made Warhol seem much sadder and more human and more interesting than I have ever found him before.

Agree, r36, but the series deals with the Diaries years, post-Factory. I do love seeing all those chic people looking so old now.

His wigs were of the ratty Korean variety and would not have held up to HD.

I'm on episode three and loving it. I love the music, the AI voice, and there is so much footage that I never knew existed, especially the Jon Gould stuff. Love John Waters and Jerry Hall. Bob C and Chris Makos are great, but Benjamin Liu (Ming Vase) is breaking my heart. Kudos to Ryan Murphy for not fucking this up.

It's a whole different take on Warhol than any previous docs. It also ties into what was happening in the culture at the time. It presents Andy Warhol as a real person and not just the persona. Very well done.

I did love Superstar as well, although it's been forever and is only 90 or so minutes long.

Ooh, Jon Gould, OP. I couldn't figure out if Jon was using Andy or Andy was madly in love and making a complete fool of himself and Jon didn't want to hurt Andy's feelings.

I doubt if Jon would see it as him using Andy, because he thought Andy was getting some form of companionship out of it. It was just torture for Andy, however, and I can identify, unfortunately. Hard to imagine pretending to be straight and getting roses everyday from Andy Warhol.

Two episodes into it, I’ll say that very little is coming directly from the diaries. It has been the unfortunate scenario of modern documentaries with talking heads, some genuine archival footage combined with lots of stock. I loathe Andy and never thought much of his pop art screen printing that was performed by his assistants and this isn’t changing my mind. Jed was hot and it’s funny to see this being portrayed as some great love affair. It was the standard young man fucking his way to the top relationship. Also, if that fucking curator calls Andy queer one more time… ugh.

Odd that Fran Lebowitz wasn't in this

It sounds like you are predisposed to dislike this, r44, but episode three actually matches up diary entries with film footage that I am assuming was shot by Chris Makos of them traveling to Cape Cod. Pretty amazing that the footage exists and Murphy was able to obtain the rights. If you "loathe" Andy, however, none of this will probably matter.

By the end of episode three it went trannie woke. Appropriation, exploitation blah blah blah. Of course there’s the myth making of Marsha Johnson again. More revisionist horseshit.

[quote] if that fucking curator calls Andy queer one more time… ugh.

Oh, for fucks sake. Thanks for the heads-up, now I know to avoid this.

In the distressed contemporary interview introduction film clips, what is the single black square with rounded corners looking like a sprocket at the left of the screen center supposed to represent? It’s something that looks so familiar, but I’m not able to place it?

I love Andy. I'll watch. I love Ryan too but more like marrying him. I'd help make his amazing productions better.

R25, Berlin is deceased and Andy died in the hospital.

r49, I've also been wondering about that black square....or is it a rectangle? Anyway, anyone know what it signifies?

I remember reading long ago that Andy wanted his wigs to look like wigs and thought it was a smarter way to present himself.....like he wasn't trying to fool anyone that it was his own hair.

One icy, aspies, borderline sociopath making a film about another.

No thanks. If you’ve dealt with this type of person in real life (monstrous human who gets a pass because he or she is an “artist”) you’ll get it.

Ugh. I know Brigid is dead. We talked for years after. I miss her. I meant talked to her. She was defiantly crazy.

We were both there when Marie Chantal Miller (now Princess) showed up with a check for $65,000 from Daddy to have her portrait done. Andy (well Gerard) did it. And MCM (as we called her) got in big trouble.

Oddly, there was a lot of downtime. I thought that summer was going to be full of wild stories.

One time, I got to go down to Seventh Ave South, to this mafia-like business and pick up the fresh silk screens. It was some commercial company that did all of Andy’s silk screens (meaning the construction of the new screens). That was fun and a little sketchy.

Hoping we see something of Gerard Malanga in coming episodes....I always thought he was very hot (well, in the 70s). Is he still with us?

Gerard Malanga is still alive, he's around 80 now.

Since she edited the Diaries, was Pat Hackett consulted or involved with this production?

Thanks DL, I only learned about this series here. I watched the entire thing last night and enjoyed it.

She is interviewed, r58 - there's a really interesting moment with her towards the end where they talk about the editing process

Did Ryan Murphy actually have much to do with this, or did he just slap his name on it after the fact? He's done that before, kind of like how Andy Warhol "presented" Paul Morrissey's films actually

Jed Johnson was gorgeous.

R60, Bianca must have really been mean to her, because it seems Pat went out her way to include every shady thing Andy said about Bianca.

It's too bad they didn't get Liza for this.

Funny thing is only a fraction of Andy's diaries have been published so far. There's a lot more. Maybe this is ahead of a new release?

I just started the Diaries. He just skipped out on a night with Halston to watch "Lucy: The First 25 Years" instead!

Listen, sweethearts, I was just a girl out there trying to make a living.

Andy's art still looks so fresh and wonderful, all these years later. Doesn't really matter how much he actually did- that was the point.

The Factory.

I have a friend who was in the middle of all the madness and would like to do a tell-all book but what can you say when the worst has already been guessed at and held as faith? People want to think poorly of Andy no matter what they're told. He's as much hated as he's loved. Maybe that's why he endures. He can't quite be kicked to the curb but kick him down the street we love to do.

What did Marie-Chantal Miller do that got her in big trouble. R54?

[quote]Odd that Fran Lebowitz wasn't in this

Fran has said that she and Andy did not like each other.

[quote]Jed Johnson was gorgeous.

My toes curl just thinking of him naked with Andy.

But I guess you have to fuck a few rich frogs before you can be a prince with your own business.

Jerry Hall looks devine. Just completely and utterly devine. Sitting straight backed on a chair in her beautiful garden all satiated by that Murdoch money. She gives no fucks sweetly and downright elegantly.

I've almost seen the whole thing. Jed was lovely and I think that was the real deal. The Official Preppy Handbook model and Paramount fellow is crap to me.

Andy's brother was sweet. He's proud. I liked his bit. He'd walk his younger brother to school because he basically knew he was gay and just felt morally compelled to guard him from the cowardly bullies. That's a big brother! Think of the era that was!

Andy was ahead of his time in a way. When was his t.v show? Is it floating about anywhere online?

R70. She took a check from Daddy’s checkbook to pay for the portrait. He had no idea. The check actually (I still can see it) was Duty Free Shops - his company that made him billions. This was when her sister was (high school) going out with Alex von Furstenberg (they were high school sweethearts. Later married then divorced). MC started hanging out with a bunch of our crowd from Brown Univ and was trying to be a “bad girl”. Later in life, she had a Brown friend of ours decorate her Greenwich house. That Warhol was placed right in the living room.

Whoever is scoring this is doing a beautiful job. I got teary eyed at the description of Jed cradling Andy in the ambulance, I’ve never heard that detail. And then moving in during his recovery and never leaving. It’s nice that they made this first episode into a love story, putting it front and center and not burying it in episode five.

Just watched the first episode tonight. I kept trying to figure out what contemporary person Jed reminded me of, and then it hit me. And it seems Warhol and Murphy have similar tastes in muses. But he reminds me a lot of Fin Wittrock.

It's not too hard to understand their attraction to each other - they were both very shy fragile boys growing up. I would imagine that shapes your personality, your interests, your baggage much deeper than your looks. They were two sides of the exact same coin. And Andy was this huge iconic figure who turned his light onto this impressionable young man who probably had no idea how attractive he was. They probably both saw themselves as awkward looking - whereas Andy had an actual reason to do so. Andy offered him safety and something stable. Jed got Andy through probably the most difficult time in his life. All those days taking care of him, they probably grew to realize how similar they were. Andy probably felt if you take care of me and help me get through this, I will take care of you - Jed probably loved him for that reason alone. Someone's love of you, for you, feels good - so good sometimes it can lead to an actual, honest reciprocation.

I’m surprised this thread has so little postings.

Does anyone know of these diaries were transcribed from recordings or did Andy write all this down.

R78 If memory serves, Andy’s tax write off were questioned by the IRS and I think he was audited. As a means to keep better track of where he spent money he recorded it by calling Pat Hackett each morning and going over the expenses he paid out the previous day so she could write them down. These grew into more elaborate conversations of his activists each day and basically became his daily diaries, dictated to her and she transcribed them.

Andy died crossing the street R20 ?

I mean R25

He was walking home from having his gall bladder removed. He must’ve been septic and collapsed in the street. I want to know who the person who snatched his wig off was, or is. That was a really cruel thing to do and I wonder if she feels guilty, he never pressed charges even though it was a devastating event to him.

He died in the hospital

I'd be surprised if there are unpublished entries in the diaries. Not that every day is covered, but I don't think there would have been any fear of libel once Andy died. And there are plenty of mundane days when ;little happened so I don't think even the dull days were edited out.

I still don't really get the Andy/Jed relationship as a sexual one though I do understand Jed's infatuation with Andy as an artist and trendsetter. But there are limits...

How did Jed die and what has his twin Jay been doing all these years?

R85, Jed was a passenger on TWA 800. Jay is still with us.

R78, that is a very good question. They read like transcriptions, don't they? Pat Hackett claims in the intro that the diaries were transcribed from her shorthand notes. I think it's impossible considering that there are laughs and snickers &c.

R79 is correct. Pat would record him and transcribe the recordings. That’s how all of Andy’s written output was done-transcriptions of tape recordings.

I remember Pat Hackett wrote in the intro to the Diaries that Andy got into the habit of phoning her every morning before he went out for the day to dictate his diary entry of the day before (which in the beginning wasn't often much more than a list of what he spent out of hand). As the years went by they became increasingly personal, not unlike a shrink session.

In what world was Jon Gould passing as straight? I don't think was as handsome as everyone mentions. I am enjoying the series the eps in though. Basquiat seemed very sweet.

I love Basquiat’s paintings and am so sad that he was diminished by those snooty critics. I don’t know how history has treated his work, but it looks like nothing else I’ve seen.

Basquiat's work is very satirical too. He expressed his anger towards society in his art. His origins were graffiti and hip-hop after all. People missed the point as per most satire.

Basquiat is regarded as a great artist now, but as the documentary explains in the 80s his work was dismissed by many critics and of course there was racism involved. He was a lovely person too. A shame he couldn't get off the damn heroin. He died a year after Andy.

The score for this is very good.

If you think about it, the gun shot actually did kill him. It just took a while.

Also, the series alluded to the fact that his modest payments to his drag models was somehow related to the shooting?

Do we still have interesting people like this anymore?

R96 That question is irrelevant.

Mr Warhola belonged to a different age. He was doing stuff which was relevant in the pre-porn time of closets and secrecy.

We're in a different age now and with different obsessions.

R96 If you mean iconoclastic artists, yes.

He was commercial artist.

He only cared about money.

He could use it to buy men for the hour.

Finished watching and so glad Murphy has the clout and the interest to get this made and in front of so many people. One of many things that struck me as interesting is that Bob C got choked up talking about Jed's death, not Andy's.

Nice guy. He came across as shy and more than a little weird. I have a painting he gave me. It’s of me.

Details, R101?

In her memoir, Ultra Violet said she came on to Andy once, and discovered he had a metal snap embedded in his scalp onto which he could affix his wigs.

Funniest parts of The Andy Warhol Diaries (Part I):

He goes to the Vatican, and in St. Peter's somehow a group of nuns recognize him and start screaming and chase after him like British girls after Austin Powers.

Did he and Mike Nichols go to the same wig maker?

Funniest parts of the Andy Warhol Diaries (Part 2):

Liza enters a party, and announces dramatically to the host, "Give me every drug you've got!"

Fun Fact: The last photo that was ever taken of Andy was him with Dionne Warwick

Andy is so free and loose at describing the drug taking he’s observing-until the Studio 54 bust. That’s also when she switches from using the nickname “Stevie” for Steve Rubell.

I liked in the diaries when he encounters Lana Turner at a book signing ,and she confronts him for saying in an interview that she became boring when she found Jesus, telling him she no longer prays for him. Andy was distraught and wrote, “Me, Lana and her fairy hairdresser were standing there with the same hairdo.”

LOVING this series, it should be required viewing for gays of all ages and artistes of any persuasion.

I don't quite get everyone's obsession with Jon Gould who was passably handsome at most. I guess you had to be there.

I refuse to believe that Andy ever had sex (of any sort) with Jed or Jon Gould, other than maybe some mutual hugs and chaste caresses. I don't care what anyone says even if they were there.

BBC just did one too.

Well, I guess thank you for bringing it up, r111, although links sure are nice.

it's on the clump.

NO LINK FOR YOU!

The BBC production can not be watched in the US. WTF

Please, sir, what is "on the clump"?

say what?

what's that on you head?!

I'd rather watch I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) again.

I loved the diaries. One of the few autobiography type things that actually made me like the subject more. Why does horseshit like the Jean Stein book and Factory Girl make him out into some evil vampire? He was friends with poor little rich girl Edie for about a year, and she was a mentally ill druggie prior to meeting him.

I love the diaries too. I'm so happy to own my copy, I dip into it every now and then.

Somehow I didn't know Andy had a brother.

Is Miss Warwick interviewed?

I hadn’t realized that there’s a major Warhol exhibition going on at The Brooklyn Museum, usually they have been heavily involved with tie in opportunities with Streaming platforms?

In February 1987 I was visiting Los Angeles from New York. My friend and I went to brunch in Venice, and I ordered something called the Andy Warhol Chinese Chicken. The waiter then told us he had just died.

R122 Was it that bookstore and restaurant right on the beach?

R123 I vaguely remember it being near the beach. It was so long ago, though, and I was just visiting.

I remember (from the book) that the wife of someone famous had bad BO. I am so old now that I can't remember who. I am from the burgh and Andy was a bit older than I am so we did the same CMU art classes with same teachers , but not at the same time. His real last name is Warhola.

Is 'Warhola' Ukrainian?

polish

my college roommate was delivered by his...uncle? idk. he was straight and had a huge polish dick.

[quote] Warhola (Ukrainian: вархола) is a Ukrainian surname meaning "quarrel"

The more you know 🌈

Andy's parents were immigrants from what today is Slovakia.

Jerry Hall had the world-historical B.O., R125.

oh, you are right. my roommate was chek, chez? wtf ever. big dick!

I think he also mentioned that Goldie Hawn smelled.

Thx 130 - Jerry Hall is the smelly one.

Jed was so appealing. When you have a twin, you have a mirror to reflect how you look, feel, and react to others. I see it as a big plus. We so often don't realize how others see us but with a twin it's all there. Interesting that Andy's closest relationships were with twins. Seeing Chris Makos brought back memories of meeting him before Warhol. I was dating his neighbor on Waverly. They were good friends and they both had sweet demeanors and wide open sex lives. Chris said he was a photographer. I think it was around the time he was with Tony Perkins. I thought he was sweet. I asked if I could see his photos and he said he didn't want to let the energy out. Sounds kind of pretentious but he was very nice about it. He is a nice guy.

Did Andy also read Jackie for her hygiene, or was it something else?

I’m sure one entry has him critiquing Halston’s new clothing line and saying it made Liza Minnelli look like a linebacker.

Sad, tragic, anorexic girl.

I have such fond memories of reading the Diaries when they came out. And it is wonderful to hear from posters who knew him or people around him IRL.

I have a little unimpressive story. Soon after Warhol died my father was at a show, might have been Atlantic City, and a fellow dealer had a flowers silkscreen to sell. My father bought it for me, knowing I was a fan. Now while at that point my family was no longer poor, but we still didn’t have a lot of money so he couldn’t have paid that much. It’s not signed and if you take it out of the frame the cutting around the edges is jagged. But it is a good quality silkscreen of the right age and it looks like the other monochromatic background flowers (I think they were done around 1970, not the 1964 series) Anyway I’ve always assumed it is one of the extra silkscreens produced on the sly by Gerard Malanga when he was living at the factory.

I don't think we can safely say Andy didn't have sex on the reg: on 14 January 1977, he announced that he had crabs, the day before going to Kuwait! It took him three days to find "crab soap" and then it didn't work.

R138, can you upload a pic? I've love to see it. You're lucky to have acquired it. It's lovely how things work sometimes.

I love Datalounge. You think Warhol is ugly so he didn't have sex. You are such little boys.

He was rich. Of course he had $ex.

My actress friend Carole Cook was doing Three Penny Opera in the late 50s, and Andy came to a rehearsal to do sketches.

He walked up to her afterwards and gave her one- a fairly large headshot of her. Something told her to keep it- and it's hanging in her living room today, God love her at 98.

[quote]I love Datalounge. You think Warhol is ugly so he didn't have sex. You are such little boys.

You fucking dumb cunt that's not what anyone said. If you knew anything about Warhol you know he cultivated an asexual public persona. Being openly gay was not an option, a public figure could not parade boyfriends around in public in that era. This documentary goes into great detail about Warhol being a very sexual person in his private life, often lovelorn and lonely. It was explained that even someone like Andy Warhol was not free to be an openly gay man in that era.

The book was intentionally published without an Index. So Spy Magazine stepped in and kindly published its own, which only magnified all the cruel observations in the Diary, like

Jerry Hall, BO of, pp111, 112 Caroline Kennedy, large butt of, p 153

R140 I’ve never figured out how to anonymize an uploaded picture on DataLounge, so this isn’t actually mine, but it looks just like it.

I have it upside down apparently since the yellow flower is the top left and I have the red on the bottom.

Attempted to watch this last night. Too much obnoxious, incessant flashing. Don't the makers of these programs know we own huge TVs these days and that that shit hurts our eyes? I had to abort.

Somebody posted this in a thread about the late Jayne Wrightsman:

[quote]I got a last-minute gig to assist one of the bartenders at a party in her apartment circa 1989. I was desperate, my friend did me a favor. We had to get there 2 hours before the party started. In one of the bathrooms was a tiny Warhol portrait of the German Chancellor Willy Brandt. The left pocket of my overcoat was ripped out on the inside, so the picture fit comfortably there. She treated us like absolute dirt. Shrieking and cursing when we got behind with drink orders. I sleep like a baby knowing that Warhol is hanging above me, appreciating.

^ Bravo!

Except who wants a portrait of Willy, especially one that's hot?. It's virtually worthless.

This thread has memories of specific incidents from the diaries popping up randomly. The two recent ones are the dinner hosted by Shirley MacLaine where I guess Andy thought he was invited bus wasn't. Shirley said, "Hello, Andy" & patted his head like a dog. There had been an incandescent episode with Shirley after Interview magazine headlined her interview "Metaphysical Madame'. She absolutely went ballistic and carpet bombed the office with phone calls.

The other one is a party Jackie O. gave and Andy was invited. He brought Bob Colacello. Anyway, the day after Jackie was pissed off with Andy for bringing somebody. Wh. is kind of weird, Bob wasn't some hoi polloi hanger on.

Also, I think it was some dinner at a restaurant that Jackie O. hosted. Andy was invited but he sat at a table miles away from everybody and the only other guest at the table was a model or something. This kind of inferred slight would eat away at Andy.

[Quote] I don’t know how history has treated his (Basquiat) work, but it looks like nothing else I’ve seen.

Are you kidding R91? He is considered one of the major artist of the 20th Century. One of his works sold for $110 Million about five years ago.

Not in the diary, but a first hand story about Warhol from the Legendary NYC personality Joey Arias, if anyone is familiar with him. One thing he said his that Andy would love going to the movies. But they would all be sitting their together and Andy would be asleep in the first five minutes of the film.

[quote]Bob wasn't some hoi polloi hanger-on.

Maybe not, but he wrote a party column for Interview. I'd be furious too if someone invited him to my house.

The Diary includes his rapturous feelings for Mommie Dearest and his genuine shock when Faye wasn't nominated for an Oscar.

Jayne Wrightsman was a total bitch and a massive snob.

I love his afternoon dates with a drunk Truman Capote.

Truman was co-hosting an Oscar party with Interview Magazine at Studio 54 and he proclaimed that he didn’t want “old bags like Gloria Swanson trading on my good name. Get me Candy Bergen!”

Warhol wrote letters to Capote shortly after he moved to New York and Capote ignored him.

Just watched episode 1. My god was Jed beautiful. Wtf. Stunning.

He didn’t seem all that into Jed or at least the series made it seem that way.

Jed seems like a real square. Maybe he was not exciting enough for Andy.

I'm loving this docuseries. I've been enamored of the Factory time-period for ages, but didn't keep up post-Factory. I'm learning quite a bit I never knew from this show and it's deepening my interest in and compassion for Andy as a person. It's also expanding my respect for him and the creative way he moved through the world. Love him or hate him, he along with others from that time made a cultural mark on history, an indelible one.

Jed's ending was so horrific. Good that Warhol was dead by then.

It's an OK series. Very stretched out. Some testimonies from people who have no business talking about Warhol. All said, did I need another Warhol doc on top of the eleventy zillion I have seen? No.

Jay and Jed

[quote]did I need another Warhol doc on top of the eleventy zillion I have seen? No.

This doc explores things that have not previously been talked about.

More Jay and Jed

tiny meat

R166 you don't have a very good eye. He looks like most men of the era. The cock looks normal. Nobody manscaped. Nobody fluffed for a camera.

Most men are growers, not showers

R153, I forgot about that. Now it makes sense why she was so perturbed.

Nobody here said Andy didn't have sex. We said we couldn't believe that Jed Johnson or Jon Gould had sex with Andy.

Would you??

I'm surprised there are no comments about Jay Johnson's commentary in e2. He looks healthy and plump. I guess he must be in his early 70s now....I wonder what he's been doing with himself all these years.

Are there photos of what these guys look like now online?

R25, Absolutely false. Warhol died in New York Hospital while in recovery following surgery. He had a fear of being hospitalized and told friends that if he ever entered one for surgery he would never survive and he was right.

R153, Bob befriended Nancy Reagan after the White House years and wrote a book about Ronnie and Nancy's enduring love affair.

FUN FACT:

Andy Warhol and David Susskind died on the same day, February 22, 1987.

David had seemed dead on his TV show for years.

Why is Rob Lowe interviewed?

wig selection

I FF'd over every Rob Lowe part. He's such a douchebag

So this schmooze-artist has been dead for 35 years and one month.

That's half a lifetime.

Oh, r172, if only there was an invention that would help you achieve your wishes.

I've always wondered if somehow Andy was actually more articulate and engaging in person, especially if he trusted you and were his friend....or if he was just as blank and opaque as he appears and sounds on film.

When I was in the military my nickname was "War hole"

Tasteful Friends - a house decorated by Jed Johnson.

r183, you would have an OF nowadays.

I love their dachshunds! Jed snuggling a dachshund is going to be my screensaver.

sad...

What's an OF?

put your wig on and go to bingo in the garden lounge, r188.

Where's the photo of Jed?

Sorry r189, I was just asking a question. What's an OF?

OF = Only Fans

[quote] I FF'd over every Rob Lowe part. He's such a douchebag

Rob Lowe is the younger version of Robert Wagner.

Oh, Only Fans. The place where lonely fags who can't get laid IRL go. Gotcha.

Jon has a huge penis.

Like bingo in the Garden Lounge.

There was a brief flash of a nude Jon Gould in the documentary and he was average.

What's a Garden Lounge? Is that an eldergay reference?

Andy was a rich guy who only hung out with rich people in rich places. He really didn't know much about the real world. Nothing more. He was an old guy in the late 70's and desperately trying to hang on to youth by hanging out with young people. Sad.

I think the criticism that Andy wasn't marching in the streets and being an AIDS activist was a bit unfair. There were people back then who supported the fight against AIDS in their own way. I guess some people expected him to be another Larry Kramer but that's just not who Andy Warhol was.

Andy with obsessed with being popular and being around the popular for the last half of his life.

We were supposed to view Andy as this sort of enigma that nobody could understand. That was the going line anyway.

I’m not sure people will see him the same after this doc. It made him seem more human I guess. It certainly was they first material on him that seemed favorable.

Usually he is portrayed using a neutral or critical tone.

Warhola had a cameo in this Muriel Spark movie. He didn't spoil it.

Episode 3, Andy as a model. Time: 7:40. Who is the gorgeous dark haired blued eyed hunk model, talking.

The PBS documentary on Warhol was adulatory but really only covered his life and work until about 1970 or so, and didn't have much of the gay stuff in it.

There is a BBC one out this year. Or at least on BBC.

By th way, Jon Gould may have been a blue blood and attractive, but he was not a great beauty. IMO

Jon was balding, and not attractive in the least. Andy bought him a place, which I believe he sold w/o telling Andy.

I wondered how Gould could afford a Beverly Hills house, makes sense that Andy bought it. He didn't come from a lot of money and he wasn't a major executive at Paramount.

I loved seeing Andy on The Love Boat, playing himself.

He was supposed to be Mayflower, no? His twin brother is named Jay Gould.

Yes, the Goulds were descended from the Mayflower. If you live in New England, your car mechanic at the local garage could also be a Mayflower descendant. They are people of all socioeconomic backgrounds.

Andy was sad. He had the emotional maturity of an 11-year-old girl.

"Oh, dear diary . . . why won't the boy 20 times better looking than me call? I just can't figure it out!"

Andy had that sugar daddy appeal. He was loaded. Attractive people marry unattractive people with money all the time.

Andy loved getting fisted!

Andy was pushing 50 yo in the late 70's and hanging out with 20 yo. He was the Sonja Morgan of his time. I'm sure Sonja knew him back in the day.

Comparing one of the greatest artists in history to Housewives trash?

Reread again, r215.

R211 you totally misread Andy. Andy was a dog and he had it all figured out - including sex and love. He knew his place. He wasn't naive at all. He was lucky with Jed - a tru looker and a nice calm serious but creative man. Andy FROZE out Jed over the years. Andy was flawed, like most people. Also Jed was bound to move on - thats what the young squire of a older gentleman always does.

I think Andy went sour on Jed because Jed was simply too pure and effortlessly beautiful and beloved by all (in Andy's head) and that drove him crazy. Andy was jealous and it drove him away from Jed.

I've watched 4 episodes now and I don't find the series at all sympathetic to Andy nor do I "like" Andy any more from watching this. He's still utterly fascinating, of course, but far more exposed for all his flaws. I love all the old talking heads who I recognize from their youth.

Does anyone know who the youngish Black commentator is, shaved head, print shirt, attractive, very sharp? I keep missing his name and how he comes into this.

[Quote] Comparing one of the greatest artists in history to Housewives trash?

Art was never mentioned just two old people wanting to hang with very young people. It never really works out.

I know someone who has a lot of money, they can take 20-something hunks off to Bali in a private jet.

But he still plays games with himself. He knows the young men love the perks but he still convinces himself that they are genuinely in love with him.

"He's just very confused. He's straight but never knew he could feel these things for another man."

Sure, Jan. It's amazing the games with play with ourselves.

R218 his name is Glenn Ligon. He's a conceptual artist.

I wonder how Basquiat's and Haring's art would have evolved if they had lived and how it would have been judged in the contemporary art world.

[quote]I think Andy went sour on Jed because Jed was simply too pure and effortlessly beautiful and beloved by all (in Andy's head) and that drove him crazy. Andy was jealous and it drove him away from Jed.

I agree, and also Jed got fed up with Andy during the Studio 54 era. He thought Andy was partying too much and hanging around too many lowlifes.

^ Rich lowlifes.

[quote] He thought Andy was partying too much and hanging around too many lowlifes.

Lorna and Joey were nowhere near Andy.

I forgot to add that during the Studio 54 period Andy was spending a lot of time with Victor Hugo who Jed couldn't stand. As in, he couldn't even tolerate being in the same room with him. Victor Hugo was total trash and lots of people in that circle hated him and thought he was just a parasite.

[quote] Andy was spending a lot of time with Victor Hugo who Jed couldn't stand.

I don’t blame him. Who wants to spend time with someone who had been dead for 90 years?

R222, are you aware that your question is significant, on point, intelligent, open to debate, and positvely unacceptable for the DL? Vacuous, shallow replies centering around all things to be sniffed at is what I see as this site's shining credo. Muriel will ban you faster than you can yell, I'M NOT SUICIDAL!

(the above is meant to be ironic)

But serially, I think their work would have evolved because they were both talented and although the phrase is well worn, cutting edge. But you also need to keep in mind if they remained true to their muse and steered away from sycophants, drugs, and everything else that will destroy your vision, they would've thrived.

Are you serious? Those two were into drugs and social climbing from early in their careers. Haring was into LSD. Basquiat a junkie.

Haring liked the black dick.

Haring had a huge cock too.

I appreciated hearing from Rob Lowe, and loved how they juxtaposed Andy's thoughts about The Outsiders with clips from the movie. It was very Celluloid Closet. Of course, would I rather have heard from Liza, Grace, and Bianca? Yes.

Andy, post-shooting . . .

Poor Jed.

Nobody ever made a movie about this guy? Or wrote a book?

Andy's death was so stupid. Who operates on an anemic man?

This is a beautiful and balanced documentary. Bravo, Ryan.

I laughed out loud when Andy said Sidney Lumet had been telling people that Andy was a racist because his favorite film of the year was "Mandingo."

I have never taken LSD, but being an ACH I know an LSD habit and a full productive life are not mutually incompatible.

And it seems like Burroughs did OK as a junkie.

(To be clear I think 99% of people don’t do OK as opiate addicts though - very different from psychedelics)

Seeing Andy's quaaludes made me drool.

[quote]Episode 3, Andy as a model. Time: 7:40. Who is the gorgeous dark haired blued eyed hunk model, talking.

Could it be model and iconic Playgirl centerfold David White?

Also, Tom Cashin was similarly gorgeous and has been Jay Johnson's partner for decades.

Oops. David White.

Tom Cashin with Andy

Yes, r231, he did...

My god yes, DL is amazing. David White. Was he gay? Looks to be.

I think what Jed Johnson and Jon Gould seemed to have in common was a certain kindness, a sweetness, a gentle quality. And yes, they could both read as “straight,” which was the only kind of gay man many gay men of Warhol’s generation could be attracted to. Johnson was beautiful. Gould less so though he had a manchild-next-door quality with a nice smile and a sexy body that wasn’t over-worked.

I was struck by what a cool customer Alan the architect was. Judging by the photos, he was very handsome and masculine-looking, so I can see why Johnson left Warhol for him. Plus they ultimately shared a business. But it looked clear to me that surviving brother Jay and he don’t get along. Alan didn’t seem moved by the memory of Jed, nor did he attend the memorial that Jay attended. And Jay seemed wistful about Jed leaving Andy because “I think Andy really loved him,” as if Alan did not. I could see Alan being the guiding force in the relationship and an aggressive top (loved the porn stache he had in the Studio 54 days) and Johnson needing that. Maybe he cheated on Jed a lot? There was (and is) a great deal of that. And since Jay inherited his brothers decorating business which he somehow could not keep going, maybe that was a bone of contention?

Would love to know . . .

Sadly, I heard David White is straight. Maybe it's just a rumor.

Warhol said it was his constant feuding with Jed at home that drove him out to the parties and Studio. Also to binge drinking.

70s and 80s Warhol doesn’t interest me that much. When artists become mainstream, they become boring starfuckers.

Jed once gave Andy a black eye slamming a door in his face. I don't know if that's in the series. I'm not watching it yet.

The issue with Jed and Andy was that Jed was young and despite being a delicate homebody and creative type, he still needed a lot of affection and hot sex, and certainly wasn't getting that from Andy. No young beauty throws away his entire youth being with an older gentleman who isn't even hot, or warm. They took it out in other ways, but I believe this to be the unspoken reality. Andy wasn't asexual, but he was clearly not an free and passionate lover. Most people want that, as some point in their lives. A rapturously sexual love affair. Especially in the 70s, for god's sake.

I think Andy's star fucking and his late career is the MOST interesting and highest achievement, as a post-modernist.

Andy, very private, was annoyed with Jed wanting to open the house up to guests, mainly so he could show off the work he'd done for Andy as a way of generating more decorating work.

Jed seems like the total package in the series -- handsome, shy, warm, and a hard worker with a career.

[quote]Jed seems like the total package in the series -- handsome, shy, warm, and a hard worker with a career.

And prone to suicide if an argument didn't go his way.

Hands down, this is the best thing Ryan Murphy has done on Netflix, with a bottomless well of entries, I’m hoping this has at least one one season.

In the diary, Warhol describes Bob Colacello ghosting him and not knowing what the problem was.

I didn’t know about Jed’s suicide attempts. Jed and Jay went to their high school prom with Joan Lunden and Barbi Benton; during the TWA 800 story, Joan eulogized Jed on Good Morning America.

Bob quit by dropping a resignation letter off to Vincent Fremont before Andy got to the office, then walking out and calling the gossip columns to tell them he quit. He said he didn’t want to end up a lifer like Brigid and Fred.

This documentary is great, I’m on episode three so far. I wish there was more on Fred Hughes in it, I find him fascinating.

A great companion to the diaries is Bob Colacello’s book, Holy Terror. It’s a good contrast/counterpoint to Andy’s perceptions on people and events.

[quote] Hands down, this is the best thing Ryan Murphy has done on Netflix, with a bottomless well of entries, I’m hoping this has at least one one season.

I guess you mean, "One more season".

R222, I think Haring would have fallen out of fashion: His look was so of-the-moment it might have been hard for him to grow past the moment.

Basquiat is a trickier answer because I can't imagine a scenario where he lives to old age. Haring was a victim of AIDS, but Basquiat had serious mental health issues that were partially inherited (his mother spent many years of her life in various mental-health facilities) and partially environmental (he was physically and sexually abused as a child). Reading Phoebe Hoban's excellent biography, it's clear Basquiat was either schizophrenic or severely bipolar, and he self-medicated with marijuana, cocaine, and heroin.

Even if he'd survived the early AIDS epidemic (and it was rumored that he was poz--how could he not be, a bisexual intravenous drug user living in the East Village in the 1980s?), I find it very difficult to picture a middle-aged or elderly Basquiat. Yes, medication for his condition got better over the years, but would he have taken it?

I have no idea about Jed and their sex life, but knew a mutual friend of Jay's. He would jack off, while Andy watched. That was it.

I binged watched the series in one sitting. Loved it. I really liked to learn about Warhol intimate romantic life. I always thought of him as cold, aloof and asexual. Jed was so gorgeous, I was in awe of his beauty every time they flashed a picture or a video of him. He seemed so kind , humble and sweet. Jon was not as beautiful but had a really energetic presence and charisma, he seemed very fun to be around. Also, it was interesting to learn about his relationship and friendship with Basquiat. He seemed very sweet but troubled unfortunately, he really was a genius… too bad the collaboration made them grown apart.

Do they show what these guys(the ones that are still alive)look like now?

I graduated from high in 1983 and had the Preppy Handbook and it was my Bible, although I put my own spin on it and added a New Wave edge. I was the first kid in my high school to have boat shoes and I was mercilessly teased for it, but the next year everyone was wearing them and nobody remembered I was the first. I loved the inclusion of it in this an the analogy of having a set of rules for gay men to hide in plain sight by using them. I very specifically remembering that image of Jon Gould in the book and being attracted to him/it, not having any idea who he was.

My other Bible at that time was Edie, the biography about Sedgwick and the years at The Factory. I studied Art History in a western Pennsylvania and wanted nothing more then to go to New York City and be part of Andy Warhol’s circle. I worked my ass off to get out of Pennsylvania and to New York, and achieved it by earning an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the summer of 1987, of course it would all be bittersweet as he died five days before my 22nd birthday in February before that summer. I had even been up for the same internship the year before, but didn’t get it as I was a Junior and they said I would have a chance the next year. I missed meeting him by a few months and a simple twist of fate.

[quote]I graduated from high in 1983 and had the Preppy Handbook and it was my Bible, although I put my own spin on it and added a New Wave edge. I was the first kid in my high school to have boat shoes and I was mercilessly teased for it, but the next year everyone was wearing them and nobody remembered I was the first.

1983? I graduated from a private high school in 1976. And everyone in my school had been wearing Sperry Topsiders for years. They may as well have been our school uniform, along with Levi 501 jeans and Lacoste shirts.

R265 A) private, that’s understandable, I went to public school and B) I grew up in South Central Pennsylvania in a bedroom community of Harrisburg, one of the dullest of state capitals. The only think I knew of Preppies came from Love Story, A Separate Peace and A Small Circle of Friends.

^^^ thing

I also loved the Preppy Handbook section in the series and it's funny to think that such a conservative look would have been embraced by Warhol and his coterie. Clearly a "so out it's in" phenomena.

I was at Yale in the mid-70s and all the cool kids were wearing Lacoste polos and boat shoes. Everyone else was in overalls, cotton turtlenecks, Pea coats and Earth Shoes.

r263, yes, it's one of the best features of the series, getting to see and hear from the people who were actually there, everyone from Jay Johnson to the girl who created The Preppy Handbook to Bob Colacello to Jon Gould's identical twin to Vincent Fremont to etc. etc. etc.

[quote] Jayne Wrightsman was a total bitch and a massive snob.

Had to google her. According to wikipedia she was a ‘philanthropist’, which seems to be the most misused word in the English language.

R269 I’m the person above who did the internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even at that time, 1987, they were completely fed up with the Wrightsman for dumping all their second rate French furniture on them for a big tax write off. They were referred to as the Louis The Who collections. Their names are still on the galleries, but I think they’ve weeded out most of the subpar donations by them and put them in deep storage.

I would've fucked this six ways to Sunday

I knew someone who was a bigwig in Interview mag in its heyday. He used to walk a few Park Av dowagers, including Estée Lauder.

He said that at the height of AIDS, they were all bitching about having to be coiffed by the assistants of the dead assistants of their dead hairdressers. I would have burned their hair off.

Preppy shit was so east coast/fly over and Repiglican in the early 80's. Here in LA there were pockets of it but most of us didn't fall in line. Hated the look.

Our Boomeresque parents loved it. We weren't hippies and it was typical 60's - 50's wear they grew up with.

I loved the preppy look, still do. Give me a man in a well cut suit any day. Or a snug knit polo shirt or t-shirt, snug jeans or khakis. Sperry topsider shoes or Bass Weejun loafers called my attention to men’s feet before I even realized a had a foot fetish. Also a gleaming shock of thick clean hair. Those were the sexual signifiers and it was fun. And everyone had pubes then. It was sexy.

The MVP in all of this is Jessica Beck, a curator at the Warhol Museum. She’s apparently always pushed the envelope talking about aspects of Warhol and his art that, while maybe not suppressed, have rarely had the light shown on them. It’s all the more impressive as she’s young and only has her MA in Art History and not her doctorate. The museum and his legacy are in good hands with her as long as the more conservative powers that be at The Carnegie don’t develop a backlash to her outspokenness and vision or make her a scapegoat if there’s a major fail along the way.

According to the diary, Diane Keaton was the star Andy despised the most. She is mentioned either four or five times, and always in derogatory terms. To Andy, Diane Keaton was the cuntiest cunt that ever cunted. It's amazing how much he hated her.

Andy also said that the wedding of Madonna and Sean Penn was the ″most exciting weekend of my life.″

R269, Jayne Wrightsman was Jackie's mentor and the true force behind the White House renovation, not Jackie.

R277, curious why??

What else did he say about Madonna. I thought she came up in like 88. Guess it was earlier.

R279 You know, I’m questioning everything about the Jackie’s renovation of the White House after I just learned between 1950-1952 the White House was completely gutted down to the shell and rebuilt from within. Every surface inside of that building was only a decade old and rehung with all the accoutrements from the past, so it’s not like it was falling apart at that point or unstable, or that she was saving and restoring aspects that were precarious. Yes, there were movements forward in restoration, conservation, connoisseurship and authentication developing in the 1960s that shaped decisions, but by the end of the 20th century much of that was greatly surpassed as well. But I really question all the funds she raised and used to redecorate, which must have been for the most part window dressing in the long term.

And Mr. MET intern - what was your plan to meet Mr. Warhol once you got to NY?

I was also going to ask r277 specifically what Andy said about Diane Keaton but then realized, knowing Andy, there were probably no specific details. Articulate, he was not. Very much like the kids today.

R283 I would have probably started with trying to run into him at the Chelsea Flea markets, or need be use the curator I was working with at the Met who was in love with me to maneuver me in the direction to best meet him. Later, when I relocated to NYC, I did manage to get myself invited to a big art party in the raw space that was to become the SOHO Guggenheim and danced drunkenly with Andres Serrano and made out with him in the dark stairwells. God, he was extremely well hung from what I felt over his jeans, and very happy to meet me.

But by the end of ‘91 my brother had died of AIDS and had spent years before that an alcoholic and coke addict so the drugs flowing through the art world were becoming intolerable for me and I tired of competing with all the trust fund babies I was going up against for art world jobs who used their salaries for cab fare, while I struggled to cover rent, food and clothes. You can be poor, white trash and get your foot inside the art world, but you couldn’t stay there for very long, no one told me that ahead of time.

Andy was never comfortable in his own skin. It's very humanizing to think that someone so talented and admired , who seemed to be living a fabulous life, never stopped being that little boy from the poor section of town who was "different" from everyone else and felt so ugly.

Mr. Met Intern here again, this is the kind of people I was going up against to get jobs in the art world in the late 80’s. We asked our Intern advisor what he would do if there was a child or grandchild of a board member or big donor who wanted to do the internship, but didn’t quite have the grades or background? He deflected the question and didn’t give a real answer.

Later, we went to this guy’s family penthouse apartment a few block away on Park Ave. and figured out that the family name was the same as whose name was on the Education Center at the Met. I will say he was stunningly beautiful and I had the biggest crush on him. It was like he had walked out of the Preppy Handbook and everything he did was effortless, especially his masculine swagger- we didn’t usually see much of that in the art and museum world.

He admired Madonna for her beauty and fame. He marveled at her overnight success recognizing her as a waitress from Luck Strike only a year prior to her stratospheric rise to fame. The truth is M worked on her success for nearly a decade.

R285 Ugh museum people. You only need to spend a day with one.

He said that Diane Keaton was the only boring celebrity guest at the Madonna/Sean Penn wedding.

Jed was beautiful. There wasn’t one bad picture of him from any angle.

R286, Andy did himself no favors with the anorexia and string mop on his head.

He describes a night out at Yoko Ono's house and that Madonna arrived, took off her shoes and said she wanted to have fun because Sean was out of town. He also said that Madonna's Virgin's Tour Concert at Madison Square Garden was probably the best concert he had ever seen.

The curator trying to read gay and aids themes into the work is kind of unctuous but she has a right to her interpretation. Christopher Makos practically snorts out his justifiable impatience. Of course the truth is somewhere between Makos "It's just graphics" and that annoying teary eyed curator who grated on me through the entire series.

Poor Tama Janowitz looks awful.

He said that despite her partying veneer, Bianca Jagger was pretty normal and got up early to go to exercise class.

R294 Her interpretations are very reductive. She also said “lived experience.”

Mr. Met Intern, I'm sorry your art teachers in flyoverstan didn't clue you in. My teachers at Brown and RISD did, so all knew the game. Didn't make the game any nicer. It was so cruel. The 1980s was when the class divides really ripped NYC and its various art scenes into he haves and have nots. I was at the Koshin Satoh show at the Tunnel covered in this series. I was 25 and very hot and playing the art game while working in finance. Andy Warhol was very easy to meet, you know. It was very easy to social climb even in the 80s but it helped to be hot, yet smart and charming, and not messy. Warhol was one of the few icons of NY who was easy to meet uptown or downtown. He liked young people. Andy wasn't a sleaze but he was involved with sleazy people. I met him through the society doctor who helped to kill him. And Ashton Hawkins, who you must have had to pull off yourself at the Met. By 1988 AIDS drama entered my young life and I actually couldn't deal with what NYC and USA was becoming and schemed to move far away from all of that. Which I did. At least in Europe they housed and fed and cared for people dying of AIDS. In NY - everyone at all marginal had a doubly heinous experience though loss of job, lack of health insurance, and poverty.

Madame Murphy always blow her load prematurely.

R288 5 years. Not a decade. An ex squatted with her in Brooklyn when he was a starving student at Pratt.

This is interesting, it was only two years ago that the artworks Andy gave Jon Gould, and another he got or bought from Keith Haring were auctioned off at Christies. I assume his family or brother must have held on to them until then.

Madonna appears frequently in the latter part of the diary. In one entry, Warhol recounts how Madonna shared some sort of chocolate treat with Martin Burgoyne, who had AIDS, and how he’d never do that, how risky it was, because they didn’t split the treat apart and their saliva was probably mixing.

I found a thread on here a couple of weeks back where someone was copying and pasting entries from these diaries, so I had a read for awhile.

Honestly, all the entries were basically: "we went here. this person did this thing. this person said this. then we went here." and I couldn't quite get into it. Maybe if I attempted to read from the beginning? But I will be honest, the kind of life he describes there isn't one I've ever really been that interested in, so maybe that's why? I just thought everyone sounded vapid and rude. When he was talking about Diane Keaton yelling at someone I was like: "why does anyone care what any of these people think and why does anyone look up to them?"

R303 you may find if you pay attention to Andy Warhol, or this diary, that Andy was ambivalent about the worth of celebrities and that was a main fil conducteur in his art. He took his role as "court artist" seriously and explored it in many mediums and he also widened the idea of who was the "court" so Holly Woodlawn was as worthy of attention as Jackie O.

Jerry Hall is amazing in this. "Jon who?"

Well said R304. This subtlety is so often missed. Andy was as much a critic as he was an admirer.

Thanks R304, that definitely gives me a different perspective on things! :)

In this doc, they show the "art works" in the possession of the Gould mother being auctioned by some two bit local auction house. It's quite touching if pathetic the local auctioneer faunding over two dime store vases painted over in 30 seconds by Basquiat, as his found Basquiat Masterpieces.

This reminds me of the late 80s in the East Village, when the marginal forgotten artists still stuck there, in their grubby tenements, found themselves with odd things in their apartments that had been touched by the now art stars. Someone would have a door with some Basquiat scribbles or an abc no rio flyer with a doodle by Clemente. Gawd, it was grim.

* fawning

Huge fallout with Bianca Jagger when she demanded Warhol and Basquiat donate to a museum. He was furious and she had no idea she made an enemy until the diary was published and read the entries.

[quote]I was also going to ask [R277] specifically what Andy said about Diane Keaton but then realized, knowing Andy, there were probably no specific details.

There's an entry in the diaries with Andy saying he hated the 1977 Oscar nominees, of which Keaton was one (and eventual winner). I'd have to go back and look it up, but there may be a clue in what he thought of her Annie Hall performance.

R298 Thanks for your comment about what a weird struggle it was. Yes, my old dyke Art History professor didn’t have any information to clue me in about, but she was a tireless champion of me and helped me get some amazing opportunities. It would be that I arrived in NYC just as things simultaneously blew up and imploded in the art world all at the same time.

Coming from Pennsylvania the two Andys- Warhol and Wyeth meant so much to me because the were actually famous artists who were living and both from Pennsylvania. It had lead me to believe anything was possible in the art world, especially then with the inclusion of Keith Haring as well.

By chance did you ever get to know Hugh Steers? I met him once through a coworker who had grown up in Washington DC with him. I regret not pursuing a follow up meeting and going to his studio and seeing his art or selling everything I owned to buy one of his paintings. I wish he was better remembered. Again, he and his family were situated for him to actually make it in the art world, but no amount of money saved you from AIDS.

Madonna and Sean Penn's wedding: Steve Rubell, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Madonna's designer friend Maripol, Madonna's gay BFF Martin Burgoyne (who died from AIDS the following year) and, um, Tom Cruise.

You can easily find an online pdf of the Diaries and do a word search.

I had no idea before I watched this that Jon Gould was "The Cute Boy" in the [italic]Preppy Handbook[/italic] (on the far left). This was an exceptionally good photo of him—he was cute but not comparable to Jed.

In addition to the [italic]Preppy Handbook,[/italic] I had a copy of [italic]Lisa Birnbach's College Book,[/italic] which was a snarky take on a Peterson's or NYT college guide. The reviews, which quoted students, were funny and bitchy. She went in on schools like the University of Alabama ("Student tip: Bring plenty of bug spray"); Ole Miss ("For fun, students mimic black speech patterns"); Reed ("The richest students seem to wear Handi-Wipes and sandals"); Boston University ("If you called out 'Barry!' and 'Debbie!', half of the student body would turn around"); and Wheaton College, the Christian school in Illinois ("Can't find who you walked into the cafeteria with? Everybody looks the same").

R313, such an interesting photo. Did Madonna really even keep in touch with that crowd after her wedding? I'm not completely knowledgable about it, but it almost seems like there was her pre- and post-wedding circles. I know two of her friends in that picture did die in the coming years of course.

[quote]What else did he say about Madonna. I thought she came up in like 88. Guess it was earlier.

Madonna first became famous in '83, which was when her first album was released. This is the exact moment she became a superstar: Premiering her new single "Like A Virgin" on the first ever MTV Video Music Awards. September 14, 1984.

People were dying all around Andy, including Jon, and his career was in a deep stall. He had put his germaphobia aside and looked after Jon when he became very ill. I think he was even moved into Andy's house for a period. I hate to think it but did Andy just kind of give up? He seemed very depressed in the Diaries at the end. Objectively, things were bleak. He did mention that dying in an airplane crash would be a good way for him to go out, that he believed in the right to suicide, and the thought of living to his mother's age was just frightening.

If I recall correctly, Diane Keaton considered herself an intellectual and Warhol crass and stupid. She was rude to him. He considered her a plain Jane and did not appreciate her aesthetic. He thought movie stars should be glamorous.

R319, he was right about Diane Keaton.

It was a small world. You all know Basquiat and Madonna were fucking simultaneous to his developing closeness and collab with Warhol.

Contrary to cruel rumor Madonna didn't drop all her 80s downtown crowd. Its just that she got so big, and many of them did not. And them the boys died. She was kind and generous to the victims of AIDS among her marginal friends. And of course Mazar is still around today, from 1981 or 82!

Basquiat and Madonna.

R322, the story of her sharing chocolate with Martin means whatever else I might think of the woman, she will have my respect. No one knew at the time, from what I understand, that you couldn't catch AIDS from doing something like that. Older friends of mine who were around at the time talk about being turned away from restaurants around then because people thought their saliva on cutlery and crockery could infect others. So Madonna gets huge points for me for that.

Come to think of it, I'm sure I actually have seen a more recent photo (ie, sometime in the 90s/00s) of Madonna with Maripol too.

I can't remember who this was, but somebody from the NYC scene was having a conversation with Andy about Madonna. This was when Madonna was brand new, her first album had just come out. This person was saying that Madonna was trash, and wouldn't last. Basically a flash in the pan novelty act. Andy replied "she's going to be the biggest star in the world."

[quote] I laughed out loud when Andy said Sidney Lumet had been telling people that Andy was a racist because his favorite film of the year was "Mandingo.

Andy's favorite or Sidney's favorite?

Julia Warhola, Andy's mother, was an interesting woman. The series doesn't really touch on it, but she was a self-taught artist in her own right. She also used to do the lettering for his early commercial illustrations and signed his name to many of his artworks.

She lived with him in NYC for many years until 1971, when he put her in a nursing home in Pittsburgh. He said later that he felt incredibly guilty about it, but she had a lifelong drinking problem that made her difficult to care for as she aged. I wonder how she and Jed got along.

All these Dataloungers flocking to the Didion and Warhol threads.

You're all so erudite, I can't take it.

R315 Mr. Met Intern here again if you’re following along. In Lisa Birnbach’s College Book she named my college as having the most unattractive male college student population. A college in Alaska had the most unattractive female college students. One of our frats, as a fund raiser, had the school in Alaska choose the most unattractive girl and flew her into our school. Then there was a vote to find the most unattractive man on campus. They met in one of the big gymnasiums with bags over the heads coming from opposite sides until they reach the center for the unveiling. She was kind of cute, he, was not. It was another reason to get the hell out and go to NYC.

It's 2022, carry on with your life!

Madonna did Speed The Plow on Broadway in 1988. She was already quite a big name at that time.

Andy got gross and creepy-looking as he got older, but when he was a young man I wouldn't call him homely. He wasn't "hot" of course, but he wasn't unattractive either.

R329, that's a horribly cruel story. Every time I want to give humans the benefit of the doubt, they just have to disappoint.

Andy as a very young man. He wasn't bad-looking.

[quote]All I can say is, thank god it's a documentary and we won't have to put up with (too many of) his stultifying, Glee-esque casting and trademark plastic, facile, single-note reconstitutions of eras,cicons, and Zeitgeists he seems incapable of grasping with any semblance of nuance.

You don't have to put up with anything, Sweetie. You choose to.

R30 Thanks for posting Beauty #1. I too am captivated by the Brinkeby song.

Am enjoying the series, have never read the Diary. Maybe it's time.

I agree upthread with the person who noted that some of you DLers think ugly men don't have sex.

Dick is dick, dears.

R134 Warhola going bald killed his inner being and he turned into a cold, sarcastic bitter status-chaser.

[quote] I agree upthread with the person who noted that some of you DLers think ugly men don't have sex.

It’s not that ugly men don’t have sex. It’s that Andy Warhol purposely went around telling everyone he was a virgin at 50 years old.

Warhol's big struggle was with his pimples. I know how he felt. The scars they leave behind, mental and physical. I didn't look in a mirror until I was 21. And I wasn't thrilled with what I saw. Jed would have been like a dreamboat to me.

R338 I got that.

The point made still stands, irrespective of Warhol's professional virginity.

Some DLer are IMO foolishly (I am not saying you are) tied into the notion that the plain guys don't get their fair share of sex. They do. And beauty fades and sweetness ebbs; and life goes on. Give me a plain guy over some pumped-up raging narcissist.

I am a former beauty and the best sex I ever had was with a balding Jewish trumpet player and a slightly tubby accountant whose ardor outdid mine. Now, of course, I am just old and falling apart. Send in the clowns.

Slightly OT, but does anyone know if the passengers on TWA 800 who weren't killed by the explosion were knocked unconscious and therefore, mercifully, were not aware of what was happening? Most of them were killed by the impact with the water. If they were still conscious and aware of what was happening all the way down (it was something like 2 1/2 minutes), I cannot even imagine. Horrifying.

Poor Jed. By all accounts he was a very sweet and kind man.

R53, why do you think Warhol got a “pass in life”. He was most certainly a genius but that does not mean he was not a self loathing unhappy man who was also very paranoid. His paranoia and inability to trust his doctors was what killed him. So he hardly got a “pass.”

I did not like him because he used people and often in doing so caused or contributed to get harm.

The part about the Shadow Paintings opening (It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Super Schlong) was sad for Andy. Out of the 400 people Bob and Andy invited only six came, so 394 of his best friends were no-shows, Andy said. Wow. Victor was best dressed in pearls carrying an umbrella.

[quote] He was most certainly a genius

He was a satirist of the NY commercial Art/Wank scene.

I have one episode left. Love it but finding it very heavy.

I think my takeaway will be that beautiful angel Jed Johnson. He’s the star of this as far as I’m concerned. Hope he found love with that architect after finally leaving Andy.

I also like that frau friend of Jon Gould who they somehow dug up. She seems completely nonplussed by their entire relationship.

does data weigh anything?

R283, Andy often walked the streets of NYC with a batch of new editions of "Interview" and handed them out to people.

Andy commenting in the diaries about Rex Smith arriving at an event with his big cock clearly visible underneath his tight pants is hilarious.

Jackie seems a bit dazed at meeting Rex.

Wow Jackie looked busted in that photo.

Warhol sounds like a datalounger when he completed about the cameltoe visible in the costumes for the musical Cats. Very funny entry, he was genuinely revolted.

Complained not completed

God only knows what Andy would have thought of The Gilded Age.

How much did the cookie jar collection fetch?

R344, he was without question the greatest artist of his time and with Picasso of the last 100 years. Think you need a bit of history under your belt. He was the last great artists to forge a new path of visual expression. But like Picasso he was a jerk. All was sublimated to their work. One thing both had in common was compartmentalized lives whereby the could be completely different and even unknown to those outside of a oarticular compartment. Both were also master manipulators.

At the time of his death there were reports that it was difficult to even enter his home because of the hoarding. Is this true? .

Yes, and his estate was robbed of millions in art and jewelry. Fortunately, karma for most of the thieves.

Robbed by who?

R277, I mentioned upthread that Pat Hackett had a hot hate for Bianca that hotted up in heated hotness and I do not think it has cooled down.

Oh, Zeman...ZIP IT, YOU TIRESOME QUEEN!!!

Did we ever learn who ripped Andy's wig off his head? What a bitch!

Debi Mazar said in an interview I watched recently that Warhol would hire her to come and cut his "hair" for him, and she would do it despite it obviously being a wig. She never said anything, just cut it as thought it were real hair.

I binged the entire series yesterday, very interesting but I kept thinking he was a modern day Fosca from "Passion".

R359, instead of casting aspersions, why don't you kill yourself. The bad voices in your head will stop. And the rest of us won't be subjected to your personality disorders. You can't even copy and fucking paste my login name, big boy. You're a mess, sweetheart. A big, fucking, useless, anonymous mess. Do you think you could be SUICIDAL?

Zemen-Wambuis, you can be a windbag.

Yeah, I want to know who the wig snatcher was. You’d think she’d have gotten her “15 minutes”.

My favorite anecdote from the Diaries is when Liza says she's not scared of "the Blacks" because her dad hired Lena Horne to be in movies.

There is some racial shit in the diary. He was raised in a specific era that is didn't recognize this as a personal failing..

It’s interesting that he says the wig snatching was the worst thing that ever happened to him right as everyone around him was dropping dead of AIDS.

What was underneath that wig. Are there any photos of him without the wig?

The part where the sweet museum curator frau is arguing that Warhol contributed to AIDS activism in his own way by silk screening images of Christ feels like a real stretch.

Valerie Solanas should have ripped off Andy's wig instead of shooting him.

How was the person able to snatch the wig if he had a snap implanted on his skull?

I thought the big "C" was AIDS when I saw it. It was odd how his "crew" denied it. That was odd.

DLers who were adults in the 80s - what do you think of his reaction to AIDS in terms of fearing he could get by being anywhere near boys who went to the baths? Was that common thinking? He comes off as rather selfish and cold (which tracks with his personality this entire series) but was that normal at the time because everyone was terrified they would get AIDS?

The terrifying thing is that he was the average DLers age at the end!

Andy's AIDS transmission fears were common fear in certain years and even very early there was public health messaging along those wrong theories. The documentary doesn't bother to go into details of what was said in what year, by ANDY, about AIDS:

The "I could get it from a fork" is very 1982. Not 1986. Andy's doctor was gay and would have probably informed him of the information as it was updated each year. Andy was 1) phobic of hospitals and health knowledge and 2) a fan of saying provocative things, in "voices". He would say what stupid people might say, or what Hollywood boilerplate text might say, and he would say it in deadpan and people with no nuance would believe he was saying his view, not playing a role.

At the very beginning of the AIDS crisis there was some fear of touching someone who had it, sharing a glass of water, etc. But that was disproved rather quickly and should not have been an issue for Warhol when he was making such confessions to his diarist.

But by this time you are dealing with a severely neurotic, depressed grieving person with a certain amount of paranoia, who had after all been shot in the past and was in precarious health already. And he was going down this crazy road of ‘healing crystals’ amd all that shit. He was just scared shitless by this time.

I really enjoyed the gay men they interviewed in this series - they all came off very well. Very good showing… smart, witty, honest. Liked hearing what they had to say.

That horrible Italian woman who kept coughing in his face with the flu - lol. What a cunt. He was so worried about the boys from the baths being anywhere near him, but allowed some woman to cough in his food. Lord.

Fred Hughes was one of the thieves, and ended up dying a horrible death.

The last two episodes are slow and depressing, but otherwise well done.

The Gould family house discoveries scene was quite touching; brother reading his dead twin's poetry.

But nothing about the bigger spectacle of the 1988 Warhol collection auctions! I still have a copy of the catalog.

R363 What kind of person tells another "Why don't you just kill yourself"? Join the Trump party if you want to be that cruel unapologetically.

My god I wept at the part when Jed died. So tragic.

MARY!!!!

He is due for another round of heightened popularity.

....

That TWA 800 crash was horrifying. Those poor people.

So far, not bad. I'm up to episode 4. I l, too, was a bit leery after seeing that this was a Ryan Murphy product. I just knew that it would be a matter of when (not if) someone was going to mention "queerness", trans, or somehow fit the exploitation of blacks into the dialog (stories just can't be told without them these days), and of course they did. It was rather tone deaf & insulting to infer that someone who grew up in a small, conservative PA town, who probably heard the word queer hurled his way several times a school day, would long to experience "queerness". Gay culture, sure. But 'queerness"? No, that's simply not the correct term. When are young people going to realize that this word will never be reclaimed to mean anything progressive or positive, especially when referring to a generation of men who grew up hearing this word as nothing more than a hateful reminder that they were supposed to remain less than their hetero counterparts.

And as far as the black drag queens who willfully volunteered, for a small fee, to pose for portraits? No one who did so felt exploited, I promise you. Everyone of them, I'm sure, stepped over the other to have the chance to be associated with Warhol & grab a chance at fame. These men were not trans, either. Like Martha P. Johnson, who is on the record as identifying as a gay man, they were the true gender revolutionaries of recent times. They exploited the ideas of prescribed gender aesthetics by being men who lived as women without mutilation of their bodies or sparring with society at large about victimhood ad nauseum. These individuals lived the lives they wanted to in their own bodies without holding the rest of the world hostage for their choices. There men were confidence, carelessness & bravery. So much of that era is not understood by younger people who try to interpret it, nor do they understand that many of us who were actually there are still here & young enough to interpret it to them.

R386 you’ll have to tell us what you think of the last episode - they address that and it’s a big contrast between what the Warhol gay friends say vs. what the millennial museum curator woman says. The director even gets into it a bit with Chris M. which was interesting.

Racist and transphobic and in their upper 60's @ r386.

Hardly in my 60s yet...But think the world started when they were born @ 388.

Well, that makes total sense.

Hardly in my 60s yet...But thinks the world started when they were born @ 388.

I sort of wanted someone to ask that black conceptual artist guy who critical of Andy's drag queen paintings - would it have been better if he didn't do them?

Drag is so mainstream now that younger people thought he was doing it for money.

Those queens were the dregs of society when Andy did their portraits. He was saying that these people are every bit as worth attention as Jackie O or the Queen or any pop star.

And Andy, at least, never saw a dime from those paintings.

R287

[quote] There is some racial shit in the diary. He was raised in a specific era that is didn't recognize this as a personal failing..

Yes, people raised a century ago aren't as morally self-righteous, superior and Holier-Than-Thou as we are.

Another point: obviously, the film producers and director had massive assistance from the Warhol Museum and Foundation, so they didn't go into the several old controversies with both; just one of many is linked:

[quote]It’s interesting that he says the wig snatching was the worst thing that ever happened to him right as everyone around him was dropping dead of AIDS.

But them dying was about MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

When Fran Lebowitz first went to The Factory for her interview, she knocked on the locked door (this was post-shooting and they were paranoid).

Someone yelled, "Who is it?"

Fran yelled back, " Valerie Solanas!"

It was the start of a very bad relationship.

[quote]Yes, people raised a century ago aren't as morally self-righteous, superior and Holier-Than-Thou as we are.

Does your Klan hood get in the way when you type, granny?

Funny seeing her in the crowd shot at the funeral R396

R396, I'm totally going to hell, because that made me laugh. While I do think it would be tiring being around Lebowitz too much, my god she can be amusingly acerbic.

[quote]So much of that era is not understood by younger people who try to interpret it

This is what is so fascinating about history. If you realise that this is what is being done here, it also reminds us all that it is being done in all interpretations of history and a lot of what we think we know may not be true at all. People say history is written by the winners (I don't always agree), but really, history is always interpreted through the lens of the times that it is being discussed. Was it Laurie Anderson who said: "History is an angel being blown backwards into the future."?

Haven't read the thread yet, but I'm three eps in and am just loving this. I was never a big Warhol fan, but man is he fascinating. And so damn funny. Dry, wise, perceptive.

I'm more taken with him as a strange human than his art.

Is there any artist today that rivals him?

None. Not one. Not even close.

Andy loved Saturday Night Fever and thought John Travolta would win the Oscar. Andy was shocked when he lost to Richard Dreyfuss

[quote]and trademark plastic, facile, single-note reconstitutions of eras,cicons, and Zeitgeists he seems incapable of grasping with any semblance of nuance.

Interestingly, someone on the trailer commented: "This looks to be made for people who have barely heard of [Warhol]. Every cliché in this trailer."

Well most of Murphy audience will know little about Warhol.

That made me lol re: Fran Leibowitz.

It’s unfortunate that Brigid is not even mentioned in the documentary and Fred is barely mentioned. Both of them were a huge part of Andy’s life and art. It makes sense since the foundation was involved and they hate Fred.

Who stole from Andy’s house and the factory after death ?

R406 Why do they hate Fred? I wished the docu had more about him too.

Who is Fred? I don’t think he was mentioned at all in the series and I just finished it.

Fran Lebowitz has said that she and Andy didn't like each other, but she's never elaborated.

Shame there wasn't more about Brigid. I think there was more about her in the Diaries. She died in 2020.

Fred Hughes was Andy Warhol’s longtime business manager. He performed CPR on Andy immediately after the shooting. He saved Andy financially by rapidly growing the portrait business. He convinced Peter Brant and Joe Allen to invest in Interview Magazine, and convinced Peter Brant to financially back Jed’s movie, “Andy Warhol’s Bad.” When Brant and Andy refused to invest more money in Bad during production, Fred jumped in and invested his life savings, which Andy gave back to him in his will (he was the only person besides Andy’s brothers to inherit anything from Andy).

He was on the Best Dressed list multiple times in the 70s for his very tasteful style, and he was friendly with Diana Vreeland, Jackie Onassis and Lee Radziwill. He worked closely with Jed decorating the 66th St townhouse and the Factory. He drank too much and did too much cocaine, and began to drive people away with his erratic behavior. He claimed to be related to Howard Hughes, but he actually grew up working class in Houston.

He had a love/hate relationship with Andy, and was the most important person in the Warhol organization after Andy.

Following Andy’s death, he worked for the Andy Warhol Foundation, which ended in lawsuits and Fred being thrown out of the foundation. He was diagnosed with MS and died 20 years ago. He’s pretty fascinating.

Thanks R411.

Well that’s fucked that he wasn’t mentioned in the documentary and instead I heard so much from Jon Gould’s hag about how she thought it was gross he was dating an “old guy.”

The stuff with Jon Gould got a bit repetitive by the end. Was touched by the twin brother reading his poem but they showed the same footage of him over and over again.

Maybe they made that choice because Gould hadn’t been covered this extensively before?

Andy had a crush on my ex. Scroll down.

Nice, R413. Can you tell us more about your boyfriend?

Which twin was/is the curly-haired one?

Jed had the straight hair.

Hughes is mentioned very briefly in the new series, during the recounting of the Solanas shooting. Solanas was going to shoot him, too.

I would really recommend the PBS American Masters documentary for information on Warhol's work. The Netflix series dwells for far, far too long on the collaboration with Basquiat.

Here is Bob Colacello's story for Vanity Fair on the early years of the Warhol Foundation and how Hughes was pushed out:

R414 The blond in the middle.

Yes, the Ric Burns PBS documentary on Warhol is magical, R417, one of the best done on anyone. The interviews and that soundtrack ... wow. Available on YT fuh free.

[quote] one of the best done on anyone.

Yes, the movie was more entertaining than Warhol himself.

They make it seem like Gould was rich. He was not. Amesbury is not swanky.

What about the Andy Devine diaries?

Gould reminded me of actor Justin Deas.

One of Warhol's best observations was that as an ugly man, handsome men are hard to get but ugly men are just as hard to get because they don't want ugly people either.

Thank you R419 going to check it out!

I agree that the Jon Gould hag was tiresome.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Jay Johnson seems like a very nice guy.

I'm leery to watch this documentary if it lingers a lot on a nothing little starfucker like Jon Gould but ignores the Factory/Interview people like Brigid and Fred Hughes.

Fran Lebowitz is really the great mystery of the New York literary world for creating a 50 year long career for writing about 22 pages of material in the first couple years of her career then spending the next 48 years managing to dine off of that slim canon.

Its thesis is basically his 'secret' loves and his art. The Morrissey film actors get brief glimpses but no mention or interviews: Joe D'Allesandro, Sylvia Miles, Holly Woodlawn, Edie Sedgewick, etc. All basically ignored.

It wasn't about his films and the Factory r430. That's all been done to death. This was about Andy Warhol as a person. It was very well done. A bit too much time was spent on Jon Gould and Basquiat, though.

[quote] Andy was grotesquely unappealing physically and emotionally and, obviously, Jed could have easily done much better.

Don't feel sorry for Jed. He started off as a delivery boy, met Warhol and worked hard to become one of the most respected interior designers. He seemed to genuinely love Warhol but Warhol was incapable of loving him back. Then Jed met Alan, young, blonde, educated architect who was his equal in looks and talent.

Click on the link and There is a younger pic of Alan and he's stunning as a young man.

Jed and Alan were together until he died in the airplane crash and they were known to have a very blissful life together. It was said that Alan was devastated for years after the plane crash and could be why he refused to talk about it or see the memorial.

I assume Warhol was madly in love with Jon Gould because he was emotionally unavailable while Jed was not.

Thanks for the Burns doc tip. Just watched and I have to say I laughed many times listening to some of the self-important art critics assess Warhol's work and swoon over his "great perception and intent.". Ladies, please.

Warhol's early work when he worked as a commercial artist was fascinating. I didn't know about this period in his life. So talented. In many ways, in my view anyway, his silk screen works were a return to his earlier career.

Semi-long story, so apologies in advance:

My husband and I were in Paris and we went to this really cute bistro for dinner. Next to us were what was clearly a gay couple - one very old, one much younger.

We could hear them talking so it was clear they were Americans. We started chatting and it came out that the older one was a retired art professor at Carnegie-Mellon and they both still lived in Pittsburg.

As a way of making conversation, I said, "Oh Pittsburg! I always wanted to go to the Warhol."

The older man's face turned red.

"THAT FUCKING THEIF!!!! I CAN GIVE YOU A LIST OF ALL THE ACTUALLY TALENTED ARTISTS THAT BITCH RIPPED OFF TO BECOME FAMOUS! I FUCKING HATE WARHOL!!"

We went back to our dinner...

Well, you guys convinced me to give this a go, and I actually spent the entire public holiday today watching the whole thing. I'm the poster above who spoke about not really being interested in Warhol, celebrity and all that stuff. And I'm not very knowledgeable about this area at all, so take my opinions for the uneducated ones they are.

I actually found the documentary interesting for the most part. I mean, that's probably obvious as I watched the whole thing in one sitting. While I'm not interested in one aspect of this, the more obvious aspect, you might say, I am interested in the mid/late 70s to early 80s period for a start.

Mostly, I felt pretty sad watching this. It was just a very sad story in many ways, plus I felt looking into their eyes, both Andy's and Jed's, you could see a fuckload of sadness in there. It doesn't surprise me Jed attempted suicide a couple of times, I could sense it from the moment I first saw him. And my god, he was gorgeous, wasn't he?

I had a negative reaction to his partner Alan though. I don't know why? I found him 'off' in some way.

Andy seemed to me to be perpetually stuck in his childhood, like so many of us can be. He felt ugly and like an outsider, and carried that with him through everything, which was very sad. Him becoming a model and constantly saying things about how he sees younger men do something and he realises he needs to do that too, it was kind of heart-breaking. You kind of want to shake him too and tell him that none of this stuff he's worrying about is important, but then again it was clearly important to him.

I really got a kick out of Jerry Hall in this. I recently watched the Antonio Lopez documentary and thought she came across as kind of cold and calculating in the old scenes they had of her, but clearly she is loving life these days, she seemed kind of fun. I was surprised, because she married Murdoch of all people!

It was sad, but I did laugh out loud a couple of times too. One was with Jerry herself. "What did you think of Jon Gould?" Jerry: "... who?" Also when Bob Colacello was shown trying to dress in drag and it just wasn't working. And the bit that I will go to hell for laughing at, but in the scene from the movie Bad, where the baby is thrown out of the window and a passing mother yells at her son something like: "See that? That's what I'm going to do to you if you don't shut up!" That seemed quite John Waters-esque.

The comment that stuck with me was Jed's brother talking about how sad Studio 54 actually was in many ways, because it's something I kind of imagine too. I mean, dancing? Heaps of fun. Flirtations? Always great. Drugs? Can be fun. But the environment of people being hedonistic to the level they were seems a bit less positive and bit sadder to me. Like they were so impressed with themselves for doing it or something.

I was surprised, but Keith Haring came across to me as kind of obnoxious.

I must admit, I don't really like his art, it's not for me. I also thought the documentary was too long, and could've been tightened up a bit. When I realised episode 5 wasn't the final episode and the following one was over an hour, I did sigh a bit.

But all up, I'm glad I watched it. What it did make me think was that I think I'm ready to watch a documentary on the AIDS crisis now. It's always seemed so depressing to me that I couldn't bring myself to do it, but I do think it's important as a gay man, especially in paying respect to the guys who came before me. I can't even imagine what it'd be like to live through that time. Off topic I know, but if any of you know of a really good documentary on the topic to watch, I'd love a recommendation, especially if it covers from the suspected origins of the disease onwards.

Thanks for convincing me to watch this one anyway, I had a good time.

Oh and PS, one part that really interested me was the whole stuff about the Preppy Handbook, if that's what it was called. And I loved when the woman being interviewed actually asked the interviewer to explain why gay men were so into it, and the realisation on her face and how excited she was about it was pretty cute.

I've read the diaries and watched several docs on Warhol but couldn't get into this. I think I bailed around episode 4.

R436 - Try "how to survive a plague"

I hate the AI voice.

R436 I was kind of taken aback by the cluelessness of the Preppy Handbook's editor about why the book was popular among gay men. The reason it was a best seller was that straight people were using it to "pass," so I'm surprised it never occurred to her.

And on an unrelated note, Luc Sante, who was interviewed repeatedly throughout the episodes, was identified each time as "Lucy Sante."

Warhol and I exchanged hellos at a movie premiere. He indeed had a unique appearance.

DeVeren Bookwalter of "Blow Job" also starred in a gay hardcore feature called "Manhole" though newspapers would only advertise it as "Manhold". The movie also starred Wade Nichols and Jamie Gillis and was in 3D. It played at NY's Adonis Threatre but is considered a lost film.

Watched episode one last night. I like the AI voiceover. It's better than the voice actors used for other productions, with their wildly wrong voices and accents. Andy was a yinzer -- like his brothers -- and he should sound like one, at least a bit. The AI vocal range was weak, however. Between the soundtrack and the monotone of "Andy", it was a little glum; otherwise pretty good. I'd recommend it. And Jed. Wow.

R436 - it struck me that Jay Johnson said he wished Jed and Andy had stayed together and worked it out. That made me think he wasn’t the biggest fan of Alan.

Jay Johnson was so soft spoken but said some beautiful insightful things. And has beautiful eyes. He and Jed will probably be what I remember most from this.

Thought it was moving when the Fremont wife basically burst into tears the second they had her start talking about Jed because he was so sweet and she loved him so much.

And agree - Jerry Hall was very entertaining. “Who?”

R427, me, too. I didn't read the article you posted, so this is probably mentioned in there, but after he died and they found bags from all the stores he shopped with whatever he bought, never unpacked wrapped in the stores tissue paper, with the price tags still on them and receipts still in the bag. Most compulsive shoppers like that are fighting depression and loneliness and they get a momentary rush of happy endorphins. It may have been fun to see Andy walking around New York with his Bloomingdale's shopping bags, but it's quite sad really thinking how mental he was.

It took a monumental amount of courage for Andy post-shooting to stand out on the streets and hand out copies of Interview Magazine to passersby. He would be catcalled and mocked as well as adored. But you could walk up to him and he'd inscribe a copy to you and even draw a butterfly or a dick for you. Many of these pop up on eBay. I like the ones you occasionally see where Warhol's signed his name just under Fran Lebowitz's nose like a mustache when she was on the cover one month.

I wondered about "Lucy" Sante.

So Jon Gould played straight with Andy to avoid putting out, but was, if a cute guy was around, a busy bottom?

I lived right near Union Square for the entire decade of the 80s and to my regret never spotted Andy. Never saw JFK Jr. either.

I asked on another thread how much 8 Elvises will go for since it's supposed to be auctioned this year. It went for 100 million in 2009 but I think it will break the record, which would have pleased him no end, However, Basquiat seems to be on the major upswing especially with young dot com billionaires. I could see 8 Elvises being the most expensive Warhol in his collection but I also think Basquiat's works will eclipse his in terms of sales prices.

Maybe I’m dense, but I couldn’t figure out if Jerry Hall’s “Who?” comment about Jon Gould was being sincere or being catty!

It goes to that "cult" thing the curator was talking about. They were all iffy about that relationship.

And another vote for Gould’s hag being annoying, and getting way too much camera time!

Jerry Hall was team Jed. Jed decorated several of the Hall-Jagger homes after he left Andy.

A lot of the people who hung out or worked with Andy in the 70s didn’t like Jon.

Lol re: the Gould hag. Also her barely concealed disdain for when Gould would come to her place after visiting THE RIVER (the horror!) or went to the BATHS (gasp!). Her assessment seemed to be that Gould was just using Andy for access to fame and celebrity and experiences because otherwise he was just some "old guy" - which ran contradictory to the series ultimately claiming that their love was reciprocal because of all the unearthed poems.

Paraphrasing, but at one point in the diaries Andy wonders why nothing happens with him and Jon and says maybe it's because they are both girls.

[quote]Gould was just using Andy for access to fame and celebrity and experiences because otherwise he was just some "old guy" - which ran contradictory to the series ultimately claiming that their love was reciprocal because of all the unearthed poems.

The thing that jumped out at me in the "love" letters was Jon gushing about Andy letting him fly "first class."

That was the relationship in a nutshell.

Gay were NOT interested in the Preppy Handbook because they wanted to pass as heteros. Many many gays find power by masquerading as classes that are perceived to have power. Gays used the Handbook just like straights did - to learn about the WASP class and help pretend to be that - if they chose to - or to laugh at it. Some of the most pretentious preps on my two Ivy League campusesin the 80s when I was a. student, and in the late 90s when I was a visiting prof, were gay guys. The other super pretentious "put on" preps in the 80s were Asian americans. The first big wave of Asian Americans in the Ivies. Gawd, the lockjaw on them.

Andy would go shopping most mornings with his friend Benjamin (shown in the doc), and buy like a crazy person- women's jewelry, sculpture, anything that caught his eye, and then just thow the stuff in a room until it was full, and then fill up another room.

He ruined Jed's beautiful decorating job over the years. Plus, he never let most people in- even good friends because he didn't want people to know he was "rich".

I remember reading somewhere....maybe it was in the original Diaries....that even after Andy's mom died in a nursing home, long out of sight, Andy would reply: "...oh, she's fine." when friends asked how she was doing. He just couldn't deal with emotion at all.

Looks like he aged quite nicely too.

[quote]Maybe I’m dense, but I couldn’t figure out if Jerry Hall’s “Who?” comment about Jon Gould was being sincere or being catty!

Same here. I wasn't clear if she really didn't know who he was or she did know who he was but didn't like him and her "who?" comment was her being bitchy. Like Mariah's famous "I don't know her" when an interviewer mentioned JLo.

She may well have been out of Warhol's life before Gould arrived.

2005 NY Times interview with Jay Johnson. Sounds like there was tension between Jay and Alan.

Apparently Jay and Jed had 4 siblings. I knew of one, Susan, who shows up in the diaries, but not the others.

Here’s the article if you’re paywalled.

The Surviving Twin, Rearranging the Furniture

By William L. Hamilton Nov. 10, 2005 THOUGH it was the celebrity decorator Jed Johnson who died in the explosion of T.W.A. Flight 800 in 1996, it is his twin brother, Jay, who is in a sense the man who fell to earth.

Jay Johnson, 56, the shy, private brother, for whom Jed was not only a best friend but his "public half," was suddenly the director of Jed Johnson & Associates, a multimillion-dollar interior design firm whose clients included Pierre Bergé, then the manager of the Yves Saint Laurent empire, as well as Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Barbra Streisand and Richard Gere.

The Johnson twins, who dropped out of college at 19 in 1967 and hitchhiked with an AWOL soldier from Sacramento to New York, quickly became internationally famous as a pair of extraordinarily handsome men. (Jed was Andy Warhol's lover for 12 years.) But they were, in subtle ways, as different as night and day.

"Jed was the front person: he sort of took care of that side for me," Jay Johnson, a soft-spoken man, said several weeks ago, sitting in the living room of the apartment in the meatpacking district of Manhattan that he shares with his partner, Tom Cashin. "I didn't really realize that until he was gone."

In a move that surprised many who knew him, Mr. Johnson took the helm of the decorating company his brother left to him, deciding not only to keep the business open, despite the loss of its principal designer and figurehead, but to run it.

On Tuesday, in an effort to broaden and brand the firm's reputation, a collection of furnishings, Jed Johnson Home, was introduced at John Rosselli & Associates in New York, where it is available to designers only. The same day, Rizzoli published "Jed Johnson: Opulent Restraint," a monograph and remembrance organized by Mr. Johnson.

Both seem signals that Mr. Johnson is stepping, finally, out of his brother's shadow, and acknowledging the future rather than the past. And they are something of a forceful reminder that the company has not only survived but thrived. A coming-out as well as a coda.

Jed Johnson Associates, which has a newly designed double-J logo, now has $11 million in annual billings, up from a high-water mark of $7 million when its namesake was alive. Its clients are typically well-heeled business people, not entertainers.

CONTINUED

Very interesting article - thank you for that.

Its design team, including Arthur Dunnam, who is now the design director, remains largely intact. Though the firm has worked in a variety of styles, including Arts and Crafts, for which it was best known, it has recently added more contemporary and colorful interiors to its résumé. And if it lost clients when it lost Jed Johnson, it has gained clients who came to it for its 30 years of experience, not the presence of celebrity. Paul Goldberger, writing in The New York Times in 1996, shortly after the plane crash, said Jed Johnson had "one of the best eyes that has existed in our time."

Alan Wanzenberg, an architect, was Jed Johnson's personal partner and professional collaborator and was considered by many to be the heir apparent as the surviving half of a well-known team. They were also business partners in Jed Johnson, Alan Wanzenberg & Associates until 1986, when Mr. Wanzenberg established his own company, Alan Wanzenberg Architect, which continued to work with Mr. Johnson. He now has his own interior design business and does not work with Jed Johnson Associates, the successor to their earlier partnership.

Nancy Blank, who commissioned Mr. Wanzenberg and Jed Johnson to design a house in Pennsylvania before Mr. Johnson died, has since designed an apartment in New York with Mr. Dunnam and the firm.

"I'm sure Jed had an incredible eye, but so do other people there," Ms. Blank said. She added that she had met people who changed design firms when Mr. Johnson was killed, but explained that "a lot of times I've found, in that industry, so many of the 'wow' names are not professional."

"And bragging rights don't do it for me," she added, "as long as I have a great finished product."

Born in Alexandria, a small town in Minnesota, in 1948 -- Fargo was the nearest big place -- Jed and Jay were two of six children of an alcoholic father who brokered milk, eggs and pelts for local farmers, and a homemaker who divorced him when the twins were 18. The two boys could have been characters in a novel by Theodore Dreiser, or a story by Truman Capote.

Raised in Arizona, then California, where the family moved in search of employment, Jed and Jay arrived in New York, making the last leg by Greyhound bus. They took the subway to the East Village, found an apartment through a heroin addict, got mugged and lost their last $200, and took jobs delivering telegrams for Western Union. On his third day at work, Jed Johnson delivered a telegram to Andy Warhol's Factory on Union Square. And yes, the rest is history.

"It became very exciting, almost instantly," Mr. Johnson said of their careers as celebrities within Warhol's circle, traveling between New York, Paris, London and exotic points farther afield. "He worked much harder than I did," he said of Jed and his ambition. "I played much harder."

Jay Johnson drank heavily, favored cocaine, wore makeup, modeled and helped paint Warhol's pictures for the Factory. "Eric Boman also wore makeup," Mr. Johnson said of the fashion photographer, who is one of his oldest acquaintances. Another fashion acquaintance, Marina Schiano, called them "the two lesbians."

"We thought we were fabulously beautiful, and so masculine," Mr. Johnson said.

He also became friendly with some of the most dissolute citizens of the century, including Marianne Faithfull, the singer, and Henrietta Moraes, a British beauty and bohemian who was portrayed by the painter Francis Bacon naked with a needle in her arm (which was artistic license, as she was investigating LSD at the time), went to prison for burglary after her marriage to an Indian poet ended, and spent her last days in a single room in Chelsea with her dachshund, Max.

Last part

When Jed Johnson left Warhol in 1976, setting up house with Mr. Wanzenberg on the Upper West Side, and started the decorating company, Jay went to work for him, an arrangement that didn't last because of his drinking and drug habits.

Jed and Mr. Cashin, who had met Jay in Paris modeling when Jay was 24 and Mr. Cashin was 19, intervened, ultimately sending Mr. Johnson back to Minnesota to a rehabilitation center for three months. Two years later Jed rehired his brother as a bookkeeper. After Jed's death an appraisal of the company for inheritance tax purposes put its value at less than $100,000, or what was in the bank.

"Basically the company was Jed, and without Jed there was not a chance it would survive," Mr. Johnson explained. But upon reading the appraisal, "I thought, We can keep this going. I owed something to the people who had worked with Jed."

Several clients indicated that they would stay with the company if it continued. Mr. Wanzenberg's business was independent. "Did Alan think he would run Jed Johnson?" Mr. Johnson said. "I think he would have liked to, and I think he was surprised that I decided that I wanted to. He felt that I may not have had the experience, that I wasn't a designer. But I never claimed to be. I don't want to be a designer."

Mr. Dunnam recalled of the period immediately after Mr. Johnson's death: "Certainly it was a time that was a big learning experience for all of us -- learning to wear different hats in the workplace. There had always been someone to go to."

"Jed was always able to deal with any kind of situation," he added. "The client in a momentof panic, the temperamental vendor. People don't think of interior design as having a stress level, but with the level of expense -- money is the most important thing in clients' lives, next to their kids -- it requires someone very mindful of that. Not just the ability to create pretty space."

At home Mr. Johnson and Mr. Cashin look out over the triangle where 14th Street, Ninth Avenue and Hudson Street meet, one of the city's most fashionable scenes playing on their picture windows as though they were flat-screen televisions. "It's great," Mr. Johnson said, with a wide, famously photographed smile unaltered by age or responsibility. "It makes you feel younger. You can sit and watch the madness."

Homer, the couple's Abyssinian cat, came into the room as quietly as a shift in the afternoon light, then jumped up onto a table -- front and center and ready for attention.

"He's not as shy as he used to be," Jay Johnson said.

Does anybody else feel the need to rewatch E2 with all the Jed stuff in it? I feel like I missed 1/2 of the info and insights talked about in this thread.

I'm also finding it fascinating to read all of the many posts here lauding the beauty of Jed. He certainly had a handsome angelic quality but his face paled somewhat next to many of the hot GQ supermodels of the early 1980s and his thin androgynous body is so different from those usually craved on DL.

But don't flame me! I mean I'm encouraged to read the acclaim for someone who was not your everyday 2022 Instahoe musclebound poseur.

What do you think young arty men looked like in the late 60s?

The boys at Woodstock. Show me the fatties and musclemen?

Young people were skinny and lithe.

Gosh, was there enough about Jean-Michel?

Well INSIDE the art world, Jean-Michel is a great artist of historic importance. So they want to explore the "two great artists" relationship. Why not? I learned some stuff about Basquiat that I didn't know before. It was nice to see so many pictures and movie clips of him genuinely smiling and engaged as an artist. I thought he was surly but this shows another side of him.

What is the rest of the Warhol family like, the Pittsburgh ones? I know they're scrap metal dealers in PA...

I was at that Diana Ross Central Park concert, running like hell through ankle deep rain. Quite a scene.

Some uncle was a doctor. So, I'm not sure how "poor" they really were or chances to get out of their situation. There must have been a whole Chex lol idk...population.

Chex college roommate with big dick from Pittsburgh and W's uncle delivered most of them

Is dat englesh?

No. Chex mix.

Did Andy fully appreciate his own stature as an icon? He seemed so humble in his way.

R481 are you being sarcastic?

Yes it's amazing how few fatties there were back then. The crowd at Woodstock was all skinny and trim. Look at a crowd today and so many fatties, even people in their twenties. The girls in particular are HUGE, like land whales.

R482 I'm not, actually.

Two things:

1. Is taking someone else's art (The Last Supper) and simply making it yellow really high, intellectual art?

2. Andy would have been really bothered by calling "queer" all the time. He wasn't "queer," he was gay.

[quote] I was surprised, but Keith Haring came across to me as kind of obnoxious.

This kind of came out in the new documentary that came out about him. They said when he became famous, he would throw huge parties, but he’d pout if someone famous didn’t show up rather than enjoying the nobodies that had been friends with him in the days when he was a nobody.

R481, it’s clear that Warhol felt critically unappreciated.

I should have fooled around with Haring when I had the chance because even though he wasn't classically handsome I thought he was sex on a stick. However, I was mortified by AIDS and didn't date or screw HIV+ people until of course, one of my boyfriends turned out to be + and SICK. I met lots of sexy fabulous + guys in the mid to late 80s, early 90s and half of them were not into safe sex and paired off with other pozzies. Back then it was called serosorting. It was around for about a decade.

[quote] The crowd at Woodstock was all skinny and trim.

Heroin tends to do that to a person.

[quote] Is taking someone else's art…and simply making it yellow really high, intellectual art?

Warhola was a commercial artist working in advertising.

Everything he did after that was mocking "high, intellectual art". He was a faker.

I had a friend who knew Warhol and Haring well. He would shed a tear sometimes talking about Keith. Warhol on the other hand was NOT a nice guy, he used to say, but that's so subjective.

He most certainly was not a "FAKER". Warhol is a contemporary artist and among the most important. Contemporary art is about breaking down any and all arbitrary boundaries of "what is art" and "high art" vs. "popular art". The first movement in Contemporary art is arguably DADA dating from WWI. Contemporary art evolved concurrently with modern art for decades, but it was small. While "modern art" was the main trend. Modern art was very much concerned with HIGH ART and the artists touch, and traditional media, and the artistic genius and blah blah blah.

Nobody who builds a commercial career in Contemporary Art is a faker because there is no such boundary in Contemporary Art. There is not such thing as fake art. Only an individual, a self anointed art expert, probably educated in art history, can call a successful contemporary artist a "faker" - its a very personal opinion. And cannot be defended on any terms that make sense in Contemporary Art criticism. One would need to deny all contemporary art, as art.

"probably UNeducated in art history"

Duchamp was "contemporary art". Was he a fake artist? Are his readymades "fake art"? Please leave the conversation. Picasso was modern art. Warhol comes from the "contemporary art" line of artistic expression and art making.

Heres more info:

Art for art"s sake.

Warhol was fully Duchampian, not least for his wit and intelligence.

I love how they talked about how edgy and full of meaning it was for Warhol to paint The Last Supper in camouflage.

He was just appropriating and reusing his last idea.

Nothing more, nothing less.

I think the morphs Warhol was doing - such as camouflage/last supper silkscreen - were huge nods to Roy Lichtenstein and more so OLD Lichtenstein from 20 years before. Still a lot of Warhol delivers visual eye candy, so there is always simply that.

You kind of have to wonder if Murphy and the director bought into the C-list art historians and the revisionism or if they were letting them reveal themselves as such. I guess a mix.

Loved when they floated the millennial museum curator gal’s theory about “the big C” standing for gay cancer by Chris M. and he was like “uhhhh or he just put it there because it was an empty space? And he liked how it looked? Where is the G if it’s supposed to be gay cancer?”

I was unimpressed by the last supper work too. Again felt like the millennial curator was going too deep into it talking about how camouflage over it clearly meant the war on AIDS.

Maybe she’s right but it felt like grasping to me. What did you all think?

r489 most of them weren't junkies

She also said that it means what it means to you.

Like all art...duh!

R502 She regards herself as a high priestess. She would've hated Warhol if she really knew him in person.

R417...Yhe Basquiat association had to explored as widely as it was because it pushed the narrative the director & several interviewees expressed in Warhol being racist & an exploiter of his power & whiteness, which is the way history is told these days. This couldn't have been any more exaggerate. Early in Basquiat's career his work was considered valuable & influential. He was well aware of his association with Warhol & the places it could take him, which it did. During his lifetime his Samo graffiti was being removed from structures because of its increasing value & demand. The idea that Warhol was in any way manipulating Basqiat because of his ethnicity is reductive & insulting to his own agency. The suggestion of a power differential is far fected, as both men were wielding their power enough to reap the benefit of maintaining an association with the other. Even Warhol's language that some have used to accuse him of being a racist presents a weak argument. His actions far demonstrated his character as much more fortified. Warhol was always keen to the next wave & he wasn't concerned with who was driving it, as long as he was able to ride--and anyone on that wave was usually aware that having Wathol along for the ride was worth it.

It isn't clear to me if the millennial or Genx woman is an archivist, curator, or art historian/critic. All different occupations. Sometimes she is staged as an archivist, in which case her interpretations do not hold much institutional value in the "scene".

If she said "that's what I choose to see, that perhaps these contemporary events influenced Warhol in these choices" - that is fine. If she was clumsy enough to say - Warhol made this.... to mean this.... it's asinine. Unless she has the research to prove it.

rather like I said up thread, I think the truth is between her "political/zeitgeist messaging" theory, and Christopher Makos's pricky shrug off that Warhol meant to say anything at all ("it's all graphic design.") The subject matters are not pure graphics. Not chosen just as random graphics.

I don't understand how Warhol got around copyright law. From the soup cans and Brillo logo to the photos of stars and the Last Supper he pinched. Really, how was he not confronted about this?

R508 for many decades, courts favored artists who appropriated and reworked images that in their original form, could be considered copyrighted. Or actually were copyrighted. The same applies to music and video/film. Music was more protected than imaged, but not totally protected. However, in very recent years, this may be tipping toward "not acceptable".

Basquiat was also the one who dropped Warhol after the show they did together was savaged by critics. He was the last in a long line of father figures Basquiat rebelled against. However, Andy's sudden death sent Basquiat into a tailspin he never really came out of, though they were estranged when Andy died.

[quote] Warhol being racist & an exploiter of his power & whiteness, which is the way history is told these days.

This is "revisionist history" or dumbing down for the masses.

R508, they were derivative works—art derived from other art, but altered in personal, expressive ways. Anyone who would have seen his ‘sixties work would have known where the underlying images come from and how they had been changed to make a different artistic point.

ITs just the same stupidity as Martha Johnson was a transgender woman who created the Gay Civil Rights movement then was robbed of the honorifics by whites.

I really enjoyed this series. There is so much about Warhol that I never knew! I found this presentation of him to be sympathetic, but still candid. Of course, much of it is in his own words, but the interviews with those that knew him were fascinating. I especially enjoyed the two surviving twin brothers.

They should have gone into the business aspect a bit more. Andy had a huge overhead and extravagant lifestyle. Plus, one of the bios (maybe Bob) said he was always helping out ex "Superstars" with money for medical bills and other things. And people were asking for money as well.

[quote]ITs just the same stupidity as Martha Johnson was a transgender woman who created the Gay Civil Rights movement then was robbed of the honorifics by whites.

If trans women of color had really been in charge of the gay rights movement, homosexuality would still be illegal.

Martha, Martha, Martha!

The comment made in Episode 2 that Roy Cohn was observed frolicking with four hot young guys at Studio 54 was interesting.

Luc Sante is now Lucy Sante and the documentary was obviously filmed before he started transitioning.

R519 OMG! I thought you were being snarky but it's true!!!

Jesus...is everyone and their fucking mother trans now? It's like some loony epidemic!

It's obvious a lot of people on here haven't read the Diaries...they don't cover the first Factory Years...the diaries started in the early mid 70s. Andy discusses the "old" years and the original Superstars on occassion but it's not the focus of the Diaries.

I don't think Andy had an extravagant lifestyle. He liked to shop but he was a smart shopper who looked for bargains. Interview had high overhead, but the "art team" was a pretty lean one. Andy himself was rather frugal. He could be generous but he could also be quite cheap, too.

He was actually a rather smart shopper. He bought things he liked that eventually increased a lot in value. And, he was a smart real estate investor, too.

Warhol really was a master of manipulating his public persona. He really wasn't THAT shy or non verbal. He wasn't a sexless virgin. He wasn't a naive innocent who just wafted through the world.

Pity Warhol didn't make Solanis' film Up Your Ass because it sounds hilarious. John Waters would have jumped at that.

[quote]The comment made in Episode 2 that Roy Cohn was observed frolicking with four hot young guys at Studio 54 was interesting.

That pissed me off, to be honest. I was like: "why did he get to do what he did and then be surrounded with hot young men?" Pure jealousy on my part, maybe. But he did some terrible stuff.

Cohn had resting evil face. No way would I ever go anywhere with that guy. Did these people not have any instincts whatsoever?

[quote]Did these people not have any instincts whatsoever?

Reminds me a bit of that part in Christopher Isherwood's [italic]Christopher and His Kind[/italic] where he talks about the gay boys in Berlin fetishising the Nazis.

Bitch shot this other bitch because he was a self serving asshole. And here is the second worst slam, Warhola was a bore.

I don't think anyone actually loved this guy. He wasn't lovable. I think they loved his money, talent and his ability to open doors, but otherwise, he was deplorable.

He was "deplorable" because he was unlovable?

Even by DL standards, that's a pretty shitty thing to say.

I think a lot of people did love/like Andy. And, not just for his fame/money.

Andy was far from perfect; he could be cold and shitty and he had a shit ton of issues but a lot of the invective thrown his way comes from bitter people who tried to exploit their connection with Andy to further their own careers and when they were only able to climb so far, they blamed him for somehow stopping THEIR rise to wealth and fame. When the reality was, they had climbed as high as most of them could go.

Andy maintained lifelong friendships.

Andy certainly did NOT usually buy quality.,which Jed changed best as he could. Andy bought flashy crap- which was sold at crazy prices because it was Andy's.

Real estate, he was lucky.

Bitch (r526, r527) didn't read the Diaries or watch the series. Bitch, bye.

R530 Well, again, that's not true. Andy collected a wide variety of things including kitsch but also art, jewelry and fine collectibles.

And, again, if you had read the Diaries you would know he put a lot of thought into his real estate purchases.

Honestly, I did watch the series, at least. To the point where I was certain that Gould died of Aids comlications. Real life can be so depressing.

I believe that Warhol had some foresight and talent. For me, it isn't enough. I never liked his persona, which I can't separate from his work.

I liked that Andy was moved by the Neverending Story.

[quote]This kind of came out in the new documentary that came out about him. They said when he became famous, he would throw huge parties, but he’d pout if someone famous didn’t show up rather than enjoying the nobodies that had been friends with him in the days when he was a nobody.

Very interesting. I know someone like that actually, (though he is not as famous as he would hope to be). It aligns with the story in this documentary about him using Andy to get photographs taken of him on the red carpet and then getting pissed off when the photographers weren't there.

R508...I see your point, but it's up to the holder of the copyright to sue anyone who infringes upon it. Campbell's & Brillo were probably thrilled to receive all the free advertising. Warhol's renditions of these products weren't altered or profane. His literal translations of their images just meant exposure for those companies. As far as the celebrities, the bulk of them sat for the photos that the portraits were based on. They were well aware of how their images were going to be used. In the case of the Elvis portrait, I'm sure it's the same case as the consumer products--free publicity.

Even though Andy told all these things to Pat Hackett, I don't think he thought it would ever be turned into a book, or now, a documentary. I wonder if he would have approved or if he would have felt invaded.

It feels a little creepy knowing how self-loathing he was and some of his inner most private thoughts, but I can't turn away. It's like one of his disaster series of paintings that he was so fascinated with.

R537, I think he meant the diaries to be read. Andy’s public “act” — his pretending to be someone who couldn’t feel and barely thought — was false, and perhaps was a product of self-hatred. (Would a straight artist felt as compelled to be such a self-mocking performer? I don’t know, but I doubt it.) The diaries show that he was a real person and that he noticed everything. I think that ultimately he wanted people to understand that.

R538, I like your explanation. It makes a lot of sense. I do think that Andy was the ultimate "time capsule".

I found him very sad. To be so successful, and yet so unhappy. He used people, they used him.

He was a rich, famous, ugly old man who used his money/connections to lure younger, better-looking men into his bed and then was surprised when it didn't mean true love.

He seemed to have the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old.

Reading the diaries, I always felt he was a very down-to-earth person at heart. Practical, blue-collar attitudes toward a lot of things.

I'll give him credit for at least looking to find love. It's not like he had a parade of boy toys. Hell, to buy Jon a house and not even get a fuck out of it?

Odd how Andy always fell madly in love with fellow bottoms.

That is no romance novel in the making.

I had a hard time swallowing "business is art" and I'll swallow just about anything.

It would have been hard for him to refuse requests for money or gifts because he wanted so much to be loved, but then he realized he was being used and was bitter about that. It does seem like he had an ability to put disappointments and mistakes in the past and move on, though. He seemed to be constantly concerned about earning more money. Was that because he spent so much or just because he never thought he had enough?

Andy got harder about his superstars later in life. The Basquiat biography talks about his holding Basquiat at arms length once he realized the extent of the artist's drug problem. One of his assistants said that Andy learned the hard way after Edie Sedgwick that junkies die, and you can't help them.

I wonder if the diary really was for IRS purposes or if that was just a cover story for him to make public his thoughts.

According to Bob Colacello, after Andy heard he was writing Holy Terror (this would have been right before he died), he started shopping the diaries around to publishers. That would have been career suicide for him to publish them while he was alive.

Andy needed to keep going to parties and product launches to court advertisers and portrait subjects-who would invite him anywhere after they were published? People would have become uncomfortable in his presence.

Supposedly after Andy died, Liz Taylor panicked and kept calling the Factory. Andy had tape recorded her drunk and high at Studio 54 discussing her sex life with each of her husbands. She was worried the tape would end up in the press.

Andy was much smarter than Truman Capote and waited until after he was dead to publish his socialite and celebrity-skewering writings.

"When you're from Pittsburgh, you have to do something."

I wonder if Jon Gould really did try to kill Andy in Aspen when they were snowmobiling?

John was borderline ugly. I don’t get it. He was bald, and run down looking most of the time. So he might have dressed decently but not appealing in the least. What a bizarre attraction.

I wonder if it’s true that he just made Jon dance naked for him and that was sex for them.

Jed had talent and ambition and it was never really clear what Jon Gould was doing at Paramount. He wasn't Robert Evans, though.

Yeah, it wasn't clear to me what his role at Paramount was. Sometimes they made it sound like he was at the top of the food chain there but other times it sounded like he was seemingly giving studio tours in a golf cart. Did he greenlight all those successful movies in the 80s? They made it sound like it, but he seemed to have his hand in Andy's wallet the whole time. Something seemed off about that whole dynamic.

I wondered about Jon Gould too. It was never specifically said what role he had at Paramount, only that he was an "executive" which could mean any number of things. He did purchase a house in Beverly Hills but Andy could've helped with that. It was mentioned that Gould was from "an old New England family," but that doesn't mean his family was wealthy.

They said he got a promotion and his salary went up 100x or more. So if he was a nothing hire at 30k and went up to 3 mil maybe he was a jr exec of some kin. Or did they say 10x higher?

Jon Gould was Vice President for Corporate Communications at Paramount Pictures.

google, you old cunts?

It sounds like he wasn’t really a producer. It says here that a letter he wrote to Barry Diller got him the Paramount job.

Did he have any experience? How does one get an exec job at paramount with no production or management experience? It just seemed like he was handed the gig.

R561, Gould came from a wealthy family. It was probably one of those gigs you get through connections.

He had experience and then used the pink old boys network to get into Paramount. So his breaks came from the velvet mafia. Wenner, Diller, Warhol.

Bob Colacello:

"Jon Gould was Vice President for Corporate Communications at Paramount Pictures... Jon seemed to have two personalities, two styles, two lives: straight and gay, preppy and flamboyant, on his own in Los Angeles and with Andy in New York. He was... awkward when he walked into a room, agile on the ski slopes and the dance floor. He was extremely proud of his old New England roots and counted Nathaniel Currier, of Currier & Ives the printmakers, as a great-great uncle. His family lived on a nine-hundred acre estate in Amesbury, Massachusetts, that had been founded by their direct ancestors circa 1620. They also owned a summer house in New Hampshire, a big classic gray clapboard facing the Atlantic, filled with wicker furniture, snapshots of family clambakes, and a collection of framed New Yorker 'summer issue' covers going back to the twenties.

Jon had graduated from New England college, where he'd concentrated both on business and the arts, including drama and dance, in June 1977. He'd spent that summmer at Harvard in the hightly selective Radcliffe Publishing Program, making many of the friends that would form the nucleus of his New York clique... Jon landed a job in the advertising department of Rolling Stone, where he caught Jann Wenner's eye by increasing move ads by 400 percent in one year. A pitch letter he wrote to Barry Diller got him the job at Paramount in 1978... and like Jed [Johnson], he had a twin brother named Jay.

We’re they really wealthy though? I think they were comfortable but if they were so rich then I don’t think Gould would have been with Andy.

Everybody mentions this 1000 acre estate but my googling turns up nothing specific. There are a few Gould houses in the area.

another. There seem to be a number of Gould houses and from the proper time period of being establishing families of Mayflower origin.

[quote]google, you old cunts?

Shush, child/ r559 - the adults are conversing. Go play with your phone - or on the freeway - or DIAGF.

Thanks to whoever started this thread.

Don't slip on concrete and die, especially with so little time to repent.

I think Jon Gould was very sexy. I would roll in the hay with him if I had the opportunity. There are nudes of him out there, images with Andy also present. I doubt anyone at Paramount knew he got naked in a public place.

Why didn't they come out and tell us if Gould was horse hung.? I slept around with some of those Mayflower or adjacent boys - Alden, Peabody, Biddle, Appleton - and they all had 8 inches or more. Several hundred years after their ancestors arrival, of course. I'm old but not a vampire.

tall, lanky, and bald...what do you think.

Gigantor obviously

Why do you all think Jon Gould was given such hands-off treatment in the series? I mean, if you think he wasn't all that? Why would there be any effort to sugar coat his rep?

Was Andy always rich from early on in NY? Or did he make his fortune in his second act?

What is Warhol's "second act"???

Warhol was rich from being a commercial artist but he became richer.

What is the art scene like now in NYC? Do they have stars anymore?

He lived in squalor when he first came to NYC-his nickname was “Andy Paperbag” because he would deliver commissions to clients in a paperbag. Once, he was meeting with an editor -I think it was Carmel Snow at Harper’s Bazaar-and he lost the job when cockroaches crawled out of the bag during the meeting.

That said, by the end of the fifties he was a very successful illustrator, able to purchase his place on 89th St.

When I read the Diaries back in the1990s, I had no idea who Jed Johnson and Jon Gould were. So I saw them completely through my interpretation of Andy's words, his descriptions. There were, of course, some accompanying photos of the two men.

I distinctly remember my impression back then of Jed as a pretty boy opportunist with little talent. He didn't strike me as a particularly sympathetic person, though clearly a young man Andy was smitten with for awhile, more of a passing crush. Jon, OTOH, seemed much sweeter and sincere and more "gettable" in Andy's mind. Andy viewing him hopefully as the love of his life until he forbids Pat to write much in the Diaries about him. I don't remember Andy commenting on his looks a lot, his looks weren't so much what the attraction was about.

In this series I think both Jed and Jon are presented with great empathy and loving care by most, if not all, of the talking heads who knew them.

Black art stars include Toyin Ojih Odutola, Nigerian art star based in NY. Deana Lawson is a NYS born and NYC contemporary photography art star. Titus Kaphar - Connecticut and New York. There are ALWAYS stars rising and falling in the contemporary art capitals of the world because the market is large and extremely lucrative.

R579, it's fascinating that people who knew Andy remembered Jed quite differently. The photographs and videos of him and his designs don't convey the impression of an "opportunist with little talent." I was left wondering if Andy felt driven to undermine him and their relationship.

Yes, r579, exactly my thoughts. Maybe I'm misremembering, but Jed didn't come off nearly as well in the Diaries as he does in the doc. It's really made me want to reread them.

I'm actually off to London next week and I'll be seeing the new hit play The Collaboration about Andy and Jean-Michel. Seeing the doc has given me some much-needed background info.

I just find it hard to believe that a man as young and beautiful as Jed Johnson could've been truly sexually attracted/in love with the repulsive Warhol, who was so strange and so much older. Jed was dirt poor and living a hand-to-mouth existence so it's very likely he did see Warhol as a meal ticket and a person with valuable connections. After all, it was Warhol's connections who got Jed started in interior design, and as soon as he became successful and started making a lot of money he left Warhol and apparently had nothing to go with him again. Jed's second partner, the love of his life, was around his own age and his equal in looks.

Who really knows, though. Just my 2¢.

But some of his brother Jay's last words in the doc claimed (insisted!) that Jed shared a bedroom with Andy for several years. Hard to know what to believe but I tend to agree with r583.

They might have shared a bedroom but what exactly went on in that bed?

Silk screening the satin sheets perhaps?

Interesting that Bob Colacello was against featuring Nancy Reagan on the cover of Interview and making the trip to the White House to meet and photograph her.

Bob and Nancy later became close friends and he wrote about her flatteringly in VF and then wrote a book about her and Ronnie.

Here's a link to part two, if you wish to continue the discussion. I've been a fan of Warhol's since I was a teenager and he was still alive. I got in trouble for buying his Diaries when they came out. Unfortunately, my father thought he was a deviant. He's come around.

R582 Don't forget...the Diaries started around the time or after Jed broke away. The same reason not much of the Factory people were in this doc: the Diaries weren't of that period.

[quote] Funniest parts of the Andy Warhol Diaries (Part 2): Liza enters a party, and announces dramatically to the host, "Give me every drug you've got!"

This is missing a few key elements that make the story more interesting. The party host was none other than Halston, and Liza asked him that because Baryshnikov was waiting outside and he and Liza were about to go fuck.

After the Diaries came out, Liza did an interview with the Hollywood Kids (remember them) and when they asked which celebrity least impressed her, she said Andy Warhol. Tama Janowitz also did an interview with them and she said Warhol would have loved the Hollywood Kids

Was Mark Gero Liza's only straight husband?

A590 it was Marty Scorsese waiting outside while Liza scored the drugs at Halston’s townhouse, not Baryshnikov.

R590

The celebrity turnout at Andy's funeral was most impressive.

There hadn't been one like that in NYC until Joan Rivers died.

Andy suffered from depression (even mentioning that he was suicidal at times) and I wanted to feel sorry for him. However, I think he came off as a liar, pretending he wasn't gay, not being honest about who he was dating, etc. He could have responded to some questions with "Please respect my privacy" but instead he just seemed to lie about who he was.

He seems to have had it all, miserably.

It's clear you haven't mastered the material. Go back and try again. And by that I mean go back to the uterus.

Andy certainly lived a very full life. More of a life than many of us will ever do. He was in the middle of everything that was happening in every decade. What surprised me was that he was willing to try anything. Even though he was out of place with the WASPy crowd, there he was goofing around with them, on the ski slopes. Even though he was out of place, there he was having dinner with a Haitian family. Andy didn't care. He had a sincere curiosity and zest for life. He really had a wonderful life.

Only Warhol can go to China.

Warhol wanted to be original and surprising in all things. He took his artist role very seriously, even if it meant clownish behavior and wearing an "Andy Suit" very single day he steps outside the door; of course all this becomes oppressive. Having it all but having no love just makes a mockery of success. And then comes age and decrepitude. It's very hard to pull it all together. Live for love and you're way ahead of the game.