OPERA MUSIC
HE LAUGHS
So glamorous!
PHONE RINGS
Hello, this is Stephen, can I help you? Um...
I forget who I'm calling.
Who is this, please? Um...
Lavine.
MUSIC: All Tomorrow's Parties by The Velvet Underground
The forgetful caller was Andy Warhol.
The call was made from a payphone painted silver, on the silver
wall of his New York City studio called the Factory.
When the Factory opened its doors in January 1964,
Warhol was already a famous pop art painter.
His depictions of everyday consumer goods and Hollywood icons had
already jolted the art world and redefined an era.
But in his new Factory studio,
Warhol's creative ambitions exploded in new directions.
He bought a movie camera and set out to become a famous film-maker.
OK.
He'd discover his very own screen stars...
..and even become a rock and roll producer.
And he went to work on perhaps the most ambitious creation
ever to come out of the Factory...
..Andy Warhol himself...
the enigmatic superstar.
OK.
Yeah.
MUSIC: Going To A Go-Go by The Miracles
I'm going this way, aren't I? That's the idea.
Warhol was called simplistic.
You have just copied a common item? Yes.
In public he was famously tight-lipped and aloof.
But who was the real Andy Warhol?
Where better to look than in the private details of his daily life?
Based on unique access to Andy Warhol's planning diary,
and with the involvement of his most intimate friends and Factory
colleagues, I'm going to experience 24 hours living on Andy time.
'Richard, everyone thinks that Andy was so quiet.
'Well, I can contradict that perfectly because he never shut up.'
Andy took speed, but by the handful.
Before he went out, he put on a costume, he put on make-up,
like an actor going to play a role.
'We were doing something that I consider to be very important,'
and that the future would recognise this.
I'll piece together a typical day in Andy's life from the mid-1960s,
which in true Warhol fashion should look
and feel just like the real thing.
'WABC, the station New York is listening to...'
In the mid-'60s, New York was the city that proverbially never slept...
'This is Dan Thompson, WOR-FM...'
..and Andy Warhol was right at home.
The pop art painter had already made people see the commercial
world around them in a new way.
Now any aspect of everyday life might be his raw material.
It's a round-the-clock blur of activity.
So our day with Andy starts not with an early-morning alarm clock...
..but in the middle of the night, with Andy working on one of his first
film projects, called Sleep,
and starring his close friend, the poet John Giorno.
It's six hours of changing camera angles of Giorno catching Z's.
What have we got here, John? These are Tibetan Buddhist cushions.
On the bottom pallet is the bed on which Sleep was filmed.
It was a bed, it sort of had legs on, they were taken off years ago.
It is quite an intimate thing to allow somebody to film you
when you are in a sort of vulnerable state like that.
Well, it never crossed my mind. It's like making love to somebody.
Andy was a very good friend, and that was what he wanted to do,
and I was happy to be the one that was there doing that, you know.
You have been described as lovers. Was that right, you and Andy?
We...we made love, we were lovers, yes.
Why did you decide to just shoot somebody sleeping for eight hours?
Wh... He just said that he sleeps so soundly. You can just put...
He falls asleep,
and he left his door open in New York, which is so strange.
You can just walk right in.
As he slept, Warhol couldn't sleep.
Even if he'd wanted to.
'In '64, Andy took speed by the handful,
'he did something called Obedrin.'
For me, this is incredibly important for his work,
because what speed did for him in those years, it made him fearless.
When he had these great ideas, he had the ability to do them.
On behalf of all your fans and the Warhol fans who are watching this,
would it be OK for me to touch the storied bed?
Oh, yes, go right ahead. Are you sure?
Do anything else that you want to. Really?
It is that kind of atmosphere, isn't it?
Let's have a look down here, let's check it for springiness.
It is very firm. Yes, there is a little give...
after these years, but...
she's still there. It is a very old mattress, I think it is even a horsehair.
You know horsehair? Is it? Yes. That is old school.
Well, thank you very much. Yes.
At around 4:30am, after Warhol completes filming Sleep,
he hails a taxi and heads home to his townhouse on the Upper East Side,
where he lives with his mother.
He makes it home just before 5am.
Warhol's definitely not a morning person,
and it is his mum who usually does the shopping.
But on rare occasions he'd stumble out of bed
and head to this very supermarket, where he found inspiration.
Art history settled on one key point about Andy Warhol, that the
man enjoyed Kellogg's cornflakes almost every morning of his life.
Now, this aisle in the supermarket had an almost sacramental
quality for Warhol. This was the altar of the supermarket.
It was the home of the Campbell's soup products that he painted
so often.
And he wasn't taking the mickey out of a ho-hum, everyday staple.
On the contrary, to Warhol, this was the food of life,
a square meal you could depend on.
And he ate them almost every day.
The Andy Warhol we think we know from those countless photographs
and reproductions is the kooky guy who took everyday household stuff,
Brillo Pad boxes, cans of soup, bottles of pop,
and prodded us into seeing them in a different way.
But there was another Warhol
who by the mid-'60s was determined to do everything
he could to demolish the boundaries between his art and his life.
Even before Andy has had his routine breakfast of Kellogg's cornflakes...
the Factory is waking up.
And a key Factory worker has already clocked in.
Around 10am, the studio is coming to life.
And starting work for Warhol in 1963,
one minimum-wage worker was intimately involved in the
production of virtually all the iconic silkscreens in the mid-1960s.
This hired hand was also a poet...
and was considered the Factory stud.
Meet Gerard Malanga.
Why can't you eat that? Well, I have a cholesterol problem. Oh, dear.
My hours have changed.
If I'm in the country, I go to bed at 9:30.
I get up at six, though, because the cats want to be fed.
He was a bit tight with wages. Do you remember what you were making?
I do. It was embarrassing.
$1.25 an hour.
Does that pluck at your innards slightly? No, not at all!
There were a lot of fringe benefits to the association,
such as plane tickets, restaurants.
Andy took care of all of that.
I felt, when we were silk-screening, we were doing something that
I considered to be very important, and that the future would recognise this.
I already knew that.
Did you feel that your contribution was recognised,
because you were doing a lot of the hands-on work on these silkscreens?
You know, a painting I silkscreened back in the '60s
went up for auction at Christie's last week.
A portrait of the Mona Lisa.
What did it go for, like, $59 million?
You know, I made that painting.
'$28 million to open it. $28 million. $30 million.'
38 million I have. $50 million.
Sold here at 50 million. Congratulations.
At the then minimum wage,
23.5 hours spent silk-screening the Warhol pictures would earn
Gerard about 30 bucks in 1964.
'Silk-screening with Andy was always an enjoyable situation because it was'
the one place where he became very honest with me,
very open with me.
There was no facade there, as it were, we were there to create
art, to create silkscreen paintings on canvas.
You know, I gave him ideas for... for instance, the
multiplication, superimposition of the Elvis paintings,
where there would be more than one Elvis overlapping with each other.
I said, "Let's just move the screen over a little bit
"and we'll get a superimposition,
"rather than just have a static image, one after the other."
And he said, "OK, we'll try that."
He liked that idea, and we did a number of those superimpositions.
It is getting on for midday.
Gerard is busy getting ink under his fingernails.
And Andy hasn't even left the house yet,
and will need all the help he can get to do so.
The youngest and arguably most important worker at the Factory
is about to leave his high school classroom in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn,
jump on a subway train and head to the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
For three years this was a daily journey from the outskirts
of Brooklyn to another world.
MUSIC: I'm Waiting For The Man by The Velvet Underground
New York City is the art capital of the world, and
Joseph Freeman, AKA Little Joey,
is on his way to get its king out of bed.
# I'm waiting for my man... #
I was essentially hired by Andy to go to his house, wake him up,
push him constantly to get ready
so that he could be at the Factory at a reasonable time.
Joseph was a geeky 13-year-old who heard about an artist obsessed with
using cutting-edge tape-recording technology.
Joseph was determined to get an interview
with the artist for his high school newspaper.
With New York charm and moxie, he got through to Warhol's dealer
and eventually Andy himself.
I got on the phone with Andy and I said, "Mr Warhol, I'm a big fan,
"I want to interview you for my high school newspaper."
And he said, "OK, come to the Factory."
The interview was followed by a job offer.
# I'm waiting for my man... #
Hello? Andy, it's me. What's pop art?
Joey would be surprised by some of the antics of Andy's friends.
Brigid Berlin, AKA Brigid Polk, was a close friend
and confidante of the artist.
She liked to make breast prints, as you do.
Minimal, conceptual. What's pop?
And she was also a Warhol superstar,
who appeared in several of his films, including Chelsea Girls.
I'll talk to you later. Give your mother my love. All right.
If you ever see her. Goodbye. Bye.
PHONE RINGS
Hello. Oh, hello, is that Brigid? Yes, it is.
This is Stephen from the BBC. How are you? Fine, good.
In the spirit of those wonderful days,
do you mind if I record this conversation now?
No, not at all. Great, OK, we will do that.
Start.
'I'll use the same model of cutting-edge recording technology
'favoured by Brigid and Andy in the mid-'60s...
'still in use amongst BBC staff today.'
Um, nine o'clock in the morning, the phone rings.
"Hi, Bridge.
"What's new?"
"Oh, Andy, there is nothing new.
"It's nine o'clock in the morning!"
"Well...
"aren't there any good invitations in the book?"
"Andy, no, the mail hasn't come.
"The mail won't be here until 11.
"Oh, Andy, I met this cutest boy.
"He was a baseball player in Central Park."
"Well, Bridge, did you do it last night?"
And he would say, "Did he have a big dick?"
SHE LAUGHS
I did this every day.
You couldn't have just done it by phoning him up and saying,
"Andy, get out of bed"?
HE LAUGHS
And depending how fast I got here or not,
I would run to his house or I would walk to his house.
# Hey, white boy
# What you doin' uptown? #
He wanted to know about your sex life. What did you think about that?
Well, no, he didn't. He...
Listen. You have this wrong.
Because he was a great friend of mine.
And, you know, two people can be terrific friends
and they know everything about each other. That's true.
You said all people are the same.
And that you want to be a machine in your paintings. Is that true?
Um...
Is it true, Brigid?
No, he just wishes it was all easier.
'Can you... Listen,'
everyone thinks that Andy was so quiet,
that his reaction would be,
"Oh, gee," or, "How fabulous," to everything.
And he would just listen.
Well, I can contradict that perfectly because he never shut up!
MUSIC: How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) by Marvin Gaye
Andy would be very un-monosyllabic with Brigid for an hour or more.
So you would get to the Warhol place about 12.50.
What would happen then?
Well, I would knock on the door and after a few minutes Andy's mom would
answer the door, and she usually had a couple of cats down by her legs...
Joey Freeman's closing in on Warhol's townhouse,
where he lived with his mother for 20 years and has
since been branded The Warhol.
The current owner has declined to let us have a peek inside,
so we were left to our own imagination.
So this is the place, right here? This is the place.
The door, I think, is the same door that was always here.
And I imagine his mother to be
pulling back the curtain.
This is Andy's mum, Julia,
making an appearance in one of her son's films
called Mrs Warhola, as she acts the part of herself.
I guess there's no harm in looking through the letterbox.
What do you think, is that an intrusion?
'Oh, look!'
Julia did give her son his bowl of cornflakes almost every morning...
after feeding about two dozen Siamese cats, all named Sam.
WOMAN SINGS IN SLAVIC
She got superstar treatment from her son.
Andy produced a silkscreen portrait of her...
..and hired a professional recording studio to tape her singing
traditional Slavic folk songs.
The Warhola family were staunch adherents of Byzantine Catholicism.
THEY SING A HYMN
Julia was the most artistic in the family.
She sang, she did her own type of art.
She loved doing ink drawings.
You know, a lot of this concern for creativity
and making things was passed on to Andy.
Julia was kind of that magical input.
Well, I mean, most people have a sort of public self or a work self
and then, perhaps, they're slightly different at home.
Maybe a bit more relaxed at home.
But you think this was particularly pronounced in...?
Oh, yes, I think so.
I think he kept his two worlds apart -
his home life, his family life...
And that was the part that we knew him, as Uncle Andy.
And he lived with his mother, Julia.
We had this wonderful kind of relationship with him there.
..and then there was this other aspect
of him being a famous painter,
going off to this place called the Factory.
When he went to church
or he said his prayers with his mother,
that was at home.
That wasn't something that the people at the Factory would know.
And of course, he had his crucifix above his bed that was always there.
And... You say "of course" but people might be surprised by that.
Oh, I think the crucifixes were always all over the house.
After I was there for a little bit,
he would come down in his jockeys.
And it's so funny because he came down in his jockeys
but he had those sunglasses on and he had his wig on,
although I never knew it was a wig back then.
It was just a person who had thinning hair covering that up.
I was 13 and a little bit chunky and I had a little Beatle haircut.
After working with him for one year, I was skinny and part of the scene.
You know?
Was that from observing what was going on
or was somebody telling you, "You need to do this"? No, no, no.
You knew that being thin was the ideal.
And you just did it by being so busy.
We'd walk onto the kerb
and at that time there was no traffic here at all.
And Andy would step on the kerb and he'd go like this.
Why would he do that?
Cos that's the way that Andy hailed a cab.
Sort of a little bit twinkling of his fingertips, like that.
Did it work much or not really?
It did. Oh, hang on. Here we go! It did! And lo and behold.
It was a Checker cab and Andy loved Checker cabs. OK.
Look at this one.
47th Street between 2nd and 3rd.
A lot of times Andy would look out the window
and he would sort of space out and get his act together.
You could see an actual transformation
before your very eyes, as it were? Yes,
he got in his cab and he would decompress.
He was quiet and he would look out the windows,
because when we got to the Factory,
he emerged and everybody went to him.
Everybody had something that they wanted him to do.
I saw that happen time and time again.
Andy and Joey arrive at the Factory at about 1:45.
We're on 47th Street between 2nd and 3rd.
And the Factory would have been over there,
where that brick wall,
that half brick wall is.
And it would have been maybe three windows wide.
It wasn't a big building.
And I think there were only maybe eight floors
in the entire building.
A key thrown down to the street
would get you into the studio freight elevator.
LAUGHTER
I thought maybe you'd like to see it. Oh, I do.
When Warhol finally arrives at the Factory at around two
o'clock in the afternoon, the needs and challenges of running
an expanding multimedia enterprise await him.
Has anyone important called? Was the film stock picked up at Kodak?
Has the latest version of some Flower silk-screens arrived for Gerard?
Did Henry confirm for lunch? Can that press interview be pushed back?
And which party invite to accept this evening?
And while all that's going on, on Sundays the Velvet Underground, the
new rock group Andy was producing, would turn up for a rehearsal.
This is the buzzing silver Factory kingdom of Andy Warhol
in the mid-'60s.
Victor Bockris was a Factory regular
and the unauthorised biographer of Andy Warhol.
Was there a court?
Yes, of course, the Factory was a court. Absolutely.
He had his jester in Ondine.
Ondine, who called himself the Pope, is an amphetamine head
known for his scathing wit and his appearances in several Warhol films.
He had his prime minister in Malanga. He had his manager in Billy Name.
Billy Name is a lighting designer who also gave
the Factory its distinctive silver look.
He had his female companions. The king was always the girl of the year.
Yes, it was a court.
His closest artistic associates compared him to Louis XIV.
His presence was everything. His presence was so...
That's like Louis XIV.
Yeah, his presence was so powerful. People would die for him.
Literally, people would die for him.
Look at his self-portraits. This great thing like... He's very regal.
He's a king.
In spite of all the new initiatives,
the silk-screens remain at the core of Factory production.
Gerard's wrapping up the smallest edition of some recently
completed prints in the Flower series.
It was very easy to multiply the Flower paintings
just like in nature.
He wanted... Everybody would have the opportunity to own an original
painting, even though it was the same as another original painting.
So we must have silk-screened close to 100 paintings.
But it's the new films of Warhol which are consuming his energy
and are starting to generate publicity,
albeit mostly as objects of ridicule.
They seem kind of inhuman, the movies.
No, they were supposed to be just very real.
And like it's called instant movie, instant sound. Everything is...
You don't cut anything out, everything is left in.
But it's very machine-like. Oh, yes.
The camera is going on, you're sitting over here.
Yeah, you don't have to watch the movie.
I mean, it takes it all by itself.
At usually two o'clock, I met the film-maker at the Cinematheque
and maybe I would call Andy or Andy would call me.
Jonas Mekas was the Cecil B DeMille of underground
cinema in New York in the '60s.
He screened, promoted and even shot films of Andy Warhol.
Of course, nobody took early, first films of Andy's seriously.
I was the only one who was screening them.
And Jonas gave Sleep its world premiere.
But I never saw Sleep from the beginning to end.
Well, maybe that was a blessing,
because some people said it was very boring.
As boring as any painting, any modern painting,
like Malevich's The Black Square.
You can say it is boring. You know? But it is a masterpiece.
It's a landmark in the art of painting.
So, you sit. Hang on a minute, Jonas. Now, I will tie you up to the chair!
For audiences,
Andy's excruciatingly unhurried films were a challenge to the mind.
And also the buttocks.
Mekas once tied him to his cinema seat to make sure
he viewed his own film Sleep in its entirety
and suffered for his art like the other moviegoers.
Like that. No wonder you didn't have huge audiences at your cinema club
if this is how you treated the patrons!
For Andy, lunch is usually between 2:30 and 3:30.
It may just be a diet pill.
Or maybe a frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity,
a short walk away from the Factory.
So, what time would you expect to see Andy at your tables?
Well, he'd always come around 2:30, three in the afternoon.
Who comes through the door these days?
Any of the top movie stars that are in New York for PR productions.
You know, we've got the nickname of the ice cream parlour to the stars.
Andy has been coming to Serendipity
since his days as a graphic artist back in the late '50s.
Oh, my goodness, look at this. Here's our famous drink.
Frozen hot chocolate. This is nectar of the gods. Exactly.
So, you know, at this table, this was Andy's favourite table.
And I would always reserve it when I saw him at the door.
And I would say, "Your table is ready," and he'd of course come with
an entourage of five or six, up to ten people.
He would put his tape recorder here, right in the centre,
and order food for everyone and just let people talk.
In the beginning, we saw him
after he made his rounds on Madison Avenue and Glamour magazine.
And then we'd sit down, because lunch would be over
and it would be a quiet time.
We were just two friends talking and we discussed all
the things about what he should do, what he shouldn't do.
Or what he couldn't do.
That was an interesting aspect of Andy,
that he was not only open to ideas from his friends,
like yourself, and his contacts, but he almost depended on it. Do you...?
Yes, I agree with that, 100%. I think
he constantly asked people around him what he should do.
# I'm in with the in crowd... #
Lunch is a time to plan an exhibition of new silk-screens,
or ask friends and colleagues for their ideas.
And Andy would get good ones at Serendipity.
From the early '60s,
Andy regularly had lunch here with his close friend Henry Geldzahler.
Henry was the curator of contemporary
art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
There's a story which I hope you can clarify about him being here
with Henry Geldzahler, and Henry had a copy of the Daily News.
Some terrible accident had happened,
nearly 130 people being killed in a plane crash.
Do you recall that day and how it influenced art history,
if I might put it grandly?
I do recall that day, because it was sensational.
All over the paper, every paper had those headlines.
And they were both here discussing. I didn't stick my nose into the...
into the table to find out
but I know the newspapers were on the table.
So maybe history was written here. I don't know.
But their heads were together over the paper.
Over lunch with Henry,
an idea was discussed which may have directly led to the powerful,
dark and controversial Death and Disaster series of silk-screens
that redefined Warhol's output in the mid-1960s.
So, shall we dig in? Let's try.
After you. In memory of Andy, it was one of his favourite...
I think he'd have liked it if we did. Of course.
It's interesting.
There's a kind of marshmallowy top and then this refreshing, cold rush.
Like a melting glacier in the mouth... Exactly.
..of the icy bottom, if I can put it that way. Yes, I like your explanation.
After lunch, Warhol hit the nearest payphone to call the carpenter
he paid 365 bucks to build the wooden boxes on which he'll
make his now famous silk-screens of Brillo Pad boxes.
Andy wants another 30 boxes.
We had to find a carpenter to make these boxes.
They had to be lightweight. We had to paint every box.
But we had a silkscreen one side of a whole series of boxes.
So it was basically five sides to a box.
It almost seemed like a very Duchampian idea, actually,
to find a three-dimensional ready-made.
And Andy was very good at executing ideas.
The Brillo boxes were selling wholesale for $300 each
at Warhol's gallery.
But a cash offer of 50 bucks on the side might also get you one.
Whatever it took to keep the lights on at the Factory.
After that, Andy jumps in a cab to head back to the Factory.
Between three and 4:30pm is prime time for filming the Screen Tests.
Screen Tests would translate Warhol's passion for doing
portraits into real-time encounters with a movie camera. Say cheese!
Can we do a cheese movie? All you have to do is say, "Cheese, cheese".
All right. No, the next segment could be a cheese movie. All right?
What's the spirit of this one? Just... You don't have to do anything.
Just what you're doing. Can I move? Yeah, you can move.
But not too much.
HIS CAMERA WHIRS INTO ACTION
How come your camera doesn't make any noise?
These silent, three-minute black and white portraits of the famous
and the unknown have been likened to modern-day Rembrandts,
with their uncanny power to reveal personality
while their subjects were being directed to do nothing.
For Warhol, the Screen Tests might discover the next
superstar for his alternative Hollywood.
At the same time, they were also a rite of passage for those
invited to be part of the Factory scene.
The camera on which all the Screen Tests were shot was bought by Andy and
Gerard at a shop called Peerless, since bought out by Willoughby's.
Willoughby's still has some vintage camera equipment in stock.
..two or three locations. Right? How are you doing? Good afternoon.
What can we get for you?
Well, we were curious about this early model Bolex.
The Bolex purchased in the winter of '63 was
the beginning of the end of one Warhol era and the start of another.
How long is it since you've handled one of these, Gerard? Years?
I would say... 1968. Is that right? Yeah.
And then you'd put it on a tripod, would you? No, no, hand-held.
Hand-held always. You could... We put it on the tripod for the Screen Tests.
Do you recall, now, how many Screen Tests you did?
We did somewhere between 480 and 500. Gosh.
It's nice. It's...kind of...
I haven't held one of these in a long time, actually.
Yeah, oh, I see you are looking at it through this viewfinder. All right.
I see! I like it.
An afternoon Screen Test transformed an uptown housewife whom
Warhol met near Bloomingdale's into one of his first superstars.
Oh, my God, I love that blouse! Which one? And I love that... This one.
It's so pretty. It's like a hoodie. A see-through hoodie.
Yeah, but it's beautiful.
And I love this pink and the flowers. Yum.
That would be great for me at Palm Beach.
We did lots of Screen Tests. Oh, gosh, I guess I did 11. 11?
That's a lot. And what were you doing while the camera was rolling?
Oh, he'd tell me things like, "Don't blink".
You try not to blink for three minutes. It's really hard.
So you had a great look. That's partly what he liked about you.
What did you get out of it? Why were you associating with him?
Well, I don't know.
What I got out of it was not being a bored housewife.
What about Andy's habit of making somebody a superstar
and then they were yesterday's plaything?
You know, that really isn't how it worked,
because everybody remained a superstar.
It just depended what you did with your life, you know? I see.
MUSIC: Baby Love by The Supremes
Bibbe Hansen had her chance encounter with Warhol
while she was in a diner with her dad, who happened to know Andy.
Suddenly I felt these eyes peering at me
and Andy leaned over the table and said, "And you?
"What do you do?"
And my father leapt up, very proudly, and said, "I just sprung her from jail!"
"Thanks, Dad(!)"
Warhol was eager to hear more about this young delinquent
and her stories of truancy, shoplifting, drugs and prison.
So, far from you being this kind of innocent that the Factory exploited,
you'd have been amongst the toughest cookies in there, probably,
even at 14, wouldn't you? Yes, I would think so.
I mean, it was on a par, certainly.
Sure enough, she received a Screen Test invite from Andy.
I instantly knew that it was a vetting process. I mean, I got it.
Bibbe would end up co-starring in a Warhol film about prison,
with his newest Factory superstar, Edie Sedgwick.
She told me the best, most black eyeliner that you could get.
And I stole her one.
She also taught me how to put on false eyelashes.
And I would give her drugs.
This bright new charismatic personality was
considered by Warhol a possible dream ticket to the real Hollywood.
It's a mid-afternoon fashion shoot for British photographer
David McCabe.
His rooftop assignment is to photograph the newest Factory
superstar, Edie Sedgwick.
Warhol has tagged along with Edie.
On a whim, I just asked Andy, "Jump up on the ladder with Edie,"
and just took that one shot with the Empire State Building behind him.
Warhol's presence steals the show and creates an iconic image
of the impresario and his new star that helped define the Warhol era.
It's one of many iconic images by McCabe that defined the times.
Andy had already met McCabe, knew his work and decided to hire him
in 1964 to follow and photograph a year in his life and art.
It was such a pivotal, pivotal time.
McCabe documented the changing scene at the Factory and Warhol's
star-studded encounters.
It was crucial to the image-conscious Andy that McCabe
was on hand to capture his encounters with the famous,
wherever and whenever they occurred.
When he received my contact sheets, he would pore over them
with a magnifying glass.
And after the year was over, what Andy was doing, actually,
was trying to figure out what kind of an image he should be projecting.
From the beginning, he was very kind of open, and I actually took
photographs of him laughing and being a regular guy.
He had turned into the Andy that we now know, the quiet,
mysterious Andy.
I mean, now everybody has, you know, they've got the paparazzi,
they've got their own photographers.
They curate their own brands,
to use a couple of terrible modern coinages, don't they? Exactly.
But he was perhaps the first. I think so.
He really transformed himself.
He transformed himself physically, he transformed himself emotionally,
by not allowing emotions to interfere with his work.
He transformed himself, you know, deeply
and to become really one of the great beauties in the world.
Andy Warhol...
There are photographs of Andy Warhol that are just, like,
incredibly beautiful.
But close friends of Warhol knew that the image he worked
around the clock to create and maintain was just that -
an image.
He thought himself ugly.
But when you saw Andy naked - he looked like a beautiful boy.
I'd say, "Andy, don't you look at yourself in the mirror? You're beautiful."
And then on this beautiful body sat the Andy Warhol head
with the wig!
And he, of course, he had a big dick...
A... Quite a big dick.
At around 4.30 in the afternoon, Andy playfully heads to a
Times Square photo booth a few blocks from the Factory,
to take some self-portraits his way -
fast, cheap and easy.
In spite of anxieties about his looks,
Andy never met a photo booth he didn't like.
So, in the spirit of Andy, I'm getting made up
for my close-up.
John Richardson, the biographer of Picasso,
who knew Warhol, said this about him,
"He hid his blotchy looks behind a smokescreen of windswept wigs,
"unevenly dyed eyebrows, heavy layers of calamine
"and Harpo Marx mutism."
Of course, I don't really need this, I'm a natural English rose,
but thanks anyway.
By the mid '60s Andy often turned up at photo booths with a
roll of quarters, to shoot himself or for a growing franchise
of commissioned portraits.
Here she is - what a beauty.
Guaranteed to get your photos in two and a half minutes, folks.
None of that hanging about for three minutes.
I like the instructions here -
Number three - "Attempt to look good."
It's as if they knew I was coming, "Attempt to look good."
And number four - "Have a drink. Your photos will be delivered
"in four to five minutes."
That's service.
OPERATIC SINGING
The photo booth was used by Warhol for his first
commissioned portrait of the collector Ethel Scull in 1963.
I thought, "Where are we going?"
"Just down to 42nd Street and Broadway."
I said, "What are we going to do there?"
He says, "I'm going to take pictures of you."
I said, "For what?" He said, "For the portrait."
I said, "In those things?" I said, "My God, I'll look terrible."
He said, "Don't worry." And he took out -
he had coins, about $100 worth of silver coins.
And he said, "We'll take the high key and the low key,
"and I'll push you inside and you watch the little red light."
By the mid-'60s, photo booth portraits were an important
source of income for Warhol.
Ethel paid $700 for hers -
adjusted for inflation - $6,000.
The photo booth helped pay the costs of running the Factory,
one quarter at a time.
Before Andy, the photo booth was a largely functional place,
to get your ID or your passport sorted out.
After all, not every family had its own camera in those days.
But it was small wonder that Warhol saw the potential for art
in this extraordinary space.
On the one hand, it threw forward to the selfie
that we're obsessed with and deluged by today.
On the other hand, though, the photo booth, the confines,
the screen, the darkness, recalled nothing so much as
the confessional of his Catholic upbringing.
In anticipation of the evening's activities,
between six and seven o'clock Warhol would make a quick
round trip to his townhouse to "get glued."
Getting glued was his expression for wig and make-up management.
He'd also put on a fresh splash of his favourite cologne -
Eau de Savage.
BRIGID: I didn't want to be with Andy at night,
I'd been with him all day.
I'd look at the clock, and I'd say,
"I'm getting out of here."
He'd look closely down at his watch -
with his eyes one inch away from the face of the watch.
And he'd say, "Brig, why are you leaving?
"The fun is just beginning."
The favourite time of the day was at the beginning of the evening,
like, at seven o'clock, because that was the beginning of the night,
whatever party it was.
From seven o'clock at night to four in the morning
is peak partying time for Warhol and his entourage -
almost nightly.
The evening circuit might begin at an uptown gallery opening...
..then move on to a fashion banquet at the Waldorf Astoria.
Sometimes Andy would get invited to a very, you know,
exclusive dinner somewhere!
Warhol was the best possible guest for any self-respecting
New York host or hostess.
It might be some museum patrons enjoying a light snack at the
St Regis Hotel.
Warhol once said he'd go to the opening of anything -
even a toilet seat.
Andy had to show up, Andy had to tap-dance for his supper.
And he had to hobnob with the rich and famous.
Andy wanted to have some kind of power.
He wanted to possess a certain kind of power...
..possessing a power that could manipulate the media,
or possessing a power where he... he could make money.
But it almost always ends up with Andy holding court,
and his entourage falling apart at the seams
at Max's Kansas City in the wee small hours of the morning.
Andy enjoyed himself, and he did stay out late sometimes.
But it wasn't something that he wanted to do all the time -
it could be a bit tiring.
As a complete change of pace from all-night partying,
Warhol would occasionally use the slot from seven at night
to four in the morning to make a movie.
In 1964, Andy bought himself a new Auricon film camera.
It held much larger reels of film than the old Bolex,
and it could record sound.
But Warhol's first film with his new sound camera
wasn't going to have a soundtrack at all.
The irony is we shot a sound movie without sound.
We made a silent movie with a sound movie camera.
Tonight, at around 6:30, Andy and five co-conspirators,
including Henry Geldzahler, Gerard Malanga, Jonas Mekas,
and Jonas's protege John Palmer, jump into taxis,
with camera, tripod and about 50 kilos of raw film stock,
and head to a friend's office
with an unobstructed view of New York City's most iconic building.
John Palmer suggested the idea for this evening's new film -
and Andy was running with it.
Tonight, they'll gleefully subvert the fundamental rules
and expectations of movie-making, and make underground film-making history.
Tonight, they'll shoot the film Empire.
It's the Memorial Day holiday weekend, when everything
in Manhattan is shut tight...
..including the office building from which Empire was originally shot.
This is the window from which the original was filmed.
The unobstructed view, though, is history.
Gerard and I are determined to recapture one of the most
eventful moments in the film.
All our hopes are now pinned to this location.
I'm told it has a rooftop garden, with an excellent view
of the Empire State Building.
Well, it's an excellent location. Only two things are missing -
the garden and that unobstructed view of the building we're
here to film.
Poor Gerard is nearing exhaustion, the jaws of defeat are
beginning to tighten around us.
In the depths of despair, with time running out,
we receive a promising tip-off about a nearby building.
Now, that's a view.
I set up the camera and I framed it and called Andy and said,
"Take a look, is this what you want?"
And Andy said, "Roll it."
And with that command, one of the most notorious and
controversial films of the underground era
was off and rolling.
It went and it went and it went and it went...
With a running time of eight hours and five minutes,
Empire provokes ridicule amongst many who haven't viewed
a second of it,
and pot smoking amongst those who try and view it all.
Thing is, we're not doing drugs cos it was Henry Romney's office
at the Rockefeller Foundation, so we were clean, we were squeaky clean.
After one hour and maybe a half, suddenly the lights go on.
What an event! What a fantastic event like...
..when lights went on on the Empire State Building.
'As luck would have it, tonight's the night
'when the lights of the Empire State Building are red, white and blue.
'What could be more pop than that?
'To help kill time, Gerard took verbatim notes of some
'of the historic late-night banter.'
Jonas Mekas - "Did you know that the Empire State Building sways?"
Andy - "Henry, what is the meaning of action?"
Henry - "Action is the absence of inaction."
John - "The lack of action in the last three 1,200-foot rolls
"is alarming."
John - "This is the strangest shooting session I've ever been in."
Andy - "The Empire State Building is a star."
And at some point, Andy said, "Maybe we've had enough."
And that's where it ended, like, eight hours later.
But you know, sometimes Andy would prefer to avoid parties
and late-night film-making, just to stay at home and watch
his favourite TV comedy - I Dream Of Jeannie.
Andy says, "OK."
I'd say, "Andy, what are you watching?"
He said, "Oh, Brig, I love I Dream Of Jeannie.
"I just love it."
Uh, Jeannie?
Jeannie, bedtime. Bong time.
You are going to bed so early, master? Oh, yes.
Yeah, I got a rough day tomorrow.
Andy says, "Why can't we get to Hollywood?"
We used to sit in his tent and drink wine with him.
And I'd say, "Andy, we are never going to get to Hollywood.
"Because you don't believe in a beginning...
"a middle...or an end."
CANNED LAUGHTER
But Andy Warhol didn't really need to go to Hollywood,
his fame had already eclipsed most Hollywood A-listers.
He once said, "A whole day of life is like a whole day of television."
And Warhol lived his own life as if it was his
very own hit series, in which Andy Warhol was producer,
director, publicist and, of course, star.
MUSIC: I'll Be Your Mirror by The Velvet Underground
# I'll be your mirror Reflect what you are... #
On our last day of filming in New York City,
something extraordinary happened at three minutes to midnight
at the eternal flame of pop consumerism,
known as Times Square.
It was as if Andy was magically out there, and had
decided to help give an ending to our made-for-TV movie about him.
All at once, Andy Warhol's Screen Tests ignited upon
Times Square billboards.
Edie Sedgwick, Nico - the singer of The Velvet Underground...
He had a vision of the future in some weird way.
I think that's what creativity is.
Andy's whole life is based on an intuition of what's going to
happen...next.
And being in front of it and making it happen.
I think Andy Warhol is the... his best creation.
In his lifetime, some thought Warhol came from another planet.
In fact, he hailed from somewhere equally exotic - the future.
And as we endlessly post on social media,
consume celebrity culture,
or even take a selfie - we're living on Andy time.
# I'll be your mirror... #
Half a century on from the amphetamine-fuelled,
sleep-deprived, superstar-obsessed creative frenzy of
the Factory days, and Andy Warhol day hasn't really ended.
# I'll be your mirror
# I'll be your mirror... #