Edie (32 page)

Paul America

Brigid Berlin and Viva

Henry Geldzahler

Chuck Wein, Andy, and Edie

Danny Williams

Andy and Gerard Malanga

Richie Berlin

Lou Reed

Walter Hopps

Billy Name

Paul Morrissey

Andy and Rod La Rod

TOM GOODWIN
 One of the things that Chuck was terrific at was getting Edie to do things on film. He understood that Edie was best at just being Edie. She was totally involved with her self-image . . . or her vision of her self-image. It was like that awful voyeuristic thing of the one-way mirror. But what was beautiful was the way she did it. Chuck had a real sense of timing with Edie. All the stuff in Andy’s films of Edie being Edie is Chuck. That’s not Andy. Andy was kind of fascinated with the whole thing, but it was really Chuck’s saying, “This is good, run it.” Was he using her for his own advancement? I don’t know, that’s always the director-actress problem.

GERARD MALANGA
 Chuck Wein brought in Danny Williams with his kind of genteel Harvard schoolboy look, brown hair. It sort of happened that Danny was responsible for the wiring at the Factory. He had this desk and it was like walking into an electrician’s hardware store, boxes labeled with plugs and wires and screws and nuts and tools . . . very Kafkaesque. This Harvard graduate putting plugs into sockets. He was always sweating, his T-shirt dirty, and his hair was stringy. Part of Danny’s seediness was that to take a shower you had to run to the YMCA across the street. If you didn’t, you just started collecting dust.

He finally went off and killed himself. He parked his car by a cliff on Cape Cod. His clothes were there, which leads me to believe that he took them off, dove into the water, and swam off to drown. I remember one detail about his death: his parents sent Andy these two brass doorknobs. Somehow they knew that Danny wanted Andy to have those doorknobs.

ONDINE
 Paul America was another
strange
cup of tea. He was everybody’s lover . . . he was marvelously satisfying to everyone. Imagine having that type of curse. People would go to sleep in his arms . . . Richie Berlin, me, just everyone! He was the personification of total sexual satisfaction. Without a brain in his head. Just beautifully vapid. He was a wonderful creature. Anybody who wanted anything from Paul could get it. He was there to satisfy. And he did.