Read I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews Online
Authors: Kenneth Goldsmith
I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews (29 page)
WARHOL: Yeah, they’re the prettiest.
O’BRIEN: Do you believe in God?
WARHOL: I guess I do. I like church. It’s empty when I go. I walk around. There are so many beautiful Catholic churches in New York. I used to go to some Episcopal churches too.
O’BRIEN: Do you ever think about God?
WARHOL: No.
O’BRIEN: Do you believe in the Devil?
WARHOL: No.
O’BRIEN: Do you believe in the end of the world?
WARHOL: No. I believe in “As the World Turns.”
O’BRIEN: Do you think psychiatry helps at all?
WARHOL: Uh, yeah, if you don’t know anything about anything. Yeah, it can help you.
O’BRIEN: Did you ever go to see a psychiatrist?
WARHOL: I went to one once, and he never called me back. Then I got over whatever I got over. Everybody I knew was going, and they make you feel as if you’ve got to go. So I went once, and they never called me back, and I felt so funny. But then I guess someone came along and took me out to a movie, or I got a new hat or something.
O’BRIEN: Do you take vitamins?
WARHOL: Yeah, I take a multivitamin.
O’BRIEN: What do you like to eat?
WARHOL: Just plain food. Plain American food.
O’BRIEN: Do you still eat a lot of candy?
WARHOL: I’ve changed. Now I just make jelly. I pour the sugar into the fruit. I thought it would be better than candy, but it’s the same thing.
O’BRIEN: Do you think sugar’s bad for you?
WARHOL: Everybody says it is. I’m sure it is.
O’BRIEN: Do you think there are more gay people now, or do people just talk about it more?
WARHOL: There must be more. But I think they’re talking about it less now. It’s probably the same percentage.
O’BRIEN:Do you think gay people are more creative than straight people?
WARHOL: No.
HIGH TIMES: Do you believe in marriage?
WARHOL: Only to have children. But it’s gone on for so long and people have thought it was right, it must still be right.
HIGH TIMES: Would you ever like to get married and settle down?
WARHOL: No.
HIGH TIMES: Has anybody ever asked you?
WARHOL: No.
O’BRIEN: Do you miss having any children?
WARHOL: No.
O’BRIEN: Do you think you’re a father figure to anyone?
WARHOL: Just to my dogs.
O’BRIEN: Have you ever been in love?
WARHOL: Let’s come back to that one.
O’BRIEN: Did you ever hate anybody?
WARHOL: Let’s come back to that one.
O’BRIEN: What do you think of violence on TV?
WARHOL: I was out with Marshall McLuhan’s daughter Stephanie the other night, and she told me she’d just come from seeing
Marathon Man
, and she had to look away during some of the violence. She works on TV, and she saw the baby that was eaten by the dog, and it didn’t bother her. She had the crew set up and photograph it right. She said it was work, and she really didn’t have time to think about it, but in the movie it’s something else.
O’BRIEN: Do you think violence on TV and in the movies makes people violent?
WARHOL: No. If you’re not violent it wouldn’t make any difference.
O’BRIEN:: Did you ever try to grow a mustache?
WARHOL: I beg your pardon. No, I never tried.
O’BRIEN: Do you wear a wig?
WARHOL: It says so in my book.
O’BRIEN: How many do you have?
WARHOL: Uh, three. The last maid stole one.
O’BRIEN: What’s your natural color?
WARHOL: Pink.
O’BRIEN: Do you believe in flying saucers?
WARHOL: My mother used to like them.
O’BRIEN: Do you believe in magic?
WARHOL: Black magic.
O’BRIEN: Do you think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone?
WARHOL: Perhaps.
O’BRIEN: Do you think Nixon got a raw deal?
WARHOL: That’s for sure.
O’BRIEN: Do you think the Pope is infallible?
WARHOL: How dare you ask me that.
O’BRIEN: Do you own any stock?
WARHOL: I’m stocking toys these days.
O’BRIEN: Do you know how to dance?
WARHOL: I don’t know how to move.
O’BRIEN: What’s your favorite scent?
WARHOL: Halston, of course.
O’BRIEN: Do you believe in the American Dream?
WARHOL: I don’t, but I think we can make some money out of it.
O’BRIEN: Are rich people different from poor people?
WARHOL: Yes and no.
O’BRIEN: Are they happier?
WARHOL: If they have a dog.
O’BRIEN: Can you take it with you?
WARHOL: Everywhere.
O’BRIEN: Do you read a lot?
WARHOL: Not too much. I mostly look at the pictures.
O’BRIEN: Do you think there are any good writers any more?
WARHOL: Oh, yeah. Jacqueline Susann. Frank Rich. Victor Hugo.
O’BRIEN: What are your favorite magazines?
WARHOL:
Blueboy, Pussy, Penthouse
. Whatever I’m in.
O’BRIEN: Do you look in the mirror when you get up?
WARHOL: Well, there’s always one there, I guess. I brush my teeth.
O’BRIEN: Do you take a shower or bath?
WARHOL: Well, a shower’s easier, but a bath is much better.
O’BRIEN: Do you have any secrets you’ll tell after everyone’s dead?
WARHOL: If I die I’m not letting on.
O’BRIEN: Do you think the world can be saved?
WARHOL: No.
O’BRIEN: Do you believe in Atlantis?
WARHOL: It’s very sexy to believe in it.
O’BRIEN: If you had an hour TV show every week, what would you put on it?
WARHOL: Kate Smith. “The Andy Warhol Hour Starring Kate Smith.”
O’BRIEN: What’s your favorite news show?
WARHOL: Channel Five at ten o’clock. I like it because it’s fast. News is my favorite program, but the networks aren’t my favorite. I hate Barbara Walters.
O’BRIEN: Do you think TV is good for kids?
WARHOL: I met two kids yesterday who used to go to bed at eight. And then in the morning the kids had bags under their eyes and were very list-less and grumpy, and the mother didn’t understand. So months later the mother happened to go up to their room at one in the morning, and the kids were sitting glued to the TV. I think they learn everything. Everything on one plane. It’s great.
O’BRIEN: Do you think there should be any censorship?
WARHOL: Of course.
O’BRIEN: Where should they draw the line?
WARHOL: Things should be more sexual.
O’BRIEN: Do you believe in capital punishment?
WARHOL: For art’s sake, of course.
O’BRIEN: Are you to the left of Dali?
WARHOL: On the bias.
O’BRIEN: What do you look at first on a woman?
WARHOL: Her bag.
O’BRIEN: What about a man?
WARHOL: His bag. The way he wears his hat.
O’BRIEN: What’s your favorite sport?
WARHOL: The one with the baskets.
O’BRIEN: Did you ever see a movie that got you hot?
WARHOL:
Behind the Green Door, Going on Sixteen, State Fair
.
O’BRIEN: Who is the sexiest woman in the world?
WARHOL: Bianca Jagger, Divine, Diana Vreeland.
O’BRIEN: Who do you think is the sexiest man in the world?
WARHOL: Henry Kissinger, Jack Ford, Steve Ford, O. J. Simpson. Woody Allen for sure not, but some people masturbate to his image anyway.
O’BRIEN: What do you think about masturbation?
WARHOL: It helps.
O’BRIEN: What’s your all-time favorite movie?
WARHOL:
Alice in Wonderland
. Bill Osco’s
Alice in Wonderland.
2
O’BRIEN: Do you think Jimmy Carter is going to get America moving again?
WARHOL: Oh I hope so. Yeah, he will.
O’BRIEN: What would you do to reorganize America if you were Jimmy Carter?
WARHOL: I don’t think it’s so bad the way it is. I don’t think he has to do really much. It’s really a great country.
1
Ray McDonald (1921-1959) and his wife Peggy Ryan (b. 1924) appeared together in
Shamrock Hill
(1949),
There’s a Girl in My Heart
(1949) and
All Ashore
(1953). They toured stages and nightclubs; Ray popped up on TV variety shows as well.
2
Alice in Wonderland
(1976). Directed by Bill Osco, starring Kristine DeBell. A XXX rated film.
Real
Mayor of New York”
CLAIRE DEMERS
Summer 1977
Christopher Street, September 1977
Andy Warhol went out every night; he once said that he’d go to the opening of anything, even a toilet seat. In September of 1977, although he was traveling for much of the month, Warhols diary records several evenings out at New York landmarks including The Four Seasons, Studio 54, The American Folk Art Museum, the Pierre, the Waldorf, The Ginger Man, P.J. Clarke’s, and several gay bars. His companions included Sophia Loren, Diana Vree-land, Peter Beard, Steve Rubell, Valentino, Edgar Bronfman, Pele, Ahmet Ertegun, Howard Cosell, David Whitney, Mick Jagger, Ron Wood, Keith Richards, and Anita Pallenberg
.
But it wasn’t always this way. When Warhol first arrived in New York from his hometown of Pittsburgh in June 1949, he and the painter Philip Pearl-stein moved into a small, dirty, sixth-floor walk-up on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village. In 19S9, after several apartment shares, his success in commercial art enabled him to purchase a town house on Lexington Avenue and 89th Street on the Upper East Side. Years later, Warhol bought an elegant town house at 57 East 66th Street, where he lived until his death
.
By the time of this interview, Warhol had climbed to the top of several ladders, thereby establishing himself as a denizen of New York City’s top-tier social scene. When Warhol was starting out as a painter, he painted celebrities in the hope that their aura would rub off on him; now it was the celebrities that wanted to be photographed with Andy
.
In April 1977, just months before this interview was published, Studio 54 opened and immediately became the playground of the rich, beautiful, famous, funny, intelligent, and powerful. Warhol became a regular there. It has often been remarked that the Studio 54 scene in many ways paralleled the social hierarchies of Warhol’s late-sixties hangout Max’s Kansas City; it became as much a lifestyle as it was a club. Warhol’s continuous presence at Studio 54 greatly increased his profile in the popular media and made his name synonymous with New York nightlife in the late 70s
.
This interview, originally published in the gay literary magazine
Christopher Street,
focuses on the city that made Andy and, in many ways, Andy made
.
–KG
What do you think your influence has been on the New York art scene?
Gee, I don’t know. I just work all the time. There are so many different styles, you know, different ways of people painting and categories and . . . there’s so much, so much variety. I don’t know if I have influenced it or not.
How do you feel about New York?
I just love New York. I have to fly around a lot, but I just can’t wait to get back to New York. I think it’s the best place in the world. I’d rather have an apartment Uptown than Downtown or in the middle, and that would be my vacation–going Downtown.
What makes New York unique compared to other cities?
Well, right now we’re getting all the kids from the different countries in Europe and they’re creative and bright and rich and you get these different people here and they’re all so talented and there’s just so many . . . it’s just actually a country in itself. It’s different from any other place in the world.
Do you have any nostalgia for the old New York?
Oh no. I like old things torn down and new things put up every minute. I like new buildings going up.
Who has changed more in the last twenty-five years: you or the city?
Well, I was just thinking–when I walk on 17th Street, where we are, and across the street to Park Avenue–that about twenty years ago everybody had short hair and then they gradually got long hair and now it’s like it was twenty years ago. Everybody has short hair again and it looks like nothing has happened. It’s really strange. But there’s a lot more people. They always say New York never increases–people are leaving it and stuff like that–but I don’t think so. I think there’s actually a lot more people. It’s not as bad as Japan. Japan is just too crowded.
I’ve never been there
.
Oh, really. You’d hate it. It’s just so jam-packed.
If you were to paint New York, what color would you paint it?
I’d paint it red.
What changes would you like to see in this city?
Oh, no changes. I like it just the way it is. But the crime is really so bad. That would be the only change: if they could do something about that.
Have you ever done any of the touristy things like climb the Statue of Liberty or take the Circle Line boat tour?
I haven’t done
those
. I really would like to do that. But I’ve done other things like the Twin Towers, gone to the top of that and the Empire State Building and to the Rainbow Room.
Do you like to walk through the city?
Oh yes, I like walking the best.
What’s your favorite building?
My favorite building is that new one on 54th Street and Lexington Avenue. I looked at it this morning about 5 o’clock. It’s where the church is. There’s a modern church and then they built a high-rise over it. Have you seen it yet? Oh, it’s great. I forget who is the designer, but if you’ll look it up you’ll find it. It’s really great. It’s on Lexington right around the corner from The Brasserie.
What would your next favorite building be?
A church I go to on 66th Street and Lexington Avenue. I forget what it’s called.
What did you do the night of the blackout?
1
The papers said I was at Elaine’s, but–I wasn’t. I was seeing a play at Lincoln Center with Irene Worth, Chekhov’s
The Cherry Orchard
. The lights went out and they decided to continue with the play. The stagehands had candles and they just went on with it and it was really great. We were going to interview her afterwards and she was having dinner with somebody named Rudi Standish. We just walked outside and got a cab really quickly and went right across through the park to where he lived, on the second floor in a big building. He sort of invented omelets and stuff like that.
So you had a good night?
It was really very easy.
You’ve talked about not wasting things and recycling things. What advice would you give New York in that area?
I think they should give money to people for old newspapers, I mean if they pack up the newspapers and put them all together, and tin cans and bottles and. . . . They should have a department store where you could actually go and sell it back. I think it would be a great new shop and give work to a lot of people besides.
What do you think New York needs the most?
A woman mayor. Bella Abzug. She’d be great.
What has New York taught you and what have you taught New York?
Oh, New York just taught me that it’s just really exciting. I haven’t taught it anything.
What’s happening with the Andy Mats, your new restaurant chain?
The Andy Mats? Oh, they’re scheduled to open in November. We’re still hoping it works out that way.
Do you think your films have had any influence on the gay movement?
Well, I don’t really know, because we never. . . I never really directed movies. They made up the scripts and so we just. . . it was like shooting documentaries, in a funny way. They were actors who would turn on for the camera and so whatever they wanted to show in the movies they usually did.
Are you still in touch with Holly Woodlawn?
We see Holly all the time. I think its so hard to be . . . if you’re a boy and you try to be a girl, it’s double work and stuff like that. And I mean I think it’s harder to be what they are because they have to do two things. First they have to be a boy and then a girl and then a boy and a girl at the same time and it’s really, really hard. I keep trying to tell them they should be a girl only when they’re performing because then they could be, you know, whatever they are during the day, and then it becomes work and it doesn’t become so hard. There are just too many pretty girls and if you have to compete with a girl when you’re not a girl it’s just so hard.
Which leads me into the next question
. . . .
But Holly’s the best comedian, I think, ever. She’s still working; I notice she’s still performing in town.
There was a fascination among the Symbolists and Surrealists with transvestism. Do you think that the ability to move from one sex to another is an art form–an added dimension or even an intellectual achievement?
I think it’s all that. I really do. Like I say, I think it’s so hard to do, and if they can do it and they do it really well. . . . Some guys would be lucky if they could get a boy and a girl at the same time. I mean, that’s what they should marry because they could have both.
The recent painting of Marsha:
2
how did you meet her?
I used to go the Gilded Grape
3
bar and the transvestites there were just so exciting looking, I decided to do some paintings of them.
In your book
A to B
you stated that men who work at being women work the hardest What about women who work at being men?
Oh, the same thing. It’s hard too. But it doesn’t show. . . . They’re usually such intelligent kids, they usually have more brains than other people do.
Do you think the feminine principle is in control in the art world and in the business world or in the art-business world?
Well, mostly in the art world. I was in theater and everything like that. They’re the people I know and girls can have a big opportunity to be up there. Even in the art world there are so many more girls working now and they’re doing things . . . if you don’t see their name it looks like a boy was doing it or something. I mean they’ve gotten so great–but then I think the women were the best anyway. You know they did those things that I like the best, the Indian rugs–they wove all those beautiful things–and then also a lot of craftworks and all those quilts, those American quilts. They’re so beautiful. I mean they’re works of art. I think women do a lot of conceptual art. And now in galleries there are so many. Do you know Linda Ban-glewurst?
4
[
sic
] Do you know her work at all? She does, oh, work that you’d never know. There are so many of them. It would be a man doing it or something like that.
Would you like to live your life twice as fast forward or backwards?
Twice as fast forwards. Get it over with.
You’ve seen great changes in your lifetime. For instance, the merging of art with fashion, the merging of art with business. In what direction do you think art is going?
Oh, I think it’s going to become fashion art. That’s the direction it’s going.
On your talk show, “Nothing Special/” what would you do differently? Would you use what you call “transmutations”? Would you recycle the leftovers on your TV show?
Well, no, I think people look at anything. So I think if you just had the camera on anything, that would be nothing special and people would look at it–just like sitting looking out of a window or sitting out on a front porch. You could just watch things go by. I mean you could do that for hours.
You have a wonderful way of discovering talent in unknowns. What do you look for?
Anybody doing different things, interesting things, being imaginative, so I think then it works in the other direction where if you’ve really no imagination, then it’s really great too, just the complete opposite.
The success syndrome never seems to affect you. How do you keep your sanity? How do you keep yourself intact?
I just keep on working . . . and take a lot of plane trips. I read a lot on the plane. Do you get a chance to read on the plane, at all?
If there arent too many people on board
.
Oh, it’s summer now, it’s so crowded, isn’t it. You can really notice the difference.
You are a paradox of endless combinations. There s the human and the mystical, there s the passive and the active, there s the sexual and the anti-sexual, there s the masculine and the feminine. And yet what is most often heard about you is praise about your love and tolerance of people. Do you feel that you have any kind of negative influence over any of the people who have surrounded you?
Oh no. I don’t really believe in negative things. That’s one thing I just wouldn’t do. I think kids are so great. I like everybody.
Do you have a message? Any special message?
I have no special message. I wish I did. It would be great if I had one. I just think entertainment is the best message. So we try to be funny.
Do you think that talking is more important than writing?
I wish I could do both. I can’t. I think writing is just really great and actually talking is so terrific. We just interviewed Pat Wayne–you know, John Wayne’s son–and oh, God, he was just so good looking and so talkative. He had just wonderful stories.
What do think will be the fate of the written word?