I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

Mary Harron

Writers:

Jeremiah Newton (book)
Diane Tucker (research)

Release Date:

1 May 1996 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Crime | Drama

Tagline:

You only get one shot at fame.

Plot:

Based on the true story of Valerie Solanas who was a 60s radical preaching hatred toward men in her "Scum" manifesto...

Plot Keywords:

Manifesto | Hatred | Paranoia | Nipples | Battle Of The Sexes

Awards:

5 wins & 4 nominations

Cast

Lili Taylor	...	Valerie Jean Solanas
Jared Harris	...	Andy Warhol
Martha Plimpton	...	Stevie
Lothaire Bluteau	...	Maurice Girodias
Anna Levine	...	Iris (as Anna Thompson)
Peter Friedman	...	Alan Burke
Tahnee Welch	...	Viva
Jamie Harrold	...	Jackie Curtis
Donovan Leitch	...	Gerard Malanga
Michael Imperioli	...	Ondine
Reg Rogers	...	Paul Morrisey (as Reg Rodgers)
Bill Sage	...	Tom Baker
Jill Hennessy	...	Laura
Coco McPherson	...	Brigid Berlin
Myriam Cyr	...	Ultra Violet

MPAA:

Rated R for strong sexual content, language, drug use and brief violence.

Runtime:

103 min

Country:

UK | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

New Zealand:R16 | Australia:MA | Germany:16 | South Korea:18 | Spain:18 | UK:18 | USA:R

Company:

Playhouse International Pictures

Trivia:

The film was originally planned as a documentary, but the filmmakers found almost no footage of Solanas or anyone to speak about her.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: While Valerie is in revolutionary guy's apartment, we hear "Kick Out The Jams" by the MC5 cranking on the stereo. This scene takes place in June 1968. This very well-known MC5 recording, however, was not recorded until October 30 or 31, 1968 (according to the liner notes), and released in 1969.

Quotes:

Valerie Solanas: Give me fifteen cents, and I'll give you a dirty word.
Maurice Girodias: What's the word?
Valerie Solanas: Men.

Movie Connections:

References I, a Man (1967)

Soundtrack:

Walk on By

Intelligent Treatment Of True-Life Attempt On Warhol's Life

Lili Taylor is astonishingly good as the bright but highly-disturbed woman who tried to kill the celebrated non-artist. We see the story told in dislocated flashback as the would-be assassin Valerie Solanis is arrested and interviewed after the shooting. Home movie footage is poignantly interleaved with Valerie's matter-of-fact admissions.

Having been abused as a child, and sexually promiscuous before puberty, Solanis developed a strong antipathy towards men during her student years at the University of Maryland. She financed her degree course by means of prostitution. The film shows her living rough in New York City between 1966 and 1968, begging, soliciting for sex and performing radical street theatre.

She is drawn into the twilight world of Warhol's 'court' of phoneys and hangers-on, a disturbed New York wise-ass who demands recognition but who will never be taken seriously by these Beautiful People.

Jared Harris plays Warhol beautifully as the inarticulate, vacuous fraud at the head of a sham 'movement'. Significantly, Warhol does not get involved in whatever's going on. A Warhol film is being shot in The Factory, but we learn that Andy won't be around today. A drug-besotted 'happening' takes place under the Warhol aegis, but Andy stays on the margins, even of the sex - his purpose is to hit on the wealthy voyeurs who turn up at his parties.

As Warhol the cynical manipulator grows in media credibility, Solanis is reduced to peddling squalid sex and copies of her manifesto around Greenwich Village. It is clear that she has been 'dropped' by the court of Queen Drella. She becomes increasingly embittered, feeling that Warhol is exploiting her writings, and her behaviour deteriorates into violence and incoherence. When she shows up in the same old rags at the newly-gentrified Factory, we grasp what she can't - that the gulf between her and these parasites with savvy is unbridgeable.

Solanis beds a fellow weirdo, and acquires a gun from him. We see their drug-induced disorientation in a sequence of crash-edits, a knowing reference to the pop style of sixties film-making.

This is a very shrewd and very watchable film. It damns Warhol, but is none the worse for that.