Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story (2000)

Directors:

Shelly Dunn Fremont
Vincent Fremont

Release Date:

18 May 2001 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot Keywords:

Screen Test | 1960s | New York City | Archive Footage | 1970s

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Brigid Berlin	...	Herself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Honey Berlin	...	Herself (archive footage)
Richard E. Berlin	...	Himself (archive footage)
Richard Bernstein	...	Himself
Bob Colacello	...	Himself
Patricia Hearst	...	Herself
Taylor Mead	...	Himself
Paul Morrissey	...	Himself
Larry Rivers	...	Himself
Andy Warhol	...	Himself (archive footage)
John Waters	...	Himself

Runtime:

Italy:75 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Vincent Fremont Enterprises

Movie Connections:

Features Imitation of Christ (1967)

Soundtrack:

All the Way

The "Overweight Troublemaker" Tells All

Brigid Berlin was the child every parent fears having. Born in 1939 to media mogul Richard Berlin and his socialite wife Honey, Brigid seemed to be on the fast track to a world of wealth and social registers--but she had a weight problem, and when mother Honey focused upon this Brigid rebelled. It was a rebellion that would ultimately lead her reject her parents, their way of life, and their values as absurdly superficial.

In 1964 Brigid met rising artist Andy Warhol, who had a knack for picking up extreme personalities and using them to fuel both his ambitions and inspiration. For once, however, he gave almost as much as he took: Brigid not only developed an arts reputation in her own right, she also managed to remain friends with Warhol until his 1987 death--something that very few people, and particularly those of Warhol's 1960s circle, ever managed.

PIE IN THE SKY might best be described as a collage of Brigid Berlin then and now. Released in 2000, the film finds her living in New York, where she has considerable cache in the avant guarde arts world--and obsessing about her weight, her smoking habit, her past, her present, her future--and indeed virtually everything. In fact, the word "obsessing" might be the keynote in her life, which she documents as it unfolds with a degree of relentlessness that is quite astonishing.

Yesterday--be it literally yesterday or fifty years ago--is just as intense in Berlin's mind as today, and a good portion of the film is given over to her reflections on her parents, the way of life that she rejected, and the pleasure she took in horrifying the social world throughout her life. She talks about art. She demonstrates her technique, which might be generously described as body painting. Now slim, she breaks her eternal diet to binge on Key Lime pies. She is incredibly compulsive, it is difficult to know whether she is as mad as she is insane, and it is impossible to know how much of the madness or sanity is calculated.

What she most certainly is is interesting, and directors Shelly and Vincent Freemont keep the focus unerringly upon their subject throughout. A fascinating look into the life of a woman who was, and in many ways remains, on the cutting edge of both art and life.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer