The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  All the kids were dancing and swimming naked. At 8:30 it was still raining. Then we left to go home and a boy jumped in the car, sat in front, I don’t know who he was. We gave him a ride home.

  Sunday, July 5, 1981

  At 12:00 Jon called and said he’d come over and we could go for a walk. He’s gained ten pounds and I’ve lost weight. I’m back to 118 again. I should eat but I’ll have to think about it, because I like being thin.

  Wednesday, July 6, 1981

  Victor is on jury duty. (laughs) Can you picture that?

  Cabbed to 666 Fifth Avenue, to Halston’s screening of Liza’s movie Arthur ($7). I loved the movie. Dudley Moore is so funny. Afterwards Jon said it was a “slight movie” and I said, “But you were laughing all the way through,” and he said, “Well, it’s no Raiders.”

  I don’t know what’s happening with Jon. Things just coast along. But I just have to be in love now or I’ll go crazy. I just have to feel something. And I’m really jealous because Jon has a family he loves and likes to see, but my family, when they try to visit me, I always say I’m out of town. Have I ever told the Diary that Jon is a twin? Isn’t that sick? Just like Jed. And guess what the twin’s name is: Jay.

  Wednesday, July 8, 1981

  Jerry Hall came by with a Halston model named Carol, and models just all talk that baby talk, the girls and the boys—you always know you’re talking to a model.

  Got a cab and the driver was complaining because the woman wouldn’t pay the surcharge that’s supposed to go into effect after 8:00 because they said it was one minute before 8:00. He said it was two minutes after, but I showed him on my watch that it was one minute of. I’ve got to start getting receipts ($6). I carry my own pad.

  Everyone tells me they like my hair this new way. I cut it every day. It’s almost a crewcut. Fred said I dress like the kids I hang around with now, he likes it. I guess the preppie look really is big because of the Preppie Handbook. I’m wearing all of Jed’s leftover clothes, the ones he left behind. I’m so skinny they fit me now.

  Thursday, July 9, 1981

  Halston invited me to Montauk, so I’m going at 6:30 on Friday with him on his rented plane. It’s so nice to be invited to your own house by the person who’s renting it—you feel at home and you’re still making money. I invited Chris Makos and Jon.

  Friday, July 10, 1981—New York—Montauk

  When we got to Halston’s house he looked at Christopher and said, “Oh, are you coming?” which put a damper on Chris and on me, too. I’d called Faye at Halston’s and also Victor to say I was bringing him.

  There’s a fruit stand that some local people set up at the entrance to our property and it looks so tacky. Otherwise everything’s the same, it’s so beautiful.

  Saturday, July 11, 1981— Montauk

  Went to the kitchen for coffee in the main house. Pat Cleveland was reading her Latin books and her mind-control books. I told her about the Silver Mind Control Place in New York that Jon said he went to. What’s that name? Silva. Silva Mind Control. She was after Jon, showing him how to walk like you have a dime up your ass and they did that well. She talks model talk. And she plays the flute. Only three notes. And she does yoga. All those things. She took off her clothes and they were nude sunbathing and fucking the rocks. She had a great body and Jon had one, too, and Chris is a little fat but it’s a good body and I had on my white protector and I was safe except for my feet which got burned because I walked. Had lunch with Halston, he was adorable. I tried to read scripts. Took a walk on the beach over by Dick Cavett’s. Jon said he had to go back to town but Chris and I convinced him to stay another night.

  After dinner we watched Grease and at 12:30 I decided to go to bed early.

  Sunday, July 12, 1981—Montauk—New York

  I was tired because I’d tried to sleep on my back last night so I wouldn’t get wrinkles, but it’s just too hard, I’ll never do it. The plane came at 9:30 in the morning. It was a beautiful day, the ride took forty minutes and we flew over all the rich estates ($500 plus $20 tip).

  Brigid called me, she’d just gotten out of the hospital. She has gallstones the size of grapenuts. She said they want to operate. I told her that they always want to operate, that it’s like doing portraits, you don’t care who you do as long as you have someone to do. Because that’s where they make their bucks. I told her to ask the doctor for painkilling stuff but she said she already did and they wouldn’t give it to her, they said they needed to know if she had pain so when she started having it they could give her the operation. I think she should get it in September unless it’s really hurting her. Life is just too hard. Called Rupert.

  Then I got the book of my old paintings out and saw all the clever things I used to do, and I just can’t think of anything clever to do now. Maybe I should do Soup Cans again. Then Chris Makos called and said Schnabel was big, that abstract expressionism was coming back. And he said that he would bring a can over for me—Campbell’s Won Ton soup that has the oriental lettering.

  Called Jon and nobody answered. Saw a wonderful movie on TV, Coal Miner’s Daughter, and I wished I taped it. Oh, I wish I was married to a husband like that! Oh, he’s so cute, so wonderful.

  Monday, July 13, 1981

  Did forty pushups.

  Glued myself together and picked up Jon and Catherine Guinness on the corner of 63rd and Park. She looked like a floozy. She’s still the worst dresser. These English girls don’t know how to dress. She had on a red floozy skirt and backless shoes and her new blonde hair and these costume jewelry earrings with diamonds that her mother gave her. She was sweet, talked and bubbled for hours. Let’s see, the gossip, she said Fred was seduced by the most beautiful girl, Natasha Grenfell—Zeffirelli is her godfather, and Tennessee Williams is, too. We had a nice time at Xenon (cab $4) seeing John McEnroe at a tennis charity thing.

  Wednesday, July 15, 1981

  I tried to work out the Newport thing that Bob got me involved in with the Pells next weekend, it’s an anti-suicide thing, and I told Bob how could he do that, since he knew I was for suicide, and he got crazy and didn’t know what to say. He said I’d better not open my mouth. And I guess I better not kill myself, either.

  I’d gotten Mary Richardson an appointment to see Halston about a job because she’d asked me to, but then she said she’d had lunch with Bill Blass in the meantime and he was going to pay her $500 an hour to model, and so she was thrilled about that and wasn’t even going to see Halston. After I’d gone to all the trouble of getting her the appointment. Mary decided to give a small dinner at Fred’s which turned out to be a big dinner and she invited me and Fred got mad because he said he’d have to fix the house up so I wouldn’t be upset when I saw it—he’s got all these English kids staying there, it’s like a rooming house.

  At Fred’s, Steve Aronson was there with Shelley Wanger and her new boyfriend David Mortimer, who’s so good-looking. Then Steve—oh God, he knows everything and he remembers just what you don’t want him to. He looked at Jon and said to me, “What did you say his name was? What’s that name? Isn’t he the one you told me thought that Popistn was badly edited?” And I said, “Ohhh, please, Steve, not now.” And the thing I can’t understand is why I would have told Steve that and even said Jon’s name to him. That’s fascinating. Why would I do that? Why would I beg for trouble?

  And when Steve heard that Fran was going to be on the cover of Interview he said that he wanted to be on the cover, too, when his book Hype came out. So then he was going on about how he had checked into Jon—into exactly what his job was at Paramount—and how he was a “vice-president in charge of inter-office memos” and finally I told him that if he didn’t shut up I wouldn’t put him on the cover. So then he said he just interviewed Roy Cohn and that he was going to ask him, “Aren’t you a big fag?” but then he ended up liking him and he didn’t, so he still had the leftover question and he asked me if I’dlike to admit that I was.

  Thursday, July 16, 1981
/>   At the party after the screening of Endless Love I talked to Don Murray and I said that I’d just read in the paper that Liza was thinking of doing a remake of Bus Stop and I said that if she at her age could play the girl, then he could still play the virgin cowboy, and that he should go find her and tell her. And he laughed. He’s still so good-looking and tall.

  Monday, July 20, 1981

  Got up. On the news was the tragedy of the weekend, the hotel walkway that collapsed in Kansas City and a lot of people were killed. Oh and I’m reading in the Enquirer about Kate Jackson and Andrew Stevens. Kate was out with us at Halston’s in Montauk this past weekend. She was with Rock Brynner, Yul’s son. Kate will do things like look at the ocean and say how beautiful it is, or go out alone and stare at the moon or walk along the beach alone and pick up a rock and throw it. (laughs) I’m serious! That kind of corny thing. I don’t know. She’s from the South, but still….

  I stopped at John Reinhold’s office to hear the news about the new diamond discovery in Australia, and diamond prices are down. Went to the office (cab $5).

  I was really upset at Rupert because he’s gone away for weeks to Jamaica, and now half of his assistants are going on vacation, too, and I got really mad at one of them, Horst, because I was telling him that Rupert better watch out, and if they couldn’t help me that I was going to find myself another silkscreener. And Horst was laughing at me like a German—he said, “I should have brought you a rose, so you would be in a better mood.” And I said, “Look, don’t tell me about roses—Rupert got the job in the first place because Alex Heinrici went on a vacation—a long vacation just like this one that Rupert’s taking—and I just looked around and found somebody else. And I can do it again.”

  And I blew my cool all day—I hung up on a few people, but it’ll be good for their memoirs.

  Tuesday, July 21, 1981

  Got a call from Jon cancelling out on our Newport trip.

  Wednesday, July 22, 1981

  Got up early, it was a pretty day. I was going to go walking with Interviews but I had a lunch date with Mercedes Kellogg and she brought the von Bulow guy, the one who’s accused of trying to kill his wife with insulin, she’s been in a coma for months. Ala von Auersperg is her daughter from her first husband and she and her brother are accusing him. He’s about fifty-five, I think. He told anecdotes.

  At 4:00 the Walt Disney film crew came and shot me in front of my Shoes and my Walt Disney drawings. They asked me who my favorite Disney character was and I said, “Minnie Mouse, because she can get me close to Mickey.”

  Friday, July 24, 1981

  Jon came by and showed me his new car and we went for a ride. Still nothing’s happening and I’m getting to think that I’ll just relax and not expect anything, that it’s enough to spend time together. I don’t know.

  Monday, July 27, 1981

  Ran into Winnie Sullivan on the street. I thought she looked a little fat. I asked her how she was doing, did she really miss Tom a lot and she said, “He died but I’m pregnant.” I asked her if it was Tom’s baby, and she said, “I’ve been seeing a lot of Jack Nicholson.” She’s very calculating, Winnie. But who knows, maybe it is Jack’s and he’ll marry her. She’s very pretty.

  Saturday, August 1, 1981

  I’m up to five sets of fifteen pushups. And I told the office that they better not be planning anything for my birthday next week, that if they did I wasn’t even going to come down.

  Sunday, August 2, 1981

  Jon jogged over from the West Side. Chris Makos picked us up at 3:30 and we went to the Whitney to see the Walt Disney show (admission $8). It was really crowded and it was funny to see Walt Disney stuff on the walls. They didn’t show it off too well, though. Mostly Mickey Mouse.

  Then we saw the Georgia O’Keeffe show on another floor and she does these flowers and slashes and all she does is paint vaginas. And we saw some other people’s stuff and you can tell the girls’ stuff always because it’s simple things, it’s the easy stuff. You can tell.

  Then we took a ride and we wanted to go to the River Cafe but they were done serving, so we stopped someplace outdoors in the Village and the food was awful ($70). But we watched everybody, people with great chests, just back from Fire Island and people cruising in gym shorts with their balls hanging out on purpose—horrible-looking people.

  Then we cabbed to the trendy West Side just to be seen—Columbus Avenue—it was eighteen deep, people walking. It’s like the 1930s with people trying to be discovered, doing their acts on the street.

  Monday, August 3, 1981

  Walked down Fifth Avenue and when I walked into a record store they had on “Heroin” from the Velvet Underground’s first album, the one I produced and did the cover for. I don’t know if they saw me coming and then put it on quickly or if it was already on. It was so strange to hear Lou singing those songs and the music still sounds so good. It brought me back. Then they asked me to sign the album. It’s still the original cover with the banana that you can peel the skin off. Does MGM keep reissuing it? I never got any money at all from that record.

  Tuesday, August 4, 1981

  The Herreras were back from the royal wedding and they invited me to dinner with Jerry Zipkin and said they’d call at 6:00. I said I’d go but I knew I’d cancel because I’m so tired of elegant people, I just wanted to be with some kids.

  Then I ran out of Interviews and I was near John Reinhold’s so I stopped in and we went into the McCreedy and Schreiber shoe store on 46th and just sat there for an hour because it was air-conditioned. I decided that being a shoe salesman is really a sexy job, sort of, even for a guy doing girl’s shoes. Stopped in at Jean’s and looked at a watch.

  Jon has gone off to California.

  Wednesday, August 5, 1981

  The Trumps came down. Donald Trump and his wife and two ladies who work for him, I guess. Mrs. Trump is six months pregnant. I showed them the paintings of the Trump Tower that I’d done. I don’t know why I did so many, I did eight. In black and grey and silver which I thought would be so chic for the lobby. But it was a mistake to do so many, I think it confused them. Mr. Trump was very upset that it wasn’t color-coordinated. They have Angelo Donghia doing the decorating so they’re going to come down with swatches of material so I can do the paintings to match the pinks and oranges. I think Trump’s sort of cheap, though, I get that feeling. And Marc Balet who set up the whole thing was sort of shocked. But maybe Mrs. Trump will think about a portrait because I let them see the portraits of Lynn Wyatt behind the building paintings, so maybe they’ll get the idea.

  Jon called from Hollywood.

  Thursday, August 6, 1981

  It was my birthday and I’d told everyone at the office that if they even mentioned it they’d be fired. Brigid had wanted the day off but I was Mr. Grump. I let everyone off five minutes early. And the funniest thing was that in the morning Brigid went to the delicatessen and over the radio the DJ said, “And happy birthday to Andy Warhol who’s sixty-four years old today,” so she was laughing that they’d even added eleven years on.

  John Reinhold sent me 500 carats of diamond dust for a present. It’s like half a can of tomato soup-size. And he sent me twenty-seven roses. Diamond dust can kill you. It’s a good way to murder somebody.

  Got a call from Hollywood. Jon didn’t remember my birthday which was great.

  Saturday, August 8, 1981

  Jane Holzer called and said that I should come over to 4 East 66th Street where a kid who goes to Columbia Film School and a group of his friends were filming an underground movie with expensive 3 5mm equipment. I went over and got depressed because here it was twenty years after my underground movies and here were young, pretty, rich kids—even richer and in bigger apartments than the kids who’d been in my movies. And we could hear them saying that they didn’t want the old people in front. I got sort of depressed and left.

  Monday, August 10, 1981

  I had to photograph the Halston and Galanos t
hings for The Los Angeles Times. Jon picked me up and we went to Halston’s. Halston had his limo waiting but Liza was late. He was on the phone with Liz Taylor and she called him an asshole so he called her an asshole and he said that her asshole was bigger than his and that I should take pictures to prove it. It was funny hearing them talk like this, that’s how they talk to each other.

  Went to the Olympic Tower to the party. Hope Lange was there with John Springer. And Christopher had just told me that on Live at Five that afternoon Hope Lange was on with Jack Cafferty and she said, “Wasn’t it Andy Warhol who once said that everyone would be a celebrity for four minutes?” And so John Springer brought that up and said that it was actually ten minutes, and then Hope laughed and said that TV was making life go by faster anyway. She was kind of great. Sort of matronly-looking now.