The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Got to our new building, 33rd and Madison (cab $4.50), and André Leon Talley was styling the shoots and had told the Guardian Angels to meet us there and the only room that looked sort of like a subway to photograph them in was the basement.

  They were all nice kids. The leader, Curtis, and his wife were there and they’re good-looking. And I guess they’re still in trouble because they’re accused of staging an incident and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did because they are theatrical. I mean everything about them is so beautiful.

  I went home and watched TV. Barbara Walters is just too goo-goo with that searching look and asking the same old questions: “How old were you when you realized you had sex?”

  Tuesday, February 7, 1984

  It was so exciting being at the new building with George the super and going to the rooms that don’t have furniture, like the big ballroom. The kitchen’s being put in and it looks so pretty. Stayed there about an hour.

  Jean Michel called from Hawaii and talked a long time. Paige is back here now and she’s in seventh heaven, overfucked, I guess. And now he’s flying this other girl out there. Paige was stupid and paid her own way—she insisted because that’s the way she is—and now he’s paying for this other girl. He’s paying $1,000 a week for this house. He owes us three months’ rent and he’s trying to get Bruno to pay.

  Talked to Paul Morrissey a few times and we’re sort of becoming friendly again, he was sort of normal.

  Then cabbed uptown to change into a tuxedo and invited Benjamin to the Michael Jackson party (cab $7). Glued myself together and then cabbed to Halston’s ($3) because he’d invited me to go in his limousine.

  So we took the limo to the Museum of Natural History and we got there right as Michael Jackson was getting an award in the center hallway. And he talked and talked, it was a new personality.

  The crowds of kids were kept on the opposite side of the street when we came in, that’s how it was set up. And there was nobody really there. Just everybody you already knew, but nobody. Just all the record-business people but in black tie. Oh, and Bob Colacello was there and we finally made up. Because I was drunk. I’d had one drink at Halston’s, and I told Bob how great his Larry Flynt article in Vanity Fair was and he was thrilled I liked it.

  Oh and the best person at the party who I just love is Truman’s niece who now works for Interview as the stylist, Kate Harrington, isn’t that the greatest name? Kate Harrington. She’s very pretty. Like what Holly Golightly should have looked like. And I just loved her because whatever man she wanted she just went right after them, she’d give them her card. And she’s good—she styled the Goldie Hawn cover.

  Monday, February 13, 1984

  Got up in the morning knowing that I had another day of French Vogue ahead of me. Had to go downtown early to meet André Leon Talley. I was photographing Benjamin in his drag outfit. It was warm out, like fifty degrees.

  Got there (cab $5) and Benjamin looked great, very fashionable, and I can really see why he gets so much drag work. Oh, and we got Lidija in the pictures, too, so it’s all nobodies and the French will think they’re somebodies. Which is a new thing because the somebodies are everywhere, you’re sick of them.

  Wednesday, February 15, 1984

  Maura came by and said that she takes home $1,300 a week at her new job writing for The New Show at NBC, and that she’s saving her money because she thinks that The New Show is going to fold fast. Her brother was with her and he’s a sculptor who does things with ping-pong balls for eyes, so you can imagine. He went to Harvard. He doesn’t use the name Moynihan.

  Friday, February 17, 1984

  The W exposé on me came out. Fred said it wasn’t so bad, though. All the old ladies will be after me, it made me seem so rich. And I read GQ and Calvin with these new ads, the perfume, the girl in the jockstrap with—oh, he’s going to be in the billions.

  And Brigid, she was knitting. Just Madame Defarge. And if you ever want to know what’s wrong with you, don’t look in a mirror, just give Brigid a glass of wine and she’ll tell you: ‘Your wig’s on crooked.”

  Thursday, February 23, 1984

  I was picked up by Benjamin and we went out with Interviews, but I really don’t like passing out this Jane Fonda issue because I just don’t like the cover, it doesn’t look like her and there’s no black in it. The one that’s coming next with Goldie Hawn looks good, though.

  Oh, and I ran into Bob Colacello. And he asked me for an Interview. I asked if his building had gone co-op and he said no, that it went condo.

  Well Jean Michel is coming back from Hawaii on the first and going to Sweden on the second. Just for a few days. Our old friend from Stockholm, Stellan, says he has Swedish girls lined up waiting for him over there.

  Saturday, February 15, 1984

  Bianca told me she’d just been in Japan doing an interview with Robert Wilson for Vanity Fair and I said how could she do that and not for Interview, and she said well would Interview have sent her for three weeks to Japan and paid her hotel bill. That must have been expensive. She said, “He’s a genius.” I did used to think he was good, too, but then that last time at Lincoln Center it was so boring. It’s like artists who do things—well I don’t know, maybe I fit into that category—but they’re showing the mechanicals of something instead of entertaining you. Rauschenberg’s good, though. He’ll put on his ice skates in a new way.

  Monday, February 27, 1984

  I was looking at the Christie’s stuff, the jewelry. In every auction they have some stuff of Gloria Vanderbilt’s. I guess she gave them lots of stuff and it’s just little junk. I guess they like to have a name in every auction and anyway, if they’d put it all together in one auction it would have just been embarrassing.

  And John Reinhold called and said he got another letter from the government about permission to drill holes in pennies. They’d told him on the phone it was okay, but he said, “I want it in writing.” So the government sent him this abstract letter saying you could drill holes in them but you couldn’t deface them. This is so I can make more of the penny belts like the one I made for Cornelia.

  Was picked up by John and Kimiko and went to the Met and the opera was Tannhàuser by Wagner. Boring. There are no great singers. I guess all the strong singers go into rock and roll now. The opera audience is still filled with boys with older men, learning about the finer things in life.

  I was looking at some magazine and there was an interview with Joe Dallesandro, done right before he did The Cotton Club—the Lucky Luciano role that PH actually got him because she knew the producer—and there was Joe saying, “Oh, I never hung around with those Factory people, they weren’t my friends.”

  Wednesday, February 29, 1984

  Time sent down the picture of Michael Jackson and I was set to do the cover, but then stupid Hart upset Mondale in the New Hampshire primary, so they dropped the Michael cover. They said maybe they’d do it another week, but I doubt it. Maybe that was just a way of getting out of my price. Oh, but they are a news magazine, I guess.

  Then Liza had invited me to come over to her theater and see the changes they’d made in The Rink and then watch the performance of this eight- or nine-year-old girl who’d been hanging around the stage door for weeks with her father trying to get Liza to watch her perform.

  So cabbed with Benjamin ($5). And this little girl, after weeks of pleading, was late. And that made it sort of weird, because everybody thought she’d be right there. Then she came and she had a perfect little Barbie doll figure and long hair and this beautiful face. It was the Debra Winger look. She was Jewish. And she put on the Liza music to “New York, New York” and she sang that and we sort of sat there. Her father was in the background. The director was really sweet. And then after she did that, Liza talked to them and said, after saying how good she was and everything, “What do you want from me?” And the little girl was cute and nervous and everything, and she said, “I want to be Liza Minnelli.” And “I want to further my
career.” Things like that. And Liza asked her what she’d done, and she said that she’d done a TV commercial. Then Liza started giving her pointers and I got goosebumps. It was memorable. One of those real scenes, it was show business but real. And it was like All About Eve or something.

  Then we left there and Liza’s new bodyguard is the Hell’s Angel I met once at the Café Central. He has a hook hand.

  Thursday, March 1, 1984

  Jay called in the morning and said the Michael Jackson Time cover was back on.

  Friday, March 2, 1984

  Mick and Jerry had their baby. A girl. A girl named Elizabeth Scarlett.

  And you know, it’s so funny with all these protests now about Jane Fonda at the stores where she’s trying to sell her exercise clothes. I don’t understand why it would start now. I mean, all these years her movies have been doing big business and her exercise video is number one— Vietnam veterans complained but nobody listened. But now with the clothes it’s all these protests and they’re effective because Saks cancelled. But why haven’t they been calling theaters all these years and saying, “We’ll bomb the theater if you show her movie"? So it makes me think it’s like one person in the garment business that’s gone after her. You know? Because it’s all of a sudden and just focused on this one area. And I mean, what category do we fall into, having her on the Interview cover? Will that be an area that’s just fine, like her videotapes where she’s the “most respected woman in America"? Or will they be writing us threatening letters?

  Monday, March 5, 1984

  I read the book about Mrs. Chairman Mao called White Boned Demon and I decided to do paintings of her. It was great, about how she went from prostitute to Chairman Mao’s wife. But I mean, how this guy wrote this stuff I don’t know. I mean, going back to individual days in her childhood and remembering if she was happy or sad, I mean, they don’t even know what happened to her mother, let alone if she was unhappy on Tuesday in May 1937! The Mrs. Mao book didn’t have any pictures in it so now I have to find some.

  Tuesday, March 6, 1984

  Worked on the Michael Jackson Time cover until 8:00. Then watched some terrible TV. I saw Joan Collins in some old movie like Caesar and she was so bad, and now she’s got the right part and she’s so good. It was all just finding the right part.

  Wednesday, March 7, 1984

  Ran into the lady whose portrait I just did, Mrs. Tisch, and I was wondering why she looked so familiar. She said she loves the portraits but doesn’t know how many she’s going to take. Fred’s going to call her.

  I finished the Michael Jackson cover. I didn’t like it but the office kids did. Then the Time people came down to see it, about forty of them. And they stood around saying that it should increase newsstand sales “by 400,” so I guess they do think about this. Then later the Time guy called me—Rudy—and said they were going to use it. I think the yellow one. And I told him to cross his fingers that it wouldn’t get bumped on Saturday and he said he would.

  Friday, March 9, 1984

  Ran into Adolfo. Benjamin said it was him, but I didn’t recognize him. And Adolfo said that he sees me in church every Sunday, that he sits right next to me, so I was embarrassed that I’ve never recognized him.

  Vic Ramos called and said he wanted to talk about something, so he’s bringing Matt Dillon over for lunch on Tuesday. So that’s something to look forward to, that’ll be fun, seeing Matt again. I’m sure he wants us to produce a movie, that’s got to be it. Because it wouldn’t be (laughs)to direct. That would be too easy, too good to be true. He asked if Paul was around and I said yes, he’s around, and he said that we’d just have this meeting this way and then we could talk to Paul later about this project.

  Sunday, March 11, 1984

  I went to church and did see Adolfo next to me, just like he’d told me.

  Monday, March 12, 1984

  Time came out and the Jackson cover made it, it didn’t get bumped. And the article inside was crazy. It had them asking if he was going to get a sex-change operation and he said no. The cover should have had more blue. I gave them some in the style of the Fonda cover I did for Time once, but they wanted this style.

  Jean Michel came by, he’s back from Hawaii, and he brought a rent check which was a good surprise. Vincent came down. Everybody was trying to get tickets to the Hard Rock Café, that place that Dan Aykroyd has something to do with. Rock Brynner is running it. Eddie Murphy was supposed to be there.

  And I didn’t tell the Diary that Michael Sklar died, did I? When I stopped in at Jean’s to look at a brooch this guy there who follows my career showed me the obituary. About two days ago he died. It said he starred in Andy Warhol’s Trash and L’Amour. It said he died of lymphoma. So is that AIDS? But gee, Michael didn’t carry on. He was a hard worker.

  Tuesday, March 13, 1984

  Matt Dillon and Vic Ramos were coming to lunch. Jean Michel came by—he wanted to meet Matt because Matt had mentioned Jean Michel’s art in the interview he did with us.

  Matt arrived first. And then Vic came and he didn’t like the idea of Jean Michel because in the seventies—I remember reading this in the papers—his apartment had been broken into and vandalized by a graffiti artist. Vic said he still hasn’t gotten the paint off everything yet.

  And after two hours we still didn’t know why Vic had wanted to set up this lunch. Then finally Matt started to say something about wanting to do a movie about a sixties underground filmmaker.

  Matt was wearing pink shoes that he said he got on St. Mark’s Place. And he was talking about Midnight Cowboy and imitating the fag in it, putting on sort of an affected accent, like British or a little like Fred when he’s Mrs. Vreeland. And Matt has the ear to be a very good actor. Vic Ramos was the casting person for Midnight Cowboy who put Paul and Jed and Ultra and everybody in the party scene. I wasn’t in it because I was in the hospital, it was in the summer of ‘68 right after I got shot.

  When I left work it was snowing and raining out. The dog had peed on my bed and I beat him up. Amos.

  Wednesday, March 14, 1984

  Ron Feldman came up to talk about the new project, the portfolio of old magazine ads. But he wants me to do corny ones—like the Judy Garland Blackglama ads. He doesn’t want the Coke one, he says who would buy it.

  Thursday, March 15, 1984

  I was violently ill. I had carrot juice and some beans at lunch and by the time I got home yesterday I felt funny. And then there was a dinner at Shezan for Egon Von Furstenberg and Mrs. Egon, and so I had to decide whether I felt well enough to go,and I went—an hour late—and I was seated next to Mrs. Egon, but the second I smelled the food I started to get violently ill and had to leave. But I kept it down. And then I got home and the dogs sat on top of me all night, so I hoped they would pick it up and take it away from me. It was so weird to get sick like that. Vincent had caught the flu from his kids so I think I picked up this thing from him.

  Friday, March 16, 1984

  A sick day. I woke up, still sick, and decided to stay at home. The phone rang a lot. People kept checking in.

  Saturday, March 17, 1984

  Dolly Parton was coming to the office to be interviewed. She arrived and she was great. She had two people with her. She said she has a place in New York and goes out and around, but I don’t know how she can unless she puts another kind of wig on. She talked nonstop for four hours. She’s a walking monologue.

  Jean Michel came by and he misunderstood something she said about “plantations” so he didn’t like her but then I got him to come back in and she charmed him. She repeated herself a lot, called herself “trash” a lot. She said most of her groupies were lesbians and fags. She has a group of dykes that follows her around. She had her hairdresser and her girlfriend Shirley pick her up. They just came in a cab, not a limousine. I worked late.

  Sunday, March 18, 1984

  The phone didn’t ring once. Oh wait, yes it did. Jane Holzer called and she’s flying us to Palm Beach on Friday to
help open her ice cream shop, “Sweet Baby Jane’s.” She called People magazine about it, so I guess they’ll do a “Whatever happened to Baby Jane” about her.

  Monday, March 19, 1984

  Paloma called and we were invited that night to her dinner for her perfume. They didn’t send perfume to men, but the bottle is kind of nice. She was having the dinner at the old Burden mansion on 91st Street that’s now a Catholic school and they rent out the old ballroom for parties.

  Dropped Benjamin. Glued and then was late. Cabbed uptown ($3.50). And because I was late I’d been bumped from the main table. So I wound up at the same table as Rosemary Kent! She’s back around and working for the Post! I’ve been forgetting to tell the Diary. And Fred was at this table, too, so he was going nuts trying to look away from her. She’s still with the same husband, Henry. And instead of running up to Paloma I ran up to horrible Rosemary Kent, who’s still writing her stupid “What’s In/What’s Out” articles, you know—“Handbags! Shoes! Andy Warhol’s wigs!”—and tried in my heart not to think she was awful, because God forgives so so should I. See, I’m sure I got sick the other day as punishment because I yelled at that lady. Didn’t I tell the Diary? A real estate lady called the office and said she wanted to show our floor to some people and I screamed that she couldn’t, that our lease wasn’t up and that she better not set one foot on the premises until it was, and she said she couldn’t believe that a nice person and an artist like me would be yelling at her. And then I got sick.