The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Friday, December 14, 1984

  And Fred’s gone off to Europe. Fred and I still aren’t getting along and I still don’t know what he wants. All I can figure is that he really wants to become an architect, because the only time he really likes credit is when it’s for architecture. I remember one time years ago when I wanted Fred to direct a Jackie Curtis play and he went crazy, he literally went crazy and said, “No no no no!” But architecture he wants to do.

  Saturday, December 15, 1984

  Got up early, had to go to work. Had Jay come in and Rupert. During the week it’s impossible to work at the new place, it’s just people coming through and gawking all the time.

  I bought three Cabbage Patch dolls on the street with their birth certificates. A boy and two girls (3 X $80 = $240). And they wanted to wrap them so that I wouldn’t be attacked for them on the street. Got research books ($180).

  Sunday, December 16, 1984

  Kenny Scharf called and said he was picking me up and that Sean Lennon was in the car with him. So I said in an hour, but then I couldn’t seem to be ready, so then I heard a commotion out in front and I knew they were there, but then I was afraid to go out.

  And while this was going on, the phone rang and it was Jean Michel from Sweden and when he heard these other kids were at my house, he began to go crazy because he’s never been there. But it’s just that I don’t like anything pre-planned. If he just dropped in or something it’d be okay. So finally I went out and I had a camera with me and Sean took it and was taking pictures of me and said that he was waiting until I got sick of smiling and then he’d take one. He got that technique from Yoko. And he dissertated on how he never knew what to do when photographers were around, whether to smile or act or freeze. He’s so smart.

  So we went to the West Side and we were going to pick up the Mia Farrow kids who live across from the Dakota—Sean plays with them—but then they didn’t come. And Yoko came, and people just kept a distance from this car—it was great—with all these famous people in it. And we picked up Jon.

  We were thinking of a place to have lunch and I said the Odeon and she said oh yes, so it seemed like she went there a lot but then she said she’d never been, that she didn’t really go out that much. And we picked up her I guess boyfriend, although I can’t figure it out if it’s her boyfriend or what. Sam Havadtoy.

  You know, if anything ever happened to Sean that’d be the end of her, I think. It really would. And I was telling her what a wonderful host Sean was at his birthday party and she said that the first time he had to do a party he hid under the couch. Yoko wanted to pay, but I did (lunch $200). Her boyfriend was very nice. And Kenny’s paintings are selling like crazy. His wife and son were along, and they just bought a house on Suffolk Street way downtown where Ray Johnson used to live. Around Orchard, over there. So he’s being a man. A provider.

  I dropped Jon ($8). Then stayed home.

  Tuesday, December 18, 1984

  I went to the office and went in the Interview side. It was busy there. Gael was excited because they’d gotten 600 subscriptions that day from the Swatch watch thing. So she was hoping that would keep up. In the old days that’s how much we’d get in a year.

  Paige is breaking up with her seventeen-year-old boyfriend. She’s going off to Haiti.

  Ran into one of those kids from Harvard in the sixties, one of Edie’s friends, I can’t remember his name. And I showed him my crystals and told him about crystal power and he was just standing there with his mouth open. He said he couldn’t believe that someone as smart as me would start believing in crystals after I made it all through the sixties and everything and laughed at all the hippie stuff and that this is just the recycle of it. But really it’s not the same, and you do have to be positive, not negative. He said he’s developing land deals in Washington State.

  Wednesday, December 19, 1984

  Fred called from Europe. Bruno wanted twenty-eight pictures in his four-year contract, but I decided he could only have twenty-five, and then I give him one for himself, so that’s twenty-six. This is for Jean Michel’s and my things. But I don’t get it, these are huge paintings he’s getting for peanuts.

  And it’s funny, because only my Disaster paintings are the “in” paintings. Even the Campbell’s Soup Cans are “out.” And I really have only two collectors. Saatchi and Newhouse a little bit. Whereas Roy Lichtenstein and those people have fifteen or twenty. I guess I’m just not… a good painter.

  It got busy at the office. Sean Lennon was coming at 4:00 so I could give him a Christmas present, a portrait of himself, but I don’t know if it’ll be done in time.

  Then at home I ate things I wasn’t supposed to and I got scared and got pains.

  The Interview Christmas party’s on Friday and I’ll just give scarves or something.

  Thursday, December 20, 1984

  When I was coming back from the dentist this good-looking lady ran out of Martha’s screaming my name and I looked and it was Claudia Cohen’s mother from Palm Beach. She said Claudia was inside getting her dress for her wedding to Ron Perelman. When I met him originally I thought he was a bodyguard because he looks a little Mafia. But he owns Technicolor or something. So I was trying to get myself invited to the wedding.

  Gerry Grinberg from North American Watches came for lunch. He said that the economy isn’t good. I guess people aren’t buying watches. He said people were buying more expensive gifts but only for themselves. Bob Denison only sent me half of what he sent me the year before, but then Park Avenue does have five times more trees planted on it than last year.

  Eizo, my shiatsu massager, wrote me a note thanking me for introducing him to Yoko Ono. She wants to see him every day, but he can’t do that, and anyway your body needs a week to rest. He’s doing little Sean tomorrow. And Eizo’s wife’s poetry teacher wrote me a Pop poem that I don’t know what to do with. It’s like, “I touch you and you touch me and we have feelings.” And you really learn all the gossip about everybody through this shiatsu network. Eizo told me that Yoko’s boyfriend Sam has a soft body. And he said Yoko’s been sick and has a bad back.

  And then went to 990 Fifth Avenue to the party Judy Peabody was giving for Peter Allen. I was talking to this art student and suddenly Peter came over and said to him, “I’m leaving and you’re coming with me!” He thought I was stealing his boyfriend! Can you imagine? That’s the first time that’s ever happened to me. So I didn’t know what to do, but then I guess Peter felt silly because later he was trying to entertain me. I left at 12:30, the party was just getting going.

  Saturday, December 22, 1984

  Went to David Daine’s, the hair stylist. Kent Klineman, Hedy’s husband, was there, and all he sees in me is a tax shelter and all I see in him is a check. I don’t know if the deal for a Cowboys and Indians portfolio he wants to commission is going to fall through because I won’t do it as a tax shelter. We’ll see.

  Sunday, December 23, 1984

  I caught up on church after missing three Sundays because of wanting to avoid Crazy Matty. So I peeked out and then made a dash for it. It’s so funny to think that Matty was married to Genevieve Waite once. Are Genevieve and John Phillips still together? And I’m trying to think, has Matty ever had a job? No, I don’t think so. Except for a few months there in the sixties when he was a vice-president or something at Fox—when all those movie companies wanted the “youth market” so they were hiring freaks. I remember somebody there was always flying Matty back and forth from L.A. to New YorkOh I forgot, he was in Bad. So that was a day’s work. I forgot he was the cripple in the wheelchair….

  So went to church, came home, started cleaning, and got exactly one drawer done. Made carrot juice and made a big mess. Watched The Jewel in the Crown. Read an article from an L.A. newspaper on Ronnie Levin’s murder. They haven’t found his body but they think this bunch of rich kids killed him and also killed the father of one of these kids—an Iranian— they found his body in the desert and they think Ron
nie’s is nearby. It was fascinating, read it twice.

  Monday, December 24, 1984

  Stephen Sprouse came by and brought two wigs for me. But I thought they would be some kind of wild style or color, which I would have preferred—a new look. But they were grey. Stretch. And we never know what to say to each other, it’s always awkward.

  Called a cab and Benjamin dropped me. Then called Halston and it was weird, he said not to come by, that he really wasn’t doing anything this Christmas.

  Called Chris Makos and he was having a party for his neighbors and it sounded sort of bad. Christmas parties always are. Except at Halston’s—they were always sort of nice. Went by and rang Claudia Cohen’s bell on 63rd Street because I want to get invited to her wedding to Ron Perelman because Liz Taylor is going to be the matron of honor and her husband-to-be Dennis Stein is going to be I think best man. He works for Perelman, that’s where I met him. Every light in the house was on but they weren’t home. Dropped their scarves off.

  Benjamin picked me up and we went to Steve Rubell’s new hotel, Morgan’s, to the penthouse (cab $4). Steve’s letting Bianca live there. And her personal stuff was all over the room where the party was so anybody could have taken anything. And I gave her and Jade scarves and hers was framed, and then later I saw it on the bed and she’d taken it out of the frame, and I don’t know why. I mean, even if she didn’t like it, it was art.

  And Dianne Brill asked me if I knew Jayne Mansfield and I guess I lied when I said yes because I couldn’t remember if I really did or not. Because I’ve read so many books about her. Dianne wanted to know if it was voodoo that killed her.

  Thursday, December 27, 1984—Aspen, Colorado

  Talked to Dr. Bernsohn. He said that the secret to sleeping was to scratch the crystal and brush it and put it on your forehead.

  Patti D’Arbanville and Don Johnson gave a big party, and my dear, Patti is now a lady. She’s come a long way from the Max’s Kansas City back room days when she was best friends with Géraldine Smith and Andrea Whips. She and Don Johnson gave the best party I’ve been to since we’ve been coming to Aspen. She’s the cream of the crop. She still can’t dress, though. She never could. Even when we filmed her in Paris in our movie L’Amour—even in Paris she had no fashion. Jane Forth and Donna Jordan had all the style in that movie because the boys dressed them. At the party Patti was wearing eighteen-inch earrings and a white dress that didn’t show off the shape of her body. Don looks sort of old, not the fresh young boy I remember meeting way back when he was in The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart. Before his comeback in Miami Vice and everything, when he wasn’t acting much, he was hanging around with musicians and he remembered that time during the Jimmy Carter days when we were both in Nashville when that guy who supported Carter, Phil Walden from Capricorn Records, had the whole hotel down there booked for us. That time I was there with Catherine Guinness.

  Monday, December 31, 1984—Aspen

  Met the Dowager of Aspen, the Grand Dame. Went to her house. Her name is (laughs) Pussy Paepcke. She’s eighty-two and she’s very beautiful, she looks like Katharine Hepburn. Her house was great, next to Jack Nicholson’s and Lou Adler’s. An immaculate house and she runs up and down stairs to get ginseng tea, she’s spry. She and her husband who was this big industrialist had a ranch in Denver and then they went and founded Aspen.

  Jack Nicholson’s not around this year. He’s filming that Prizzis Honor thing in L.A.

  Wednesday, January 2, 1985—Aspen—Los Angeles

  We’re at the Mondrian Hotel. And it does look like a Mondrian. They’ve got valuable Miro paintings in the lobby and art all over. It’s on Sunset near La Ciénega. It’s not Beverly Hills.

  You know what’s fascinating is that Hollywood’s still filled with all these delicate ladies who look like they were beauties, all glued up and in their cars, driving around. Not with drivers, just driving themselves. And you wonder what they used to do, what star they were, what roles they had. Everybody reminds me of Jane Wyatt out there. Those skinny, petite beauties who wear turbans and they’re at premieres and things. And they’re like eighty years old. How do these ladies live? I mean, if they were contract players they didn’t make much. I guess one of their husbands must have been rich. But wasn’t that before community settlements? But I guess you don’t need much to live. Like you don’t pay rent if you have your own house. And food, well, you can eat at McDonald’s or there’s always some fairy fan who’ll take you around.

  We went out driving, took a lot of pictures on Melrose. Went to the Interview office out there, talked to Gael and I was really upset when she told me that Peter Lester had died in Los Angeles. That’s two Interview editors dead of AIDS.

  Thursday, January 3, 1985—Los Angeles

  We went over to a studio across from the Formosa Restaurant, they shoot Doug Cramer’s TV show Dynasty there. The Love Boat writers are working on my episode which is going to film on March thirtieth and I started to get scared, I don’t know if I can go through with it. The guy was really gay. And Joan Collins got done shooting and I said hi, and she said I still owed her a painting. She was great. And Ali McGraw waved. There were like 500 people there working. And it’s directed by Curtis Harrington who was an underground filmmaker in the sixties who did voodoo kind of stuff, and now he’s doing this.

  Then we went to the Interview offices and I got excited about Interview. I think I do want to buy a building out there, because they’ll only give you leases to rent for a few months. Gael said that Third Street is going to be the next street that’s big. I got excited on Melrose. Jon’s trying to move into production at Paramount, so he has to be out here more. And gee, I can’t believe that it gets dark here at the same time it does in New York. It seems like since it’s sunny it should stay light longer. I was shocked.

  Then we went out to the premiere of the redone Wings that Paramount was releasing and it was absolutely great. And you look and you think why can’t they make movies like this now. Buddy Rogers who was married to Mary Pickford was there. And Clara Bow was just great in it. The fashions look like today. And it was a big event. Got home around 11:30 or 12:00.

  Saturday, January 5, 1985—Los Angeles

  Did Melrose. It was warm and beautiful and sunny. Oh, and I heard about about a way to shoplift at the supermarket which I think I’m (laughs) going to do—switching the price stickers at the supermarket.

  Went to the new museum way downtown. It was an automobile show. Real cars mixed in with Ma tisses and Rosenquists. And they had a painting of mine in it that they had labeled a “Car Crash.” But when I saw it, it wasn’t a Car Crash it was a Disaster. The one with the fireman. Should I tell them? How could they not even notice it didn’t have a car in it. And the show’s going on to Detroit. In Detroit they’ll notice there’s no car. But really, should I tell them?

  Sunday, January 6, 1985—Los Angeles—New York

  Jon invited me to breakfast at the Beverly Hills Hotel and it was a grey day but we ate outside anyway, they put heaters all around you, so you don’t know it’s cold.

  Flew to New York. And at the baggage you see how pushy people are. This guy with polished nails just pushed everybody aside, and then there was a girl in a wheelchair and when her luggage came down the shoot she just got up out of the chair and ran and got it. (laughs) That’s a real scene. Home at 1:30 (tip to driver $20).

  Tuesday, January 8, 1985

  Vincent just called on the other line and said we have to make half a million by March to make our payments on the new building.

  Went over to Earl McGrath’s for the birthday party of Jann Wenner and Sabrina Guinness, a double. And Jerry Hall was there, she looks just great. She looks like these girls who could marry big Texas millionaires. She’s so stupid to have married Mick. Not to have married, even.

  And by the way, Fred looks good, I wonder if he had a facelift when he was in Europe. It’s nothing drastic, he just looks rested. If I had a lift, though, I’d go for t
he really tight-pulled look. I wouldn’t care if I couldn’t shut my eyes. Like Monique Van Vooren.

  Thursday, January 10, 1985

  Fred said that Si Newhouse passed on buying my painting. I guess I was hot before Christmas and now I’m not. This was for another painting, not the Natalie that he already got.

  And Fred told me that he’d called down to Leo’s and asked the kids who work there why Leo had said such bad things about me in that USA Today article on me on Monday and they said they’d find out. And they told Fred that Rauschenberg left Leo to go to Blum-Helman. Isn’t that something? Well it’s that Leo’s getting senile. I know that’s why he said those things, he’s getting senile.

  Benjamin dropped me at Jean Michel’s and he has like twenty people working for him, getting big canvases ready. It’s really neat and clean there now and it looks great. And he has a $5,000 TV set that’s really big.

  Then we cabbed to Julian Schnabel’s on Park Avenue South and 20th. Bryan Ferry was there. Julian has all his own art in the place and he tells you about each one, he stands there and reads into his own work. I mean, he literally stands there and (laughs) tells you what his paintings mean. And this was the first time in a long time I wished I was tape recording.

  Schnabel also makes his own furniture. He made his own bed. Cast iron, gunmetal, really heavy. If you ever fell on it you’d kill yourself. His little girl was there and she was pulling her nightgown up and showing her pussy. (laughs) It was weird. And all his paintings are just everywhere, all the plate canvases—he used to be a short-order cook. And he has the best furniture from the fifties.