The entries by Warhol gave me sense of his mind like I never knew. He would write about going to church every Sunday. Or seeing mundane things like "saw a squirrel eating a nut" (8/20/79). Or who or what he saw at a party or a restaurant in New York. Or reminisces and brushes with movie star friends like Paulette Goddard. In some of the 1985 entries he wrote about his experience on the "Love Boat" tv show. And he even talked about meeting with Donald Trump and his wife who wanted him to do some art to be on display in one of his buildings.
My favorite parts of the collection were any time he would reference or comment on a recent movie he had seen.
I've included a few excepts/quotes as well as some of my own thoughts. It's funny - Andy Warhold would write in his diary in a very similar way that I blog....basically commenting on a few random things that stood out to him about a film or something. And I love how he philosophizes as well, such as "Life really does repeat itself. The old songs come back in a new way and the kids think they're new and the old people remember and it's a way of keeping people together I guess, a way of living". (8/2/78) I think he would have really used Twitter alot if were around back then.
The following excepts come from the book The Andy Warhol Diaries, which is a printed collection of the artist's journal entries. The book is edited by Pat Hackett.
Note: anything in red is written by me and not a quote from the book.
Jan 29, 1978 - There was a dinner for the New York Film Critics and celebrities were there. "Maximilian Schell was there and he'd gotten a supporting role award for Julia. I had never met him before and I was disappointed that he was fat, but he was really sweet. He said that I did great things for him in Germany, that he'd seen Flesh and hated it and then gone back to see it again and again and loved it, and that he though, 'if this is a movie, then I can make a movie too.'
April 4, 1978 - a screening of Louis Malle's movie "Pretty Baby". "Interesting...strange....It was a cute idea for a movie, but nothing comes of it - like they had pickets picketing against the sin in New Orleans but nothing happened because of it."
May 30, 1978 - "I began watching The Valachi Papers on TV with Charles Bronson, and then I fell asleep, and then I woke up and ran to the window when I heard a voice say "Open Up, it's the narcotics squad" and then I realized it was on the TV".
July 27, 1978 - Watched 20/20 and instead of saying, "In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes" it was so funny to hear Hugh Downs say "As Andy Warhol once said, in fifteen minutes everyody will be famous". People on TV always get some part wrong. Like "In the future fifteen people will be famous"
Oct 12, 1978 - "I watched TV.... All Fall Down. When Brandon DeWilde kicks the picture of Warren Beatty and Angela Lansbury grabs it and holds it close - it's so good, you know? Who wrote the movie? Was it the one who committed suicide who was like Tennessee Williams? The one who wrote Picnic? Inge.
Nov 19, 1978 - "Went to the Coronet to a screening - The Deer Hunter was the new kind of movie - three hours of watching torture. It took place in Clairton, Pennsylvania, where all my cousins afe from, and in the movie they said was Russian-Polish, but that was just to make it more something, because it was really Czechoslovakian. It had John Savage, and lots of good looking kids".
"It starts off, it's three buddies drinking. For a whole hour it's the Polish Wedding, and they could have cut it, but it was fun. So real and so beautiful. It shows a new kind of people in the movies that haven't been shown before, so it's really good. Then they go shooting some deer, so you know that from there it's going to cut to Vietnam. In the end Chris Walken puts a gun to his head and shoots himself dead and Bobby DeNiro says "Oh Darling, I love you I love you" holding his bleeding head, something like that.
Aug 2, 1979 - I started watching Brief Encounter and at first I thought it was really good but then I started thinking what a stupid story about a lady who would give herself a problem when she had a happy marriage, and it was just dumb and I hated it".
Aug 17, 1979 - Went to Gulf & Western building for a meeting with Paramount Pictures to do the poster artwork for their new movie Serial. I didn't realize it was such a big meeting. I was 15 minutes late and there were 20 people there.....the guy - his name was Cohen with a "K" - Kohen, he pointed out the window, he kept saying, "You've got to do a good job so I can keep the office". He saying, "I'll know it when I see it." He was so old fashioned.
Note: Warhol did not do the poster art for the movie.
Sept 16, 1979 - went to a party for the opening of Yanks movie. Met Richard Gere "(He) said ten years ago he came in on a bus from new Jersey and went to see our movie Bike Boy at the Village and he said from then on, he's been trying to be an actor".
Jan 7, 1980 - went to see American Gigolo - "at the end of the movie there's a scene where a pimp is being thrown out off a balcony by Richard Gere and you see my three posters in the background - the Torsos. The scene is played against them"
May 26, 1980 - wrote about seeing The Empire Strikes Back.
Aug 12, 1980 - wrote about meeting Sean Young..."she's in some James Ivory movie that's about to come out" (Jane Austen in Manhattan starring Anne Baxter in her last film).
Oct 16, 1980 - he wrote that it was in the news that Mary Tyler Moore's son committed suicide. I didn't know that, that's sad. Andy mentioned the suicide in "Ordinary People" and wrote "everyone's going to hate her now because they will think that that's really her".
(I haven't seen that movie in long time so I'll need to check that out again.). A few months later, he met Mary for lunch and wrote about that too.
Oct 26, 1980. Andy wrote "I watched Sabrina on TV and William Holden and Audrey Hepburn looked so old. It seemed so old-fashioned talking about Long Island and the North Shore.....I watched Hooper on TV and my God, it was great. Just Burt Reynolds and his usual lines. He played a stunt man."
Nov 16 1980 - "watched Saturday Night Fever on TV and it was great"
January 13, 1981 - "watched Giant on TV from 1 - 5:30. It's so long. I even went to church in between and when I came back it was still on. James Dean's acting when he gets old is the worst thing. But they did a good thing - when he's drunk and talking into the microphone it's like a rock star...he's right on top of the microphone and it's just noises coming out and so it's abstract"...
Feb 22, 1981 - "Jerry Hall called...said that poor Mick (Jagger) has been down in Peru with the Herzog movie and it rains all day and he has to sleep on a wet mattress and Jason Robards was taken away with pneumonia to a hospital in NY"
- Note: the movie they were talking about was Fitzcarraldo which came out in 1982 ....I haven't seen it. Both Jagger and Robards were re-cast.
Later that day, Andy Warhol wrote that he went to a black-tie birthday affair (for lawyer Roy Cohn) with about 200 people. "Lots of heavies" he wrote, and noted that Donald Trump was there. That was interesting. Others he saw there were Gloria Swanson, Rupert Murdoch (TV mogul), Mark Goodson (TV mogul), and others. Interesting how Trump has had TV connections going back 40 years; I think people forget all the media ties he has. (in later journal entries, Andy writes about his meetings with Trump, but there was nothing too remarkable or unsurprising).
March 13, 1981 - Andy saw Jack Nicholson at a party...wrote..."I told Jack how great he was in Postman and that everybody thinks Jessica Lange is great".
April 14, 1981 - Worked until 5:30. Jon Gould invited me to a screening of Atlantic City that he was giving for his crowd.
June 12, 1981 - "I watched Urban Cowboy and John Travolta just dances so beautifully. It was a really good movie
July 12, 1981 - "Saw a wonderful movie on TV - Coal Miner's Daughter, and I wish I taped it. Oh I wish I was married to a husband like that."
Aug 28, 1981 - "Paramount was having a screening of Mommie Dearest (cab $6).....it was absolutely great. Faye was really good. Really. Oh this movie affected me so much. Movies are really affecting me lately. What's happening to me?"
In January 1982, Andy wrote about meeting with Robert Towne, the screenwriter of Chinatown who was working on a new movie Personal Best, about to be released. Andy also wrote about going to see the play in NY Torch Song Trilogy (later would be a movie) and meeting with Harvey Firestein who created the play (and also acted in one of Warhol's plays years earlier).
Jan 15, 1982 - he went to see the "new" Coppolla movie "One from the Heart" starring Frederic Forrest (who was in Apocalypse Now). I never saw One from the Heart. Andy wrote "was boring...stinkerroo..and Forrest is one of my favorite actors and he'd gained about 20 pounds for the role. It was pretty but looks aren't enough, it's not going to make it"
June 5, 1982 - "went to see My Dinner with Andre....I feel asleep....it was so boring. Hippie talk. I guess the kids are thinking this is intellectual because it tells about feelings".
June 16, 1982 - He wrote about seeing "Grease 2" for the third time. He really liked that movie!
June 17, 1982. He wrote about seeing Blade Runner and wasn't sure what to make of it..."It's like Dick Powell playing Philip Marlowe. And if I ever saw this as a script, I wouldn't know what to think. And they say these lines seriously, it's all done like it's real problems".
Sep 1982 - watched "Looking for Mr Goodbar....(Richard Gere) was so good in it....couldn't watch the ending because it was too crazy"
March 25, 1983 - "Decided to see The Outsiders which was just opening, and I loved it. It was like watching Lonesome Cowboys. You can't believe it - young boys with dyed hair reading poetry in the sunset. The Sal Mineo type. And then they're in this old church hiding and the boy says, "All I really want you to do is read Gone with the Wind out loud to me". And all the boys are so cute. And this schmaltzy music playing as if the boys are going to kiss. Things were all cut up so they didn't make sense. It was like seeing Bruce Weber photographs. Every boy was a raving beauty".
May 15, 1983 - Went over to the Criterion to see Beathless (tickets $10). It's strange to see Richard Gere doing this. It\f it'd been somebody like Matt Dillon it would have been like a James Dean movie. It's that Satre way, the nothingness thing. You would think existentialism would be still modern, but it isn't. ....it's strange to see someone that age doing that, but maybe that'll bring back that kind of person...."
April 1, 1984 - "Decided to see The Ten Commandments (playing in a local theater)...And let me go on record: Cecil B DeMille is the worst director ever. We'd missed an hour but was still three hours to go and a half hour intermission. And all those actors were terrible. I mean Edward G Robinson, forget it. And forget Yvonne DeCarlo and Anne Baxter, too. Charlton Heston was okay, he was good-looking. The orgy scene was (laughs) people dropping grapes on each other - it sounds like an old Andy Warhol movie, right? And then they would lift their skirt two inches off the floor. That was it. That was the orgy. Edward G Robinson - you couldn't believe it."
Nov 12, 1984 - went to see Stranger Than Paradise...it's good"
Feb 1, 1985 - Andy went to see a film with his friend Tab Hunter - Lust in the Dust, a b-movie. "The movie was awful but I had to lie to Tab and say I loved it. He was literally trying to act. He tried to be Clint Eastwood when all he should have done was be Tab Hunter"
March 19, 1985 - he went to see Desperately Seeking Susan. "It's like those sixties movies but the opposite - the sixties movies had too much sixties and not enough story - and this has too much story and not enough eighties. It's boring"
July 22, 1985 - Went up to see Kiss of the Spider Woman...I liked the movie. And I guess people are wanting artsy movies now, or something. It's the right time.
Aug 13, 1986 - went to see Stand By Me at the Coronet. These four little kids and there's the fat kid, and the brilliant kid, and the crazy kid."
Sep 29 1986 - saw Blue Velvet - "what a good movie, so weird and creepy. Alot of couples walked out. And Dennis Hopper was finally good."
Oct 8, 1986 - saw Color of Money "I slept through most of it. I just wasn't interested in pool, and nothing was explained".
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