However much of Andy Warhol was style and how much was substance, there is no doubt that his Manhattan studio ('The Factory') was a little capsule of creativity that could refresh your view of the world - even if you were someone as uncreative as Valerie Solanas, who was trying to sell Andy on her unwanted pornographic play 'Up Your A**". Andy could recognise garbage at a glance, and jokingly pretended to admire the typing, before agreeing to read it later. Then he managed to lose it. In doing so, he had signed his death warrant.
Who was this Valerie Solanas, who seemed to have such a problem with rejection? According to her own account, she was a badly-scarred victim of childhood rape, who wanted to exterminate the male sex, and published a manifesto called SCUM - supposedly an acronym for 'Society for Cutting Up Men'. Soon she would try cutting-up Warhol and two other men with a Biretta stolen from a drugged-up revolutionary. (Ironically, Warhol used to get his kicks by cutting-up porn mags in the bathroom!) It took him a few years to die, but the cause of death was unequivocal.
Solanas is played by Lili Taylor, made-up to look every bit as ugly as the original, as she replicates the depressing and degrading life of a psychology graduate turned lesbian hooker living on the street. It's clear that she not only hates the world, but apparently wants to be hated too - in which she is entirely successful in my case.
Taylor does not really have to do much acting. The star of the show seems to be her ever-present cigarette, presumably a symbol of in-your-face bad girl. Andy is played realistically by Jared Harris, and I like him asking Stephen Dorff (in drag) "How often do you get your period?"
When a copy of "Up Your A**" finally surfaced fifty years later, it was (unsurprisingly) dismissed as infantile nonsense. Yet the end-frame tells us that the SCUM Manifesto continues to sell all over the world as a feminist classic. But only because its author had become the new Lee Harvey Oswald.
Who was this Valerie Solanas, who seemed to have such a problem with rejection? According to her own account, she was a badly-scarred victim of childhood rape, who wanted to exterminate the male sex, and published a manifesto called SCUM - supposedly an acronym for 'Society for Cutting Up Men'. Soon she would try cutting-up Warhol and two other men with a Biretta stolen from a drugged-up revolutionary. (Ironically, Warhol used to get his kicks by cutting-up porn mags in the bathroom!) It took him a few years to die, but the cause of death was unequivocal.
Solanas is played by Lili Taylor, made-up to look every bit as ugly as the original, as she replicates the depressing and degrading life of a psychology graduate turned lesbian hooker living on the street. It's clear that she not only hates the world, but apparently wants to be hated too - in which she is entirely successful in my case.
Taylor does not really have to do much acting. The star of the show seems to be her ever-present cigarette, presumably a symbol of in-your-face bad girl. Andy is played realistically by Jared Harris, and I like him asking Stephen Dorff (in drag) "How often do you get your period?"
When a copy of "Up Your A**" finally surfaced fifty years later, it was (unsurprisingly) dismissed as infantile nonsense. Yet the end-frame tells us that the SCUM Manifesto continues to sell all over the world as a feminist classic. But only because its author had become the new Lee Harvey Oswald.